Chapter 27
Her voice, when she finally spoke, was quiet, but it cut through the air like a blade. “Fine. I’ll go, Luca... but I’m not taking Nico with me.”
That stopped him cold.
He froze, turning slowly to look at her, the words not making sense. Amber stood there, pale, her eyes dark like he’d never seen before. Or maybe it was him. Maybe he was the one seeing only darkness. He didn’t know anymore.
“What did you just say?” His voice was low, disbelieving, as if asking the question would unravel the impossibility of what he’d heard.
Amber’s gaze dropped to the floor, her long hair hanging like a curtain over her face. “I’ll leave. I’ll pack my things and go.” Her voice wavered, her lower lip trembling. “But Nico stays here. With you.”
Luca stared at her, heart pounding, the quiet of the room suddenly suffocating. “What the hell are you talking about?” The words were out before he could stop them, raw with disbelief and a fear that clawed at his chest. Amber—this woman who would fight the world for their son—was giving him up?
His feet moved before he realized it. He crossed the room and gripped her shoulders, shaking her as gently as he could manage, his breath coming fast. “Amber?!”
“I can’t take Nico back with me,” she whispered, her voice breaking as tears slid down her face, hidden beneath the dark waves of her hair. Luca’s panic spiked. He shook her again, he wanted answers. An he wanted them now. “Why? Why can’t you take him?”
She finally looked up, red-rimmed eyes meeting his with a terrible fragility that cut through him like a knife. “They found stage one breast cancer. I... I have to start chemotherapy in three weeks.”
The words hung in the air between them like a death sentence. Luca’s grip loosened on her shoulders as the ground beneath him seemed to shift, the room tilting, her words sinking in slowly, painfully. Cancer. Amber—strong, defiant Amber—had cancer.
“I’m just preparing for the worst,” she continued, a false steadiness creeping into her voice. “I don’t know how I’ll feel once the treatment starts, or if I’ll be able to take care of Nico. And if things... if things go wrong...” She trailed off, but Luca understood. The possibility of her not making it through. The sheer terror of it.
She swallowed hard, blinking away more tears. “I don’t want Nico to see me like that. Sick, weak... watching me fall apart. A mother who won’t be able to take him to park, take him to school or cook his favourite food. I don’t want that for him.” Her voice cracked, and she exhaled shakily, pushing forward. “It’s just for six months. Maybe less. I’ll come back for him. But for now... I need you to take care of him.”
Luca could only stare. His thoughts were a tangled mess—panic, disbelief, anger at fate for doing this. To Nico. To them. But he couldn’t find the words, not when his mind kept flashing back to his son’s tearful eyes It all began to fall into place. Nico’s outbursts, his heart-wrenching fear that his mother didn’t love him anymore, his insistence that Amber was planning to leave him behind—it suddenly made sense. Nico hadn’t been wrong. His mother *was* going to leave him. But not for the reasons Nico had imagined. His poor, dear son.
He still hadn’t processed the shock of Amber’s cancer. The low, relentless hum in his ears drowned out everything else, leaving him fixated on one terrible fact: Amber was sick—very, very sick. This might be the hardest battle she would ever face, and she was going through it alone. Her fragmented, distant family wouldn’t be there for her. The only real family she had was Nico, their son, and now she was sacrificing even that, leaving Nico behind for his own sake.
But who would be there for her? Who would take care of *her*? Who would make sure she wasn’t swallowed by this disease, alone and scared? He wanted to ask her, to offer something—anything—but what right did he had to say any of that?. So he said nothing.
Amber’s silence stretched between them, and he realized too late that she was waiting for him to say something. Anything. Her face crumpled in that long pause, mistaking his shock for rejection.
“I know you’ll be busy with the wedding soon... with Carlotta,” she began, her voice fragile. “You’ll have a new family, and Nico will just—”
“Stop!” Luca’s voice cracked with an anger that surprised even him. “Just because I’m marrying Carlotta doesn’t mean I’m abandoning Nico. I am not replacing him with a new family. He is my son, Amber. Nothing will ever change that.”
“So... you’ll keep him?” she asked, her voice a mix of hope and resignation, like she already knew the answer but needed to hear it anyway.
Luca didn’t respond. There was no right answer. Not really. Months ago, maybe even years ago, all he had wanted was to have his son under his roof, to be with Nico every day. He would have traded his entire fortune—his life even—just to have that. But now, after hearing his son’s desperate cries, Nico’s deepest fear of being abandoned by the one person he adored most, how could he be so cruel? How could he take Nico away from his mother, knowing the boy’s fragile heart already questioned if she loved him anymore? How could he do that to his son, who craved her approval with every fiber of his being?
“Luca, please,” Amber’s voice trembled, but it was filled with that aching, quiet desperation.
"Have you even considered how this will affect Nico?" Luca’s voice cracked as he spun around to face her, the words catching in his throat. "How he’ll feel if you leave him here with me? He’ll think you abandoned him, that you don’t love him anymore."
"No! That’s not true!" Amber's voice came from behind him, so raw and filled with pain that it twisted something deep inside Luca. "That’s not true, and I’ll explain everything to Nico. I’ll make him understand it’s just for a few months, and that I’ll come back for him soon..." Her voice faltered, as though she was already saying goodbye to her son.
Luca exhaled sharply, his chest tight. "I think it’s too late for that conversation."
Amber’s eyes widened. "What do you mean?"
"Two nights ago," Luca began, his voice heavy with regret. "The night Ma invited the Forentinos for dinner, and I— I made the mistake of telling you to leave. Nico was inconsolable. I couldn’t figure out why, even after I reassured him you’d be back soon. That’s when he told me... He thought you brought him here to leave him with me. He believed you were abandoning him because you didn’t love him anymore."
"He... He knew?" Amber’s voice trembled with disbelief. "But how?"
"He overheard you talking to a friend. Something about leaving him with me, and he took it to mean you were done with him, that you don’t love him anymore." Luca said, his words laced with sorrow.Her face crumbled. “Oh, my poor, poor boy!” Amber exclaimed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “How he must have been suffering, and yet he never voiced a word!” But even as she lamented, a painful truth settled in her heart: he had been reaching out to her all along. How could she have missed it? Her sweet, obedient son had morphed into a sobbing mess the moment she mentioned their trip to Rome, throwing tantrums and displaying anger throughout the entire journey. It all clicked into place now. Nico had been silently crying for help, and she hadn’t understood.
But alas, when it came down it, it actually changed nothing. “Nico will have to stay here with you,” she said, her voice trembling. “I have no other choice. There’s no one in the States who can take care of him while I undergo chemo. No family, no relatives, not a single soul!” The word “chemo” felt like a thousand arrows to Luca's chest.And he was already bloodied and wounded enough!
They were silent for a long-long while. Doing nothing. Saying nothing. Just trying to heal. He was looking out of the window again, even with the blinds still drawn the bright sunlight was leaking in through the corners and sides of the blinds. It was no longer that dark.
But his soul still felt like it was trapped in that terrible thunderstorm trying to tear it apart in two. But he knew what he needed to do. It was like the sunlight, seeping into him through the cracks.
He would do what would be the best for his son.
“I will need to talk to Carlotta about this.”