Chapter 27 Marco
MARCO
Eight pounds. Marco stared at the number on the baby scale Christina had borrowed from the pediatrician, trying to make sense of it.
Eight pounds, four ounces. His wallet, stuffed with cards he hadn’t used in days, probably weighed more.
And yet this tiny creature—his daughter—felt like she contained the entire world.
“You have to support her head,” Christina said from the doorway of the nursery, arms crossed over her chest. “She can’t hold it up on her own yet.”
“I know.” He didn’t know. He knew nothing.
Four days since the dock, since the truth had finally broken open between them, and Marco Castellano—heir to a fashion empire, face of international campaigns, man who’d navigated boardrooms and red carpets with equal ease—was terrified of a ten-week-old infant.
Violet blinked up at him from the changing table, her eyes catching the afternoon light through the window.
They were changing—the blue-gray of her first weeks giving way to something greener, hints of gold just beginning to emerge around the pupils.
The Castellano eyes, arriving slowly, like a secret revealing itself.
“Okay.” He slid one hand beneath her head, the other under her bottom, exactly as Christina had shown him. Twice. “Okay, piccola. Come to Papa.”
He lifted her against his chest, and the smell hit him first—baby powder and something else, something clean and new that he had no name for.
Violet squirmed, her tiny fists batting against his collarbone, and then she settled.
Just like that. Her cheek pressed against his shirt, her breathing slowed, and she was asleep.
Marco stood frozen in the nursery, afraid to move, afraid to breathe too deeply. The weight of her was nothing—eight pounds, barely there—and everything. He could feel her heartbeat through his shirt, quick and light.
“She likes you.”
Christina’s voice had softened. When he looked up, she was still in the doorway, but her arms had dropped to her sides. The wariness hadn’t left her eyes entirely, but something else was there too. Something that might be hope.
“She doesn’t know me yet,” Marco said quietly. “She just knows I’m warm.”
“That’s how it starts.”
From the living room came the sound of voices—Sophia’s clipped Italian accent, then Tara’s warmer tones responding.
His sister had insisted on coming to the cottage this afternoon, on seeing Christina and Violet properly.
Marco had expected fireworks. Instead, Sophia had stood in the doorway of the nursery ten minutes ago, watched him fumble with a diaper, and said nothing at all.
He wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse.
“I should go rescue my mother,” Christina said. “Sophia looks like she’s trying to figure out which fork to use for conversation.”
“She’s not usually this quiet.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing.” Christina disappeared down the hall, and Marco was left alone with his daughter.
His daughter.
The words still didn’t feel real. None of this felt real—not the quaint cottage with its hand-sewn curtains, not the view of the lake through the nursery window, not the ceramic bluebirds on the shelf or the rocking chair in the corner that creaked when you sat in it.
This was Christina’s world. Violet’s world.
And he was just a visitor, trying not to break anything.
Violet made a small sound in her sleep, her lips pursing and releasing.
Marco found himself swaying without thinking about it, a gentle side-to-side motion that seemed to come from somewhere instinctive.
His mother used to sway like this when she held Lorenzo as a baby.
He remembered watching from the doorway of the Milan nursery, six years old and jealous of the attention.
Now he understood.
“I’m going to learn,” he whispered against Violet’s downy head. “I’m going to learn everything. I promise.”
The living room had rearranged itself in his absence.
Sophia sat on the edge of the worn sofa, a cup of tea balanced on her knee, looking profoundly out of place among the quilted throw pillows and family photographs.
She’d changed out of her ruined designer clothes into a pair of black leggings and an oversized sweater—and the effect was startling.
Without her armor, his sister looked almost vulnerable.
Tara was in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on a dish towel, watching the scene with an expression Marco couldn’t quite read. She’d been polite when they’d arrived, but underneath the courtesy was something cooler. Protective. A mother bear assessing a threat.
Christina stood by the window, arms crossed again, her posture a mirror of how she’d looked in the nursery doorway. Guarded but willing.
“She’s asleep,” Marco said, settling carefully into the armchair. He was getting better at sitting down while holding her, at not jostling her awake. Small victories.
“She has your coloring.” Sophia’s voice was neutral, observational. “The hair, especially.”
