Chapter 10 - FENWICK RESTORED
Six months later, Fenwick Street had grass.
It wasn't much grass—just a thirty-foot strip between the two brownstones where the city had torn down an abandoned dry cleaner’s—but Dante had brought four truckloads of rich, black loam from a nursery in Rhode Island and had Jamal and the twins lay the sod by hand until it looked like a golf green.
The brownstone itself had been transformed.
The three-story brick had been sandblasted until the stone was a warm, dusty rose. The copper gutters gleamed like gold in the July sunshine. The second-floor windows were new, double-paned, lead-framed glass that didn't let in a single whisper of traffic from the avenue.
In the backyard, where the old rusted clothesline used to hang between two dying ailanthus trees, there was a cedar deck forty feet wide with an outdoor kitchen that Silvio had built using three thousand firebricks and a motorized rotisserie that could turn two whole pigs at once.
It was four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and the air smelled of roasting pork, rosemary, and sweet lemon ice.
"Caleb!" Talia’s voice came from the top of the deck stairs.
She was fifteen now. She wore a clean yellow sundress, her dark hair pulled back in a neat braid that Marisol had done that morning, but she still had her work boots on underneath the hem. Some things didn't change.
"If you drop that watermelon into the cellar hatch again, Dante’s going to make you scrub the grease trap with a toothbrush!"
Caleb, who was currently carrying a twenty-pound melon across the lawn with Nico trying to trip him from behind, froze, looked up at his sister, and immediately altered his course toward the picnic table.
"It wasn't me last time!" Caleb yelled back. "It was Luis!"
Luis didn't look up from where he was sitting under the big maple tree.
He was wearing clean canvas sneakers, denim shorts, and a navy-blue polo shirt with a small collar. On the grass between his knees was a wooden cigar box—mahogany, with Dante’s initials burned into the lid—lined with purple velvet.
Inside the box were two hundred and fourteen bottle caps.
Every single one had been cleaned with vinegar, polished with steel wool, and arranged by color: reds on the left, blues in the middle, gold and silver on the right.
Dante was standing beside the brick rotisserie, wearing a linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a cold bottle of mineral water in his left hand. His scar had faded slightly in the summer sun, turning a pale, silver line against his tanned skin. At his waist, hidden beneath the drape of an apron that Jamal had bought him for Father’s Day—it said *THE BOSS IS ALWAYS RIGHT (ESPECIALLY ABOUT BRASS)* in bright red letters—was the familiar leather holster, but the snap was engaged.
He looked over at me as I walked out the back screen door carrying a wooden bowl of potato salad the size of a hubcap.
I had gained five pounds since February, and every single ounce of it looked good on me. I wore a bright turquoise dress that hit my calves, my shoulders bare to the sun, my hair pinned up with tortoiseshell combs that Dante had bought me from an antique jeweler on Newbury Street.
Dante set the water bottle down, wiped his hands on his apron, and met me at the edge of the deck.
He took the heavy wooden bowl from my hands with one arm, setting it on the cedar table, then reached out and pulled me against his hip with the other.
"The probate judge called," Dante murmured into my ear, his stubble scratching pleasantly against my cheek.
I leaned into him, resting my hand flat against his ribs where the bullet scar was now just a thick, white line under the linen. "And?"
"The final adoptions are entered into the state registry," Dante said. "All nine. The certificates will be delivered on Monday."
I looked across the lawn.
Jamal was showing Matteo how to balance the blade on a lawnmower using a nail driven into the fence post. Sophie was sitting on the top step with her legs swinging, reading a book about ancient Rome while Bibi braided clover blossoms into her shoelaces. Avery was fast asleep in an enormous hammock slung between the two maples, her thumb tucked securely into her mouth, a light cotton blanket pulled up to her chin despite the seventy-degree heat.
"Nine Morettis," I said, the words tasting strange, sweet, and permanent on my tongue.
"Ten," Dante corrected.
I looked up at him, my brow furrowing. "Ten?"
Dante reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, velvet box. It wasn't black like his dossiers. It was dark emerald green, tied with a thin gold cord.
He didn't drop to one knee. Dante Moretti did not kneel to any person on this earth, and I wouldn't have respected him if he had tried to start now.
He stood tall, broad, his shoulders blocking out the sun behind him, holding the box out in his scarred palm like an offering from one sovereign nation to another.
"I bought the house on Fenwick, Marisol," Dante said, his voice dropping into that deep, heavy register that made the hair on my arms stand up just like it had that first night on the freezing porch. "I bought the block. I bought the judges. But I haven't bought you."
He opened the box.
Inside was an antique ring cut from heavy platinum, set with an emerald the size of an acorn, flanked by two rough-cut diamonds that caught the afternoon light and scattered green and white sparks across the cedar wood.
"You don't need a protector anymore," Dante said, his gray eyes fixing on mine with a raw, terrifying honesty that stripped away every bit of the mob boss and left only the man who had slept on my kitchen floor for six months to make sure the door stayed shut. "The city knows who they are. The commission knows who they are. They are safe."
He reached out, his thumb catching my chin, lifting my face toward his.
"I’m not asking you to take my name to save the house, Mari," he whispered. "I’m asking you to take it because the house is empty whenever you walk out the front door."
I looked down at the ring, then across the sunny lawn at the nine children who were currently arguing over who got the largest piece of crackling off the roast pork.
Talia was watching us from the bottom of the steps, her arms crossed, but there was no knife in her eyes anymore. She gave me a small, almost imperceptible nod—the kind of nod one sentry gives another when the relief watch finally arrives.
I looked back up into Dante Moretti’s scarred, stubborn, beautiful face.
"You have terrible taste in aprons, Dante," I told him, my voice thick with tears that I didn't bother trying to stop.
"Jamal picked it out," he said without blinking.
"And you're going to have to learn how to braid Bibi’s hair," I added, reaching out and taking the ring from the velvet box with steady, unhurried fingers. "Because she bites whenever I use the plastic bands."
Dante smiled. It was the first real, full smile I had ever seen on his face—wide, crooked, and completely transforming the granite line of his jaw.
He took the platinum ring from my palm and slid it onto the third finger of my left hand. It fit perfectly. He had measured my knuckle from my old gardening gloves while I was asleep three weeks ago; I knew because Jamal had told me for fifty cents and a cherry popsicle.
"I can handle Bibi," Dante said, pulling me against his chest until my feet were almost off the deck boards, his mouth finding mine in front of the children, the neighbors, the three bodyguards sitting in the sedan across the street, and the entire city of Boston.
May you like
From the lawn, Caleb made a loud gagging noise that was immediately silenced by a sharp cuff to the ear from Talia.
"Shut up, Caleb," she said, her voice floating up through the warm July air, sounding younger, lighter, and completely unafraid. "Eat your watermelon."
