Page 144 of Powerful Deception

“Here,” I say, holding up the pants. “You try it.”

Dante continues to smirk as he walks over to me and takes the pants. The man has the audacity to wink at me before turning to the moving tornado.

“Angioletto, come here. Now.” Dante orders, and within seconds, Angel stops.

The kid stops.

What the hell?

I watch, dumbfounded as Angel smiles up at his dad as if he were a superhero or something, walks over to him and lets him put on his pants.

Unbelievable.

“Why are you giving Mama a hard time?” Dante asks his son as he situates his shirt and small bowtie.

As I watch Dante dress Angel, my mind drifts.

It's almost two years to the day, since I walked into Perversa and pulled down my dress for Dante for the nanny position. Almost two years since I met Angle and Alessandra, I became their nanny and fell in love with them in ways I can never comprehend. Almost two years since me and Dane started the journey that we are in now.

A lot has happened since that day I agreed to be Dante’s nanny.

After the situation with Gallo and Dante and I declaring our love for each other, I was officially fired as the nanny officially became Dante’s stay at home girlfriend.

As much as I wanted to work, Dante wouldn’t let me, so we came up with a compromise. I stay home with the kids and if anything came up where he needed help with anything that Evelyn couldn’t handle we would come to me. I agreed.

That worked for the better part of a year and a half, but earlier this year, I decided to go back to school to get my master’s in business.

The idea came by one day as I was helping Alessandra with her words. She is speaking a bit more than what she used to, but it's definitely not the same as other six-year-olds. As I was helping her, I thought about kids in her situation that didn’t have the same resources that she did. So I looked into it and found that while there are a lot of charities that help kids for a number of things, speech therapy wasn’t one that was heavily available.

So I decided to go back to school to open one and learn all the ropes.

Dante was okay with it.

I was able to get into some night classes and stay with the kids during the day, and so far it’s working out. I stay with the kids during the day, and when Dante comes home from the club or doing mafia stuff he stays with the kids while I go to school.

“Because I wuv her.” Angel responds, taking me out of my head space.

With a smile, I get up from the ground and make my way over to my little man.

“And I love you too.” I say as I lift him up and plant kisses on his chubby cheeks.

“Mama!” Angel squeals as I kiss him and when I put him on the ground he runs right out the room.

Mama.

That’s what the kids have been calling me for almost two years as well. It started when Angel started to officially put words and he must have heard the word from somewhere because he repeated it.

The first time we heard him say it, we were in shock. Never had I told him to call me mama, but yet here he was saying it. I tried my hardest to teach him another word, but all that would come out of Angel’s mouth was mama.

After a week or so of me panicking, Dante told me that it was okay if they called me mama. I was helping raise them, I was in their lives, and in a way I was a mother figure to them.

I thought about it and after a few days, I was okay with it but I was even more okay with it when I explained to Alessandra that Angel may call me mama, but I would never be mami. I didn’t want to replace Angelina and I wasn’t going to.

So the kids have their mami and their mama and I’m happy with that.

“You ready to go downstairs?” Dante asks me, wrapping an arm around my waist.

“I still think that the kids will be bored out of their minds around adults.” I say, leaning into him.

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