Page 129 of Made in Love and Blood

“Is it? Did you even spend two minutes looking at your daughter whenever Nico was in the same room with her? Jesus, they’ve been sharing a bed since...like prom! And you basically said nothing about it, so whose fault is this really?”

“That’s unfair. I think I kept the conversation open and tried to let them figure it out.”

“Which is basically permission, so.”

He made a face.

Carina continued, “I think they’re in love.”

Salvatore scoffed at the idea.

His wife didn’t even blink. “That from the man who fell in love with a twenty-year-old that had paint stains on her Birkin, more money than she knew what to do with, and parents who told her no when she brought you home. Please.”

That one stung a little.

“And you know what, they really don’t owe us that information, if they are in love,” Carina told him. “They are adults, whether you like it or are ready to admit it, or not. Maybe they’ve only just figured it out themselves, or they’ve known for a while, but that’s between them. They’re young, and neither has very good impulse control. Their frontal lobes aren’t even fully developed yet.”

“Exactly, and you tell me she’s an adult. Do you not see the irony?”

“I see a father who’s terrified because the child he spent eighteen years protecting from the rest of the world has suddenly figured out there’s someone else in her life who wants to do that for her, as well.”

“He’s not me. He can’t possibly come close to the sacrifices I have made for her. He’ll never even know them.”

“He’s not supposed to be you, baby. If it’s real, he’s supposed to be hers. She gets to decide how that looks, you know what I mean? Add all of that onto the wall they probably came up against tonight, and—”

“Marco,” Salvatore interjected darkly.

“Yeah.”

That asshole only needed one word—his name.

“Forgive me for being concerned that they’re making choices they won’t be able to take back,” Salvatore grumbled.

“Aren’t those choices theirs to make, though, consequences and all? Is it the choices that they’re making, or does it bother you more that you aren’t getting to protect them from making them in the first place?”

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t have one.

Life should be getting a lot easier for Francesca, and Nico, if Salvatore were being honest. Both motherless children from too young of an age to even know the difference. Constantly held apart from their peers because they couldn’t find a place there. Exceptional in so many ways, but also broken in more than one, as well. Had they not suffered enough? Paid a dozen times over for sins that weren’t even their own?

He only wanted to make it right. No one else would.

“This should be the easy part of her life,” he said after a quiet moment. “And in his. I tried. I was trying to make it that way.”

Carina shrugged one shoulder. “Who says it won’t be?”

“Well,” he replied, gesturing wildly at nothing in particular, “I can’t say this whole situation speaks great of what’s to come, babe.”

“You don’t know that, and there you are, it’s almost sad. It’s nearly three in the morning, and instead of fucking your wife to sleep like you should be doing to distract yourself for a little while...you’re sitting in the dark, in absolute knots, because your daughter won’t pick up her phone.”

“Carina, that’s out of line.”

“No, it’s the truth. Nobody said you had to like it, Sal.”

He covered his eyes with a trembling hand. “Tell me what to do here, then. Tell me, and I’ll do it.”

“Do you really want me to do that?”