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Planning a wedding between the daughter of a famous retired actress and the grandson of the town's most formidable Nonna turned out to be less a matter of taste and more a matter of diplomacy, conducted almost entirely over a group chat named, at Ava's insistence and over several objections, THE FLOUR WAR CONTINUES.Elena: I have three photographers interested. Free of charge. I said no to all of them.Costanza: Good. This is a family wedding, not a magazine spread.Priya: Can we discuss the fact that Ava wants a cannoli tower instead of a cakeAva: It's traditionEnzo: It's chaos and you know itAva: Chaos IS our tradition, Wobbly Chair, you agreed to marry me knowing thisLeo: can I bring a date or is this a family-only eventElena: Leo you have never once brought a date to a family event in 29 years, who is sheLeo: no commentDaniel: I vote for the cannoli tower. Also, someone tell Uncle Marco he is not allowed to hold the tongs during the ceremony. Any tongs. This is non-negotiab

It was Priya who noticed first, because Priya noticed everything, and because Ava had gone unusually quiet over her third cannoli of the morning, which was itself a medical anomaly worth investigating given Ava's usual enthusiasm for her own product."You're not eating that like a woman enjoying dessert," Priya said, setting down her coffee to study her friend properly. "You're eating that like a woman doing math.""I am doing math," Ava admitted, setting down the pastry with unusual care. "Bad math. Math that keeps landing on the same number no matter how many times I redo it in my head."Priya's eyes went wide, comprehension dawning fast. "Ava.""I haven't told him yet.""Ava.""I know!" Ava dropped her head onto the counter, laughing and panicking in the exact proportions that had defined her whole personality since second grade, since the ricotta incident, since always. "I don't know how to tell the most controlled man on earth that he's about to have zero control over the next ei

The pregnancy was not, as it turned out, entirely smooth — a scare at eighteen weeks sent them both racing to the hospital at midnight, Enzo driving with a controlled calm that fooled absolutely no one who knew him well, his knuckles white on the steering wheel the entire drive, jaw locked tight against words he wasn't letting himself say out loud."Talk to me," Ava said, one hand braced on her stomach, the other reaching for his across the console. "You're doing the thing where you go quiet and scary, and I need you to not do that right now, please.""I'm not scared.""Enzo.""I'm terrified," he admitted, voice cracking on the word, the first genuine crack she'd heard from him since the alley two years ago, since he'd stood there and told her he didn't know how to want something without controlling it. "I can't fix this with a spreadsheet or a lease trust or a well-timed apology. I can't control any of it, not one single variable, and I hate it, and I love you and this baby so much i

Little Cosi — the name had shortened itself within a week, the way names in loud families always did, worn smooth by daily use the way river stones wear smooth over time — grew up exactly as chaotic and loved as everyone had predicted, splitting her toddlerhood between flour-dusted mornings in her mother's bakery, perched on the same prep counter her mother once perched on, and quiet afternoons learning knife skills (plastic ones, to Enzo's great relief and Ava's mild, theatrical disappointment) in her father's kitchen.By the time she was seven — the same age Ava had been when she'd declared war over a backpack full of ricotta, a coincidence nobody in the family let pass without comment — Cosi had already staged her own version of the feud, this time against the son of the new coffee shop owner two doors down, a solemn, serious boy named Theo who had, in her professional seven-year-old opinion, "looked at her cannoli wrong," an offense apparently serious enough to warrant retaliation

Priya Nair had spent a decade being everyone else's soft place to land — Ava's steady voice of reason through every crisis, the person who talked sense into both halves of the Ludovico Street feud when nobody else could, the maid of honor who'd organized an entire wedding around a six-foot cannoli tower without complaint. It seemed only fair, Ava thought, that Priya's own love story finally arrived with considerably less drama than everyone else's had.His name was Marcus, a quiet architect who'd been hired to redesign the shared kitchen wall between the bakery and the restaurant after Cosi, at four, had discovered a loose brick and turned it into a personal excavation project. He and Priya had met over blueprints and stayed for the coffee, and by the time Ava noticed anything was happening, they'd already been together for two months, quiet and steady and entirely undramatic in a way that made Ava suspicious out of sheer habit."You're doing the eyebrow thing," Priya said, catching A