Chapter 01 - “Isabella, just like Mama.”
Tuesday, 3 August 1999
The Mount Sinai Hospital, Manhattan
The hospital room smelled metallic and something heavier—final.
Marco DeLuca had learned, over the years, that death always carried a second scent. He stood by the bassinet, a baby swaddled carefully in his arms, his gaze fixed on her face. She was impossibly small, warm and alive in a way that felt almost defiant.
Fourteen-year-old Sylus stood a few steps away, already tall for his age, shoulders squared beneath a too-thin frame. His face had begun to sharpen early—strong lines forming where childhood softness should have lingered, dark eyes steady and watchful. He hadn’t cried since the accident nearly a month ago.
Not once, as far as Marco had seen.
Zayne, almost twelve, sat against the wall, pale and narrow-shouldered, holding Xavier close. His features were still fine-boned but already composed, lashes casting faint shadows against his cheeks as he watched the room with deliberate stillness. The six-year-old was fast asleep, cheek pressed into Zayne’s shoulder, all soft warmth and weight, too sleepy to question why they were here, too young to understand everything that had happened to their family.
Caleb, eleven, hovered near the couch, lean and restless, dark brows drawn tight over sharp, expressive eyes. He kept glancing between Marco and the baby, his mouth unable to stay neutral for long, emotion flickering across his face faster than he could suppress it.
Rafayel, only nine, stared at the floor, his face still round with childhood, silent tears slipping down his cheeks.
Marco cleared his throat. “I need you to listen to me,” he said gently.
Sylus’s eyes lifted immediately, alert.
“Your sister was delivered last night,” Marco continued, his thumb brushing against the baby’s rosy cheek. “She’s healthy.”
No one spoke.
She shifted slightly in his arms, a small sound escaping her—soft, unimpressed with the tension in the room.
Caleb’s breath hitched anyway. “So she’s… okay?”
“Yes,” Marco said. “She is.”
For a second, relief tried to exist.
Then Marco went on. “The doctors withdrew your mother’s life support once your sister was safely delivered.”
Sylus spoke first. “So now they’re both gone.”
It wasn’t a question. It was flat, final—like he’d already done the math and simply needed it confirmed.
Marco didn’t try to soften it.
Rafayel broke then, a sharp, panicked sound tearing out of him as the last of his hope gave way. Caleb pulled him close without thinking, arms wrapping tight as if he could hold the world together by force alone.
Zayne didn’t cry. His breath caught once, silent and sharp, his eyes fixed somewhere far away as he instinctively drew Xavier closer.
Sylus remained still.
Marco shifted the infant slightly in his arms. “Your sister doesn’t have anyone else now,” he said quietly. “But she has all of you.”
Sylus looked at her properly for the first time—at the way her fingers curled, at the impossible fact that she was here at all.
“We know,” he said, certain.
Marco hesitated, then shifted his weight and held her out. “Do you want to hold her?”
Sylus stepped forward without a word. Marco placed the baby into his arms, guiding his grip. He adjusted instinctively, cradling her close—careful and protective.
“She was supposed to be named Caterina,” Caleb said quietly from behind him. “Mama picked it.”
Rafayel nodded shakily. “She told us.”
Even Zayne glanced up at that.
Marco watched Sylus for a moment longer, then said, “That was the plan.”
He paused.
“But I thought this was something you should decide together.”
For a long second, no one spoke.
Then Rafayel wiped his face with his sleeve and whispered, “Isabella, just like Mama.”
Sylus looked down at the baby in his arms, at the small, steady rise and fall of her chest. “Isabella,” he repeated.
The room went entirely still around the word, as if it had belonged to her all along.
In that moment, the five boys inherited the most precious gift their parents could ever leave them.
A sister.
And in Sylus’s arms, Isabella Bellini slept on, unaware that she had already been claimed, fiercely and completely, by five brothers who would love her for the rest of their lives.
