Page 260 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

‘You can’t quit over a bagel.’

‘I just did.’

He put a hand to his chest and tried to pull air into his uncooperative lungs.

The child stumbled. The father scooped him up. Marcello couldn’t tear his gaze from them.

Livia floated in his vision.

‘You are allowed to move on too, Marcello.’

‘I’m good.’

He closed his eyes. Opened them. The father was still carrying his toddler. He stared after them until they disappeared from sight.

He’d not beengoodsince he’d touched his son’s forehead and panicked to feel the heat coming from it.

He’d run from the pain but had never run from Tommaso. He carried his child with him. A piece of him. He’d given the whole of his heart to his son and would never betray his memory and the purity of his love by letting anyone else in to share it. Would never open himself to pain again.

But pain had found its way back to him.

Pain and loss. Deeper than he could have believed he was still capable of feeling after Tommaso.

Work hard and play hard, that was what he’d dedicated himself to. Because life was fragile. Fleeting. You could close your eyes to the night and never see another sunrise, and all that would be left of you was an emptiness in the souls of those who’d loved you that nothing could fill.

Or so he’d believed.

It hadn’t been his office walls closing in on him, it had been the world. His world. His world without Victoria.

She was his world. His everything.

He raised his head, closed his eyes and spoke a prayer to his son.

And then he went back into the lobby and spoke to the nearest doorman. ‘I need a car. Now.’

At Marcello’s second stop, he jumped out of the car and slid through the slush to the door. On the side of it a list of apartment numbers but no names.

He’d never visited the apartment before. Had no idea what number it was.

Swearing loudly, he called Ryan. The car for Victoria would be arriving at any moment.

The tumble dryer beeped at the same moment Victoria’s intercom rang.

She closed her eyes.

So this was it, then.

Dully, she pressed the button to open the entrance door. She’d been told the driver would carry her cases to the car. Her life, all packed away. All except three towels. She could only hope they’d actually dried.

She supposed the towels being a little damp wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t like her parents didn’t have a washing machine or anything.

She wouldn’t stay with them for long. That much she’d decided. She had her nest egg plus the extra three months’ salary unexpectedly credited to her bank account only that morning. Marcello generous to the very end, and now she could easily afford to put down a deposit on a home of her own. Maybe afford to buy a home for herself outright. Maybe ask Grandma Brigit if she’d like to move in with her. At least her dragon breath would keep Victoria warm and her sharp tongue keep her on her toes. Stop her falling into the pit of despair she was so close to the edge of. The tears she’d wept earlier had been a temporary stem on the pain but she was barely clinging on.

Her decision had never felt so real as it did in that moment.

In a few hours she would no longer share the same sky as Marcello and she was going to have to find a way to live with that.

Although expected, the knock on her door made her jump. She hadn’t moved from the intercom.

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