Page 415 of Rosetti Family New York
"What did you expect?"
"Someone who breaks easier." He studies the doorway where they vanished. "She's got steel under all that polish. Good thing, considering what's coming."
"What's coming?"
Dom's expression hardens. "Chase made another move last night. Hit one of our supply lines. He's escalating."
The words follow me into the house, through marble corridors that suddenly feel less like home and more like the front lines of a war Isabella never asked to fight.
But as I follow the sound of laughter from the kitchen, I find Carmela and Isabella bent over the espresso machine, working together to coax perfect crema from its complicated mechanisms.
"The trick is to let it know you respect its artistic process," Carmela explains, adjusting dials with exaggerated care. "Italians don't respond well to being rushed."
"Like most artists," Isabella observes, and there's actual amusement in her voice.
"Exactly. You work with artists?"
"I work with their ghosts. Dead painters, mostly. European decorative arts."
"Ah, the safe ones. They can't hit on you or steal your ideas."
Isabella laughs, and the sound does something to my chest. Loosens knots I didn't realize had formed. This is what I wanted, what I hoped for. Isabella finding her place in the chaos of my world, my family accepting her not as my captive but as herself.
"Matteo," Carmela calls without looking up from the machine. "Your girlfriend has excellent taste in coffee. I approve."
"He's not my—" Isabella starts, but Carmela cuts her off.
"Honey, I've seen the way my brother looks at you. Whatever complicated situation you two have worked out, it's not casual." She glances at me over Isabella's head, something knowing in her dark eyes. "And the way you look at him suggests it's not one-sided."
Heat flushes Isabella's cheeks, and she focuses intently on the espresso machine. But she doesn't deny it, and that small omission makes my coin flip faster between my fingers.
Before I can say something that might spook her back behind her walls, heels click across marble, and Besiana appears in the kitchen doorway. My sister-in-law surveys the scene with the poised elegance she brings to everything, taking in Isabella's casual clothes and Carmela's animated gestures.
"You must be Isabella," Besiana says, extending a manicured hand. "I'm Besiana. It's lovely to finally meet you."
"Thank you." Isabella accepts the handshake, but I catch the slight tension in her shoulders. Another performance, another careful first impression.
"You carry yourself with such control," Besiana observes, pouring herself coffee with fluid grace. "Like someone used to being watched."
The insight cuts through Isabella's polished exterior to something raw underneath. I see her blink, surprised by the perception, the lack of judgment in Besiana's tone.
"I suppose I am," Isabella admits after a moment.
"Performance becomes survival when you're surrounded by powerful men," Besiana continues, her voice gentle but knowing. "But you're safe here. You don't have to be anyone but yourself."
The kindness in her words makes something crack open in Isabella's expression. She's spent so long being what other people need that someone offering her permission to just exist seems to catch her completely off guard.
The coin goes still in my palm as I lean against the doorframe, watching three of the most important women in my life find their rhythm around each other. Isabella's walls aren't gone, but they're lower. She's laughing at Carmela's stories about the espresso machine's previous victims, asking Besiana genuine questions about the art decorating the kitchen walls.
And when she catches me watching, she doesn't look away immediately. Just meets my gaze across the kitchen and offers me a small, real smile that promises nothing and everything.
"You know," Carmela says, glancing between us with barely contained mischief, "I think this might actually work out."
Isabella's smile falters slightly, but she doesn't retreat. Just takes a sip of perfect espresso and lets the comment hang in the air between us, weighted with possibility neither of us is ready to name.
But for the first time since she pulled away from me yesterday, I believe we might actually find our way to whatever this becomes. And sitting here in my family's kitchen, watching Isabella belong somewhere she never expected to fit, that feels like enough.
For now.
