by Cora Reilly
I nodded. “He’s talking to Mia now?”
“Yes,” Ilaria said. “He wanted a word with each of us alone.”
The door swung open and Mia stepped out, her face tear-stained. When she spotted me, she looked relieved. “You’re here. Father worried you wouldn’t come.”
“I’m here,” I said simply. Giulia squeezed my hand. I headed into the hospital room, trying to stifle my anger toward Father. The moment I spotted him lying in the bed, looking breakable and like the shadow of the man I’d known all my life, it slipped away. Giulia was right. Today wasn’t about dishing out accusations. It was about saying goodbye. That was one of the things Giulia had taught me: to allow kindness when I could afford it, which wasn’t often.
Father’s eyes followed me as I walked up to him. He looked terrified. I’d never seen him like that. He was a brave man, one of the strongest men I knew. Now he looked like a word from me could break him.
“Father,” I said quietly.
I touched his thin hand resting limply on the covers. His expression softened, and he slowly turned his hand so he could wrap his fingers around mine, squeezing weakly.
“Cassio.” The word was a croaky whisper. I bent over him to hear him better. “I only… only wanted what I thought was the best.”
“I know.” He’d been wrong, but I, too, was guilty of wrong decisions in my past.
“I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”
Forgiveness wasn’t my forte. I wasn’t sure if I could really give it to my father so shortly after the events, but he didn’t have much time left. “I do.” It wasn’t a lie. I’d eventually forgive him. Not today, but in a few months or years. He closed his eyes briefly and a tear slid out. I’d never seen my father cry. I leaned forward and hugged him carefully. He squeezed my hand again, even weaker than before. “Can you… get…?”
I nodded and asked my sisters and Mother to enter. Father died two hours later surrounded by his family. Giulia had been right. Making peace with Father hadn’t just set him free but also me.
“How’s our boy?” I asked like I did every evening when I came home. Tonight, I hadn’t made it for dinner—a rare occasion. Giulia’s due date was in a few days. After Father’s funeral and Luca’s warning to Felix, things had settled down. Now we could look forward to the future.
“Good,” she said softly, touching her belly. “But I’m always hungry, and I have a terrible craving for something sweet.”
I nuzzled her ear. “Just like me.”
Giulia huffed. “Not that kind of craving. Though I wouldn’t mind that either.” She gave me a coy smile that went right down to my dick. Lucky for me, Giulia’s sexual appetite hadn’t diminished one bit during pregnancy. If possible, it had gotten even more insatiable. Daniele and Simona sat beside each other on the sofa, watching one of their favorite YouTube channels on TV. Loulou was curled up beside them.
“Daniele, Simona, you can watch another video after that one. Your mother and I have something to discuss upstairs.”
Daniele’s face scrunched up, making it clear he detected the lie. He wasn’t a child anymore. At least, that meant he and Simona wouldn’t disturb us. Wrapping my arm more tightly around Giulia, I led her upstairs.
“You’re eager,” she said with a small laugh.
“I told you, I crave something sweet, and we both know you’re a sweet temptation I can’t resist.”
Giulia rolled her eyes as she unbuttoned her dress and dropped it on the bedroom floor. “That was corny.”
“Kneel on the bed.”
“You realize I have about twenty pounds attached to my front, right?” Despite her words, she did as I asked. It was my favorite position to eat her out and hers too.
She groaned before I even touched her and not in pleasure. “I think we have to cancel sex.”
I helped her back to her feet, and Giulia’s face contorted.
I froze. “The baby?” I asked, my voice calm, even if I didn’t feel it. Everything inside of me twisted and turned.
“Yeah.”
I wrapped an arm around Giulia, steadying her. I was so nervous, for once in my life, my hands weren’t steady. After helping Giulia get dressed, calling Elia, and telling Daniele to take care of Simona, I drove us to the hospital, all the while whispering words of comfort. I wasn’t even sure what exactly I said, hardly noticed the street ahead of us, but I got us there safely.
I’d never been present during a birth. Gaia hadn’t allowed me to witness this moment of a baby being born. I hadn’t insisted because I wanted her and our baby to be safe during labor. I didn’t want her arguing with me.
This time was different. In every regard. Giulia wanted me at her side, needed me. I held her hand through every new wave of pain, felt her body convulse under the force of it, marveled at her strength and her ability to gift me with her beautiful smile whenever she got a respite. Seeing her in agony was the worst thing I could imagine, but I was grateful that she allowed me to witness this.
“One more push,” the doula encouraged after almost five hours of labor.
Giulia clutched my hand, her face scrunching up. She was tired and sweaty. The floor was covered in fluid, my clothes were drenched with sweat and her blood. It was a mess, and yet the most beautiful moment in my life.
And then a cry rang out. I tensed, holding my breath at the same time as Giulia went slack with relief. I stared at Giulia’s red, sweaty face, contorted in pain only moments ago, now filled with a bliss I could hardly comprehend. Her eyes were frozen on the bundle the doula held up, but I could not tear my eyes from my wife, from the woman who’d saved me and my children from a dark path. Giulia slanted me a stunned look and finally, I dragged my gaze away from her to see the little baby that had caused her such bliss.
