Page 120 of Mafia Don's Secret Twins

This is what I’ve been reduced to.

Pacing.

Pacing the halls. Pacing my room. I spent a restless night last night just… turning, until I finally got out of bed and decided to pace around instead.

I can’t do this anymore.

Something has to change. But I can’t change anything.

I’m just…

Stuck.

The door to the house creaks open, and my father comes in. I freeze; I’m not sure that I want to talk to him.

Well.

I definitely don’t.

But unfortunately, he’s already seen me. His face seems to… soften. Slightly. “Marisol,” he rumbles. He collapses onto the living room couch, dismissing Paolo as he does. “Come sit with me.”

Cautiously, with all the awareness of a mouse creeping in front of a cat, I pad into the room.

“How are you?” he says after a minute.

I blink.

I don’t remember the last time that my father asked how I was.

“Andrei tells me that you have been enjoying the pool,” he continues.

If I could glare at Andrei, I would, but that would give too much away. “I like to swim.”

“I know. Why do you think the house has a pool?”

I blink.

“The house has always had a pool.”

“Well of course. Your mother told me when you were a baby that you enjoyed water. It was your birth month, or something like that,” he huffs. “Honestly, I didn’t know, or care. She said to build you a pool and so I built you a pool.”

I raise an eyebrow. “I thought this house used to belong to Ricario Pinto?”

“He did not have a pool, Marisol.”

I’m confused.

It feels like my father is trying to say that he made modifications to the house… for me?

It’s not just the house. The whole place is a compound, literally built to hide criminals and allow them to engage in activities that the central government can do nothing about. It comes with abarracks,for the love of everything holy.

There’s no way that my father tried to make it family-friendly for…

Me.

“You had a lot of children, father,” I say quietly. “Any one of them could have enjoyed the pool.”

He stiffens.

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