EPILOGUE
IRINA
Five months later
Matteo carried the urn through the property that had once been the Bellandi Estate. The building had been demolished, reduced to nothing but dirt on the ground in the months since the explosion left it unstable.
His eyes were heavy-lidded, his body weighed down by the exhaustion of the last few months.
War. Vengeance.
A city on fire.
The workers around the property had finished laying out the posts and structure of the foundation, the concrete mixing in the truck off to the side as we all walked behind Matteo in the funeral procession that Simon had deserved all those months ago.
Simon’s sister walked at Matteo’s side, her eyes wet and her lungs heaving as she tried to force down her tears. Even after five months, Simon’s loss was felt every single day. Every day that Luna looked for her father’s shadow. Every day that passed where Ivory grew bigger, and her due date approached.
Every day that Matteo’s new security couldn’t form any kind of personal relationship with him, his heart too set on not betraying the man who had given up everything for him.
Samara sang softly as we walked, her voice carrying through the void that had been our home. That would be our home in the future.
Matteo nodded as he stopped at the edges of the boundary where the foundation for the new house would be built, signaling the construction workers to start pouring the concrete.
As they laid the foundation, we all watched it spread over the designated area in a smooth flow. Matteo opened the lid on the urn, tipping it over so that Simon’s ashes joined the pouring cement.
He’d given everything to make sure the Bellandi legacy continued on. To make sure that Matteo lived to rebuild this place. It was only fair that he be a part of it forever, even in his absence. Fair that he was a part of the very foundation we built our home on.
Ivory turned her face into Matteo’s shoulder when he stepped back, her tears soaking his suit, and she cried for one of the deaths that war had brought.
* * *
One and a half years later
“Eleni!” I called, tapping my fingers against the console by the front table of the women’s center, Rebirth. The tween girl came hauling booty down the stairs, rounding the corner as she took the backpack out of my hands.
The women who had needed a safe place to land turned to watch her from the living room just off the foyer, grins on their faces as they watched her awkward antics. She’d had a growth spurt in the months since she’d come to live with us, her too-long limbs frequently making her stumble like a newborn giraffe. She’d grow into them eventually, but for now it was the cutest damn thing I’d ever seen.
I gave her a look, silently reminding her of the need to move with caution around the housing portion of the center. Most of our occupants had grown familiar with Eleni and her exuberance, but we were expecting someone new to join us any day now.
As soon as she could safely extricate herself from the situation she was living in.
She smiled sheepishly, knowing that I couldn’t stay mad at that face. “Scar is waiting for us at home,” I said, reaching out to tuck a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear.
“I thought he was with Aunt Ivory until tonight?” she asked, her face lighting up at the thought of seeing Scar earlier than planned.
“Your Aunt Ivory wasn’t feeling up to going out after all, so he’ll be home for dinner. I thought I could make pastitsio?” I asked, guiding her out the door as I pulled the front door closed and locked it behind me. I glanced toward the hired guards stationed at the gate as we headed directly for the car they’d pulled out front for me.
It was only five at night, but Scar wouldn’t be pleased to find me working past my curfew. His rules were strict, never slacking on what he would allow in terms of me working myself too hard.
Even if he wasn’t home, at five o’clock I left the office without fail.
I just snuck some work in from the house if he wasn’t there to witness it. We pretended he didn’t know until Eleni was in bed, then he smacked my ass until it was raw.
It was hardly motivation to behave.
Eleni grinned. Her Greek roots showed through in the dark shade of her hair and her warm brown eyes. Aside from those eyes, she was the near-spitting image of me when I was her age. She’d first come to Fresh Start in the weeks after the explosion, brought there by a state social worker I knew who thought I might be able to help her.
She looked just like her mother, the spitting image of a woman Scar had eventually admitted lay dead and buried in an early grave because of me. It had been Eleni’s mother’s finger that Darragh sent me in a box, with her chunk of hair and skin that accompanied it.
In those early months, I’d felt tremendous guilt for every moment I spent with her. Every moment where I fell more and more in love with the girl I had taken everything from. Months had passed before I worked up the courage to tell her the truth, feeling overwhelming guilt in the fact that Eleni clung to me as if I hadn’t been the cause of her entire world ending.
Knowing I was the reason she didn’t have a mother.
But Eleni hadn’t blamed me. She’d smiled and nodded, whispering in words far too old for her age about the evils of men and not wearing the weight of their sins on our shoulders.
She’d come home with me that night and never left.
We climbed into the car when James opened the back door for us. My driver and personal security hadn’t left my side since the end of the Bellandi war. Since the day I’d said goodbye to Calix so he could return to Philadelphia in time to stop his Thalia’s wedding.
James closed the door and climbed in the driver’s seat, grinning as he looked at me in the rearview mirror and drove down the driveway to approach the gate. He coughed to hide his smile as he pulled out onto the street and let Chicago traffic sweep us up. He knew how nervous I was, how terrified I was that Eleni might say no.
It hadn’t taken nearly a year and a half for me to come to think of her as my daughter, but with every day that passed I wondered if she felt the same.
She loved Scar. Adored him with an affection that took my breath away. She loved the family we’d given her, but could she ever really love the woman who had taken everything from her?
By the time we walked in the front door, I was a mess of nerves. Determined to forget the entire thing and toss aside the notion of officially adopting Eleni, I wasn’t ready for the balloons and decorations littered the living room when we walked inside to look for my husband.
“What’s going on?” I asked, staring down at Eleni in confusion. I’d been meant to surprise her with the adoption papers, but she grinned in satisfaction.
She pulled a stack of papers from her backpack, handing them over to me so I could look down at the document as my husband stepped out from the shadows and wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
She snuggled into his side, looking as content as she could possibly be despite the tears stinging her eyes. “Scar knew you would chicken out again.”
“I—what?” I said, stumbling for words as my eyes fell onto her signature scrawled on the place where she had to consent to the adoption.
Scar reached across us, dragging me into his chest as Eleni’s arm touched my back. “I can’t believe you didn’t know I would want this,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “Sign the fucking papers before I cry.”
“Language,” Scar scolded, turning a stern glare down at Eleni.
At our daughter.
He turned anyway, offering me his back to use as a surface so that I could scrawl my name beside his. I’d file the papers the next day, then deal with the court proceedings that needed to happen to make it official.
If Matteo and my father couldn’t push things along, anyway.
“The two of you are all I’ve ever wanted. You know that, right?” I asked Eleni, turning to cup her cheeks in my hands as I touched my lips to her forehead.
With the papers signed and waiting on the coffee table, I took each of their hands and walked into the kitchen.
Happy to make pastitsio with the family I’d almost lost before I even made them mine.
* * *