Author: Sam Mariano
Category: Young Adult
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I try to pick my jaw up off the floor, but I can only stand here gaping at this ordinarily quiet woman. I’ve never loved Colette—she had some spunk when we first met, but she’s settled into her role as Dante’s lady. Now, all of a sudden, she’s going all Mob Wives on me and I don’t really know how to act.
“Put it away,” she says, rolling her blue eyes at me.
I try to shake off my surprise, tucking the phone in the side of my bra. No one’s looking there, that’s for sure. Rafe doesn’t know Mateo’s paranoid procedures, anyway. Had Adrian been the one to escort me to the bathroom, he would know to pat me down and double check that nothing went down since I got someone else alone.
When we go back outside, Rafe does not do that. He’s still shooting the shit with Dante. Once Colette returns to Dante’s side, the men shake hands. Then, resting his hand around his wife’s dainty waist, Dante regards me briefly before strolling toward the door to leave.
“Come on,” Rafe says, nodding back toward the dining room.
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My heart pumps a little faster as I resist the urge to look back at Dante and Colette over my shoulder. I can’t do that. I’m completely flabbergasted, but I can’t alert Rafe to the fact or he’ll be suspicious. We are clearly not on the same team here.
Just to get a better feel for the situation, I remark, “You and Dante seem to get along. Most of us avoid him—Mia calls him Dr. Doom.”
He smiles faintly at Mia’s nickname. “Dante’s a little dark for Mia. Mateo’s generally sociopathic, sure, but he’s not as mean as his brother. Dante’s colder, less flexible, more old-school. He’s not really her type.”
“I’ve never heard anyone refer to Mateo as flexible before,” I state. “That’s a new one.”
“You’re still breathing, aren’t you?” he shoots back, raising an eyebrow. “If that’s not flexibility, I don’t know what is.”
“He’s flexible for Mia,” I explain.
Rafe shrugs. “Dante is flexible for no one.”
Chapter Five
Mia
“Toys, toys, toys! Get your toys here,” Rosalie calls out like an old-timey paper boy, even though I’m the only one in the room. Offering her most pleasant smile, she looks at me. “Hello, miss. You wanna buy some toys for your daughter?”
“I sure would,” I tell her, looking over the line of her own toys she assembled in the floor in front of me. “Do you have any idea what kind of toy she might like?”
“I think all of them,” Rosalie states. “She likes toys and she always is a good girl.”
“Oh, is she?”
She nods in earnest. “If you buy her more toys, maybe she’ll keep being good.”
I fail to bite back a grin. Before I can respond to Rosalie’s subtle extortion, Mateo’s voice startles me from the doorway. “I think our daughter has enough toys.”
Rosalie brightens, breaking character for a moment. “Daddy!”
He smiles and pushes off the doorframe, approaching us and squatting down to meet Rosalie’s gaze. “You’re supposed to be in bed, little girl.”
“We’re playing,” she states, sweetly.
Now his gaze lands on me. “You were supposed to read a bedtime story and leave.”
“I got sucked in,” I offer, apologetically.
“I’m a little worried that my three-year-old can rule you,” he states.
“She’s a very persuasive three-year-old,” I inform him.
Rosalie ignores us and punches some numbers into her cash register. “For all of the toys, that will be five dollars.”
I hand over my pretend plastic credit card.
She grimaces apologetically. “We don’t take this kind.”
“What?” I demand. “It’s the only kind I have.”
Shaking her head, still with the apologetic grimace, she says, “You give me real money.”
“Real money?” Mateo questions. “We have to pay you real money for the toys we already bought you? To give to you again?”
Rosalie nods. “That’s the rules.”
Instead of giving her money, he tickles her until she’s laid out on the floor, helpless with giggles.
“You have to get up a lot earlier in the morning to con me, kiddo,” he informs her.
Since she does not understand that phrase, Rosalie sits up and throws her hands down dramatically. “I don’t want to get up in the morning. I don’t even want to go to sleep. I want to stay up and play and play and play.”
“Be that as it may, it’s bedtime.”
“No fair,” she objects.
“That’s life,” Mateo informs her. “If you don’t like the rules, be the one who makes them. Go get in bed or there’s no story tonight.”
She crosses her arm and scowls at him, but then she trots right over to the bed and climbs up, awaiting her bedtime story.
I lean in and whisper, “Big meanie.”
“One unruly child cutting into my Mia time is enough,” he informs me, his gaze dropping pointedly to my stomach.
Now I copy Rosalie’s scowl. “He doesn’t mean it.”
He shakes his head and stands, muttering something about a “pain in the ass” as he walks to the bookshelf. I don’t know if he means me or the baby, but I decide it’s me since the other option makes me a little ragey.