Page 85 of This Life of Mine

“Yeah.”

And somehow that feels worse. Because Cole is chaos. David must be strategy.

Chapter twenty-six

Alex

Istop at Sprouts, and move through the aisles with more purpose than I’ve had in a long time.

Chicken thighs. Bone-in. Skin on. Italian sausage. Hot and sweet because balance matters. Garlic. Lots of it. Cherry peppers packed in oil. White wine-dry. Fresh rosemary, parsley, and lemons.

I don’t second-guess any of it. My hands anticipate what to grasp before my mind does.

Chicken Scarpariello.

It’s the dish my mother made when she wanted everyone at the table. Loud and bright. Comforting. A little aggressive in flavor, unapologetic in heat.

She used to say it was peasant food dressed up.

I haven’t made it in years.

Back in Queens, our kitchen was small but always alive. My mother cooking in a dress, music playing low, windows cracked even in winter because something was always frying or simmering.

I learned by watching, by being handed a spoon and told to taste, and being told I was wrong and to taste again.

The memory makes me smile.

“Il cibo è memoria,“ diceva sempre. “Se lo fai in fretta, dimentichi da dove vieni.”she used to say in Italian. “Food is memory. If you rush it, you forget where you come from.”

Down the line, I gave up cooking.

Jobs don’t allow it. You eat on the run. Protein bars. Takeout. Whatever keeps you moving. Meals become fuel, not ritual. Kitchens become places you pass through, not places you stay.

Tonight is different.

Back at my rental, I set the ingredients out on the counter, lining them up without thinking. It offers a sense of stability. Like laying out tools before a job. Only this one doesn’t involve weapons or chains. It involves care.

I think of Lina. Bruised and battered, stubborn enough to go to the gym, brave enough to ask me to dinner. How she remains unaware of the complete extent of the peril surrounding her.

This dish isn’t flashy. It’s not impressive for the sake of it. It’s honest.

I wash my hands and begin rinsing vegetables in preparation for tonight. The smells are already pulling me backward in time. My mother correcting my knife grip—telling me to slow down.

I haven’t made this since becoming Alex Lombardi. Before disappearing wasn’t a choice—it was a necessity.

Cooking it tonight will be like reclaiming something I believed I’d buried along with the rest of my past. A reminder that, before everything changed, I came from a kitchen where food meant love, and love meant showing up.

I’ll be there with her tonight, not as a protector, nor as a shadow. Only as a man offering something real.

As I pull out the garlic and lemon, the smell opens a door I usually keep locked.

In an instant, I’m back in Queens. Only it isn’t the kitchen anymore. It’s fluorescent lights. A stainless steel table. My mother’s body laid out too neatly, like someone tried to give her dignity after stealing everything else. Cold and still.

My beautiful and loving mother was raped and murdered by a rival crew my father had crossed. They weren’t after her. She was just the price they chose to make him pay. A message written in blood, meant for him.

He never showed up to receive it. He didn’t even come to the funeral.

The money and visits stopped long before that. Quietly. Like a faucet turned off without explanation. My mother never said his name out loud after that. Only worked harder. Took extra shifts a the hospital. Smiled less.