Mafia's Final Play (Mafia's Obsession #3) - Summer Cooper Page 0,32
learned to be very careful - to not spill, break, or drop anything around her.”
“She sounds like my mother. It was alright for her to throw things, break things, but if I got one thing wrong, I had hell to pay.”
“You understand then.” He slipped into the chair opposite her where they sat in the middle of the table. He put the glass bowl down on a potholder with a large spoon in it. “We had very similar childhoods, in many ways, I think. Only, your mother was ill; my aunt was just a scary bitch that liked to torture me in the name of making me a man. The kind of man she wanted me to be.”
“Lucky for me you still have a mind of your own.” She dipped some of the salsa into her bowl and pulled out a nacho chip.
“As do you.” He smiled as he relaxed and ate their snack. “It’s amazing we aren’t completely broken, you now?”
“We adapted, both of us, in our own ways, I guess,” Marie volunteered, her eyes far away, her memories somewhere in the past. “My mother used to hate it that I could just turn off and put up with her. I sometimes, when I was little, thought she wanted to make me run away from home. But if I tried to leave, she’d always drag me back one way or another.”
“Like when you tried to go to LSU?” he asked, his eyes watchful, curious.
“Yeah, but even when I was younger. She used to tell me that if I called child protective services on her, or told the teachers about how she used to hit me and stuff, that she’d hunt me down and bring me back, no matter what.” Marie shivered as memories flooded in, painful ones. “I couldn’t understand it. She hated me, told me every day, in very plain language, that she hated my every existence. Yet, she didn’t want to let me go.”
“I guess she wanted to have you as her whipping boy, so to speak. Without you, who else would she have to abuse, to complain to, to blame?” Matteo felt the way her eyes cut to him, sympathy in her gaze.
“It was the same for you, I guess?”
“In a way, yes. Celeste didn’t tell me she hated me, or that I should have been aborted, but she was cruel. At least, until I learned what exactly she wanted me to be, to act how she wanted me to act. I remember once, she’d rewarded me with a puppy, a tiny little thing that followed me around all the time. When it was six months old, it had an accident in the house because I was in bed ill and hadn’t been able to let him out. She had him euthanized.”
“Fuck, Matteo.” The wrenching pain his words caused her was apparent in her voice as she spoke. “That’s awful.”
She found his hand with hers and held on, even after he smiled and pushed the memory away. “She taught me responsibility.”
“What an awful way to do it.” She frowned. “Isn’t she due back soon?”
“I think so. But her last email said she might stay a few more months, so I don’t know. Apparently, Italy suits her.”
“We can hope.” Marie went back to munching on salsa and chips. “If we’re lucky, she’ll not come back at all.”
The words just slipped out, and she felt terrible for it, but he just laughed it off. “I have to agree with you. She’s a terrible person.”
“She is, yeah.” The need to hide her embarrassment at her brash words made her look away. “It’s stopped snowing.”
“Want to build a snowman?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
“Isn’t that from a movie or something?”
“It is, but I’ve never seen it. I’ve just seen it on so much merchandise.”
“I think I would like to build a snowman with you.” She finished her salsa and got up. “I’ll get dressed.”
“I’ll meet you outside then.”
She had on plaid flannel pajamas, so she went up to change into leggings, a pair of jeans, and a thick gray sweatshirt that she pulled on over a long-sleeved t-shirt. That ought to keep her warm. Downstairs, she put on her coat, gloves, her new crocheted cap in awful shades of pink and green, and a scarf.
They worked together to build three giant balls of snow, then he went off to find some branches to make the limbs with while she sought out small rocks for his face. “We