Page 90 of Arianna

I should be giving all my attention to what matters most now, my political aspirations, but all I can seem to focus on is her.

On how right she feels here in my home.

In my world.

With my kid.

My enemy’s daughter has infiltrated my world. My goddamn life.

I must be sick.

That is it.

It is just a fixation, and like most of my compulsions, this one shall fade with time.

Liar…

I let out a frustrated sigh and look out the window from where I am seated to the blackened sky smattered with stars.

Trying to get my shit together. To figure out just what the hell I thought I was doing. How was I supposed to maneuver this?

Because it was getting harder and harder figuring out how to be in Arianna Parisi’s space and act like she had not gotten under my skin. Like I was not constantly watching her. Wanting something I most definitely shouldn’t want.

The reaction that had shaken my insides when I’d watched her from outside the door of my child’s bedroom and saw her holding Ellaiza as if my baby was the blood of her blood. Every interaction between her and my daughter disarms me.

A motherfucking arrow straight to the heart.

Piercing.

I am a fool for entertaining the idea because, deep down, I know that I could never have it. That I’d ruin it, but I still haven’t been able to shake the sense that I was looking at something right.

Something good.

What was missing inside these walls.

Beauty, magic, and hope.

She has me all tied in knots.

This is straight fucking stupidity.

That shit wasn’t in the cards for me.

I already got lucky with my daughter. Wanting more seems as if I’m reaching for an impossibility.

Before Arianna came into my life, the word impossible was not in my vocabulary, yet here I am, restless and fucked-up over the twenty-year-old child of the man that took what mattered most to me once.

My hate for Gabriele Parisi might not extend to his daughter but feeling anything toward her feels like a betrayal. A slap to the face for what I lost.

I couldn’t lose sight. I couldn’t jeopardize what I was living for by going after something I couldn’t have.

But then the image of Arianna a moment ago, looking at me with so much love and light in her eyes, fuck, there was light and warmth—things that weren’t there before—when she talked about my baby girl doing things to me. Shook me to my core. My chest felt like it was going to implode as I glanced at her and witnessed all that joy lit on her gorgeous face.

It made my chest feel tight, something that no other woman has managed to do before.

Yeah.

The brat flipped that shit on me, hadn’t she?

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