Page 57 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

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“This place is like a daycare,” Sasha says. He’s softly bouncing one of the boys, Enzo, who drools on Sasha’s shoulder, fast asleep.

He’s right, Vanessa Morelli’s backyard is overrun with children, Willa’s little girl in a floaty in the pool with Vanessa’s baby, both splashing as their moms pull them around in their circular floaties.

Marianna is in the pool, clapping and making the little ones laugh by splashing water in her face and acting shocked every time. It’s their favorite game.

Angel and Artie are swimming too, taking turns trying to tackle Leo, who is twice either of their size.

Nate saunters up to where Sasha and I stand in the shade, holding my other son, Iliya, who’s got curly brown hair and eyes like his mother.

He reaches for me when he sees me, and I take him, my heart growing three times its size when he babbles and rests his head against my chest in what I would like to call a hug.

I pepper his head with kisses and snuggle him back, my precious boy.

I didn’t know I could love something as much as I love these two, a consuming protectiveness and adoration only rivaled by the love I feel for their mother.

I think sometimes it must be genetic, since I don’t love any other baby as well as I love these two.

But I do love Vanessa and Willa’s babies, and would do anything to protect them.

So if not genetics that makes me adore them so, maybe it’s the fact that the love of my life painstakingly grew them, sick most days of her pregnancy, and then labored and birthed them one after the next on a cold December evening, just before my birthday.

Maybe it was the eight days they spent in the NICU growing stronger before we could take them home, Marianna and I visiting as often as we could, holding them against our skin at every chance.

Maybe it’s their smiles, their laughs, the way they can have personalities already—I don’t think I realized they could have personalities yet.

Whatever it is, my love for them shows me that whatever my father felt for us, it wasn’t love. Not even some twisted version of the love I feel—it was something foreign and broken, a shattered, fucked up man creating offspring for his ego and legacy more than anything else.

I will protect them in ways he never cared to protect me.

“Does Enzo seem bigger this week?” Sasha asks of the sleeping child in his arms. “Like these little thighs might have doubled in size.”

“He wants to be as tall as his uncle,” I muse, and Sasha smiles.

He sees the babies every day, the short elevator ride the perfect commute for an uncle as doting and obsessed as him.

He rivals only Nate in his desire to be holding an infant at all times.

Sasha’s recovery wasn’t a short one, but he’s fully healed now with a scar like Mary’s to show for it.

As if thinking of her draws her attention toward me, Marianna pushes herself out of the pool and, without first grabbing a towel, crosses the backyard to where we stand in the shade. She drips water onto my legs and blows raspberries on Ilya’s stomach as he screams and giggles.

“Your cheeks are sunburnt, love,” she says, and presses up on her toes to kiss each side of my face and then my mouth. Ilya laughs his screaming laugh and continues to do so while we kiss either side of his head.

The noise rouses Enzo, who blinks groggily awake.

Seeing his mother, his single favorite person on the planet, Enzo reaches for her.

She coos, taking him from Sasha’s arms and cradling him as she rocks side to side.

Her hair still drips down her back, but Enzo doesn’t seem to mind her damp skin or the smell of sunscreen.

Nate calls Sasha over to help him and Sean with something on the grill, because I suppose it takes two mafiosos and a math teacher to have a successful barbecue. It warms my heart that they’ve accepted my brother so seamlessly into their family. It’s what I wish I could’ve had with him growing up.

“You’re looking all wistful again,” Marianna remarks, smirking.

“Maybe I’m feeling wistful again,” I say. “Sue me.”

I never dared wish this kind of joy for us, for myself. With Marianna, hope for this kind of contentment was dangerous; it threatened to bury me alive beneath the weight of my desire.

And yet, here she is, and here I am. Two sons, a precious menace of a wife, and more joy than any one person should rightfully have to themselves.

My father raised me to believe I’d never have this, that it wasn’t feasible nor even desirable. She teaches me the opposite, just by being who she is.

“I love you,” she says, as she always does. “Even with the sunburn.”

For someone who promised to never love me, she says it constantly now, an easy refrain and frequent reminder. Passing me a mug for tea: I love you . Sleepily rolling over when I get up with the babies: love you . Besting me in a fight with her cunning and skills: I still love you.

“I love you,” I say in English, and then Russian, Italian, every language I know, swaying with her and our boys as the rest of our family laughs and plays, perfectly content on a late summer day.

THE END