Chapter 40
VALENTINA
Marco made me explain everything Sebastian had said. Every miserable detail. It wasn’t the highlight of my week. It probably wasn’t even the highlight of my Tuesday.
Apparently, the Americans were involved now.
The Feds. But no—not because of me. I wasn’t that important, despite Sebastian’s knack for making everything sound personal.
They’d been sniffing around Marco’s business long before I’d stumbled blindly into his world, which should’ve made me feel better but instead left me mildly insulted.
Figured. I couldn’t even be scandalous without it being secondhand drama.
After the dust settled, things didn’t exactly change between Marco and me.
Not dramatically anyway. He didn’t suddenly start whispering sweet nothings or bringing me flowers.
(Thank God—if Marco started quoting poetry, I’d probably file for divorce myself.) He was still Marco.
Frustratingly reserved, annoyingly composed, emotionally constipated.
The man was allergic to vulnerability, but that was okay. I had enough for the both of us.
But something had shifted anyway—small, barely noticeable at first, but growing more obvious by the day.
He still irritated the hell out of me daily. Still gave me sarcastic replies to perfectly reasonable questions. He still woke up at obscene hours and made no apologies for being the stubborn, difficult man he was.
But I was noticing small things now. Tiny shifts I never would’ve paid attention to before.
Like the way Marco didn’t just want to be near me—he made it painfully obvious he wanted to be right next to me, all the time.
He’d started asking me to go places with him—small things that didn’t even make sense really.
Like last week.
“Come to work with me,” he’d said, as if asking someone to tag along to a law office was normal.
I’d raised an eyebrow at him, trying to hide my amusement. “Marco, I don’t exactly do lawyer work.”
“You don’t need to,” he’d replied, shrugging. “You just have to sit there.”
“Just sit there,” I repeated dryly. “And do what, exactly?”
He paused. “Motivate me.”
I laughed at that, unable to keep a straight face. “I motivate you?”
“Something like that,” he said quietly, the corner of his mouth twitching up just slightly.
It was those little things. Those stolen smiles.
Those casual requests that were anything but casual.
And he’d started doing it more often—asking me to be with him in places where I didn’t belong, where it didn’t even make sense for me to be there.
He wanted me close, even if he’d never said it outright.
But that was just how Marco was.
It was the subtle things—the things no one else would notice.
Like the way his hand would linger on the small of my back when we walked through a crowd as if to make sure no one got too close, or the way he’d keep his eyes on me from across the room at those awful parties, like he couldn’t bear to look away for fear I’d slip through his fingers.
Or the day I found him at the kitchen table, running through files that meant nothing to me, surrounded by notes and scribbles and too many cups of coffee.
He lifted his eyes when I walked in, and without saying a word, he pushed the chair beside him out with his foot.
Just a quiet invitation, a small gesture that meant more than I’d ever admit.
So I sat there beside him tracing absent patterns on the edge of the table while he worked, wondering if he could hear how loud my heart was beating in the silence between us.
And every once in a while, when he thought I wasn’t looking, he’d glance up, his attention lingering on me for a second too long before dropping back to his papers.
And maybe I was imagining it—maybe I’d lost my mind somewhere between the sobriety and Max’s never-ending rules—but it felt like he was always searching for me even when I was right there. Like he needed to make sure I was still beside him, still safe, still his, even if he never said it.
One night, curled up together on the couch, wrapped in a comfortable silence broken only by the muted sound of the news in the background, I finally gathered enough courage to nudge at those carefully guarded walls.
“Tell me about Louisiana,” I said softly, leaning my head against his shoulder. “What was it like growing up there?”
Marco didn’t answer right away, but I knew he’d heard me. His hand tightened slightly against my waist, fingertips tracing gentle circles through the fabric of my shirt.
“Humid,” he finally said, his voice low, like he was pulling memories from a faraway place. “Small. Quiet.”
I smiled softly, not daring to lift my head. He’d stop talking if I moved. I knew that much by now.
“Show me sometime,” I said quietly, staring at the blank television screen. “I’d like to see where you grew up.”
He exhaled slowly, his chest rising and falling under my cheek. “I don’t think you would.”
