Page 90 of Ruthless Vow
Maria nods, dark hair pulled back in a practical braid, and adjusts the flame beneath the pan. Nonna Rosa’s been training her for years now. Passing down recipes and techniques and all the small rituals that keep this family fed.
I hover at the threshold, uncertain. This is their domain. Their rhythm. I don’t want to disrupt it.
Nonna Rosa spots me before I can retreat.
“Cassia! Mais, look at you standin’ there like a ghost. Come, come.”
Not Mrs.Santoro. Not the Don’s wife. Just Cassia.
She beckons with the spoon, leaving no room for argument.
“I need someone to knead this dough. Maria’s got hands like a surgeon but no patience for bread.”
“That’s not.” Maria starts.
“Hush. It’s true and you know it.” Nonna Rosa’s eyes twinkle. “Come on, dawlin’. Show me what those accountant hands can do.”
I step into the warmth of the kitchen. Garlic and rosemary and sweetness baking in the oven. Fresh coffee on the counter. The yeasty, alive scent of dough rising under a cloth.
Nonna Rosa guides me to the counter where a pale mound of dough waits. She dusts flour over my hands, positions my fingers, shows me the motion.
“Push with the heel. Fold. Turn.Comme ca.” Her own hands are quick and sure, decades of muscle memory. “Don’t be gentle. The dough can take it. It wants to be worked.”
I try to mimic her movements. Push. Fold. Turn. The dough is cool and yielding under my palms, and the repetition is meditative. Grounding.
“That’s it.” Nonna Rosa nods. “You’re a natural.”
“I doubt that.”
“Don’t doubt me,cher.I’m always right.”
She moves back to the stove, tastes from a pot, adds a pinch of salt.
“Maria, watch the roux. It’s about to turn.”
The kitchen settles into rhythm around me. Nonna Rosa directing. Maria executing. Me at the counter, working the dough, trying not to think about what’s coming tonight.
Elena would have hated this.
The thought surfaces without warning, and I push it down just as fast. But it lingers there, at the edges. My sister, who was supposed to be here. Who was supposed to be Dante’s wife, standing in this kitchen, learning Nonna Rosa’s recipes.
Elena would have hated every second of it. The flour under her nails. The heat from the stove. The work. She always preferred to be served rather than to serve.
She left two days ago. Dante arranged safe passage, enough money to start over somewhere far from New Orleans. He didn’t tell me where. I didn’t ask.
I didn’t say goodbye.
I’m still not sure what I would have said if I had.
Thank you for running?
I’m sorry you were scared?
How could you take their money and not care what it did to us?
The truth is more complicated than any of that. Elena is my sister. I spent my whole life loving her, resenting her, wanting to be her, wanting to be seen the way everyone saw her. And now she’s gone, and I’m here, and the grief is tangled up with relief and anger and something that might feel like freedom.
She didn’t say goodbye either.
