Page 50 of Playing the Sicilian's Game of Revenge

She let herself cry. She let herself eat far too many cakes. She took a long bath, where she cried all over again. She kept waiting for it to feel cathartic, but mostly she just felt wrung out and awful.

She was headed for the kitchen for more cake when she heard...commotion deeper in the other wing. Like... Her heart skipped a beat. She rushed through her wing of the house to the main part, and there they were. Her favorite people.

Helena was having a little toddler tantrum. Gio was covering his ears while Lorenzo held Helena and tried to calm her down. Brianna rubbed her ever rounding belly looking sun-kissed and exhausted. They all looked a little damp.

“You’re back.”

“Aunt Sav!” Gio ran full throttle at her, so she had no choice but to catch him. Bury her nose in his hair. Hold on for dear life. “You’re getting far too big for me to toss in the air.” She gave him a tight squeeze, tears threatening. Oh, she’d missed them. Missed this. And...she could be okay. She would be okay. Even without Teo, because she had them.

While Teo has no one.

Gio wriggled in her grasp until she had to put him down. Helena, distracted from her tantrum, toddled over to Saverina and demanded the same treatment as her brother. “Up! Sav!”

So Saverina did the same thing. Lifted her niece, snuggled and squeezed until the girl squealed and demanded to be put down.

Usually they made her feel so happy and light. That Lorenzo could have this, when he absolutely deserved it and was an amazing father. But today, she couldn’t help feeling bruised. Wistful.

Like children were never going to be hers, when that was silly because she was so young yet. Had so much life to live. She’d meet other men. She’d fall in love again.

It felt impossible in the moment, but she had to shake away these dire thoughts and smile at her brother and sister-in-law.

Lorenzo looked her up and down, frowning as if he could see everything in her expression.

“We decided to come home a little early. Saverina—”

Before he could finish, Saverina crossed the room, flung her arms around her brother, and burst into tears. She had never done such a thing in all her life, always trying to be strong for him. But today...she only wanted to be held and told it would be okay. It would get easier to feel this horrible ache in her chest.

He hugged her close. “Do I need to kill him?” he asked in her ear.

“Yes,” she said emphatically into his chest.

“Can it wait until tomorrow? I’m a bit tired from the trip.”

It made her laugh, which she figured was the point. “I suppose.”

“Come on, Gio,” Brianna said, taking her son’s hand as she carried her daughter. “Let’s let Papa and Auntie Sav catch up.”

“But why is Aunt Sav crying?”

“Well, I imagine the answer to that question is men,” Brianna said with some humor as she tried to drag Gio out of the room.

“But I’m a men,” Gio insisted.

“Hopefully a better one,” Brianna muttered, and then they were gone.

Saverina looked up at her big brother and sighed. “I suppose you’d like the whole story.”

“I do not think I will like it, no, but let’s hear it.”

She explained it all to him. Even the part about Teo tricking her. She laid it all out. The embarrassing parts and the way she’d learned, matured, grown. It made her proud of herself, actually, the way she’d crawled out of that terrible realization into a person she liked better.

“He is so focused on this revenge. But you were right, I hate to admit. When you have love and family and real joy, the revenge no longer feels quite so important.”

Lorenzo nodded. “It is a strange lesson to learn, but yes. It is true. However, this is not a lesson you can teach him. He has to accept it on his own terms, in his own time.”

“I know. I do know that. I can even accept it if he never does. It’s just... I know he loves me, but he’s...he lost his mother, and he’s so mired in that grief he won’t deal with. If he would, if he could, we could both be happy. Now.”

“Well. I suppose men do that kind of thing.”

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