Page 26 of The Kingpin’s Bride

The estate sat behind high walls and quiet security, the kind of place that looked like old money until you noticed the men at the gates never smiled and the cameras tracked every car that slowed near the entrance.

I parked on the gravel drive and sat for a moment with the engine off. The last time I had been here, the girls had been small enough to lift with one arm. Time moved differently when you spent most of it in the dark watching someone else.

The watch ticked against my pulse, steady and indifferent, the same way it had the night Angelo died, probably. I wonder if he saw it coming. Leo Moretti was vicious.

My sister Aurora opened the door before I reached it. Her face broke into a real smile, the kind she reserved for family, the kind that reached her eyes and made the years fall away for a second. She looked exactly as she always had in the soft light of the foyer, elegant, composed, and capable of seeing too much.

“Matteo.” She pulled me into a hug that smelled like expensive perfume and something softer underneath, like clean laundry and the faint sweetness of whatever the girls had been eating.

Her arms were strong. She held on a second longer than necessary. “You should have told us you were coming. I would have saved you some dinner.”

“I didn’t know I was until I was driving.”

Her eyes were searching in that quiet way she had always had, when we were younger and I thought I could hide the sharper edges. Whatever she saw made her smile soften into something closer to concern. Then she stepped aside and let me in.

The house was loud in the best way. Somewhere deeper inside a child shrieked with laughter. Another voice, higher, called for Papa. The sound of small feet on hardwood. The distant clatter of toys. Aurora’s hand rested briefly on my arm, warm and steady.

“They’re in the garden with him. Go. I’ll bring coffee.”

I walked through the main hall and out the open glass doors at the back. The garden was washed in late afternoon light, the kind that turned the stone paths gold and made the leaves look almost soft. Santino stood near the low stone wall with his sleeves rolled up and his shirt open at the throat, looking more relaxed than he ever did at the club or in any room where the Families were watching. Four girls moved around him like satellites, bright and chaotic and completely unafraid.

Francesca, the boldest, was trying to climb his leg, small hands gripping the fabric of his trousers with fierce determination. Angelica held a fistful of flowers she had crushed in her excitement, petals stuck to her fingers like confetti. Elisa sat on his shoe, arms wrapped around his calf, refusing to let go even when he tried to take a step. The youngest, small, dark-haired, unsteady on her feet, held onto his fingers with both hands and stared up at him like he had hung the sun in the sky just for her.

Santino looked up when my shadow crossed the grass. Something in his face eased, the careful mask he wore in public slipping into something realer.

“You’re late for dinner by about four years,” he said. His voice carried the same dry humor it always had, but there was warmth underneath it now, the kind that only came from a man who had built something worth protecting.

Francesca abandoned her climbing attempt and ran at me instead. I caught her under the arms and lifted her high enough to make her squeal, the sound bright and pure against the quiet of the garden. The others followed in a rush of sticky hands and overlapping voices.

For a few minutes there was only the chaos of small bodies and the simple, stupid warmth of being claimed by children who did not care what I did in the dark. Angelica pressed her crushed flowers into my free hand. Elisa wrapped herself around my leg the second Francesca was set down. Baby Selena reached for me with both arms until Santino shifted her closer so she could pat my face with solemn, sticky fingers.

Aurora appeared with a tray and saved me from being climbed like a tree. The girls were herded inside with promises of juice and the threat of baths, their protests loud and temporary. When the glass doors closed behind them the garden felt too quiet. The light had shifted further toward evening. Shadows stretched long across the grass. Santino handed me a coffee he had poured, black and strong the way we both took it.

“You look like a man who came here to say something,” he said.

I wrapped both hands around the cup and watched the surface ripple. The words sat heavy on my tongue. Part of me wanted to keep the plan sealed behind the usual walls, the same way I had kept every other decision that mattered. The larger part had driven here for a reason. Santino had always been the only person who could look at a hole and not pretend it was nothing.

“I’ve chosen a wife.”

Santino went still. The slight pause of a man recalculating the board, measuring the new piece against every other piece in play. The wind moved through the trees at the edge of the property. Inside the house one of the girls laughed, bright and unburdened.

“The seat condition,” he said. Not a question.

“Yes.”

“Do I know her?”

“Not sure.” I looked up and met his eyes. “She’s one of the dancers at After Dark, so you may. Name is Morena Caruso. She’s been on the secondary stage for weeks. I’m taking her at the auction in three weeks.”

Santino was quiet for a long time. He drank his coffee slowly, eyes on the garden wall, the same way he used to study a map before a job. When he finally spoke again his voice was lower. “You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“Not about the seat. About her.”

I thought of the private room. The knife. The way she had looked at me when I told her to leave. The pain that had formed when Dario said she would hate me if I killed him. The scent she had left behind. The way my body had reacted even while I was deciding whether to end a man. The photographs on my wall. The three weeks I had spent watching her from the shadows like a man who had decided the ending.

“I’m sure.”