14. Maria
— · —
Maria
Almost four months pass after the hearing, a blur of doctor’s appointments, of a belly that won’t stop growing, of slowly learning what it feels like to be safe. It happens on a Tuesday.
I’m curled up on the couch in our new apartment, a real apartment, with two bedrooms and a kitchen that has actual counter space and a nursery that’s slowly filling with tiny clothes and stuffed animals.
The morning sun is streaming through the windows, and I’m halfway through a cup of decaf when the news breaks.
“Breaking: Tommy Moretti, heir to the Moretti restaurant empire, arrested on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering. Sources say the investigation stems from evidence provided during a recent custody hearing...”
The footage shows him being led out of the family restaurant in handcuffs.
He’s wearing a suit, expensive, tailored, the kind of suit he always wore to impress people. But it doesn’t look impressive now. It looks desperate. Small. Like a costume that doesn’t fit anymore.
Victor stands in the background, stone-faced, already distancing himself from his golden son.
You made him, I think. You created this monster. And now you’re pretending you don’t know him.
“Maria?” Luca emerges from the bedroom, hair still wet from the shower, towel slung around his hips. “What are you-”
He sees the screen. Stops.
We watch together as Tommy is loaded into the back of a police car. As reporters shout questions. As Victor turns and walks back into the restaurant without a word.
“How do you feel?” Luca asks.
I think about the question.
“Empty,” I say finally. “Relieved. Sad.” I shrug. “All of it, I guess.”
“That makes sense.”
“Does it?”
“He was your husband. For five years.” Luca sits beside me. Takes my hand. “It’s okay to grieve what you thought you had. Even if it was never real.”
I lean into him.
“I thought I’d feel happier. When we won.”
“Winning doesn’t always feel like winning.” His thumb traces circles on my palm. “Sometimes it just feels like surviving.”
“Is that what this is? Surviving?”
He looks at me. At the curve of my belly - eight months now, impossible to hide, straining against every shirt I own. At the apartment we’ve built together. At the life growing between us.
“No,” he says. “This is something better. This is living.”
That night, I find him at the piano.
He isn’t playing, just sitting on the bench in the dark, one finger resting on a key without pressing it. In all the months I’ve lived here, I’ve never once seen him touch it.
“She taught me on this,” he says, without turning around. He knows it’s me. He always knows. “My mother. It’s the only thing of hers I took when they threw me out.”
I cross the room and sit beside him on the bench. I don’t say anything. I just let my shoulder rest against his while the baby kicks lazily under my ribs.
And then, quietly, clumsily, like a man remembering a language he hasn’t spoken in years, he begins to play.
It’s nothing impressive, a simple, halting little melody.
He fumbles a note, mutters a curse, starts the bar over.
But he plays. For the first time in five years, he plays.
And I sit in the dark beside him and understand that this is the part of him no one in that family ever bothered to look for.
“What’s it called?” I ask, when his hands finally go still.
“No idea. She made it up. Used to play it when I couldn’t sleep.
” He bumps his shoulder against mine, and there’s something unguarded in his face I want to memorize.
“Maybe I’ll teach it to her one day.” And for once there’s no Victor, no Tommy, no hearing, just a badly played lullaby and a future finally quiet enough to hear it in.
***
The empire crumbles faster than anyone expected.
Victor tries to distance himself, but the investigation finds too many threads. Tax evasion. Money laundering. Decades of buried crimes surfacing now that the golden son has fallen.
The restaurants close one by one - seized, sold, shuttered. The Moretti name, once synonymous with power and prestige, becomes a punchline. A cautionary tale.
Rosa retreats to a villa in the countryside. Won’t speak to anyone, not even her surviving son. I hear she’s taken up gardening. Pretending none of it ever happened.
Nonna Donna survived her stroke. She’s in a care facility now, frail but still fierce. I visit every week, bringing flowers and gossip and updates about the baby.
“A girl,” I told her last week, when we finally learned the sex. “We’re having a girl.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “A girl. Oh, Maria. A girl.”
“I think I already know what I want to call her,” I admitted. “But I haven’t said it out loud yet. Not even to Luca. I want it to be his, too - when the time’s right.”
Nonna reached for my hand. Squeezed it with surprising strength.
“That’s perfect,” she whispered. “That’s absolutely perfect.”
