Page 28 of The Mobster's Forced Marriage

It probably looks silly, but I don’t want to be all doom and gloom first thing in the morning, especially when there’s a child here. There may not be any sunshine at the beginning of December, but isn’t it still nice to start a new day?

And I’m glad to see it work because, when I get up and go to the fridge, I notice Misha’s eyes following me. He’s curious, and that’s exactly what I was hoping for. I dig out a bottle of whipped cream and blueberry sauce before opening the freezer to take out a basket of vanilla ice cream. It’s been there for a while, but I know how tasty it is in any condition.

“It’s gonna be delicious! Do you wanna try?” I put my precious sweets on the table in front of Misha, and he glances at them over his glasses and bites his lip before turning to Sasha.

She doesn’t look happy with my delivery, and for a moment it looks like she's gonna reject my offer. But eventually, her frown softens, and she sighs and gives Misha a small, encouraging smile.

“Sure, let’s try it. Looks like it’s gonna be tasty.”

And I can’t help but smile when I see Misha’s eyes open wide in delightful surprise when he takes the first bite of his pancake with ice cream and blueberry sauce on top. I don’t know why he doesn’t like me much, but I kinda like him. He’s a good kid, just a little too quiet, but I’ve spent only a couple of days with him. Maybe it’s all just the stress of changing places.

But as I figure out a few days later, it’s not.

I keep thinking about a way to talk to Sasha that won’t end up with her dagger in my neck, but none of my ideas sound reliable. Catch her after a shower? Sneak into her room at sunrise? No, those options are too creepy. Besides, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist her body, what with the way her presence affects me even on a regular day, so she’d at least attempt to kill me anyway.

But I don’t want our conversation to turn into sex either. I actually want to know what I did that upset her so much, and practice shows that even touching her sends my mind off the road completely.

While I keep musing on those thoughts, days pass by, and the situation doesn’t get better. Sasha just refuses to acknowledge my presence, and I feel like any attempts to get closer to her make the air between us that much more tense. But at least I still have hope that I’ll be able to find my way around Misha.

You see, if I can’t warm up Sasha’s heart toward me, the least I can do is become friends with her son—which, as it turns out, is not so easy.

Usually, I get along with kids of all ages. Max and Romeo—Elena and Matteo’s sons respectively—are always fun to play with, and even though Luna doesn’t know yet what it means to play games with Uncle Louis, she adores me in her own way. But Misha is just…I don’t know, he’s kinda difficult.

He doesn’t talk, doesn’t play games, and whenever I offer to watch some TV shows or movies together, he just sits on the other side of the couch quietly, holding on to his knees with his eyes focused on the screen. He rarely smiles and never laughs, at least not in my presence, and even when I bring him a new set of LEGO, he only stares at it for a moment with wide eyes before thanking me with just a ghost of a smile on his lips.

And do you know what? I blame Sasha for it. I’m sure she told Misha some bullshit about me just to make him dislike me. She obviously doesn’t appreciate my attempts to spend time with him, but at least she rarely takes him away unless Misha himself runs to her at the first hint of her appearance.

It’s plenty suspicious, huh? I mean, of course, Misha is her son, so she has every right to dictate what is right or wrong for him to do…but I’m her husband! She can’t just expect us to spend the rest of our lives on different sides of the same house?

It’s really annoying to think that Sasha manipulated her son into hating me—but my theory starts to crumble when I notice an old scar on his neck. We’re in the middle of building a LEGO tower together after Misha, very reluctantly, allowed me to join him, and whenever he crouches down to fit small pieces together, I see a pink line leading down under his collar.

As bad at keeping my curiosity down as I am, I clear my throat and ask him just a few minutes later, “Hey, Misha, do you, uh, do you have any cool scars? I have a few on my belly, wanna see? For example, this one is from when I got shot while chasing down…probably some of your distant relatives.”

I chuckle while Misha only glances at the constellations of scars and burns on my abdomen and looks away with an even deeper frown than before. “Scars aren’t cool. They hurt.”

“Not if they are very old.”

He purses his lips, rearranging the roof of the tower. “They’re ugly.”

“Not all of them.”

“Mine are.”

Oh. I don’t like how that sounds. I frown a little, looking at him, and lower my voice. “Do you have many of them?”

Misha pauses in his movements and looks at me briefly, as always avoiding my gaze as soon as our eyes meet. “Do you really want to see?”

“Yes, I do.”

After a few seconds of hesitance, Misha places the LEGO block in his hands on the floor and reaches over his shoulders with both arms. He tugs at the fabric of his shirt and as soon as he pulls it out of his pants, I see the first scar, then another one, and another. There’s a whole pattern of pink and red scars covering his back and leading down under his pants.

“See, they’re ugly,” Misha murmurs and lets go of his shirt, hiding everything, and I…I don’t even know what to say.

I sit there for a moment, looking for words, because I feel like Ihave tosay something. I’d hate to let him think that enduring so much pain makes him worse than other kids.

“You know, it…I think it only shows that you are very strong.” I slowly reach to pat his shoulder, and Misha only glances at me but doesn’t move away. It gives me the courage to keep going. “Who did this to you?”

He purses his lips hard, refusing to say anything for a long moment. I don’t push him and switch back to the tower when Misha finally mutters, “Grandpa.”

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