Like Father, Like Son

Chapter 14

I carry Salvatore's morning espresso to his study at exactly nine-fifteen—two sugars, no cream, served in the bone china cup that belonged to his grandfather. My hands don't shake anymore; I've trained them into submission like everything else about my body that wants to betray me around him.

"Your coffee, Don Caruso." I set it on his desk with the careful distance of someone handling nitroglycerin.

He reaches for the cup at the same moment I pull back. Our fingers brush—barely a whisper of contact, but enough to resurrect every second of last night's kiss. He jerks away like I've burned him, coffee sloshing dangerously close to contracts worth more than my father's lifetime of debts.

"Thank you." The words come out clipped, professional, nothing like the man who pressed me against a wine rack and kissed me like the world was ending. "The Torresi contracts need filing. Alphabetically, by date of execution."

I move to the filing cabinet, hyperaware of his presence behind me. The air shifts whenever he looks up from his work—I can feel his gaze like fingers tracing my spine.

When I turn back with the completed files, he's closer than geography should allow, leaning over my shoulder to point at a clause that apparently needs immediate attention.

"This section here requires revision before we can proceed." His breath warms my neck, and I know he's standing too close for this to be about contracts. "The terms need to be more... definitive."

The double meaning isn't lost on me, but before I can respond, he's already retreated to his desk, that perfect wall of control reconstructed between us.

The hours crawl by in this exquisite torture. By noon, I need escape from this suffocating tension, so I wander the parts of the mansion that aren't explicitly forbidden.

The library still smells like her.

I know it's ridiculous—Joana's been dead for God knows how long—but her perfume clings to the leather-bound books she must have touched.

First editions of Neruda lined up like soldiers, their spines cracked from reading. A bookmark still marks page forty-seven of "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair." Her handwriting fills the margins—notes about metaphors, observations about desire that feel too intimate to read.

Who were you? I think, studying a photograph tucked between books—Joana laughing at something beyond the camera's view, her hand reaching toward whoever's taking the picture. Salvatore, probably, capturing a moment he'd later hold while sobbing in his study.

"Trying to channel my dead mother, are we?"

Marco's voice cuts through my contemplation like a rusty blade. He's propped against the doorway, bourbon perfuming the air around him even though it's barely five o'clock. His eyes rake over my outfit—a simple black dress, conservative by any standard except apparently his.

"I don't know what you mean." I close the book of poetry carefully, like sudden movements might provoke him.

"That dress, that hairstyle, standing exactly where she used to stand when she'd hide from my father's moods." He staggers closer, each step deliberate despite the alcohol. "You think I don't see what you're doing? Playing dress-up as Saint Joana?"

"I'm not trying to be anyone but myself."

"Yourself?" He laughs. "You don't even know who that is anymore. But let me save you some time, sweetheart—you'll never be her."

The words land exactly where he aimed them, in that soft spot where my deepest fears live. Because he's right. I've seen how Salvatore loved her, still loves her, and I'm just a pale imitation stumbling around in her shadow.

"You're just the debt payment who happens to have a pulse and a pretty face."

His hand cracks across my cheek with enough force to send me stumbling. The world tilts, my vision sparking at the edges as I fall—right at Salvatore's feet.

He must have heard the commotion, must have been coming to investigate, because suddenly he's here, and the temperature in the room drops to absolute zero.

"Marco." Just his son's name, but delivered with the kind of control that precedes natural disasters.

"Perfect timing, as always." Marco sways but manages to stay upright through pure spite. "Come to rescue your newest acquisition?"

"Lucia is under my protection as a member of my staff." Salvatore's voice remains level, but I see his hands clench into fists that have definitely broken bones before. "You will not touch her again."

Marco's laugh is all broken glass and bitterness.

"There it is—the great Salvatore Caruso, protecting everything that matters except what actually does." He stumbles toward the door, pausing to deliver one last cut. "Protect her all you want, Father. Won't change the fact that she's my wife."

The silence after his exit feels like aftermath—the ringing quiet that follows explosions. Salvatore extends his hand to help me up, and when I take it, when our skin makes contact, everything from last night floods back.

"Thank you." I hold onto his hand longer than necessary. "For protecting me."

He pulls away like I'm contagious, stepping back to establish that careful distance he maintains like a religion. "This connection between us, whatever you think you feel—it has to die, Lucia. Tonight. Here."

"Why?" The question comes out raw, desperate. "Because you're scared of what this is?"

"Because you're not—" He stops himself, but I know how that sentence ends.

"Because I'm not Joana?" I stand straighter, anger replacing hurt. "I know I'm not her. But I'm also not going to disappear just because you order it. I have nothing left to lose, Salvatore. This pull between us? It's the only real thing in my life right now."

"Lucia—"

"I'm not Joana," I repeat, stepping closer despite his obvious desire to retreat. "She would have obeyed you, wouldn't she? Accepted your decrees and fallen in line like a good little ghost. But I'm not her, and I won't pretend this doesn't exist just because it's inconvenient for your grief."

He stares at me for a long moment, his face a masterpiece of controlled devastation. Then, without a word, he turns and walks away, leaving me alone with her books, and the echo of everything we're both too damaged to pursue.