Page 144 of Bene

Yeah.

Really bad timing.

Didn’t he know it?

“I’ll call you back, or just call Ginny, Les,” Corrado said.

“I was having fun, though.”

“Let’s not and say you did, okay?”

“Don’t hang up the phone on me, Cor—”

He did just that.

However, the few seconds Alessio had used to make a joke clearly calmed them down a bit. The man certainly wasn’t a Guzzi by blood, but he belonged with them just the same. He proved it time and time again, like now. The way he just knew when the right time was to step in, and make a bad situation better.

“Okay,” Chris said, putting his hands up to pat Marcus on the chest, forcing their brother to take a step back with every smack, “let’s take a minute to breathe—all of us. We wait for Ma to get home with Papa, whenever they finally get around to seeing a judge about the possibility of another bond hearing, at least until the charges are properly dropped, and then we’ll sit back down and revisit all of this, yeah? Let them figure all of that out first, she’s still at the penthouse in the city, but said she would call as soon as she got the okay to go down and get Papa. Then, we will revisit this.”

“There’s nothing to revisit,” Bene said, “she’s mine—I love her. She stays with me.”

Marcus still glared.

Except now, Bene knew, things had changed.

A baby changed everything. It made this written in blood. And his baby was still a Guzzi no matter who birthed the child.

Marcus was always going to be Marcus. He was who he was. The man their father made. He’d protect a Guzzi no matter what.

Until the day he died.

“Caroline, yeah,” Ginevra said, “kind of a play on Corrado’s and his mother’s name, but with a little twist Les liked, too.”

“I love that name.” Vanna beamed at the eleven-month-old baby currently toddling from chair to chair at the small dining table his parents used in their large kitchen when they wanted a more intimate place to eat with their sons. She never let go of one before moving to the other, not quite trusting her legs yet. “And she’s so beautiful.”

“Like her mother,” Valeria added. “Maria, don’t you take another cookie from that pan. I saw what you were doing, princessa.”

Even with all their Italian flowing constantly, or usually, Valeria still held tight to her Spanish roots. He figured it was good for their kid, though, because the girl got Italian from Chris, a bit of French from their dad and Marcus, Spanish from her mom, and English from everyone else.

“But I was only taking one for Daddy.”

Valeria pursed her lips. “But were you really, though?”

“Well …”

“Maria,” her mother admonished.

“He would have let me have it anyway!”

Laughter from the ladies lit up the kitchen.

From his position in the doorway leading into the kitchen, Bene smiled at the scene but didn’t move further inside where he could be noticed. He didn’t mean to spy, really, but after Christopher forced him to take a walk around the property to chat while Corrado took Marcus up to their father’s office for his own conversation, Vanna promised she would be fine to sit by herself.

He didn’t think so.

His brother didn’t give him a choice.

He found she was, in fact, just fine, and apparently made friends with Chris and Corrado’s spouses. Valeria, who always had to be cooking something to keep her hands busy, and Ginevra who was never far behind in that respect, had a whole table full of sweets baked, it seemed.