Like Father, Like Son

Chapter 29

His hands frame my face like I'm scripture he's memorizing before the world burns, and maybe that's exactly what this is—our last testament before we become ghosts together.

The farmhouse kitchen feels too small for this magnitude of reunion. Three months of believing him dead have carved hollows in my chest that now flood with recognition so intense it physically hurts. Every cell in my body screams that he's real—this isn't grief hallucination or pregnancy hormones manufacturing miracles. This is Salvatore, alive, his thumb tracing my bottom lip with the reverence of someone handling stained glass.

He lifts me onto the counter with that effortless strength that always made my pulse skip, stepping between my thighs while rain hammers the windows like the universe applauding our destruction. His hands work at my rain-soaked jacket with trembling precision, each button a small surrender, each inch of revealed skin a territory reclaimed.

The jacket falls away, then my shirt. His sharp intake of breath when he sees the subtle swell of my stomach makes my chest constrict. His palm spreads across it with infinite tenderness, and the look on his face—wonder mixed with possessiveness mixed with murderous rage at the uncertainty of paternity—rewrites my understanding of worship.

He drops to his knees in front of me, and the sight of Salvatore Caruso kneeling sends heat flooding through every nerve ending. This man who makes other men genuflect now pays homage to my body like it's the only religion he's ever truly believed in. His hands slide up my thighs with the patient devotion of someone approaching an altar, pushing fabric aside with fingers that shake despite their certainty.

"Beautiful." The word ghosts from his lips against my knee, then higher, each utterance a prayer. "Perfect." His mouth follows the path his hands map. "Mine." The possessiveness in that single word makes my spine arch, my fingers tangling in his hair that's still damp from rain or sweat or the effort of staying dead for three months.

The counter edge digs into my thighs, grounding me in this reality where dead men resurrect through careful planning and pregnant women hunt ghosts that turn out to be the love of their lives. His mouth moves higher, and coherent thought dissolves into sensation so acute it borders on pain.

"My goddess." The blasphemy falls from his lips like benediction while his hands worship with the dedication of a believer who's found proof of divinity. Every kiss is an apology for his absence, every touch a promise that he'll never disappear again—lies dressed as devotion because we both know this world doesn't allow men like him to make promises that gentle.

He rises, pulling me against him, and the feel of his body—solid, real, alive—against mine makes me understand why people wage wars for love. The months of grief have sharpened my hunger into something feral, and when his mouth finds mine, I taste his matching desperation. We're trying to crawl inside each other's skin, to fuse at a molecular level that would make separation impossible.

He carries me to the bedroom while I map the proof of his survival with my mouth—the pulse at his throat, the warmth of his chest, the particular way his breathing catches when I bite the spot where his shoulder meets his neck. Even this utilitarian space with its practical cotton sheets can't diminish what ignites between us.

He lowers me onto the bed with the care of someone handling explosives, which might be accurate given how I feel ready to detonate. His hands remove the rest of my clothes with tortuous patience, each revealed inch examined like evidence of what these three months cost us both.

"Look what you've become." His mouth traces the new fullness of my breasts, his breath hot against sensitive skin. "Death and life in the same body—you're impossible."

His hands span my waist, measuring changes with something between worship and calculation. "If this child is mine, I'll burn down heaven for it."

"And if it's Marco's?" The question escapes before I can stop it.

"Then I'll love it anyway and hate the irony." His honesty cuts deeper than any lie could.

I arch beneath him, confession torn from somewhere primal: "I practiced your eulogy every night. Perfected it while Marco snored beside me."

"Save it," he says against my throat, dark amusement in his voice. "You might still need it."

His hands know exactly where to touch to make me forget my own name, his mouth charts territories that have been dormant since his supposed death. My body responds like it's been sleeping for three months and suddenly remembers how to wake—violent, desperate, absolute.

"I memorized every cent Marco stole," he breathes against my skin. "But mostly I memorized this—exactly where to touch you for forgiveness."

We move together with the synchronization of people who've memorized each other's frequencies, who know exactly how to tune their bodies to create harmonies that shouldn't exist. The pleasure builds with devastating precision, each wave threatening to pull me under.

"Watching you hunt me was obscene," he confesses between kisses. "This pregnant widow with a gun—Christ, Lucia."

"I would have shot you," I gasp, nails marking his shoulders. "Every bullet for making me grieve."

"I know." Pride colors his voice. "That's why you're perfect."

The storm outside intensifies, but it's nothing compared to what builds between us. Three months of separation collapse into this single point of connection, this moment where two bodies remember they're just one soul split into impractical halves.

"I love you," he says, the words falling into my mouth like communion wine. "I love you beyond death, beyond reason, beyond salvation."

"Show me," I demand, pulling him impossibly closer. "Show me how much."

He does, with a fervor that borders on religious experience. Every movement is worship, every touch a prayer, every breath a hymn to what we've survived to find again. The reverence in his hands makes me understand why people die for love—it's not the dying that matters, it's this, this moment where boundaries dissolve and two become one become infinite.

When I'm right at the edge, when one more touch will shatter me completely, his eyes lock with mine, dark and wild and full of terrible possibility.

The release crashes through us simultaneously, my body arching into his as we shatter together, fragments of ourselves scattering and reforming in patterns neither of us recognizes. I come apart with his name torn from my throat, while he buries his face in my neck, my name falling from his lips like absolution.

We lie tangled in the aftermath, breathing hard, skin slick with sweat and satisfaction. The rain continues its assault on the windows while our bodies slowly remember how to exist as separate entities. His hand rests on my stomach, thumb tracing circles around the life that grows there.

"Run with me," he says, the words falling between us like lit matches. "Let's have Caronte help you disappear too."