Like Father, Like Son

Chapter 28

"I think you might want to reconsider."

The man steps forward into the kitchen light, his baseball cap sliding back, and the world tilts off its axis because that face—those dark eyes, that particular curve of jaw, the silver threading through hair I've memorized in dreams and nightmares—belongs to a dead man.

Salvatore. Not some faceless assassin. Not Caronte. Salvatore Caruso, who burned alive in a Mercedes three months ago while I watched the footage on repeat like self-flagellation.

The gun stays pointed at his chest because my brain refuses to process what my eyes are screaming. This is a fever dream, a grief hallucination, the particular madness that comes from carrying too many secrets while growing a life inside you. Dead men don't make pasta in farmhouses. Dead men don't lean against counters with that specific combination of exhaustion and amusement that made my body recognize him before my mind could accept it.

"You're not real." The words scrape out raw while rain hammers the roof like applause for this cosmic joke. "You died. I saw the car, the explosion, the fire that burned hot enough to melt steel."

"Lucia, I need you to calm down and listen." He raises his hands slowly, the gesture achingly familiar—how many times did I watch those hands sign death warrants, stroke my skin, hold wine glasses with aristocratic precision?

"How long have you been here watching me suffer?" The accusation tears from my throat, the gun trembling with my rage. "Three months, Salvatore. Three months of me thinking you were dead while you played farmhouse in the mountains?"

"Every day was necessary. Marco had to believe completely, had to get comfortable enough to reveal his network." His voice carries that particular control that made grown men piss themselves but made me wet. "If I'd contacted you earlier, if you'd known I was alive, he would have seen it in your face. You're many things, Lucia, but you're not an actress."

"So you let me grieve? Let me plan your memorial, arrange flowers on your empty grave, carry what might be your child while believing you were ash?" My voice rises with each word, fury mixing with relief into a cocktail that tastes like madness. "Do you have any idea what that did to me?"

His jaw tightens, and there it is—that flash of guilt that proves he's real, because only the living can carry remorse. "I left you the ring. I knew you'd be smart enough to decode it, angry enough to hunt, brave enough to come here alone. No one else would have followed that trail."

"The trail that led me to believe I was hunting your killer." The bitter laugh that escapes me echoes off the farmhouse walls. "Were you going to let me shoot you? See how far I'd go for revenge?"

"I was curious if you'd actually pull the trigger." The admission hangs between us, brutal in its honesty. "The woman I fell in love with wouldn't have. But the woman Marco created, the one who's been living in hell for months—I needed to know who you'd become."

The gun wavers because only Salvatore would remember my rambling analysis of dead marriages, would think to use it as proof of life. My arm aches from holding the weapon steady while my mind races through possibilities, probabilities, the terrible arithmetic of resurrection.

"Caronte isn't one person—it's a code name for an organization of professionals who specialize in strategic disappearances." He moves closer with the careful precision of someone approaching a wounded animal. "They're loyal to me, have been for fifteen years."

"I don't understand." The confusion cuts through my anger, because this revelation rewrites everything I thought I knew. "You're saying you faked your own death? That you've been alive this whole time while I—"

"I've learned too late in life to trust a woman's gut instinct." His interruption carries the weight of old regret. "Joana tried to warn me about Marco for years, said he was wrong, dangerous. I dismissed it as maternal anxiety, overreaction. When I finally found evidence of what he'd planned, what he'd already done, I activated them."

"The explosion, the fire—" My voice cracks as pieces click into place with nauseating clarity.

"Theatrical but effective. Caronte extracted me seconds before the detonation, replaced me with medical cadaver parts that would leave just enough DNA evidence to satisfy investigators who weren't looking too closely." His mouth curves in that particular smile that used to make my pulse skip. "The beauty is that Marco thinks he succeeded. The two million monthly payments he believes are blackmail? That money funds my absence, keeps me invisible while I document his every crime from a distance."

The elaborate cruelty of it steals my breath—letting Marco believe he's won while slowly bleeding him dry, making him finance his own father's surveillance.

"The ring." Understanding crashes through me with the force of revelation. "You left it knowing I'd find the accounts, trace the money, follow the trail here."

"I knew you'd be the only one angry enough to dig that deep, smart enough to decode what you found." He's close enough now that I can smell him—not cologne anymore but soap and survival, the scent of a man living stripped of everything except purpose. "I needed you to find me when the time was right. When Marco felt secure enough to get sloppy."

The gun falls from my nerveless fingers, clattering against linoleum with the sound of surrender. Three months of grief, of carrying his ghost like a stone in my chest, of growing what might be his child while believing him dead—it all crashes through me in a flood that makes my knees buckle.

He catches me before I hit the floor, those familiar arms creating a cage of safety I thought I'd never feel again. The sob that tears from my throat sounds inhuman, all those careful months of controlled sorrow erupting in one graceless moment.

"My father." The words come out broken between gasps. "Someone killed him, and I need to know if Marco—if he orchestrated that too."

"We'll find out together." His hand cups my face with devastating tenderness, thumb tracing my cheekbone in that way that always undid me. "I have resources, connections Marco doesn't know exist. Franco's death wasn't random—that much is certain. The timing, the method, it all points to careful planning."

His eyes drop to the subtle swell at my waistline, and the question forms in his expression before his mouth shapes the words. "The baby—do you know whose it is?"

The truth tastes like copper and hope. "The timeline makes both possible. Those nights with you, the dutiful attempts with Marco before everything changed." My hand finds my stomach instinctively, protective and possessive. "But I hope—God, Salvatore, I hope with every cell in my body that this child carries your blood, not his."

The confession hangs between us for a heartbeat before his mouth crashes against mine with three months of suppressed hunger. The kiss tastes like resurrection, like every prayer I swallowed while believing him dead, like the specific frequency of desire only our bodies know how to tune.

His hands tangle in my rain-soaked hair while mine map the proof of his survival—the solid warmth of his chest, the pulse hammering at his throat, the rough catch of his breathing that says he's as desperate as I am. We're trying to crawl inside each other's skin, to compress three months of separation into this moment of reunion that feels like drowning and breathing simultaneously.

The passion I've carried like shrapnel in my chest reignites with violent beauty, every nerve ending singing hymns to his proximity. His mouth moves to my throat, and the sound that escapes me echoes off the farmhouse walls—part sob, part triumph, pure recognition that the man I love survived his own murder and brought me here to find him.