Mariella grew up in the foster care system, abused every day until she found solace in the most unexpected form; Mateo, the son of an Italian mob leader.
Fate brought the two together, but when it tears them apart, how is she supposed to cope? Espe...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Mariella
"You're doing it wrong..." I sing, glancing over to Mateo's poor excuse of gift wrapping.
He nudges my shoulder with his, acting clueless as if he's the world record holder for neatest wrapping skills. A deep chuckle releases from in between his lips, sending a flutter to my stomach. That's a sound I could listen to forever.
Correction- I will be listening to that sound forever.
"It's better than yours," he laughs again.
I gape at him, "At least mine isn't crooked."
"Mhm, " he hums, "whatever you say."
"You're an ass."
He grins, leaning his head on my shoulder. I continue to make quick work of taping the festive wrapping paper to itself before grabbing his unfinished job to complete.
Christmas is officially in two days, and I think we may have gone a bit overboard on the gifts. Well, I may have been the one to go overboard. In just trying to compensate for the fact that we moved to a whole different continent.
Overcompensating? Sure. But what kind of mother would I be if I didn't take advantage of the fact that I now have enough money to give them a good Christmas? Not that our Christmases in the quaint apartment we're horrible. We had Jen to entertain us and I did my best to get them as many gifts as possible.
But let's face it, New York itself isn't exactly cheap.
Despite that, I still miss living in the city. Being in New York was more freeing than my experience in Italy is. While it hasn't been horrible, I'm a whole lot more scared to do things. Paranoia is my life now, unfortunately.
Italy is beautiful, but back home I could walk around without fearing for Vivi and Angel's lives. Mine is a concern, too, but I would save my babies over myself any day.
I miss the ability to walk out the door any time, any day that I pleased. Mateo would probably not appreciate me doing that now.
I grab a whole new sheet of paper for the remote-controlled car for Angel, of course. Mateo chose this for him, not heeding to the warning of how much noise it will make. There will be no sleep in this house when Angelico gets a hold of this thing. Not that there's much sleep, anyway. Not for me.
That's why, despite it being the middle of the night, I'm still up and wrapping gifts. Mateo suggested we go to bed and finish wrapping the gifts tomorrow hours ago. Since I denied, knowing I wouldn't be able to fall asleep, he insisted on staying up with me.
I've been unable to get more than an hour or two of sleep since I shot that guy. But I'm not about to admit that to Teo. No way in hell would that go over well.
I grab the box covered in mini Santas and snowflakes, waving it in front of his face tauntingly. I swear he has absolutely zero skill when it comes to this.
