Page 174 of Lovely Venom

I smile down at baby Niccolo, humming the melody of a familiar lullaby as I rock him back to sleep.

He came into this world on a Tuesday, with what Abella lovingly described as his father’s temper. Baby Nico wasn’t happy about being evicted from his mother’s womb, but at four weeks, he’s fully embraced his broody disposition. It is, notoriously, a Vitale trait.

“What song is that you’re humming?” Lucia asks. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.”

“It’s something my mother used to sing to me when I was a child,” I confess, leaving out the part that it’s Greek.

Silence settles over the table, and when I glance up, all the girls are watching me.

I know it’s because I don’t talk about my mother. There have been times over the years when someone in our friend group quietly slipped a question about her into the conversation, but I’ve always shut it down.

It hurt too much to talk about her, so I avoided it. But pregnancy has changed my relationship with that grief.

Before, when I thought about my mother, every memory was overshadowed by the trauma of her death.

I witnessed something no child should ever have to carry, and I was trapped inside that horror for so long, I’d almost forgotten all the good. Now, I’m starting to remember the things I thought I’d lost, and I’m realizing they still exist in me.

What she gave me, nobody can ever take away. The songs she used to sing. The stories she used to read. Her smile, her laugh, and the way I felt whenever she was with me. It’s only because of her that I knew what love was, and as brief as it may have been, her love will live on through me.

I’ll pass those same stories and songs down to my children, and in that way, there will always be a little piece of her here with us.

“Hey, Mama,” Cristian murmurs against my ear.

“Hi.” I smile up at him.

“I like this.” Warmth floods his eyes as he observes me with the baby.

“I know you do.” Amusement touches my voice.

There’s nothing ambiguous about the way he looks at me now that the soft curve of my belly is visible. I’m in my sixteenth week of pregnancy, and my body is starting to change. Cristian loves it, and with every passing day, I know he’s imagining what it will be like when I’m holding our baby in my arms.

As happy as I am, it’s also a reminder that, at some point, I’ll need to do the thing I’ve been putting off.

It’s been on my mind since he gave me the ring—which turned out to be an oval diamond with the word Aeterna engraved on the band.

It means eternal.

I cried when I opened it, and I’ve been trying it on at least once a day when he’s busy working. It feels like the happy ending I never thought I could have.

If only we could skip past the bad part.

“I have to go into the city,” Cristian tells me.

“Okay.” I nod.

That news doesn’t make me panic as much as it used to.

They still haven’t found Elias, but he’s been off the radar for so long, part of me hopes he just gave up. Although I still don’t like the idea of him being out in the world after everything he’s done, I also just want that chapter of my life closed.

“Do you know how long you’ll be?” I ask.

“A few hours at least,” he says. “But I’ll check in to let you know.”

“Thank you.”

He palms my face and gives me a long, lingering kiss in front of everyone.

It’s only when Rafe makes a smart-ass remark from across the patio that Cristian pulls away and flips his brother off.