She rushes around the table, nearly knocking over a wine glass. Carmela tries to steady her, but Aria is unstoppable.
She reaches Antonella and pulls her into a crushing embrace.
"My daughter," Aria says, crying and laughing at the same time. "My beautiful daughter. You're giving me a grandchild."
Antonella looks at me over my mother's shoulder. Her eyes are wet. She's smiling.
"I told you she'd be happy," she mouths.
I watch my mother hold my wife. Watch my family rise from their seats, gathering around us. Congratulations and laughter and tears mixing together in a chaos I would have hated six months ago.
Now it feels like home.
Antonella
I watch Aria embrace Bruno, her small frame barely reaching his chest. She's crying and laughing, switching between Italian and English so fast I can barely follow.
"My son," she keeps saying. "My beautiful son. A father. You're going to be a father."
Bruno's arms wrap around her. He looks uncomfortable with the attention, but he doesn't pull away. His eyes find mine over her head.
I smile at him.
This is my family now. These people gathered around the dining table with wine glasses and tear-stained cheeks. TheSartoris. The most powerful crime family in Chicago. And somehow, impossibly, mine.
Nora waddles over to me, one hand pressed against her swollen belly. Our children will grow up together.
"How are you feeling?" she asks. "The first trimester is brutal."
"Tired," I admit. "Nauseous. Emotional."
"That sounds about right." She squeezes my hand. "It gets better. Then it gets worse."
I haven't realised it yet. Not really. The pregnancy still feels abstract, like something happening to someone else.
Except once.
In that basement. On that filthy mattress.
That was the moment I became a mother.
Strange, that the worst moment of my life gave me the clearest understanding of what I'm becoming. Strange, that terror and violence showed me something beautiful.
"Antonella." Vittoria appears at my side, her eyes still red from crying. "I'm so happy for you. For both of you."
"Thank you."
"Bruno is different with you." She glances at her brother, who is now being interrogated by Lorenzo about baby names. "He smiles. He laughs. I thought I'd never see that again."
"He was always in there," I say. "He just needed someone to remind him."
Vittoria hugs me.
"Welcome to the family," she whispers. "Officially."
I hug her back. This woman who visited her brother every week even when he screamed at her. Who never gave up on him. Who loved him through his worst moments.
"Thank you for not letting him push you away," I say.