Page 67 of Marcus

Didn’t she understand that?

“We’re all like that,” she assured, “we just keep it to ourselves.”

“You think?”

Cella knew it.

Her sister?

Beaten in the back of a limo by an ex who tried to murder her years later.

Her mother?

Practically a slave to a biker gang before her father found her.

All her cousins?

They had stories, too.

Her aunts … uncles. They had theirs to tell as well when they felt like it. It was a big piece of what made their family such a strong unit. They all knew what it was like to need support and love surrounding them in their darkest moments.

“Yeah,” she told him, “we all have a story. A past, Marcus, it’s part of what makes us who and what we are, and I’m only just starting to learn that, you know? I was never bitter about being born into this life they made for me, but I was never quite sure that it was what I wanted, either. I’m just coming to learn that perhaps I should be grateful about the parts of my life they gave me that I love, and focus less on the pieces that have taken from me when I wasn’t willing to give those things.”

“People forget, Cella.”

Their stares met.

Her still standing in the middle of the room.

Him in the doorway.

“Forget what, Marcus?”

“That everyone sacrifices in this life of ours. Oh, we call it the good life, right? And it is when it’s good, because then it’s so fucking great, but those times make us forget that if we haven’t already sacrificed to be these people, then we soon will.”

Cella sucked in another lungful of air, her eyes burning from tears she refused to let fall. “I think I’ve sacrificed enough.”

Marcus nodded, and in five long strides, he’d crossed the room to come stand in front of her. His hand found the side of her cheek while his thumb stroked the line of her cheekbone before he pulled her in for a kiss that almost felt like the parts of her heart that were still a little broken had begun to mend again.

Because of him?

This thing they were doing?

Most likely.

She’d deal with it later.

Marcus kissed her one more time, softer although it didn’t linger because he held her stare as he said, “I agree, bella. You have absolutely sacrificed enough—let yourself be happy now.”

“Ah, Marcus brought you along again, did he?” The dark-haired, blue-eyed man winked at Cella as he leaned over the table on the back terrace of the Guzzi mansion to grab a piece of cut watermelon which he gave to the baby hanging off his hip. “He must really want to keep you if he brought you back for another round with this family, huh?”

“Alessio,” Cara chided.

Well, tried.

The man in question only laughed and shrugged.

“Little bites,” he quickly told the baby on his hip with brown eyes that looked nothing like his. They matched the eye color of the man standing next to Ginevra across the back lawn with their toddler daughter dancing in a waterfall of bubbles her uncle, Beni, was currently making for her. Still, Alessio interacted with the child the same way he did the little girl who did have blue eyes. “Careful, Lev. Jesus, gonna give Dad a heart attack here.”