that would become a home. I’d wanted to wait, but as I walked toward my small bedroom, I knew now was the time. I had to take the leap, not for me, but for the two small humans who trusted me to take care of them.
I opened my bedroom door, cursing as I saw the sheets ripped off my bed. Mom had been in here again, which was yet another reason we couldn’t keep doing this. My room was just big enough for my bed and a rail to hang my clothes on. It had done the job it was meant to over the last few years, but I couldn’t keep this up. It didn’t matter how much I wanted to help my mom, sometimes walking away did more good than harm.
Laughter floated from the bathroom, and the sound had my lips lifting. Cardo and Chiara never failed to remind me why I did this. Without them I wasn’t sure where I would have been. Maybe I would have ended up like my mom, or maybe I would have been a nine-to-five suit wearer in the city. The possibilities were endless, but the path I was on was the one meant for me. There was a reason I had to drop out of school; a reason that I had asked Lorenzo for a job that day. It had all led me to this moment, the moment of clarity.
It was time to get out of here. Time to put Cardo and Chiara first.
With an energy I only ever felt when I was at the Beretta mansion, I changed out of my shirt and slacks and into some sweats and a T-shirt. Cardo and Chiara were occupied, so I darted into Mom’s room. She was sprawled half on her bed and half on the floor. Normally I would have helped her into the bed and made sure she was safe. But as I stared at her greasy hair and gray face, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was twenty-four and I’d been cleaning up after her my entire life. It was time to stop.
So I shut the door, putting a barrier between her and us. Rage slammed through me knowing that the kids had already seen her like that. She was messy—more so than usual.
Trying to put the image of her out of my mind, I walked down the hallway and into their shared room where Chiara was staring at her hair in the mirror and Cardo was trying his hardest to fit a puzzle piece in a space that it didn’t go in.
“You like it, Mateo?” Chiara asked, meeting my gaze in the small mirror I’d bought her.
“I love it.” I stepped toward her and ran my fingertips over the two braids. “They’re pretty.” I’d never met the woman who they had been with, and even though deep down I wanted to ask them who she was, I knew they wouldn’t be able to give me the kind of information I needed. I didn’t care that her eyes bled of pain—pain that I recognized. I didn’t give a damn that her biting down on her plump bottom lip had me going hot all over.
What I did care about, was her being around Cardo and Chiara when I didn’t know a fuckin’ thing about her. I made a mental note to ask Mr. Blue to do an in-depth background check on her and then I stepped back. “Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes.”
“Okay,” Chiara murmured, turning to look back in the mirror. She looked so much like our mom that it was scary sometimes. Thank God neither she nor Cardo got her eyes though. I’d been punished with them, so they didn’t need to be either.
I ruffled Cardo’s dark-brown hair as I moved past him and out of their bedroom, making yet another mental note that he needed a haircut soon. Sometimes I wondered if I was doing a good enough job with them. It always felt like I was five steps behind what they needed and that I was always trying to catch up. But at least it was better than leaving Mom to it. If it was up to her, they wouldn’t even eat unless they were at school.
I gritted my teeth as I walked through the living room and past the waist-high wall that separated it from the kitchen. She’d pulled everything she could out of the cupboards. She was looking for money again, but there