“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
His eyes hardened.
“Did Mrs. Chen tell you? Did someone brief you on my wife’s routines so you could manipulate my sons? Manipulate me?”
“No.”
“Then where did you hear it?”
“My nonna sang it in Brooklyn. Her mother sang it in Naples. It’s an old lullaby, Mr. Rinaldi. I sing it to my daughter when she can’t sleep. That’s all.”
Victor laughed once, without humor.
“You come into my home and sing my dead wife’s song.”
“I sang it to my child,” Serena said, finding her spine. “In our room. I didn’t know anyone could hear me, and I didn’t know it would hurt you. But I won’t apologize for comforting Lucia.”
The kettle began to whistle.
Neither of them moved.
Finally, Victor looked away.
“She had a voice like yours.”
The rage drained out of him, leaving something worse.
Grief.
Serena turned off the stove. She made two cups of tea and placed one in front of him at the kitchen table.
“I’m not trying to replace her,” she said. “I couldn’t.”
Victor stared at the mug.
Then, slowly, he sat.
“Three years,” he said. “Three years, and I still hear her in the hallway. I still wake up thinking she’s in the shower. Sometimes I set out her coffee mug before I remember.”
Serena sat across from him.
“The boys were three when she died,” he continued. “Drunk driver ran a red light downtown. Beatrice was gone before I got to the hospital.”
“I’m sorry.”
“They barely remember her now.” His voice roughened. “Alessandro remembers her cookies. Tommy remembers the song. Marco remembers that she smelled like vanilla. Nico says he doesn’t remember anything, but he sleeps with her scarf under his pillow.”
Serena’s throat tightened.
“I don’t know how to be both parents,” Victor admitted. “I know how to run an empire. I know how to punish enemies. I know how to keep men loyal with fear and money. But I don’t know how to make four little boys feel safe when the safest person they knew is gone.”
“You hired employees,” Serena said gently. “Not caregivers.”
His gaze lifted.
“And you think you can care for them?”
“I think I already do. Not the way I love Lucia. But enough to see when they’re hurting. Enough to stay when they make it hard.”
Victor was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, “Teach me the song.”
Serena blinked.
“What?”
“The whole thing. I want to sing it to them the way Beatrice did.”
The most dangerous man in New York sat in a dark kitchen at midnight, asking a broke single mother to teach him a lullaby.
Serena softened.
“Not tonight,” she said. “Tonight, you listen.”
So she sang.
All the verses.
Victor looked down at his untouched tea, and when the song ended, his eyes were wet.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Anytime.”
She meant it.
For two weeks, the house began to change.
Not completely. Not magically.
Marco still tested rules like they were locks he could pick.
Nico still hid toys in the pantry and once filled Victor’s dress shoes with pancake batter.
Alessandro still worried too much.
Tommy still watched more than he spoke.
But the boys ate dinner now. They washed their hands. They let Lucia into the library nook. Sometimes, when they thought no one noticed, they asked Serena questions.
Did their mother like rain?
Was Papa always so serious?
Could people in heaven hear lullabies?
Serena answered what she could.
Victor began coming home earlier.
Sometimes he stood in the doorway during dinner, pretending he was checking messages, while actually watching his sons laugh.
Sometimes Serena caught him trying to braid Lucia’s hair because she had asked him if he knew how.