***
And Giuliana-
Giuliana has her baby three weeks before me.
A little girl. Seven pounds, four ounces. She names her Elena, after our mother.
She sends me a photo the day after the birth. A tentative olive branch, the first real communication we’ve had since the café.
She’s here. She’s healthy. I thought you’d want to know.
I stare at the picture for a long time.
Elena Maria Benedetti. My niece. Tommy’s daughter.
My daughter’s half-sister.
I don’t respond.
Not yet.
But I don’t delete it either.
***
Luca
Eight months pregnant, and Maria has never been more beautiful.
I know that sounds like something you’re supposed to say, like a line from a greeting card or a cheesy movie.
But it’s true. There’s something about her now, something that glows from the inside out.
The roundness of her belly. The softness in her face.
The way she talks to the baby when she thinks I’m not listening - little conversations about the world she’s going to show her, the life they’re going to build.
I’ve never loved anyone the way I love her.
It terrifies me.
“You’re staring,” she says. We’re in the kitchen, and she’s trying to reach a bowl on the top shelf, a task that’s become increasingly difficult as her belly has grown.
“Can’t help it.” I come up behind her. Grab the bowl easily. “You’re very stare-able.”
“That’s not a word.”
“It is now.” I wrap my arms around her from behind. Rest my hands on her belly. “How are my girls today?”
“Your girls are hungry. And tired. And really, really need to pee.”
I laugh. Press a kiss to her neck.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.” She turns in my arms. Looks up at me with those dark eyes. “Even though you still can’t make coffee.”
“My coffee is fine.”
“Your coffee is a war crime.”
“You wound me.”
“You’ll survive.” She stretches up. Kisses me. “Now let me pee in peace.”
***
That night, I can’t stop thinking about her.
She’s in the shower. I can hear the water running, the soft sounds of her moving around. And my mind keeps drifting to places it probably shouldn’t, to the curve of her back, the swell of her belly, the way she looks with water streaming down her skin.
She’s eight months pregnant. You should probably leave her alone.
But I can’t.
I’ve been trying to give her space. Trying to be respectful of how tired she is, how uncomfortable her changing body makes her.
But the truth is, I want her more now than I ever have.
Something about seeing her like this - round and glowing and carrying a life we’re building together - does something to me that I can’t explain.
I knock on the bathroom door.
“Maria? You okay in there?”
“I’m fine.” A pause. “Why?”
“Just checking.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Luca?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to come in?”
***
The bathroom is full of steam.
She’s standing in the shower, water cascading over her shoulders, her back to me. The glass is fogged, but I can still see the outline of her, the curve of her spine, the roundness of her hips, the swell of her belly in profile.
God.
“Are you going to stand there all night?” She looks over her shoulder. Smiles. “Or are you going to join me?”
I strip off my clothes. Step into the shower behind her.
The water is hot. Almost too hot. But I barely notice, because she’s turning to face me, and the sight of her, wet and naked and beautiful, steals all the air from my lungs.
“You’re staring again.”
“Can you blame me?”
“I look like a whale.”
“You look like a goddess.” I reach for her. Pull her close. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Luca-”
“I mean it.” I cup her face. Force her to look at me. “Every inch of you. Every curve. Every stretch mark. Every single thing your body is doing to bring our daughter into the world.” I kiss her forehead. Her nose. The corner of her mouth. “I have never wanted anyone the way I want you right now.”
Her breath catches.
“Show me.”
***
I start with her shoulders.
My hands slide over wet skin, working out the tension she carries there. She groans - a sound of relief, of pleasure, of surrender - and leans back against me.
“That feels incredible.”
“We’re just getting started.”
I work my way down. Her arms. Her back. The sore muscles along her spine that ache from carrying the extra weight.
“How does that feel?”
“Like heaven.”
“Good.” I press a kiss to her shoulder. “Turn around.”
She turns.
And I sink to my knees.
***
The water streams over both of us as I worship her.
I start with her belly - pressing kisses to the taut skin, to the place where our daughter is growing. She shivers. Not from cold.
“Luca-”
“Shh. Let me.”
I kiss lower. The curve of her hip. The inside of her thigh. The soft skin that trembles under my mouth.
“You don’t have to-”
“I want to.” I look up at her. Water running down my face, her body a miracle above me. “I want to taste you. I want to make you feel good. I want to spend the rest of my life on my knees for you.”
