Chapter 617: Only With You

Luca exhaled.

There was no point dragging the argument any further. He had already won the one thing that mattered most.

Marco lived.

That was the deal. Everything else could be handled later.

Luca turned towards Marco. "Go prepare the men for the raid."

Marco nodded. "Of course."

But he did not move immediately. Marco still felt heavy and exhausted from his grief.

Luca’s attention shifted back towards his parents.

Carol was still standing several feet from Massimo with her arms crossed, looking like she could quite happily resume the knife incident if someone gave her five unsupervised minutes.

He pointed between them. "You both better figure out what it is you want from each other and stick by it. And keep the fucking sharp objects away from my wife!"

Without waiting for another argument, he turned and headed upstairs.

Carol turned on Massimo almost immediately. "You happy now?! Satisfied?"

"Only with you, my love," Massimo said with entirely too much swagger.

Veronica, who had already witnessed enough of their relationship for one morning, decided it was safer for her sanity to focus on something else. She pushed herself carefully off the sofa and moved closer to Massimo. "This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?"

Massimo turned his attention to her. "I don’t know what you are talking about."

"Oh, please." Vee folded her arms over her stomach. "I watched you when Luca told you he would take over. There was no surprise. None. You knew somehow he would reach that conclusion."

Massimo’s face remained perfectly composed, but Vee knew smugness when she saw it.

The man practically breathed it.

"Still have no idea what you are talking about, Regina." He gave her a smile that confirmed almost everything he was denying.

Veronica shook her head. "You are unbelievable." She turned towards the stairs.

"Donna?"

Marco’s voice stopped her.

She turned around. "Yeah?"

He stood several feet away from her. "Can I..." he hesitated. "Can I talk to you?"

Vee already knew. "Is this about Valentina?"

Marco exhaled. "Donna..."

"Let me save you your breath, Marco." Her voice hardened before he could go any further. "This is happening."

"Vee... please. I’m not asking for her," he said. "I’m asking for me."

Veronica had watched him stand beside Luca through situations that she still to this day would not fully understand but she could not remember ever seeing him look quite like this.

He was a man in pain.

"Has she learned her lesson?"

The question itself exhausted him.

"What’s the point, Vee?"

"The point is that she needs to understand what she did."

Marco rubbed a hand over his face. "Just end it. I can’t..." He swallowed and looked away for a moment. "I think of what will be done to her, and I can’t fucking stop thinking about it. She is my wife."

Yes, she had betrayed him, lied to him and placed a death sentence over his head without even understanding she was doing it.

None of that changed what she was to him.

"Just end it. Whether she learns a lesson or not, it really doesn’t matter, does it?"

He was asking her not to make him spend whatever time remained imagining every awful thing that might be happening to the woman he still loved.

"My decision stands." Vee turned away and headed upstairs. She wasnt being intentionally brutal, she just couldn’t afford to be weak.

Marco remained where he was, staring down at his feet.

Carol caught his stance from across the room and forgot about Massimo for a moment. "Baby?" Carol called as she moved closer to Marco.

Massimo, still standing behind her, muttered, "He’s a grown man, Carol."

She turned on him with enough leftover anger to power another argument. "Shut the fuck up!"

Massimo lifted his brows but wisely said nothing else.

The moment Carol turned back to Marco, though, her entire expression changed. The fury disappeared. What remained was the softer, maternal look she reserved for her boys.

"I have to go, Ma. I have a few things to catch up on."

Carol ignored the attempt at escape. "My beautiful boy."

"Oh my God..." Massimo groaned, and turned towards the bar with a gagging expression.

"I know how much you are hurting. I know, believe me."

"I’m fine, Ma."

Lying to Carol about his emotional state was a waste of everyone’s time.

Marco sighed, bent down and kissed the top of her head. Then he took her hand and lifted her fingers to his lips. "I’ll see you later."

Carol nodded sadly.

Marco let go of her hand and headed out, carrying himself with the same steady calm he had worn through the entire disaster.

Upstairs, Veronica pushed open the bedroom door and found Luca sitting on the edge of the bed with his face buried in his hands.

Vee smiled thinking he was probably imagining every possible way the trip to Italy could go wrong and blaming himself in advance for each one. She closed the door behind her. "You know I am not glass, right, Luca?" She crossed the room. "I’ll be fine. I can make the trip."

Luca finally lifted his head.

Vee rested one hand over her belly. "The baby is fully grown already. There isn’t any risk anymore."

"You don’t know that."

She sighed.

No amount of doctors, security or planning could give Luca what he actually wanted, which was absolute certainty that nothing would happen to her.

"I’ll be quite all right." Vee moved closer and sat beside him. "You cannot control everything." She leaned into him slightly.

"I don’t like taking chances with you. But I guess the immediate issue anyway is making sure those two kids downstairs don’t kill each other."

Vee laughed softly against him. "Yeah, I suppose."

The entire situation was ridiculous.

Massimo and Carol were in love.

Unfortunately, both of them were also stubborn enough to make love look like warfare.

"Do you think we can get a night away before we leave?" Vee lifted her head slightly.

"And leave those two unsupervised?"