Page 27

Sophia

I have suffered through a lot of pain in my life, but nothing else prepared me for this. I have never been in so much pain, or been so tired in my life. Not even when I was fighting for my life on Guiseppe’s ship.

“You can do this,” Angelo says to me, holding my hand as I bear down again, trying to push as hard as I can despite my exhaustion.

I glare at him. “Your overeager spawn couldn’t bother to wait until I got my epidural. Don’t tell me I can do this!”

He grins at me, unrepentant in the face of my frustration with him. “Are you too weak to give birth?” he taunts me, trying to will me into being angry enough to get through this labor. I know what he’s doing, but my patience is so frayed that it actually works.

“Fuck you,” I whisper at him. The nurse closest to me blinks in surprise, then smiles.

She pats my leg. “Atta girl,” she says before withdrawing to enter some notes in the computer nearby.

“You’re crowning,” my OBGYN says excitedly.

I glare at her bowed head. I resent her excitement when all I feel is pain, nausea, and bone-deep exhaustion.

“Another couple of pushes and you will be done,” Angelo tells me. He presses a kiss to my sweaty brow and I soften a little toward him just before the next painful contraction tears through me.

I’ve been practicing my Italian, and I switch away from English to roundly curse everything about existence, my body, and my husband as I bear down again. I add a little flourish about Angelo’s giant head and the fact that he clearly has gifted our child with this unfortunate trait.

“That sounded so beautiful,” my doctor says, looking up at me with a grin. “I’m sure it was all cuss words, but it sounded really pretty.”

“Romance languages,” Angelo says with a shrug. “The best way to curse the heavens and sound polite while you do it.” He turns toward me again. “Break every bone in my hand, Tesoro mio,” he goads me. “Show me that you can hurt me.”

“I wish I had the strength to deck you right now,” I grumble, allowing my body to tell me to push again. I give a little gasp of relief as I realize that it’s over…I’ve done it. I fall back against the bed, gasping, listening to everyone else in the room cheering and celebrating my good work.

“Ready to hold your son?” my doctor asks with a grin before placing the slimy, slippery body of my child, wrapped in a towel, on my chest.

My arms come up automatically to catch my child and I expect to be revolted at the mess, but I’m not. I’m not at all. I instantly feel the most overwhelming rush of affection for the messy little bundle in my arms. I reach up and stroke back the damp mop of curly black hair on his head. Just as I thought, his head is huge.

“Are all of our children going to have bowling balls for heads?” I ask thoughtfully as I stroke the hair on my child’s head.

My doctor laughs. “Probably,” she says. “I’d love to lie to you, but that tends to be a consistent feature if even one of them has a huge head.”

“It’s all the brains in there,” Angelo says proudly, and I snort. “What?” he says to me with an unrepentant smile. “You know you’re the smart one around here. That means it’s your fault that he has a big head, not my fault.”

I giggle in spite of my exhaustion. Angelo and I have settled into a routine that includes lots of verbal sparring, which is often quite fun for me. I love ribbing him and he loves ribbing me back. It’s gotten us through a lot of really tough times over the past six months.

It had taken quite a while to settle down the men who had worked for my father. They had been reluctant to be guided by a woman. I had spent a lot of time dragging my heavily pregnant self to meetings, arguments, and flat-out fights, just to make sure that my word was law.

We had removed a few men who were clearly never going to agree to my terms or my guiding hand. I hadn’t asked much about what Rudy and Franco did with them. I didn’t really care, to be honest. They were my father’s men and I didn’t owe them much in the way of loyalty. There were only a few key players who mattered to me and the rest could go hang if they didn’t like my tenure as don.

“Are we still naming him Rudolpho?” Angelo asked me as he reached out to tentatively touch the crown of our baby’s head.

I nod. “He saved the day when we needed him most. It’s the least we can do.” I think of Rudy and all the hard work that he has done to secure my place in my father’s seat of power. He has been invaluable to our efforts and he has proven himself to be one of the best friends I could ever have.

“Knock knock!”

I look toward Justine’s voice and smile as my friend comes prancing into the delivery room in tall stilettos and designer jeans. Justine never looks anything less than perfect and apparently sitting for hours in the hospital waiting area hasn’t dimmed her fashion-model presentation a bit.

“Oh my God! His hair!” she gushes as she hurries over and examines him from every angle. She reaches back to clasp Franco’s hand, yanking him closer. “Look at how beautiful he is! I can’t wait until we have a baby!”

Franco looks a little green around the gills, and I chuckle. He and Justine got engaged recently, but I don’t think he’s quite ready for babies or homemaking yet.

“We will name our first girl Sarah of course,” Justine rambles on, and my eyes unexpectedly fill with tears. “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry,” she says quickly, pressing her hand to mine where it is cradling Rudolpho’s body. “We don’t have to do that if you aren’t okay with it.”

I shake my head, the tears spilling down my cheeks. “No, no. I love it,” I say with a watery smile. I wave my free hand. “Pregnancy hormones,” I say, but I know it’s not that, not really. It means so much to me that Justine still remembers who I was when I was living as Sarah.

“Then it’s decided,” Justine says happily. She turns to Franco. “Can we start trying now? I want our babies to grow up together.”

Franco is white as a sheet and he swallows hard. Angelo chuckles and pokes him in the ribs with his elbow. “Just say yes,” he suggests. “It’s easier in the long run.”

“Sure,” Franco manages to choke out.

Justine claps and dances around in a circle, her heels clacking on the hospital room floor. “I’m so excited!” she squeals. “Our baby is going to be so, so, so beautiful!”

I look over her head at Angelo and we share a smile. I don’t think either of us ever gets tired of how normal our lives really are. We worked hard to secure a future for ourselves and also for those who are loyal to us. We won’t treat people the way that our fathers did. We want to create a family joined by loyalty and a desire to stay safe and be cohesive.

“I love you,” I mouth to my husband.

“I love you forever, Tesoro mio,” he mouths back.

My heart is full and a piece of it is now resting on my chest, ready to take on a brave new life.

I think of my parents and close my eyes. Thank you , I think to the both of them. Thank you for helping to make sure that everything turned out all right in the end .

The End