Page 150 of Bene

That was that.

“You always had to do everything different, didn’t you, son?”

Bene’s chuckles echoed out to reach Vanna’s spot in the hallway. She hadn’t been invited into his father’s office yet, but they knew she was there. It wasn’t like she was spying, or anything.

“You couldn’t make things easy … not once,” Gian added. “From the day you learned to walk, it felt like I was constantly chasing after you. Well, both of you.”

“Where’s the fun in anything easy?” Beni asked.

“Gives me less gray hair.”

“Yeah, well …”

“So it’s known,” Gian continued, “and so Marcus doesn’t chew my head off later, no one is impressed by how this came about. But because there are special circumstances here, and your mother locked me in a room to make me listen to everything she had to say about all of this, we have to make other decisions. We have a lot of things to discuss, but we’re also going to do so respectfully.”

“Or try,” Marcus returned.

“No, we will.”

A sigh answered that.

The conversation continued. For the most part, Vanna followed along, listening to a father act as the referee between his sons when things became heated like they had when she first arrived at the mansion with Bene. Except, it seemed with their father there, all the Guzzi boys were far more likely to calm down when told.

“I often try not to step in when they have these kinds of moments. Gian always managed the boys better alone than with me trying to step on his toes and remind him to be a father first, and their boss second.”

Vanna spun around, stunned at how quietly Bene’s mother managed to come down the hall without her even realizing she was there. Or maybe it was because she had been far more focused on the conversation happening within the office.

Cara, wearing a periwinkle dress that reached the floor, with her red hair let down in soft waves, didn’t look like a woman who had spent months worried her husband would never see the outside of a jail cell again. She hadn’t spoken a word to Vanna after returning to her home that day, but she didn’t take it personally.

Sometimes, one needed a moment.

Just a single moment to breathe.

She was sure that’s what Cara had done.

“Do they do this often?” she asked.

Cara shrugged as she came to stand next to Vanna, just a couple of feet away from the open office doors. She busied her attention on straightening a few of the items on the decorative table and rearranged the roses that had been placed in a vase near the back corner. “Whenever it’s needed, I think. This is … a special circumstance.”

It was habit for her to apologize, now. She felt like the more she said it, the more they might believe her. Besides, apologizing was really the only thing she could consistently do for them after everything. This time was no exception.

“Sorry,” Vanna muttered.

Cara smiled her way. “Do you love him—my son?”

She dragged in a burning breath. “More than I can explain.”

“You know,” Cara said, raising a brow as she folded her arms over her chest, “I thought it was your face that reminded me of someone the first time I met you, but it wasn’t that at all.”

“Oh?”

“No, it was what you were doing. Getting close, lying to do it, and hoping to use it against us. It was the same thing your aunt did to my husband, and even though I wasn’t around when that happened, I knew enough from him to sense it.”

“I—”

Cara didn’t even give her the chance to speak before she added, “Except there was something different about you, and it confused me. Because I felt that part of you that could do us harm, and I also saw something else in you … something changed when you looked at him. And I couldn’t ignore that, so it made me overlook the rest.”

“I don’t want to be like my aunt at all.”