Page 4 of Dina's Favorite Mistake

Chapter One

One Year Later

Scowling, Dina stomped out of her bedroom and stormed across the hall to her daughter’s door. Camila’s favorite popstar had unexpectedly announced her retirement last night. So, of course, Camila had been dramatically and obnoxiously blasting music ever since.

“Turn that down!” Dina knocked on her daughter’s door. “Guests are arriving soon. You’re going to terrify them with all that noise.”

There was no response from inside, and the music volume didn’t decrease even a decibel. Dina flung the door open and marched right over to the sound system. Camila hadn’t even noticed and stayed at her perch in front of her vanity, dabbing at her face. Dina finally found the power button and shut the whole thing off.

“Hey! I was listening to that!” Camila shouted and glared.

“Camila Maria Farias!” Dina erupted in frustration at the sight of her teenage daughter’s destroyed bedroom. “Look at this mess!” She picked up a pile of carelessly discarded clothing. Some of the pieces still had tags dangling and the tell-tale smudge of fiery orangeTakisdust. “Have you been using these as napkins?”

Seated in front of her vanity, Camila rolled her eyes. “Manuela will wash them on laundry day.”

Aghast at the way her daughter so flippantly regarded the household staff, Dina glared at her. “Manuela isn’t washing any of this. You are.”

Camila spun on the tufted bench in front of her mirror and gawked at her mother. “I don’t know how to wash clothes.”

“Well, you’re fourteen. It’s time you learn.” Dina tossed the mangled handful of shirts at her daughter. “Starting now.”

“But the party!”

“Weren’t you complaining last night that you were too old for a baby’s party?” Dina reminded her daughter of the pouting and whining after dinner last night. All because Dina’s mother had dared to ask Camila to help with the face painting station at the party. “Since you’re too mature for a baby’s party, you can learn to do laundry.”

“But!”

“No.” Dina cut her off with a slash of her hand through the air. “No more excuses. When I was your age, I handled my own laundry, kept my room and bathroom clean and managed my own calendar.”

“At my age, you were in boarding school and had freedom,” Camila shot back. “I’m still stuck here in this prison—.”

“Prison?” Dina repeated with irritation. “This massive, luxurious estate is a prison?” Dina scoffed. “You live a fairytale life, Camila. You have no idea what a real prison is.”

“No, but my dad does!” Camila screeched. “You and my uncles made sure of that.”

Dina reared back in shock at her daughter’s outburst. “Camila, your father is in prison because—.”

“Because he hurt our family.Allegedly.”

Her shock turned to horror. “There was nothing alleged about it, Camila.”

“Wela Mirta says otherwise,” Camila insisted.

Dina frowned at the mention of her former mother-in-law. “Mirta? Since when do you talk to your grandmother?”

“Since I decided I needed to know my family better,” Camila defensively said and turned back to her mirror.

“You know your family. Yourrealfamily,” Dina clarified. “We’re right here. Loving you. Supporting you. Believing in you.”

“She loves me, too! And maybe if you weren’t so controlling, she would be able to support and believe in me,” Camila snapped.

Dina swallowed the awful things she wanted to say about Mirta. They were things that she would never tell her daughter. Terrible, awful, painful things she had endured while married to Diego. Horrible abuse that Mirta had known about and sanctioned with her silence and excuses.

“She wants to host myquince,” Camila revealed.

“Over my dead body!” Dina snarled, surprising even herself with the ferocious way the words left her mouth.

“What is all the yelling about in here?” Soila Farias, the matriarch of the family, entered Camila’s room with Jasper on her hip. The birthday boy toyed with his grandmother’s necklace and babbled happily in her arms. “I can hear you halfway across the house!”

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