Lorenzo

One Month Later

The baby had affected Isa and me in very different ways. The first was, of course, that she was the one carrying the child and I was not, meaning she was the one who was getting the odd food cravings, the increased libido, and the insane bodily changes that came with pregnancy.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still. I was anxious. I wanted and didn’t want the baby to be born right then just so I could relax. There was so much to do—and even though there were still a number of months left before the baby came, I was frantic. I wanted everything to be perfect for the baby’s arrival. We had to be settled somewhere, and we had to have everything we needed.

No dollar would be spared. The baby deserved the best of everything that money could buy. This was my kid we were talking about. Lorenzo Montorini’s child was not going to do without.

It was possible that Isa and I were better matched than we had initially thought because we came up with much the same idea concerning the future. She wanted me to leave the family business as well, and she wanted to move to somewhere that would be more suitable for raising a child. She had the New York suburbs in mind, but she wasn’t totally opposed to Europe. I managed to sway her towards my cause a little more when we flew to Rome and she saw the house that I had purchased for us.

The villa was about a ten minute drive from the city, meaning it was close but still a little quiet. It had a historic architectural style that had been preserved, but the inside of the house was modern and furnished to suit a jet-setting young couple like us. There was a pool outside and a lawn. Space. The kid could run around, learn to swim. We could get a dog. The perfect family home.

That was where we were, touring the property together for the first time when Isa felt the baby kick. She had stopped in her tracks as we were headed up the stairs and held her stomach, which of course put me on high alert. My mind had gone from zero to one hundred in a heartbeat. I had thought that she was entering early labor or she was in some sort of pain and something was wrong with the baby. I didn’t know what the national emergency number was in the case of situations like this. I was not prepared to try and deliver a baby myself—and that baby was not coming. No way. It was way too soon.

The look on her face, which was one of shock and happiness, brought me back down. She had started crying almost immediately and grabbed my hand and placed it on her rounded belly. It was a few seconds and then I had felt it, too. Our baby, kicking up a storm. It was likely the most humbling and beautiful thing I had ever experienced. I knew the baby was there. I had seen it through the sonogram at the hospital, and I had been watching Isa’s body grow and change with its development, but that was the closest that I could get to the kid as its father before the little guy or girl was born. Isa was carrying the kid, so she felt it all the time, but the child and me, we were a little more separated.

I didn’t care that it was routine movement of the child and that it was completely normal. The baby was talking to me. The kid was talking to me and telling me that he or she really liked the house and couldn’t wait to move in.

I already loved Isa with a force that scared me to think about, but feeling our baby move inside of her was the closest thing I could imagine to magic. It was magic, and it was love. Our love had manifested itself physically, and it was going to be born in four to five months in New York City. I couldn’t imagine anything so beautiful or so pure.

During one of our earliest fights, we were at Campania and I had wanted her to leave. It was a whole ugly blowout both inside and outside of the restaurant, a moment I wanted to leave firmly in the past because she hadn’t deserved any bit of that. I had told her that I would buy her a restaurant if that was what it took to get her to leave Campania like I was asking her to do.

It was only fair, a restaurant for a restaurant.

New York was a different city from Rome. Did the Italian food we ate back home even pass for Italian food here? The culture was different, the people were different, and life would be different—but I had a feeling that Isa would be able to hack it.

It was a restaurant I had promised and it was a restaurant that she was getting. The international experience was going to be fantastic for her career. Her star had been blindingly bright in New York, and I was convinced because she was who she was and because she was my wife that she would bulldoze the competition and make them bow down. I knew what she had done for Campania and it was only fair that she got to do the same with her own restaurant.

Even the original restaurant that we had fought about, Campania, had passed into her possession, though it was through the sad situation that was her father’s passing. She became the owner, but she ended up bringing in family to manage it. Her mother was going to be her eyes and ears while we were far away starting a life together.

Of course, the timing was a little off.

We were expecting a baby, and we were about to get married again. I hadn’t wanted Isa to work initially, but it was what she wanted to do. We were starting over. So many things were changing so why couldn’t that? After the baby was big enough, she could go back to work at a restaurant. Not just a restaurant but her own.

I liked to think of it as a sort of wedding present, either a belated one for the first wedding that we had had or one for the wedding that we were about to have. Planning had understandably been halted for a while following the difficulties that we had been through recently, but they were back up and running. The second wedding had been my suggestion, but it was another thing that I was going to let her take control of. It was supposed to be for us, but I wanted it to be for her.

Everyone knows the wedding day is really for the bride and all the rest of the people, including the groom just showed up. She deserved everything I could and couldn't give her. Whether she wanted to invite half of Manhattan or she wanted it to be just us, she was going to get it.

What we were looking for was somewhere to build the restaurant that would become Isa’s. It would be a long road, getting architects and contractors, decorators and when it was ready, getting actual chefs and wait staff, but we had time. We weren’t in a hurry. We had a marriage to begin and a baby to have and raise in the meantime. We would be fine.

As far as New York went, it would still be a part of our lives yet. Say what you wanted about organized crime, but when you were at the very top of the command chain, the job was a versatile one. Sure it would be easier to work using New York as a base, but there were more important things we had to think about. My lieutenants were always a great team. They’d do just fine without me. New York was always just a phone call away. If my guys needed me, all they needed to do was ring. Isa made the decision to break her father’s empire into pieces that she meted out among his men.

We were keeping the house, and we would move away to Rome after the baby had been born. After that, we would have a life across the sea, peaceful and safe. Perfect to raise our family. The house in New York was for when we decided we missed the friendly New York atmosphere. Our parents might want to see their grandchild sometimes—and this way they’d be able to.