“Maybe not,” I admitted lightly. “But show me anyway.”
Marco was quiet for so long I thought the conversation was over. It wouldn’t surprise me; he avoided talking about his childhood the way most people avoided the dentist. Or jury duty.
“You really want to see it?” he finally asked, his voice cautious.
“I want to see it with you,” I clarified softly. “I want to understand where you come from. Maybe it’ll help me understand you.”
“Maybe.”
I smiled. “You’ll plan it?”
“If you want me to.”
“I do,” I said softly, settling back into him, curling tighter against his side.
There was a long stretch of silence between us after that. The kind that didn’t feel awkward, just full. Like we’d both run out of words, but not out of weight.
My head rested just above his heart, and I could hear it—it was calm, a little too steady for a man with as much buried under the surface as him.
Marco didn’t hesitate when I asked about things anymore, but he didn’t exactly volunteer information either.
I knew better than to push when the silence was doing more work than either of us could.
Still, the thing with Marco was, once he let the door crack open, I couldn’t help but pry it wider. It was pathological, probably.
“Did you have any siblings in that house?” I asked eventually.
He paused. “Just Remy.”
Right. Remy. His foster brother.
I was still trying and failing spectacularly to reconcile those two as brothers. Marco, the world’s grumpiest control freak who probably made lists just to have something to check off, and Remy, who’d somehow managed to be one of the few adults I’d ever trusted with anything that mattered.
It didn’t add up. It was like finding out Batman and Mr. Rogers were raised in the same house. I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of cosmic mix-up had landed those two in the same foster home.
Maybe it wasn’t fair, but I was instantly dying to know what they were like as kids.
Had Remy been calm and responsible? Had Marco always been this tense, this quietly furious, this allergic to casual conversation and smiles?
Or had he once been softer, lighter, before something shaped him into the frustratingly well-ordered man I knew now?
More importantly—had they fought over dumb stuff like who got shotgun or who stole whose shoes? Had Marco written passive-aggressive notes on the fridge about stolen yogurt, or was that just a habit he reserved exclusively for me?
“Did you live there long?”
“Moved in when I was six,” he said simply. “Stayed until I left.”
So he’d left when he joined the military.
“What was she like?” I asked, then I clarified, “Your foster mom.”
He was still again. “Neglectful,” he said finally. “Couldn’t remember my name half the time.”
“Oh.” I blinked, the word catching in my throat like I didn’t expect it to sting. “Careless, or . . . substance abuse?”
He turned his head just enough to look down at me, and for a second I almost wished I hadn’t asked. “Alcoholic,” he said gently as his fingers stilled against my waist.
And just like that, I felt it. The recognition. That awful, sinking twist in your stomach when someone names something out loud that you thought only lived inside you.
Alcohol.
It sounded like such a simple explanation. A single word to cover a lifetime of excuses, of apologies not given, of birthday cakes forgotten and school plays missed and the endless, exhausting ache of never being enough to change someone.
I swallowed hard, pressing my forehead tighter against him, but not because I needed comfort.
I needed space. Just not the physical kind.
Because that had been me, hadn’t it? For years.
Drowning. Disappearing into a glass instead of being someone my family could rely on.
I wondered if someone would ever describe me that way—casually, with that same disappointed tone Marco had just used.
Maybe someone already had.
“Do you remember anything about her?” I asked, my voice quieter than before.
He didn’t answer right away. A part of me wanted to take it back, to say, “Never mind. Let it go.” But I didn’t. Because the part of me that wanted to know—to really know him—was louder.
Even if the answers weren’t pretty.
I gave him time. I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe too loudly, like he might spook if I pushed.
Then, finally, he said, “She smelled like vodka all the time. She’d call me Mi Vida while she complained about her love life. Pretty sure that was what made her drink. She had horrible taste in men.”
I imagined six-year-old Marco lying awake at night listening for footsteps. Wondering who might walk in next.
“Was she mean?” I asked, softer this time.
“No,” he said as if it surprised him a little. “Just . . . gone. Even when she was in the room.”
I’d done that. Checked out. Zoned out. Let people talk while I floated ten feet above the conversation, pretending I was listening. Pretending I was fine.