Chapter 10 - A Table Set for Three
Six months later, the spring came to Boston with an explosion of white magnolia blossoms along Commonwealth Avenue.
The brownstone at number 312 had wide, curving sandstone steps that had been scrubbed until they gleamed like bone. In the small front garden, two lilac bushes were already heavy with purple buds, their sweet, heavy scent drifting down toward the iron railings of the sidewalk.
Inside, on the second floor, the kitchen smelled of roasted garlic, rosemary, and fresh yeast.
Elena stood at the butcher-block island, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her hands dusted with white flour as she kneaded a ball of pizza dough. She was wearing a simple linen dress, her hair pinned up with a wooden comb, her face full and healthy, the purple hollows beneath her eyes completely erased by six months of uninterrupted sleep and clean air.
The front door on the ground floor opened.
The click of the brass latch was followed by the sound of small, energetic footsteps racing across the oak parquet of the entryway.
“Mama! He’s here! He brought the cannoli from the North End, not the ones from the bakery on Tremont that taste like cardboard!”
Elena smiled, shaking the flour from her fingers as Mila burst into the kitchen, wearing a yellow sundress and carrying a white cardboard box tied with red-and-white butcher’s string.
Behind her came Alessandro.
He looked ten years younger.
The silver in his hair was still there, but the severe, haggard tension that had marked his face for three decades had softened into something resembling contentment. He was wearing an open-collared linen shirt under a navy blazer, his hands carrying a flat wicker basket filled with fresh figs and late-spring asparagus from his greenhouse in Cape Ann.
He set the basket on the table, leaned down, and kissed Mila on the crown of her head as she darted past toward the refrigerator.
“Wash your hands, little bird,” Alessandro said. “Your mother has spent three hours on that sauce.”
“I’m washing them!” Mila shouted from the pantry sink. “With the lavender soap!”
Alessandro walked over to the island.
He did not touch Elena with the familiarity of a man who owned her; he stood beside her with the quiet, reverent space of a man who was grateful simply to be permitted in the same room.
He reached into his pocket and placed something small and silver on the marble beside the flour bin.
Elena looked down.
It was an envelope from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
“The charter school application for the South End program?” she asked.
“Approved,” Alessandro said. “The board voted unanimously this morning.”
“Did you have to threaten any of them?” Elena asked, raising an eyebrow with mock severity.
“Not a single one,” Alessandro said, placing his hand over his heart with an expression of profound, theatrical innocence. “I simply donated three hundred thousand dollars to their new science library. It turns out that benevolence is much more efficient than extortion. Less paperwork.”
Elena laughed—a clear, musical sound that filled the high-ceilinged kitchen and made the copper pots hanging from the ceiling ring with a soft, sympathetic vibration.
She wiped her hands on her apron and turned to face him.
Alessandro reached out, his large, warm fingers gently brushing a smudge of white flour from the bridge of her nose.
His touch was hesitant, gentle, completely stripped of the violence that had once defined his every waking second.
“The city is quiet, Elena,” he said softly, his dark eyes locking onto hers with a depth that made her heart skip a beat. “The docks are running clean. The port authority has their new contract. For the first time in thirty years, I woke up this morning and didn't have to check the obituaries to see who had betrayed me.”
“And Luca?” Elena asked quietly.
“He is the second mate on a freighter running between Valparaíso and Melbourne,” Alessandro said. “He wrote to his mother last week. He told her the work is hard, but the sea air has been good for his lungs.”
Elena leaned forward, resting her forehead against the firm, solid linen of his chest.
She heard his heart beating—strong, rhythmic, unbroken beneath the silver scars that still marked his ribs.
Alessandro’s arms came around her, slow and careful, holding her against him with the desperate, grateful reverence of a sailor who had survived a five-year storm and had finally felt the solid stone of the harbor beneath his feet.
“Dinner is ready!” Mila announced, marching back into the kitchen with three mismatched cloth napkins tucked under her arm like a professional headwaiter. “Mama made the round bread. The kind with the hard crust.”
Alessandro stepped back, his hand lingering for a single, warm second against Elena’s waist before he turned toward the table.
He took the three napkins from the child, bowing from the waist with the elaborate, courtly grace of an old Venetian prince.
“After you, Miss Carter,” Alessandro said.
Elena watched them—the former king of the Boston underworld and the five-year-old girl who had refused to let him die in the rain—setting the three places at the long, polished table in the center of the sunny room.
May you like
Outside, the bells of the Arlington Street Church began to chime five o'clock, their iron resonance rolling through the warm spring air, over the Public Garden, over the brick triple-deckers of East Boston, and out toward the wide, quiet sea.
Elena untied her apron, picked up the hot loaf of country sourdough wrapped in a clean white towel, and walked toward the light.
