Page 157 of Mafia Don's Secret Twins

And I lose it.

Eventually, I stop crying, the girls and my mom all staring at me. My mother is gently patting my head, and I wipe my eyes, taking a tissue when she offers me one.

“So. He was that bad?” she asks.

I look at the girls.

My mother sighs. She asks the girls to go play, the Spanish rolling off her tongue, then turns back to me.

“Tell me.”

In Portuguese, I slowly start. “I don’t know. I don’t think he was as bad as he could be. As bad as he was. He assigned Moretti to follow me around like some kind of guard dog, and Moretti… he wanted to marry me, to be father’s heir.”

My mother snorts and cusses in Spanish.

“Mãe,” I chide, looking at the girls.

She waves her hand. “I have been working on their Spanish, but they don’t know that word yet.”

“They’ll figure it out,” I whisper.

She shrugs. “Continue, please.”

“He… father… he made it seem like he loved me. Loved you,” I say quietly.

My mother’s eyebrows pinch together. “Loved?”

I take a deep breath.

Then, I tell her about the mud. About the mountain.

About him pushing me away.

And, what he told Dino.

As the story unfolds, my mother’s face goes pale. When I reach the part about Dino seeing father die, she winces.

“I was afraid of this.”

Curious, I tilt my head and look at her.

She shakes her head. “Benicio and I… We are like the moon and the sun. Destined to be apart, forever. If we were together too long, the world would stop spinning. A while back, I woke up in the night feeling… like I had lost the moon,” she whispers.

“Mãe,” I say, my voice breaking on the word.

She waves her hand at me. “Benicio was not an easy man. But I am not an easy woman. What we have… I will hold. I will keep. I do not expect anyone to know about it, I do not expect anyone to understand. But as happy as I am to see him dead, I will miss him with every piece of my soul.”

I don’t know what to say to that.

Other than to just hold her hand.

We stay like that, together, watching the girls play. My mother mourning the loss of her moon.

And me, wondering if I ever had mine to begin with.

I leave the playroom.

Eventually.

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