Page 160 of Mafia Don's Secret Twins

She lets out a long string of curses in Spanish.

“Mother. Please,” I say in English. “There are babies in this house.”

“And they’d say the same thing if they knew the words. What the hell are you thinking!”

“That I’m not going to beg him to be with me! If he wants to choose me, he can!”

“And you think that him choosing a future that you can live in isn’t choosing you?”

I raise an eyebrow.

She collapses into a chair, her eyes trained on me. “I have been talking to the women. Listening. Hearing about this Dino, the father of my grandchildren. He reminds me so much of your father?—”

“Oh, no. Then I definitely need to run,” I snap.

She holds up a hand. “Let me speak, because I am your mother and I will not be talked to like this.”

My mother rarely scolds me, and it shocks me into silence.

“He has a fire in him that reminds me of your father. But unlike your father, that fire has not burned him alive. When I fell in love with Benicio, there was merely an ember. He lived in the blackened shell of himself, and he had done things that were… that were beyond repair. I loved the man Benicio was. I did not love the things Benicio did to fill the darkness in his heart.”

My heart aches. “Dino has darkness, Mãe.”

“Not like your father did. He is choosing to build you a life, Marisol. He’s going to make you a queen.”

“I don’t want to be a queen,” I whisper. “I just want to be loved.”

My mother’s face falls, and she stands. Slowly, she tugs me into a hug.

“Why can’t you have both?”

I look up at her.

“Those things are not exclusive, my love. Your father did not know how to do both. Like I said, the fire in him had burned away much of the person Benicio could be. I loved him, even if I didn’t always like him, even when I knew that loving him would burn me too. But Dino… he loves you. It is clear. He loves you, and what he does, he does for you and the girls.”

“Then why did he leave?”

She rolls her eyes. “Have you been in this house? There are too many men. They make the air thick with their machismo. A man like Dino who is full of so much dynamite will explode. But if he channels that into a place where he can make his own action, he will carve an empire out of the very bones of the earth. He means to change the shape of the world. For you,” she whispers.

I frown.

“He has always loved you, Marisol. He has just waited to see if you would love him too.”

I blink.

Could that be true?

If it is, then I have made a terrible, terrible mistake.

I look up at my mother. “Mãe…”

She smiles.

“Go. I will watch the girls. And when we come to Greece? I want a villa all of my own,” she smiles.

I take a Range Rover. I don’t know whose it is. But I peel out of Elio’s garage, hoping that I can beat Dino to the private airfield that Gia told me he was headed toward.

Please don’t let it be too late.

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