Four years later.
I stood at the airport waiting for Rosa's flight, and I was nervous.
My daughter was coming home. Not for a visit. For good. Stanford graduate, engineering degree, ready to take her place in the family business.
Twenty-one years old, and about to become my successor.
"You're fidgeting," Dante observed.
"I'm not fidgeting."
"You've checked your phone six times in the last minute."
"Her flight's late."
"By three minutes."
He was right. I was nervous. Because Rosa had changed during college I'd seen it in video calls, heard it in her voice. She'd grown up. Become her own person, separate from us, from the Commission, from the legacy.
And now she was coming home to reclaim it all.
"There," Tony said, pointing. At sixteen, he was taller than Dante now, lanky and artistic, his hair perpetually falling in his eyes. "I see her."
Rosa emerged from the crowd, and my breath caught.
