Page 19 of That Time I Accidentally Took Over the Mafia

Just as the words settle, a sharp knock at the door shatters the quiet. I jump, reality rushing back in.

“It’s time to go,” Enzo calls from the other side, his voice brisk and insistent.

Jax pulls away reluctantly, but I tug him back for one more kiss, soft and lingering. “I’m sorry too.”

He rests his forehead against mine, closing his eyes as if to hold onto this moment a little longer. His hands cup my face gently, as though he’s afraid I’ll disappear when he opens his eyes again.

But finally, he does, and his dimples greet me with a soft smile.

“Come on, Peach. Let’s get dressed before your old dickhead boss beats the door down.”

“Igot you a hot chocolate.”

It’s a simple phrase, but when Jax handed me the disposable gas station cup this morning, I stared at him like he’d just sprouted wings and was about to start crowing. His brows knitted in confusion, and he moved his pink sucker to the other side of his mouth. The poor guy was probably wondering if I’d lost my damn mind. But that phrase, so casual, yanked me back to a memory—one I’ve been running from for years.

It was as if the words were carved into my brain, lying in wait for the right moment to resurface.

I hear my father’s voice now, as if he’s standing right beside me, saying the exact same thing.

“I got you a hot chocolate, il mio tesoro.”My treasure.

I can see him so clearly in that moment, his hands steady as he placed the cup on the glass dining room table—the same table that once felt enormous to my child-sized perspective. Back then, everything seemed oversized and overwhelming. The table, him, his promises—they were all larger than life.

But now, as an adult, the table is just a table.

Everything that once felt so grand has shrunk in the cold light of reality. And that man, my larger-than-life hero, became small that day.

Something shifted in that moment. I don’t know what it was, but that cup of hot chocolate—it changed things. Before he handed it to me, he was a giant in my eyes. Afterward, he became small. The pedestal I’d placed him on cracked and crumbled, leaving me with a man who wasn’t all I thought he was.

And I—I wasn’t his treasure anymore. At least not in the way he’d once made me feel.

He became the man who failed me, and now he’s just a man who is dead. Another man from my past that I’ll bury there, along with the ghosts of three others I thought I buried four years ago.

Jax stands there now, waiting for me to come back to the present. The hurt in his eyes is unmistakable. He thinks I’m offended or angry at him for some inexplicable reason. For something I don’t even understand myself.

He pulls the cup back, his expression resigned. “Sorr?—”

“No, Jax. It’s fine.” I force a smile, trying to brush it off. But the words don’t feel like they fit anymore. The smile doesn’t feel like mine. “I just... I remembered something.”

We’re back in the SUV now, the hum of the engine filling the silence. Trees blur past the window, their shapes distorted by the rain streaking the glass. The weight of the quiet between us feels suffocating, the air thick and heavy.

I catch my reflection in the window—haunted, distant. The ghost of a little girl stares back at me, small and alone, just like she was then. Just like I was then.

“Il mio tesoro,” I whisper, the words barely audible even to myself. They carry more weight than they should. More pain. More distance between me and the woman I am now.

It’s strange, isn’t it? The way memories work. The more I think about it, the more I realize I can’t remember what happened before that moment—before the shift. I don’t remember life before he became that small man.

But I still remember that night with the hot chocolate.

The memory is like a lone photograph, faded and incomplete, yet vivid in its own way. I haven’t thought about it in years. A lump forms in my throat, and I swallow it down.

There’s nothing before that memory. No Delaney. No Mom and Dad. No Christmas mornings or chasing birds on the beach in summer.

Time didn’t exist until that hot chocolate was set down in front of me.

It must have been around the time my mom disappeared. I was six when the lightning flashed in the dark sky and took her away from us. Just like the flashes in the sky now, dark clouds reflecting the somber mood this memory has left me with.

A burst of lightning outside jolts me, pulling me from my thoughts. My gaze stays fixed on the rushing landscape as rain pelts the window. The storm feels eerily familiar, a reflection of the one in my memory.

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