Page 92 of The Air You Breathe

We walked into the hallway of the courthouse as Giovanni walked up to us with a very pregnant Vittoria. If I was angry that he had faked his death then Vittoria must have gone nuclear, she cussed him out so badly he wasn’t able to come home. He begged her profusely, saying he had to do it, that it was the only way.

She eventually forgave him, and they definitely made up for lost time. It was no surprise that they announced she was pregnant just a few months after he came back.

“Sorella,” Vittoria said, before she hugged Darcy. She had taken to calling her sister after we decided to have a small commitment ceremony. Evan didn’t want to wait anymore, telling us he wanted to make Darcy our wife, tying us all together. After, we took a week off at some resort here in Colorado because they didn’t want Evan to leave the state.

Once this whole trial was behind us, we planned to go to a resort where we had our own private villa on top of the ocean. I planned to make Darcy scream my name over and over again to make sure everyone remotely close to our villa, knew my fucking name.

“You ok?” Giovanni asked us, as the girls talked.

I shrugged, knowing I should be feel relieved, but it was like my brain couldn’t process that my father was going to jail for a really long fucking time. Even though we had lived this year as normal as possible, there was always the fear he was going to send someone to come and get us, or worse, he would be released on a technicality.

But Giovanni had a lot of his bases covered, so he called our uncle and told him what had happened. He was more than happy to give us whatever the state needed to put Lucio behind bars for a really long time. One of his lawyers Elio came down to help in the case for a few days before the trial. He was sharp and smart as hell, spending a lot of time here helping anyway he could.

“I think once he gets sentenced, we will feel a hell of a lot better too,” Evan said, looking around like he was waiting for someone.

Candy came out of the courtroom fixing her hair and lipstick before she walked away.

“Baby, I have something you're going to want to see.” Evan grabbed Darcy’s hand as they walked behind Candy, making the rest of us follow them. Candy left out the front of the courtroom immediately getting swarmed with reports about Lucio’s case and how she was pivotal in the case.

Just a whole bunch of smoke up her ass that she had clearly loved during the last few weeks of the trial. All the reporters followed her down the steps, Evan opened the door silently as we all got out without anyone noticing us.

“Evan, what the hell, I really don’t want to talk to reporters.” Darcy looked annoyed.

“Just watch baby.” He pulled her to his side.

“Move, move!” An officer yelled coming up the steps, straight to Candy.

“Ms. Candice Waverly, you are under arrest for—”

Then all hell broke loose around her. A TV crew was filming her getting arrested as we watched Candy fall from grace.

“How the hell did you do that?” Darcy looked positively giddy. “Oh my god, I have to call Jane so she can tune into the news and see her get arrested.”

I laughed, happy that she was feeling better.

“What is she getting arrested for?” I asked.

“Embezzlement, selling narcotics and sex with a minor,” Evan said, putting his hands in his coat.

“She would also sell drugs to the high school kids,” Giovanni added.

“Sex with a minor?” Darcy asked.

“She was dumb enough to save everything to her phone, which saved it to her cloud. Clark found all of it during his search, but I kept some stuff to myself in case I needed something else to threaten her with.” He shrugged like it was no big deal.

“Fuck, well Clark needs to get a fucking fruit basket sent to him,” Darcy said, with raised brows.

“I think she’s right or maybe even a hooker,” Vittoria laughed. “Come on, vita mia, I’m ready to go, this baby is hurting my back.”

We all said our goodbyes before we led Darcy to Evan’s car. I don’t know what I expected for us to be feeling when we got into the car, but the somber mood wasn’t what I had predicted. We got what we wanted, but it felt like we had been wound tight for so long that we had no idea what to do with ourselves.

“Mary is here,” Darcy said, confusedly when we pulled up to the house an hour later since the hearing had been in Monroe.

She got out of the car before Evan could put the car in park, opening the front door and we quickly followed her. When we walked in, Mary was hugging Darcy. Aiden, Nathan, Callum and Jane were all together. My mother and Ava were also there with Evan’s mom and sister too. Giovanni, Vittoria and my niece managed to get here before us.

“What’s this?” I asked, coming up behind Darcy.

“We thought you might need some company after that awful trial.” Mary said, giving me a hug and then moving on to Evan.

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