by Bethany-Kris
“Gian.”
“Cara—”
“We’ll talk, and then you can talk as much as you want,” the woman said, offering no room for argument. “Please, Gian.”
“It won’t change what I think or feel.”
Cara smiled softly. “Oh, is that what you think?”
“I know what I know, and that’s more than enough.”
“Exactly, what you know ... but you don’t know them.”
Gian visibly stiffened. “I—”
“We’ll talk, and then you can talk,” she repeated, “please.”
He sighed, gaze skipping to Bene and Vanna again in just enough time to see him press a quick kiss to her temple. “Fine, we’ll talk first.”
“Good. I miss my library. Let’s go.”
“Right now?”
“No better time, Gian.”
That was that.
• • •
“You always had to do everything different, didn’t you, son?”
Bene’s chuckles echoed out to reach Vanna’s spot in the hallway. She hadn’t been invited into his father’s office yet, but they knew she was there. It wasn’t like she was spying, or anything.
“You couldn’t make things easy ... not once,” Gian added. “From the day you learned to walk, it felt like I was constantly chasing after you. Well, both of you.”
“Where’s the fun in anything easy?” Beni asked.
“Gives me less gray hair.”
“Yeah, well ...”
“So it’s known,” Gian continued, “and so Marcus doesn’t chew my head off later, no one is impressed by how this came about. But because there are special circumstances here, and your mother locked me in a room to make me listen to everything she had to say about all of this, we have to make other decisions. We have a lot of things to discuss, but we’re also going to do so respectfully.”
“Or try,” Marcus returned.
“No, we will.”
A sigh answered that.
The conversation continued. For the most part, Vanna followed along, listening to a father act as the referee between his sons when things became heated like they had when she first arrived at the mansion with Bene. Except, it seemed with their father there, all the Guzzi boys were far more likely to calm down when told.
“I often try not to step in when they have these kinds of moments. Gian always managed the boys better alone than with me trying to step on his toes and remind him to be a father first, and their boss second.”
Vanna spun around, stunned at how quietly Bene’s mother managed to come down the hall without her even realizing she was there. Or maybe it was because she had been far more focused on the conversation happening within the office.
Cara, wearing a periwinkle dress that reached the floor, with her red hair let down in soft waves, didn’t look like a woman who had spent months worried her husband would never see the outside of a jail cell again. She hadn’t spoken a word to Vanna after returning to her home that day, but she didn’t take it personally.
Sometimes, one needed a moment.
Just a single moment to breathe.
She was sure that’s what Cara had done.
“Do they do this often?” she asked.
Cara shrugged as she came to stand next to Vanna, just a couple of feet away from the open office doors. She busied her attention on straightening a few of the items on the decorative table and rearranged the roses that had been placed in a vase near the back corner. “Whenever it’s needed, I think. This is ... a special circumstance.”
It was habit for her to apologize, now. She felt like the more she said it, the more they might believe her. Besides, apologizing was really the only thing she could consistently do for them after everything. This time was no exception.
“Sorry,” Vanna muttered.
Cara smiled her way. “Do you love him—my son?”
She dragged in a burning breath. “More than I can explain.”
“You know,” Cara said, raising a brow as she folded her arms over her chest, “I thought it was your face that reminded me of someone the first time I met you, but it wasn’t that at all.”
“Oh?”
“No, it was what you were doing. Getting close, lying to do it, and hoping to use it against us. It was the same thing your aunt did to my husband, and even though I wasn’t around when that happened, I knew enough from him to sense it.”
“I—”
Cara didn’t even give her the chance to speak before she added, “Except there was something different about you, and it confused me. Because I felt that part of you that could do us harm, and I also saw something else in you ... something changed when you looked at him. And I couldn’t ignore that, so it made me overlook the rest.”
“I don’t want to be like my aunt at all.”
She really didn’t.
Not anymore.
“You can’t be like her,” Cara replied simply, “because she couldn’t love, Vanna, and she never once tried to help when she only wanted to hurt.”
“Thank you.”
Before Cara could respond, she heard Gian say inside the office, “Have her come in, son.”
Cara nodded toward the door with one of those knowing smiles. Bene came out into the hallway, his gaze darting between his mother, and Vanna. He offered her his hand, and she didn’t hesitate to take it. Vanna took in the people in the office—only his father, and brothers. Downstairs, she knew the women and kids were keeping busy. A part of her wanted to be down there. If only because it was easier to be a coward.
“Sit,” Cara said, joining them before she went to stand behind her husband where he currently sat at the large desk dominating the room. “And then we can all go downstairs and find out what that delicious smell is.”
“Sit,” Bene urged.
She let him lead her to the chairs opposite to the desk. He took one, and she took the other. She kept her hands folded at her middle, but Bene reached over to grab onto her jittery leg, the press of his palm against her jean-clad thigh more than enough to settle her nerves before he removed his touch.
