Page 33 of Secret Mafia Daddy

“Oh, it’s so fast like this,” Chelsea muses, a smart kid, always picking things up quickly, and she’s finished with the puzzle by the time I’ve spritzed on some perfume and slid on a pair of low, black heels.

“Wear the stilettos,” Angelo commands, and I bite my lip.

“I’m not great at walking in them,” I complain.

“You’ll learn,” he says, and I want to roll my eyes but I keep telling myself this is temporary.

Look what you’ve gotten yourself into, I think. You let loose one time, and see what happened.

More than once, really, but who’s counting? Sleeping with my husband was also a mistake, but it won’t happen again.

As frustrated as I am, I can’t help but smile at the two of them. Angelo, for all his faults, seems to take Chelsea in stride, and it makes sense, since she’s always had a wild streak, just like him.

She’s always wanting to go on adventures, “ventures,” as she calls them, and no matter how many imaginary scenarios I think up, she always wants more.

Now we’re on an adventure for real, and I lean forward and whisper to her, “How do you like your adventure with Papa?”

Her eyes sparkle as she looks at me and a wicked grin just like her father’s spreads across her face.

“Can’t wait to have more,” she says, always greedy for adrenaline, and I sigh while Angelo laughs heartily.

“You’re Papa’s girl, all right,” he tells her, kissing all over the side of her face while she giggles.

Even though Angelo had threatened to kill me, I have to be grateful for him for getting us out of the city, away from my father. I also have to be grateful for him for loving Chelsea, for accepting her even though he hadn’t known her the first three years of her life.

I’d never imagined he’d be a hands-on dad like this, but I’m glad that he is.

As I head to the bedroom to escape from him for a second, I wonder if this “venture” will turn out to be a good one.

15

ANGELO

My heart swells every time I look at my baby girl, at her little smile so much like mine, the way sometimes she sticks her nose in the air like her mother when she disapproves of something.

Right now, it’s baby carrots dipped in blue cheese, my favorite snack.

Chelsea sniffed them out, climbing up into my lap to ask about it, and then when I’d given her a bite her face screwed up and she lifted her chin high into the air.

“That’s nasty, Papa,” she says, spitting it out with her tongue back into my plate. Usually that would gross me out, but it’s Chelsea, my own flesh and blood, and I just laugh and stand up, depositing her on the ground and she goes back to her puzzle.

“It’s too chunky,” she keeps complaining, her tongue stuck out, until I get her some apple juice to wash it down.

I chuckle. “I like it chunky.”

“Mama eats apples and peanut butter,” she says. “That’s gross too, because she likes the chunky peanut butter.”

“Does she now?” I ask curiously, since I have three jars of chunky peanut butter in my pantry.

Chelsea sucks down her apple juice. “Yeah. You both eat gross stuff,” she says simply and then, when concentrates on the puzzle in front of her.

It seems strange to think that one day she’ll be a rebellious teenager, and with her mother’s looks – I may have to kill several teenage boys.

I’ll have to talk to Dante about it. I’m sure he’ll understand since he has a daughter of his own. Nico’s the lucky one, with a boy. He won’t have to worry too much about the kid getting taken advantage of or getting his heart broken.

I think about Chelsea, about her big brown eyes with the hint of amber so much like mine, filled with tears over some boy? No fucking way.

I’m jolted out of my thoughts about the future when the doorbell rings.

---