Chapter 574: The Answer Was Always There

Marco opened his eyes and stared at the board again. "The answer was always there, right in front of me, and I refused to see it. How could I? My wife, Luca." He reached for the glass Luca had placed beside him. He only stared into it. "My wife," he repeated. Marco had loved Valentina through everything. He had loved her fiercely, patiently, stupidly.

"I set a trap. She called Voss." He swallowed, finally lifted the glass, and drank.

A full, brutal swallow.

"She took the bait."

Luca chuckled. "We really are brothers. You did the same thing I did." He looked down at his own glass.

If Marco was this way, Veronica would be destroyed. He would have killed a hundred men to spare her this.

But the wound had come from inside her own bloodline.

"I love her, Luca. I... I... cannot do this."

Love. The most dangerous weakness in the world, if one asked Massimo.

"I know," Luca said quietly.

"She is my wife. She is Matteo’s mother. And then she goes and does this? God." Marco pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes.

"You have to leave the famiglia for a while."

Marco’s head snapped to his. "What?"

"You cannot be near this."

"I have always told you, Luca. You cannot skirt the rules of the famiglia for me."

"And I cannot lose you," Luca said. He set his glass down because if he kept holding it, he would either throw it or crush it. "Do you understand that?" he demanded. "You are my fucking brother. The closest fucking people to me are not my blood. I lost Nonnina. She was with me all my life." He hated this entire conversation. Hated Valentina even more.

"Am I supposed to watch you die too?" Luca asked. "And you know Don. You know him. He will have me pull the goddamned trigger myself. Or worse," he added. "He will have Veronica do it."

Massimo Genovese believed in rules the way priests believed in scripture. Betrayal was betrayal. Blood relation, love, none of it mattered once the famiglia was endangered.

Rules were rules.

"You had nothing to do with this," Luca said. "I have always known that. You think for one second I believed you would help her feed Voss? You plan on sacrificing yourself for the stupidity of your wife?"

Marco pressed his hands over his face, shoulders shaking. He was trying to hold himself together. A tragic construction plan. "I cannot live without her anyway...I always knew family was never in the cards for me, and yet I pushed. I pushed. What was I thinking?" he whispered. "A wife? A son? God, I am an idiot."

"You are not."

"I am." Marco wiped his eyes with two fingers, angry at the tears. "She is... I love her."

"I know, man." Luca exhaled slowly. "I tried to protect you. I tried to protect her too. For your sake...For Vee’s sake. That is why I sent you to Italy. I thought if you were far away, I could argue that you had nothing to do with anything when everything came to light. I thought distance would help. I wanted to separate your from her madness before it would swallow you whole."

"I thought I could find a way around the rules," Luca admitted. "I was in a tough spot...I needed to find a way out, but she did not make it easy. She is not making it easy."

Marco picked up his glass again. His fingers tightened around it.

"Looking at you now," Luca continued quietly, "I am afraid of what happens when Vee knows."

Marco’s grip hardened. A sharp crack cut through the room. The glass split beneath his fingers. Whisky spilled over his hand and onto the floor.

"You cannot go home," Luca said. "Go stay with Ma for a bit."

"Ma is going to be pissed."

Luca pointed at him. "Keep her in Singapore and make sure she knows not to call Don."

Marco leaned his head back against the wall. "This is a mess."

"beyond a mess."

"You should tell Veronica," Marco said and looked at him, pain still sitting heavily in his eyes. "Give your wife some credit and do not just predict you will be disappointed."

"Remember when she tried to run away with Val when the whole Vito madness began?"

"She won’t run," Marco said.

Luca’s mouth tightened. "Neither will she want her sister dead, Marco."

Marco sighed heavily.

"Get a flight out of town," Luca said. "Help me save you, Marco. Stay far from this."

"I am just supposed to disappear until I hear of my wife’s death?"

"Yes."

Their entire lives had been spent preparing for enemies with guns. No one had trained them for being brought to their knees by women they loved.

"I warned her countless times," Luca said quietly. "This was only going to end one way. Only one way. First, I have to handle Vito."

"Yeah," Marco said, voice rough. "About that. I think I may have walked your plans a couple of steps back."

"Why?"

"Valentina called Voss. Voss will move Vito."

"Oh, I do not know where he is," Luca said. "But he will come to me. All by his greedy self."

******

Valentina found herself suddenly out of breath. At first, there was only confusion. A brutal, immediate confusion that tore her from sleep and threw her straight into terror. Her body jerked. The darkness around her was no longer the soft darkness of her bedroom. It was pressed against her face. A pillow sealed over her nose and mouth, held there by a hand that did not tremble.

her half-awake brain tried to make sense of it. Panic exploded through her. Valentina’s hands flew up, clawing at the pillow, nails scraping over fabric and then skin. She twisted beneath the weight pinning her down. Her legs kicked against the sheets. Her chest screamed for air. She tried to turn her head, tried to bite, tried to force one desperate breath through the suffocating pressure.