Yes, she wanted it back.
Still, she kept quiet.
Now was not the time.
It was only once everyone had settled into their spots that Gian decided to speak, and Vanna was a bit grateful for that because she certainly didn’t have the first clue how to begin. A part of her still wondered what she was even doing here.
Why did they let her be in their home?
After everything?
“Let’s start from the beginning,” Gian said, “and Vanna, I suspect that starts with you. Don’t leave anything out, hmm?”
She took in a deep breath. “Sure.”
“Whenever you’re ready, then.”
Gracious.
Kind.
Respectful.
All things the Guzzi family seemed to encompass, and even in the face of someone who had only intended to hurt them, they still offered her those things first. It wasn’t lost on Vanna, and if anything, their silence as she talked, explaining how this had all come to be, made her feel more guilt than she thought was possible.
It was okay, though.
She deserved it.
She took it.
“There are a lot of ways I would like to spend my first day home with my wife after everything,” Gian said, his expression neutral as Vanna finished, “but this certainly wasn’t one of them, no offense.”
She nodded. “None taken.”
“It seems we have a lot to clear up, oui?”
God.
If Vanna could shrink into the office chair, and never be seen again, it might be the better option than the way she felt right then with Gian Guzzi sitting across the room from her. Not because he made her feel uncomfortable, but after an hour of admitting every single one of her secrets to the man, and all the shit she had done to him and his family ... well, Vanna had never felt more ashamed.
It took a couple of days before
the man was finally released. Apparently, a few missing papers could keep him behind bars longer than anyone thought. Then, he arrived home with his wife at his side, the first time she came home and stayed since her husband’s arrest, if Vanna was to believe what others told her.
Standing behind her husband, Bene’s mother kept her hands clasped to his shoulders during the entire conversation. A pillar of the family, it seemed.
Vanna wasn’t surprised.
Women tended to be the powerhouses.
They turned the world.
Men simply went along with it.
“You know,” Gian said, clearing his throat as his gaze flicked to Marcus who stood near the office windows, clearly unhappy, “there was a time when I thought I loved Elena.”
Vanna flinched.
She couldn’t help it.
“All of her making, of course,” Gian added quickly, waving a hand as if to dismiss the notion he could have truly loved her dead aunt, “because she orchestrated it all. From bumping into me at a restaurant, to the lies she told about who she was and what she wanted from me. Instead, she used those things I trusted her with to get away from a man she hated, and then she left me high and dry for years while I felt like I would never have the chance to be with someone I loved entirely. I couldn’t be with someone else when I was already married to her, after all. Until Cara came along, that is.”
Cara smiled briefly, bending down to kiss the man on the top of his head before straightening back up like she hadn’t moved at all.
“Nonetheless, with Elena, nothing was ever true, and even after the things she had done to me and to my family ... I would have forgiven her for it all, if only she loved me back the way I thought I loved her. That’s the thing about love, when it’s real, then nothing else really matters. You figure out a way to make it work—it doesn’t give you another choice.”
Beside her, Bene reached over to unfurl her fingers around the arm of the chair. His palm pressed against hers, the warm heat soaking into her hand and straight up her arm almost instantly. Their fingers wove together, and just like that, she felt settled again.
Better.
He made her better.
“Nothing was ever real with Elena,” Gian said, still staring at Vanna as he spoke despite all the others in the room, “and so there was nothing to make work. I think that’s where the two of you differ, isn’t it?”
“How are we supposed to trust her when—”
“Hush, Marcus.”
The man at the windows quieted instantly.
“I’m sorry,” Vanna whispered.
Behind his large desk, Gian nodded. “I understand that even to the detriment of yourself, you did what you could to help fix your errors, and while I could be quick to punish you for the rest first ... I’m inclined to learn from the past, and the mistakes I left behind there.”
He glanced up at his wife, asking, “What is it you say this family does, cara mia bella?”
Cara smiled. “We forgive—we love.”
“We do because that is how you teach it to others.” Gian looked Marcus’s way again, the other man stiff in his position in front of the windows. “Something you still have to learn, although your reasoning for wanting to do neither is justifiable. Still, we remain together, or we fight and tear each other apart on our way down, yes?”
It took Marcus a second.
And then, two.
Finally, with a hard exhale, he muttered, “Yes, Papa.”
Gian’s gaze turned on Bene as he said, “Also, I hear we have other news to share. Something ... happier, even if you do know better. And Bene, you do know better.”
What?
Bene’s cheeks reddened.
Vanna almost laughed.
“That was not intentional,” he started to say.
“And yet, here we are.”
“Well—”
“We already know,” Cara said behind Gian, her attention drifting to Vanna, and then down to her stomach where one of her hands stayed flat against her body, “because Christopher told us.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t keep secrets,” Christopher said from the back of the room.
“Yes, we know.” Corrado’s reply came out dry, and tired. “Which is why no one tells you anything, man.”