He was wrinkly and smeared with blood, and it clicked. That bliss on Giulia’s face… it crowded my chest, made me feel almost lightheaded with its force. The doula came over to us and put our son in Giulia’s arms. Gabriel was beautiful. I wrapped my arm around Giulia’s shoulders, kissing her temple, filled with more gratefulness than I ever considered myself capable of. Her smile was pure love, unrestrained joy.
I would have been happy with only two kids, but now that Gabriel lay in Giulia’s arms, now that I’d witnessed his birth, I knew this would make our life even more perfect.
Going through labor once was definitely enough, which was why I was entirely grateful that we already had three kids, two of which I didn’t have to squeeze out of me. I loved Daniele and Simona with all my heart, and Gabriel joining our little family didn’t change it. Still, I was glad that I experienced pregnancy, not so much the actual birth, just once.
The day after I’d given birth, Simona and Daniele visited the hospital with Elia. They both stared down at Gabriel’s sleeping form in his crib as if he was an alien.
I stifled a smile. Cassio touched their shoulders. His clothes were wrinkly from spending the night in hospital, and his stubble looked much scruffier than he preferred, but his eyes lit up with pride. “Now you have a little brother to watch over. That means you’ll have to stop fighting all the time or it’ll upset the baby.”
Daniele gave his dad a doubtful expression, looking right through him.
Nice try.
“You said he’d look cute, but he’s all wrinkly, and he’s shedding skin from his head,” Simona said with a wrinkled nose.
Cassio sighed. With a laugh, I got out of bed and slowly made my way over to them despite the pain in my lower body. “He’s a newborn. That’s how they look. I think he’s impossibly cute.”
“Was I a cute baby?” she asked.
“Yes,” Cassio and I said at the same time.
Daniele frowned. I wrapped my arm around him, whispering, “I love you.” He smiled, abandoning whatever dark thoughts had bothered him. “I’m glad you got me a brother and not a sister like Simona wanted.”
“You need to thank your dad for that.”
Cassio narrowed his
eyes at me when Simona and Daniele looked at him for answers. Grinning, I walked up to him. “Maybe you need to have the talk about the birds and the bees soon.”
“I talked to Daniele, and Simona doesn’t need to know anything until she’s sixteen or seventeen.”
I rolled my eyes. “I was seventeen when we got engaged.”
“Don’t remind me.” He kissed my lips, causing our children to make disgusted faces.
“It worked out well.”
“It did,” he agreed, peering down at our sleeping newborn son.
In the afternoon, Mom, Dad, and Christian came to visit. I had seen my parents at Mansueto’s funeral, but we had only exchanged public pleasantries. We hadn’t really talked once since our fight. They probably held it against me that I asked Luca to threaten them. That was why I was surprised to see them.
Cassio hovered beside the window, not greeting either of my parents as they stepped in. He shook hands with Christian, however, which made me smile. My brother turned to me then and hugged me awkwardly because I cradled Gabriel in my arms. “Congrats. From Corinna as well. She would have come but she’s feeling sick often.” His wife was pregnant with their third child.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Mom and Dad won’t give you any more trouble. I talked to Dad and made it clear that he needed to get a grip if he didn’t want to lose you and me.”
A wave of gratefulness flooded me. Christian squeezed my shoulder before he stepped back to make room for Mom and Dad.
Mom crept toward me, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, Giulia.”
Her joy was earnest and it dulled my resentment. This was a new stage in my life, and I didn’t want to be weighed down by baggage from the past. I smiled. She hugged me, careful not to crush Gabriel. She stroked his cheek and took his tiny fingers into her hand. “God, I forgot how small babies are.”
Dad waited a few steps behind her, looking awkward, but his eyes, too, brimmed with emotion. I smiled at him and he stepped forward. “Congratulations.”
“Won’t you hug me?”
Relief crossed his face, and like Mom, he embraced me gently. He didn’t really know what to do with Gabriel, but he caressed his head once before he stepped back.
Cassio’s gaze could have frozen over a furnace. “I hope you heed Luca’s warning.”
“Cassio,” I said softly. “My parents won’t ever mention the matter again. Right?”
I looked at them expectantly. If they loved me, if they wanted me and their grandson in their life, they’d forget what Mansueto had told them.
Dad sighed and nodded. “If it’s your wish, we’ll take the secret to our grave.”
“It is.”
It was settled. We didn’t mention it again, and when Simona and Daniele joined us later, my parents hugged them and treated them almost as if they were their grandkids.
This was proof of how much they feared losing me… and Luca’s wrath, but I focused on the former, not the latter. Life was decidedly more pleasant if you chose to concentrate on the positive and not the negative. And I had so much to be grateful for.
A loving husband, a reasonably well-behaved dog, and three wonderful kids.