Her hand finds my hair. Tangles in it.
“Okay,” she whispers. “Okay.”
I taste her.
***
She’s sweet and warm and perfect.
I take my time. Learn her all over again - what makes her gasp, what makes her moan, what makes her grip my hair so tight it hurts.
I’ve always loved this. Loved making her fall apart. Loved being the one who gives her pleasure, who takes her out of her head, who makes her forget everything except the way her body feels.
But tonight is different.
Tonight, I’m not just making her come. I’m showing her what she means to me. What this, all of this, means to me.
“Luca-” Her voice is strained. Desperate. “I’m close - I’m so close-”
“I know.” I don’t stop. Don’t slow down. “Let go, baby. I’ve got you.”
She comes with a cry that echoes off the tiles.
I work her through it - every wave, every shudder, every aftershock - until she’s sagging against the shower wall, boneless and gasping.
“Oh my God.” She’s laughing. Crying. Both at once. “That was-”
“Not done yet.” I stand. Pull her against me. “I want to be inside you.”
“Luca-”
“If you’re too tired-”
“I’m not.” Her arms wrap around my neck. “I want you. I always want you.”
***
We move carefully.
Her back against the shower wall. My hands supporting her weight. The angle different than usual - accommodating her belly, making sure she’s comfortable.
“Is this okay?”
“It’s perfect.” She pulls me closer. “Please, Luca. I need-”
I push inside.
Slowly. Inch by inch. Watching her face for any sign of discomfort.
There isn’t any.
Just pleasure. Just need. Just her eyes locked on mine as I fill her completely.
“God.” My forehead drops to hers. “You feel-”
“I know.” She kisses me. “I know.”
I start to move.
***
It’s slow.
Slower than usual. More careful. Her body is different now, more sensitive, more responsive, more everything.
I worship every inch of her.
The water streams over us as I move inside her - long, deep strokes that make her gasp, that make her dig her nails into my shoulders, that make her whisper my name like a prayer.
“I love you.” I say it with every thrust. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
“I love you too.” She’s crying again. Happy tears. “I love you so much.”
“Look at me.” I cup her face. “I want to see you. I want to see everything.”
She looks at me.
And I see it all, the fear and the hope and the love that mirrors my own. The trust she’s placed in me. The life we’re building together.
“Come with me,” I whisper. “Maria - please-”
We fall apart together.
***
Afterward, we stay in the shower until the water runs cold.
She’s wrapped in my arms, her head on my chest, the baby kicking between us.
“She’s active tonight,” Maria says.
I press my hand to her belly. Feel the tiny flutter of movement beneath my palm.
“She knows her daddy’s here.”
Maria looks up at me. Her eyes are wet.
“You really think of yourself that way? As her daddy?”
“I’ve thought of myself that way since the first ultrasound.” I kiss her forehead. “She’s mine, Maria. Maybe not by blood. But in every way that matters - she’s mine.”
“Tommy-”
“Tommy can have his name on a piece of paper. He can send letters and fight for visitation rights and do whatever the lawyers let him do.” I hold her tighter.
“But I’m the one who’s going to be here.
Every night. Every morning. Every scraped knee and bad dream and first day of school.
I’m her father. In every way that counts. ”
She’s crying again.
“Why are you so perfect?”
“I’m not perfect. I’m just yours.” I tilt her chin up. Kiss her softly. “For as long as you’ll have me.”
“Forever,” she whispers. “I’ll have you forever.”
“Deal.”
***
Three weeks later, everything changes.
I wake to Maria shaking my shoulder. Her face is pale in the moonlight. Her voice is strained.
“Luca. Something’s happening.”
I’m up instantly. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“The baby-” She gasps. Presses a hand to her belly. “I think - I think she’s coming.”
“It’s too early. You’re only-”
“I know.” Another gasp. Another wave of pain crossing her face. “But she’s not waiting.”
I’m already grabbing clothes. Keys. The hospital bag we packed two weeks ago, just in case.
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
“Okay. Okay.” I’m trying not to panic. Failing. “We’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Luca-”
“Yeah?”
“I’m scared.”
I stop. Take her face in my hands.
“Me too.” I kiss her forehead. “But we’ve survived everything else. We’ll survive this too.”
She nods. Lets me help her to her feet.
And we walk into the unknown together.