Page 26 of Contempt

Lucia nodded. “All right.”

She still didn’t move.

Neither did her brother.

“Lucia,” John murmured.

Her gaze lifted to meet her brother’s. “Yeah?”

“He does miss you. I promise … that is all he cares about. That he misses and loves you, nothing else. And if for right now, that’s what you can focus on, too, then that’s all that matters, okay? Nothing else has to come into play.”

Easy for John to say.

Not so much for her.

“Yeah, okay,” Lucia whispered.

John nodded toward the door at the end of the hospital hallway, and didn’t move a muscle until Lucia started walking that way. She passed a look over her shoulder just before she came to the doorway, only to watch her brother disappear around the corner.

She took a deep breath, and passed the hospital room a look.

Now or never …

She knew Lucian loved her.

That was the problem.

He loved her too much, maybe.

Lucia put those thoughts in the back of her mind, and headed inside the hospital room in just enough time to watch the nurse take the cap her father offered. His hair stuck up in all different directions, but he was quick to smooth the strands back down once his hands were free of the white, jelly-looking cap.

“It’s been helping, then?” the nurse asked.

“Seems so,” her father replied, tiredly. “No hair loss.”

“Good, Mr. Marcello.”

Lucia stayed quiet in the doorway as the nurse removed the IV from the port that had been inserted in the right side of her father’s chest. Lucian glanced away from the nurse as she worked quickly and quietly to clean up the area, and then allowed him to button up his shirt.

“You know,” she said, “we could bandage down the IV port differently, if you—”

“This is fine; allows me to keep it out of sight.”

Lucia frowned.

John had said their father was keeping this a secret, hadn’t he?

But why?

It didn’t make sense when she knew her father was close to his brothers. She had no doubt that if her uncles knew her father was undergoing chemo treatments for renal cancer, that they would be here every single treatment. Or at least, one of them.

Lucia didn’t get the chance to think on it for too long. Her father stood from the chair, and reached for the blazer that had been tossed to a table nearby. As he did so, his attention finally landed on her.

He froze for a split second.

She smiled.

“Hey, Daddy,” Lucia said, waving a hand.