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Strong hands settled over mine. Marco’s.
“Beth, you’re awake.”
His face was white, tense, unlike I had ever seen before.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said. “The baby is fine. The doctors have checked you over.”
He wore a strange expression, something I couldn’t quite decipher. Fear clutched at my heart.
My jaw clenched. I would not apologise for this. I would not. I wasn’t sorry I was pregnant. The fear of losing the baby made me even more certain that I wanted her or him more than anything.
I turned my face away from Marco, so exhausted by everything that had happened, my mind too fuzzy from the pain meds to think of what to say to him.
Tears welled up in my eyes, spilling down my cheeks as a wave of grief crashed over me. My baby was okay. My darling baby. That was all that mattered.
I couldn’t help but sob, the weight of the fear and uncertainty lifting from my shoulders.
The mattress dipped as Marco sat on the bed. He wrapped his arms around me, holding me tightly. I closed my eyes and let him, his presence a soothing balm to my shattered nerves.
My body shook. I couldn’t control my sobs. It was like the uncertainty and pain and constant fear from these past weeks came boiling up. And the fear from the weeks before that, where I had been living a lie, unable to tell Marco the truth. And the fear and pain from all the years before that, the horror of what happened to Mom, the agony that dad had died defeated and shamed and all alone.
The weight of it all choked me. I sobbed and sobbed, and he held me, stroking my hair, telling me everything was going to be alright.
I must have fallen asleep from exhaustion, because the next time I awoke, the room was dim, and Marco was snoozing in the chair beside me.
The moment I awoke, sheer instinct seemed to wake him too.
He reached for my hands. Stroked my hair back from my forehead. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
I shook my head, but I was parched. I looked for water, and he poured some for me, lifted a cup with a straw to my lips. Like I had done so many times for my mom.
He wiped a non-existent stray drop from the corner of my lip with a napkin.
“You scared me, Beth,” he murmured, his voice filled with a mixture of tenderness and anguish. “I should have been there to protect you. You and my child.”
His fists clenched at his sides.
I knew how that felt. I had felt that way when Mom had her accident.
With a cry of dismay, I tried to sit up, then stopped, wincing.
“Mom?” I asked, my eyes widening. How could I have not thought to ask about her? Then, “Chiara!” I added sharply. “Is she okay?”
“They’re both okay,” he said, his gaze dark, full of emotions I could not read, yet full of tenderness too, which made me look away. I wasn’t used to being an invalid. I wasn’t used to being cared for. It felt so strange.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the baby?” he asked gently.
I shrugged. “How could I with everything else that was going on? Look what happened when you found out that we’d slept together three months ago…”
I looked away, still hurting from the memory of him throwing me out.
He tilted my chin up to make me look at him. “I’m sorry, amore. I was a fool. I put you in danger—” His voice choked off. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
“It’s over now, Marco. I’m fine. The baby is fine. What happened at the house? Are you okay? I heard gunshots.”
“My cousin Sandro arrived at the same time. We handled it. Jacob and his men are in our custody. One of them is dead. He was Jacob’s nephew, a cop. He was the one who was… strangling you.”
His jaw clenched, his expression furious, as if he wanted to kill him again.
