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Not when my biological mother made her life hell for the first seven years of their marriage and even once sneaked inside the house trying to seduce Dad, although what possessed her to do such a foolish thing baffles me to this day.
My father sees no woman but his wife.
And not even when the press called her a delusional, ugly fool who decided to marry a man ruthless enough to take away the child from his ex-wife because she probably didn’t have anyone else wanting to marry her. Just a small list of things she had to put up with through the years.
All because she chose to be my mom and enveloped me with so much love, I no longer felt the sting from my biological mother resenting and despising my entire existence. “Hi, Mama. I promise to stop by this week so we can have our tea party.” I place her back on the floor, and she pats my cheeks, sweeping her loving gaze over me. I see traces of worry on her face. My parents know me well enough to notice these small details, and I would hate anyone reading me this well if it wasn’t for the fact that they do love me.
And as I’ve discovered, parental love, unfortunately, is not a given right but a privilege, and I cherish mine.
“You do that.” She puts her hand above my heart. “What’s going on inside here, Florian?”
“Lots of things.”
“Are you ready to share them?” Dad asks, crossing his arms, and at this moment, it seems like they expect me to confess to something. “Because we’re ready to listen.”
Mom adds, “We’ll always be on your side. No matter what.”
“Yeah.”
That’s the problem, though, them being on my side will probably mean the end of their long-lasting friendship, but I say nothing. They’ll find out soon enough, considering that’s why I’m here, among other things.
Tonight, I’m claiming Jimena as mine in front of our families, everything be damned, and I gathered enough information to protect her if Death and his fucked-up son shows up to hurt her.
The last couple months, I’ve watched all my best friends marry their women, living in bliss, all the while I denied myself and my woman, who’s been hurting from it all and having to hide our baby as if he is some kind of crime.
Besides in true Jimena fashion, she has ignored me so all I could do was watch her from a distance all this time while sending various gifts and endless messages.
My woman ignored those but accepted all the gifts—always knew she was smart.
They are both a gift, and I’m done allowing the demons from my past to treat them as my dirty secret.
“Okay. As long as you remember that.” Mom winks at me. “Call your grandpa, though. He’s been harassing me with constant messages that his oldest grandson is avoiding him.”
Ah, yes.
One small detail the press never found about my mother that kind of surprised all of us once upon a time?
She was a mafia princess who had one year to prove to her dad that she could make it on her own for him to allow her to live as she wanted. She accepted the nanny position because she had two months left to prove a point and got fired from her previous job. She even lied about her age. She wasn’t twenty-five, she was thirty. For whatever reason, that lie stuck, and we never corrected it in the media either.
Needless to say, her father raged once he discovered that she fell in love with a divorced single Dad twelve years older than her. He couldn’t believe she worked as the help, as he called it, and wanted to drag her back to Boston, but she refused, and in time, he had to accept her decision.
He still hated Grandpa for treating Mom like this and told Dad that he’ll never consider him a man worthy of his daughter.
However, his hatred didn’t extend to me, and he welcomed me into the family, even showing me off to his friends, so with Mom, I gained a new set of grandparents.
“Isn’t Kian with him now?” My baby brother takes small breaks on the weekends from his school and likes to fly to Boston frequently to visit our grandparents. Especially after he’s been officially diagnosed as a psychopath at a younger age. Around the time he found death, blood, and human remains fascinating and displayed no emotions toward anything or anyone else.
Despite growing up surrounded by love, it’s a foreign concept to him, although he never shows bad behavior when it comes to us.
Then again, we never try to control him because it usually never ends well and causes violent outbursts, resulting in a lot of broken bones.
Nonno is the only one in this world who can control Kian, and sometimes I wonder if he prepares him to be his heir, not that my brother would want that.
He appreciates the doses of violence Grandpa allows him to indulge in. Thankfully, Mom doesn’t know about them, but he has no desire to follow the rules.
He prefers to make decisions on his own, and the mafia doesn’t really work this way, but who knows what’s really going on in that crazy head of his.
“Yes. He wants to see you both and fix the damage.”