No one turned to look at the two.
“Could have kept that secret for a bit,” Bene returned.
“No, probably not.”
“Bene,” Gian urged, “less them, more me, please.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No, apparently, you’re going to have one.”
Yep.
There it was.
Bene laughed under his breath. “Yeah, so there’s also that. And I know that probably pisses you off the most, but—”
“You’ll be married before the child is born.”
Vanna’s head snapped up.
So did Bene’s.
Gian raised his brow at the two of them. “It’s non-negotiable. It’s our way, and I won’t have more reasons for the made men in this family to instigate issues with my sons, either, and this would absolutely do that being who she is.”
The man shrugged, adding, “And I think it should be made clear that the child is the only reason why we’re sitting here right now doing this instead of something else that would be a far more appropriate answer to your actions against me and mine, young woman. It was my wife ... and her reminder to me that we have all made choices in our life that hurt those we try to protect the most, who made me willing to sit down with you. In any other situation, I would not offer my forgiveness or a second chance. And you can absolutely expect that no one else in our family will want to do the same. You don’t have our trust, Vanna, and neither do you, son, because of who stands beside you. Those are things you have to earn back now. I can’t give it to you, Bene.”
“I know, Papa.”
“Good, and as for the rest ...”
Her lungs ached with every breath.
Gian was owed his moment, though.
“A marriage settles it,” he continued, “and the child cements it. It’s a Guzzi child regardless, and when you give the mother the last name, too, our line becomes clear. And unless there’s a reason why the two of you would rather not be married, then—”
“No, yes,” Bene said, stumbling over his words as Vanna still tried to find hers, “yes, I want to marry her, of course, I do.”
“Good,” Gian replied.
“Vanna?” Cara spoke up, then. “Because no one thought to ask you, I guess.”
She smiled.
Cara smiled back.
“I just want to be with Bene.”
Forever.
Truer words had never been spoken.
At least, not from her.
Bene’s hand tightened around hers, and with a firm tug, he had her leaning closer so that he could press a kiss to her temple. “You got me.”
• • •
We’ll deal with the rest later.
Because there would be a later, now.
They should have sent her running.
Killed her.
After all she did to them, the Guzzis should have buried her in a shallow grave where no one knew she rotted, and her name became dust in the wind. Instead, because a girl fell in love with a boy ... one of theirs, they let her stay. They promised to forgive.
If you do the same, Gian told her. Because you must do the same.
He was right.
Those thoughts chased Vanna through the Guzzi mansion with every step she took, her laughter flying over her shoulder as Bene almost caught up to her when she rounded the corner at the end of the long second-floor hallway.
The nostalgia of it wasn’t lost on her. The familiarity of it all comforted her like nothing else could because everything was different now. Oh, they had a way to go, she was sure. It didn’t take a day for her to damage them, and she didn’t think it would be fixed that quickly, either.
Va
nna wasn’t stupid.
Or selfish, either.
“Are you going to make this easy on me, or what?” Bene called behind her.
She winked over her shoulder. “Never.”
He wouldn’t want easy, anyway. He chased her like this once. She let him catch her, then. Only, that had been for entirely different reasons.
Some things didn’t change, though.
Like when he caught her.
Kissed her.
Those things stayed the same.
Entirely perfect.
Like them.
Even if everything else still needed work.
That was okay, too.
She didn’t mind putting in the effort.
MARCUS
The Guzzi Legacy, 6
PROLOGUE
Black everywhere.
A sea of black, really.
Cella Marcello felt like everything had become painted with the color. Tainted. Maybe that was the better word for this day and what was happening. Everything was tainted with blackness because wasn’t that the only appropriate hue for grief?
Especially grief like this.
One so hollow.
Empty.
Lonely.
From the suits and dresses surrounding her, worn by people with faces she recognized and—some—she loved to even the clouds above her head. Her emotions. The hole in the ground. The shiny granite headstone with her husband’s name carved with white lettering.
All black.
She saw other colors, of course. The green of the grass, and the gray of the sky. The light rain from earlier in the day left a mist in the air, curling up from the ground and disappearing all around her. A few people dared to wear shades of gray and even navy blues for the day instead of the standard black clothing that accompanied funerals. The silver bangles on her wrist jingled with her trembling, and it didn’t seem to matter how tight she held her child, the shaking didn’t relent.
If anything, it became worse.
How much longer could she hold it in?
How long would it be before she could breathe?
“Want me to take her?”
Cella looked to the side, peering through the black veil that hung down from the rim of her large hat, finding her mother trying to offer her a smile. It didn’t reach Jordyn’s wet eyes, and there in the glistening tears, she found her own reflection. She looked like her mother—soft-featured, round face, a small, sloped nose, high cheekbones, and full lips shaped like a curvy bow. All her sisters, the two of them, took after their mother whereas their brother, John, looked far more like their father.
