No summons. No tension. No weighted silences or loaded glances. Just Enzo appearing at my door in the late afternoon with an invitation.
"Dinner tonight, signorina. The family dining room. Informal."
I blink at him. "Informal?"
"The brothers requested your presence." Something that might be amusement flickers in his warm brown eyes. "I believe they're attempting something unprecedented."
"Which is?"
"Cooking."
I almost don't recognize the scene when I arrive.
The formal dining room I've eaten in before, all dark wood and crystal chandeliers and enough silverware to require a manual, has been abandoned. Instead, sounds of life drift from somewhere deeper in the house.
Laughter. Arguing. The clatter of pots.
I follow the noise to a kitchen I didn't know existed. Not the industrial space the staff uses, but something smaller, warmer.
Copper pots hanging from the ceiling. A worn wooden table. Windows overlooking the garden, now dark with evening.
And the Moretti brothers, transformed.
Santo stands at the counter, setting plates with careful precision. Matteo leans against the refrigerator, gesturing dramatically with a wine bottle while arguing about something I can't quite hear.
And Luca—Luca is at the stove, sleeves rolled to his elbows, actually cooking.
I stop in the doorway, certain I've stepped into an alternate universe.
"She's here," Santo says, spotting me first. His smile is warm, unguarded. "Come in. Don't mind Matteo—he's been complaining about the wine selection for twenty minutes."
"It's a legitimate concern," Matteo protests. "You can't serve a Barolo with seafood pasta. It's criminal. It's—"
"It's not seafood pasta," Luca says without turning from the stove. "It's carbonara. And you'll drink what I give you."
"Carbonara?" I step further into the kitchen, drawn by the smell—garlic, pancetta, something rich and savory. "You cook?"
"Our mother's recipe," Santo explains, moving to pull out a chair for me. "She taught all of us, but Luca's the only one who got it right. Matteo burns water, and I—"
"You cry over onions like a child," Matteo finishes, grinning.
"They sting!"
"They're onions, Santo. Not chemical warfare."
I sink into the offered chair, watching them bicker with something like wonder.
These are the same men who bid on me at auction. Who've pinned me against bookshelves and made me beg. Who run a criminal empire with iron fists and cold calculation.
And here they are, arguing about onions.
"How long have you been doing this?" I ask. "Cooking together?"
"Since we were children,"
Luca says, finally turning from the stove. He's carrying a massive pot, steam rising around his face, and he looks... softer. Human.
"Our mother believed men should know how to feed themselves. She said anyone who couldn't cook couldn't be trusted."
"She also said anyone who overcooked pasta deserved to be shot," Matteo adds cheerfully.
"That sounds extreme."
"You didn't know our mother." Santo's voice is warm with memory. "She was... fierce. Tiny woman, maybe five feet tall, but she ran this household like a general. Our father was terrified of her."
"Everyone was terrified of her," Luca agrees, the ghost of a smile crossing his face. "She once made a rival family's consigliere cry at a dinner party because he insulted her risotto."
"Wait, seriously?"
"Made him apologize in front of everyone."
Matteo pours wine, apparently having lost the bottle argument, and sets a glass in front of me. "Then sent him home with leftovers and a note explaining exactly how he'd failed as both a man and a human being."
I laugh despite myself. "She sounds amazing."
"She was." Something shadows Santo's expression. "She died when I was six. Cancer. Luca was fourteen, Matteo eleven."
The warmth in the room shifts, deepens. I see Luca's hands still on the serving spoon. See Matteo's smile falter before he shores it back up.
"I'm sorry," I say softly. "I didn't mean to…"
"You didn't." Luca meets my eyes, and there's no coldness there. Just old grief, worn smooth by time. "She would have liked you, I think. She appreciated women who didn't take shit from powerful men."
"Luca practically raised us after that," Santo adds quietly. "Our father was... absent. Grief made him cruel. So Luca stepped up. Made sure we ate, went to school, didn't kill each other."
"The last part was the hardest," Matteo says, but his voice is gentle. "We were nightmares. Especially me."
"You were grieving," Luca says simply. "We all were. We just handled it differently."
The pasta is served. Simple, perfect—creamy sauce clinging to each strand, pancetta crispy, black pepper sharp on my tongue.
We eat and drink and talk, and for the first time, I see them not as three predators circling me—but as brothers.
Stories spill out between bites.
Matteo at twelve, stealing their father's car keys and crashing into the fountain. "I blamed Santo," he admits, grinning at his youngest brother. "Told Papa he'd been practicing driving in secret."
"I was six!"
"You had shifty eyes."
Santo's disastrous first confession to a girl who turned out to be a rival family's daughter.
"I wrote her a poem," he groans, covering his face. "Three pages. Our father found out because her father called threatening war."
"It was a terrible poem," Luca adds dryly.
"It rhymed!"
"Roses are red, violets are blue, your eyes are like emeralds, I'm obsessed with you."
"Oh God." I'm laughing so hard my sides ache. "Please tell me that's not real."
"It's real," Matteo confirms gleefully. "I have a copy. I'll show you later."
"You will not," Santo threatens.
Even Luca contributes—dry observations that make his brothers groan and me nearly choke on my wine.
The time Matteo tried to impress a girl by jumping off the boathouse roof and broke both ankles. Santo's brief, disastrous attempt at a mustache at fifteen.
"You looked like a sad caterpillar," Matteo wheezes.
"You look like a sad caterpillar now."
"Children," Luca sighs, but he's smiling. Actually smiling.
After dinner, we migrate to the library.
The fire crackles low. Wine glasses are refilled. And somehow, without anyone planning it, we end up on the large leather sofa together.
I'm in the middle.
Santo's arm stretches behind my shoulders, not quite touching but close enough that I feel his warmth.
Matteo's thigh presses against mine, solid and comfortable. Luca sits at the end, and at some point my feet end up tucked against his leg, his hand resting absently on my ankle.
No one speaks. No one needs to.
The fire pops softly. Wine warms my blood. Three heartbeats surround me—steady, present, mine.
For once, there's no hunger in their eyes. No competition. No power plays or possessive touches or weighted silences. Just quiet contentment.
Four people who stumbled into something none of them expected, silently acknowledging that whatever this is—it's becoming real.
I close my eyes and let myself feel safe.