“And his eyes,” Christina said. “They’re starting to change.”
Sophia’s gaze moved to Christina, and something passed between them—not warmth, exactly, but a kind of acknowledgment. Two women sizing each other up, recalibrating.
“I owe you an apology.” Sophia set her teacup down on the table. “When I arrived yesterday, I assumed the worst. I thought—” She stopped, pressed her lips together. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I was wrong.”
Christina’s shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. “You were protecting your brother. I understand that.”
“Do you?”
“I have a brother. Two of them. I know what it’s like to want to shield someone from getting hurt.”
Sophia nodded slowly. “Then perhaps we understand each other after all.”
The tension in the room shifted—not dissolving entirely, but loosening. Tara moved from the doorway to sit beside Sophia on the sofa, and the gesture felt significant. Perhaps some kind of truce.
“Marco.” Christina’s voice pulled his attention. “Can we talk? Outside?”
He looked down at Violet, still sleeping against his chest. “I can take her—”
“Let me.” Tara was already rising, crossing to him with practiced ease. She lifted Violet with the confidence of someone who’d raised four children, settling the baby against her shoulder without waking her. “Go on. Sophia and I can get to know each other better.”
The look on Sophia’s face suggested she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that, but she made no protest.
The back porch of the cottage overlooked the lake, the water gray-blue under the late September sky.
Leaves were beginning to turn along the far shore—gold and rust bleeding into the green—and the air carried the first real bite of autumn.
Christina wrapped her arms around herself, though the chill wasn’t that sharp yet.
“My family. They think—” She stopped, started again. “They think you’ll get bored. That this is just another adventure for you, and when the novelty wears off, you’ll disappear back to your real life.”
The words landed like stones in Marco’s chest. He wanted to argue, to defend himself, but he couldn’t. They had every reason to believe exactly that.
“What do you think?” he asked instead.
Christina turned to face him, and in the afternoon light, he could see the exhaustion written in every line of her beautiful face. The sleepless nights, the months of fear, the weight of a secret she’d carried alone.
“I think you’ll be like Colton,” she said quietly. “You’ll miss the excitement. The glamour. The life you had before. And eventually, you’ll leave.”
“Christina—”
“I’m not saying it to be cruel. I’m saying it because I need you to understand what’s at stake.
” Her voice cracked. “If you leave, it won’t just be me you’re hurting.
It’ll be Violet. And I can survive a lot of things, Marco, but I can’t survive watching my daughter grow up wondering why her father doesn’t want her. ”
“Colton came back.” Marco crossed the porch in two strides, stopping just short of touching her. “I’m not going to leave.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He kept his voice steady, willing her to hear the truth in it.
“I’ve been looking for something for a long time, Christina.
Longer than I even knew. I’ve been to every party, every gala, every red carpet event in the world, and I’ve felt nothing.
Empty. Like I was playing a part in someone else’s story. Until that night with you.”
“And now?”
“Now I hold my daughter while she sleeps, and I feel everything.” His throat tightened. “I watch you move through this cottage, and I want to be part of it. Not as a visitor. Not as the guy who shows up with expensive gifts and disappears. As someone who stays.”
Christina’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Pretty words.”
“I know. I’m good with pretty words.” Marco ran a hand through his hair. “That’s why I’m going to show you instead. I talked to Colton this morning. He said I can stay at his place for a while, if it’s okay with you.”
“You’re not going back to the inn?”
“I want to be closer. Not in your space—I know you need room to breathe. But close enough that you can see me. Every day. Proving that I’m not going anywhere.”
Christina was quiet for a long moment. Behind them, through the cottage windows, Marco could hear Tara’s voice and Sophia’s responding, the sounds of two very different women finding common ground.
“Okay,” Christina said finally. “Colton’s place. But Marco—”
“I know.” He reached out, brushed his fingers against her hand. Just briefly, just enough to feel the warmth of her skin. “Day by day.”
* * *
The Blueberry Inn smelled like sawdust and fresh-cut pine.
Marco held a level against a piece of trim while Will Dixon marked measurements in pencil. The older man worked with an economy of motion that Marco envied—no wasted effort, no second-guessing. Just decades of experience translated into confident hands.
“Little to the left,” Will said. “There. Hold it.”