Monster A Dark Arranged Marriage Romance - Vanessa Waltz Page 0,99
told Tony. “You’re a saboteur.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I am. Our kid will speak broken Italian if I don’t get a handle on this.”
“It’ll be fine.” He wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “I’ll talk to him only in Italian. So will my mom. You can speak to him in English.”
“I want him to have Italian lessons, too.”
“No way, hon. He’s going to public school. No extra classes. No dancing. He’ll be so much happier for it.”
“Tony.”
“I’m not budging on this.”
I released a frustrated sigh, annoyed that we couldn’t find common ground. We couldn’t decide on a name and had different visions for our son’s future. I wanted to give him every opportunity to excel, but Tony was adamant that public schooling would keep him grounded.
I slid off the bed and wrapped myself in a robe, grumbling all the way to the breakfast bar.
Tony, following close behind, balled me in a fierce hug that squeezed the breath from my lungs.
“I have a present for you, too.”
I looked for it, but he shook his head.
“Get dressed.”
Half an hour later, we rode in an elevator of a luxury hotel. I played with Tony’s lapels and kissed his firm mouth, which barely yielded to my touch. He was fidgety. His eyes shifted from the door to me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was nervous.
“Is everything okay?”
He took my hand, his palm clammy. “Evie, there’s one thing I never told you. I found out something months ago and kept it to myself.”
“What did you do?”
“Me? Nothing. It’s what your father did.”
I stared at him, bewildered. I hadn’t seen my dad in months. His lawyers tried to contact me for his defense, but I told them to fuck off. His human trafficking trial loomed over my head. He used me to help him, and it was possible the investigation could zero in on me.
“Do we have to talk about this right now?”
“Yes,” he said, pulling me into the hallway. “Trust me, you want to see what’s behind this door.”
My stomach fluttered as he stopped me in front of a room, more worried than I’d ever seen him.
His mouth whitened as he slashed the card through the keypad. It beeped, unlocking the door.
Then it swung inward.
Grim-faced, Tony nudged me inside. I strolled onto the carpet and gaped at the woman on the queen-sized bed. She wore a beige cardigan over a light purple tank top.
“Mom?”
She sprang off the mattress and we crashed into each other’s arms. Wild sobbing burst from her as she clung to my shoulders, wrapping me in her lilac scent.
All the questions could wait.
I had my family back.
Epilogue
Tony
Four Years Later
How did I get here?
Tightness clawed my throat as I folded my son’s side-snap bodysuit and packed it in a suitcase. Tristan had grown out of it. So had Massimo. Neither of my boys would ever fit in them again, and that resonated inside me with a beautiful, awful pain. Wrapping up something that was my whole world was hard.
Four years had gone by.
We’d spent the weekend at Vinn’s beach house after a frenzied afternoon of celebrating his son’s third birthday, and this was our last night. Nostalgia made me pack Tristan’s baby clothes, and now they didn’t fit on either of my boys.
The whole gang packed the house. I barely got a minute of shut-eye without Michael’s children thundering the stairs, but I liked the noise. I’d missed my dad’s big family reunions.
Our fifteen-month-old, Massimo, sat on the rug, banging the wrong end of a drumstick into the wooden toy. He was my mini-me, identical to me in every way. He offered the stick to Tristan, who shook his head. Massimo seized the edge of the couch and lifted himself. He headed toward me, grinning. This kid would crawl through a bed of nails to reach me.
I set him on my lap. “Want to read a book?”
He shook his head.
“Want num-nums?”
He shook his head, pointing at someone’s beer glass.
I shoved it way out of reach. “Kid, you scare me sometimes.”
Actually, he gave me heart attacks on a regular basis. Probably because my world would end if anything bad ever happened to him. I took his hands, and his fists closed on my fingers as he walked forward purposely. I bent over and let him run toward Vinn’s dog, a golden retriever with a saintlike patience with children.
Evie took over watching Tristan as I expended Massimo’s limitless energy on the beach. Massimo slapped my cheeks with wet sand. His face lit