“Can we go see him?” Elio asks.
“Please?” Adalina presses her hands together like she’s pleading.
“Okay, but don’t wander off. Just go to Santa.” They’re off running to Santa before I can finish. I watch them as they get in line.
"Agent Blackwood approached Elena," Dom says once they're out of earshot. "Interesting timing."
"What are you implying?" Luca's voice drops dangerously low.
My stomach clenches as I realize Dom is going to accuse Luca of being the one orchestrating the downfall of La Corona.
"I find it curious how everything has unfolded. Each year you return home, and the FBI is in the shadows, stirring up trouble. Are you going to use those kids against us too?"
Luca steps forward, and I instinctively move between them. "Stop it, both of you."
"Your uncle destroyed my life once," Luca snarls, ignoring my effort to defuse the situation. "You think I'll let anyone do it again? You've never had the authority to keep me from what's mine."
I wince at his words, at the raw pain beneath them.
I was always selfishly thinking of myself.
Never of his years of exile, of people believing he betrayed my father.
"I won’t defend my father. He was a fucking asshole,” Dom acknowledges, "but I’m the one who has protected Elena and those children for years while you ran away to Italy."
"Protected them from me?" Luca laughs bitterly. "Or kept them from me?"
The accusation hangs in the air. My heart hammers as I realize Luca is suggesting that Dom knew all along.
"I never knew they were yours," Dom says quietly.
"And if you had?" Luca challenges.
"They're watching," I whisper, nodding toward our children who stand in line to talk to Santa, their eyes turned toward us.
I smile and wave at them so they don’t know the tension brewing between the adults in their lives.
"Your children deserve stability," Dom says, his voice dropping so only we can hear. "If you want to do right by them now, Luca, you need to do right by Elena too."
My cheeks burn at his suggestion.
I told him marriage wasn’t in the cards for me and Luca.
"That's not necessary," I interject quickly, not wanting Luca to think I want Dom to use his power to force Luca to marry me. "I don't want?—"
“You disrespect me by mistreating my cousin,” Dom continues.
Luca's eyes narrow. "You're lecturing me about respect? You know what your father did, Dom. You know and you’ve never said a word. You’ve let the world believe I was to blame.”
I step between them again, placing a hand on each of their arms. "Stop. Both of you. I don't want a marriage out of obligation or respect or whatever misguided sense of honor you two are fighting about."
Dom looks at me with surprise. "Elena?—"
"No." I cut him off. "I appreciate your looking out for me, Dom, I really do. But I don’t want our children to grow up in a home filled with resentment. They deserve better than parents who married because they felt they had to."
The festival continues around us, lights twinkling, children laughing, carols playing, but the merriment doesn’t break through the tension between us.
"What matters is that Rocco, Elio, and Adalina have both parents who love them," I continue. "They need us to figure out how to be parents together, not how to force a relationship that's broken."