In the past, I’d visited my family’s beach house to find inner peace and remind myself of the beauty in life. I’d gotten up early to stand on the porch and watch the ocean roll over the white beach, to listen to the calming whooshing of the water without being disturbed. I often brought work with me.
Today, I slept in. Something Giulia had taught me. It was already past nine when I stepped onto the porch. Giulia and the kids were already up. Laughter drifted up to me from the beach, not the quiet of the past. I didn’t miss it. I hadn’t come here to find inner peace or see something beautiful. Inner peace had found me when Giulia stepped into my life. I didn’t have to drive hundreds of miles to seek a beach house for that. Now I only had to come home to my wife. Too beautiful for words—inside and out.
I closed my eyes, tilting my head up to the early morning sun, letting it warm my upper body and face. Many aspects of my life remained dark spots of brutality, but my home had become my safe haven.
“Love, won’t you join us?” Giulia called.
I looked at her. She cradled our two-month-old son with one arm while her other hand clutched her ginormous sunhat against her head. The wind was tearing relentlessly at the ugly thing. I’d made peace with her quirky clothes, but some things were beyond my tolerance.
“Love?”
That word wasn’t a casual endearment born out of habit coming from Giulia’s lips. Every time she said it, it held meaning.
Giulia encompassed that word “love,” that feeling, in every action, every smile, every fiber of her being.
I headed down to her, sand clinging to my bare feet as I crossed the dune to the beach. Simona and Daniele were taking a dip in the cold ocean, chasing each other and laughing. It was warm for late October, but the water was freezing cold. Back in Philadelphia these moments of childish carefreeness were few and far between for Daniele. At twelve, almost thirteen, he was only a little over a year away from becoming a Made Man—his fourteenth birthday would mark the day of his induction. His eyes found me briefly, and he gave me a boyish grin before Simona tossed water into his face and their chase continued. I joined Giulia, wrapped an arm around her waist, and grabbed the hand holding her hat down to pull her against my body, Gabriel between us. A gust of wind carried the straw hat away until only the bright yellow of its one big sunflower flashed in the distance.
Giulia gave me an indignant look. “You did that on purpose.”
I kissed her and she softened against me. Giulia handed me Gabriel, who peered up at me with my dark-blue eyes. It filled me with pride seeing our physical similarities, but it wasn’t stronger than the pride I felt when Daniele and Simona did something that I’d taught them—like play pool. Both of them were quite good at it. I loved all three of them equally.
“I have more hats like that,” she said pointedly.
“I know. I’ve made peace with your love of sunflowers.” Giulia had planted several of those ginormous flowers in our garden. What had once been a neatly manicured lawn was now filled with toys (for children and Loulou), wildflowers, and those yellow atrocities. “You brought chaos into my life.”
“You like my kind of chaos.”
Daniele and Simona continued their chase on the beach. Loulou jumped up from her spot on a lounge chair and joined them with cheerful barking. The floor of our beach house would be littered with sand tonight. In the past, this would have made me furious.
“I do. More than anything else, I love our life. It’s perfect in my eyes.”
Giulia kissed my chest over my heart then Gabriel’s forehead. “We made it that way. We work every day so it stays that way. Happiness is a choice.”
I wasn’t sure it was true for everyone, but for me, especially since Giulia had come into my life, it was. Giulia still painted almost every day and even took courses to improve her craft. In one of them, the teacher had asked them to create a painting that expressed their vision of happiness.
Giulia had painted our children, Loulou, and me taking a stroll on the beach.
It was as easy as that. Whenever I looked at the photo of Giulia and our little family that I carried in my wallet, one overwhelming feeling filled me: happiness.
THE END
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Born in Blood Mafia Chronicles
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Luca Vitiello
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Bound by Honor
(Aria & Luca)
Bound by Duty
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Bound By Temptation
(Liliana & Romero)
Bound By Vengeance
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Contemporary Romance:
Only Work, No Play
Not Meant To Be Broken
I usually avoid these at all costs because I worry that I’ll inevitably forget to mention someone. Yet, I feel like it’s time to say my thanks.
My husband always says I’m even worse at expressing emotions than him, which if you knew him (I often refer to him as the iceman), would give you a pretty good idea of just how bad I am at this. Maybe it’s because as authors we spend more time in our heads than outside of it because sometimes, I say my thanks so often in my head that I’m convinced I actually voiced them aloud. Expressing deeper emotions is even harder for me, so I usually just don’t.
But there are many people who helped me tremendously, not just with this book (that’s just a very small part of it), but with my career. Becoming a professional writer can be a lonely endeavor. I love writing and communicating with fans. Everything else, all the organizational effort that goes into being a writer, not so much.
That I have any semblance of organization is thanks to my amazing assistant Emily. She organizes everything for me. Without her I’d be completely lost. Her job isn’t easy but she makes it seem that way, even if I forget things or confuse things or disappear into my own head again. Thank you so much.