The casual mention of Vito as "Mr. Vito" makes me smile despite everything. "You've worked for him long?"
“Ten years this fall." She pours coffee into a delicate china cup and sets it in front of me at the small breakfast table. "Started just after he built this place. He wanted someone to keep it ready, make sure it felt like a home instead of just another house."
I take a sip of the coffee—it's perfect, rich and smooth without being bitter. "Do you... do you know why I'm here?"
Mrs. Chen settles into the chair across from me with her own cup, studying my face with those perceptive eyes. "I know enough. Young woman needs some time to think. Happens more often than you might expect."
"It does?"
"Oh yes. This house has seen its share of people working through difficult decisions." She breaks off a piece of muffin and takes a thoughtful bite. "What is it you're trying to decide, if you don't mind me asking?"
The question is asked so gently, with such genuine interest, that I find myself wanting to answer honestly.
"Whether I can love someone enough to live in their world, even if that world is dangerous. Even if it's not the life I thought I wanted."
Mrs. Chen nods slowly. "And this someone—he loves you back?"
"Yes. At least, I think so. I hope so."
"You hope so?" Her eyebrows rise slightly. "Child, love isn't something you hope for. It's something you know, deep in your bones. The question isn't whether he loves you—it's whether you're brave enough to love him back."
The words hit something deep in my chest. "What do you mean?"
"Love requires courage, especially the kind of love that asks you to change your life, to become someone new. It's easier to love someone when they fit into the life you already have planned. Much harder when loving them means stepping into the unknown."
I think about Dante's hands cleaning my wounds, his voice calling me princess like it's a prayer, the way he chose me over everything he'd ever known. "He's already proven his love. He saved me, fought for me, gave up everything that mattered to him."
"And now you feel like you owe him something?"
The question catches me off guard. "I... maybe? I don't know."
Mrs. Chen reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers. Her skin is warm, weathered from years of work, and somehow comforting.
"Let me tell you something, dear. I was married for forty-three years before my husband passed. Married him when I was eighteen, barely knew who I was or what I wanted from life. Spent the first year trying to be the wife I thought he needed, the woman I thought I should be."
She pauses, her eyes distant with memory.
"One day, he sat me down and said, 'Chen Mei-Lin, I didn't marry the woman you're pretending to be. I married you. Stop trying to be perfect and start being yourself.'" She smiles softly. "Best advice anyone ever gave me. Took me another year to figure out how to do it, but when I did... that's when our real marriage began."
"What does that have to do with me?"
"Everything, I think. You're so busy trying to figure out if you can be the woman he needs that you're forgetting to figure out who Sofia actually is. And until you know that—really know it—you can't make an honest choice about anything."
The truth of it sits heavy in my chest. She's right. I've been so focused on whether I can live in Dante's world that I haven't stopped to consider what my world might look like, with or without him.
"How do I figure that out?" I ask quietly.
Mrs. Chen stands and moves to the window, looking out over the grounds toward the water. "When I was your age, there was something I'd always wanted to do but never had the courage for. Something that felt too bold, too much like claiming space in the world for myself."
"What was it?"
"I wanted to cut my hair short. Sounds silly now, but back then, in my family, women didn't do such things. Hair was meant to be long, traditional. Cutting it felt like... rebellion, I suppose. Like announcing that I got to decide what kind of woman I would be."
She turns back to me, her eyes twinkling. "The day after my husband gave me that advice, I walked into a salon and told them to cut it all off. Came home looking like a completely different person. My mother cried, my aunts were scandalized,but my husband... he took one look at me and said I'd never been more beautiful."
"Because you were finally being yourself."
"Exactly." She sits back down, leaning forward slightly. "What is it you've never had the courage to do, Sofia? What would claiming your own space in the world look like?"
