Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 113710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113710 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
“Carmela never takes the blame for anything. It is always someone else’s fault. And she never issues praise, but that doesn’t alter the facts.” Ignoring the red dot highlighting a wrinkle on her forehead, I continue. “She shouldn’t have blamed you for my actions that night. You were barely an adult.”
Her shoulders curve over her chest as she lets out a harsh, relieved breath.
It is redrawn when I add, “But you can’t keep using your mother to excuse your mistakes. You’re not nineteen anymore. You know the difference between right and wrong. You know hurting a child is wrong.” As tears threaten to topple from her eyes, I appeal to the little girl who bandaged my cuts and bruises when I took the blame for her mother’s favorite dress being ruined so she wouldn’t get in trouble. “Let her go, Anna. Please. You’re hurting her.”
Nothing I say is getting through. I can see it in her lifeless eyes. She’s too tangled in the lies she’s been fed her whole life, so I have no choice but to shift my focus to Camille. She is an innocent in all of this, and I refuse to let the actions of adults continue to hurt her.
I can’t see Dante’s face, but I feel the tension rolling off him when I signal for him to get ready to take his shot before I start singing.
“Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full.”
Anna glares at me like I’ve lost the plot, but I don’t stop because Camille understands why I chose this song.
Her erratically panting chest stills as determination squares her shoulders.
“One for the master.”
At the “one” in my sentence, Camille’s shoe comes down hard on Anna’s exposed toes.
“And one for the dame.”
This time, Camille slams her elbow into Anna’s ribs.
“And one for the little boy who lives down the lane.”
Anna yelps when my last prompt sees Camille throwing her head back. If Anna wasn’t cowering in pain from the jab in the ribs, Camille’s headbutt would have missed its mark. Since she’s hunched over, she falls back with a groan, and her grip loosens enough for Camille to escape.
Camille doesn’t hesitate for even a second when I hold out my arms for her. She races for me so fast that Anna doesn’t have time to react, much less dodge the bullet Dante pops between her brows the instant his daughter is safe from danger.
Or should I say, our daughter.
Epilogue
Dante
Goose bumps break across Lucia’s skin when I brush her hair to one side. It tumbles in a soft wave over her shoulder, exposing the delicate column of her neck and a small constellation of freckles.
Before searching for it only six short weeks ago, I’d only seen that combination of freckles on a woman’s skin once before. The pattern on the neck of a woman who held me captive for five years matches a cluster of stars I traced on maps as a boy.
Every time I see it, I feel a strange sense of certainty that I’d been searching for her longer than either of us realized.
“I’ll be right outside if you need me, angelo,” I murmur, my voice low enough that only she hears me.
Lucia nods, though worry still peppers her features. We’ve become so dependent on each other the past six weeks that she hates stepping even a few feet away from the safety we’ve carved out of the chaos that should have destroyed us.
We were brutally betrayed, but we came out of the flames stronger than ever.
Lucia trusts me now. She knows I’d never risk something so sacred for anything less than our children.
Yes, I said our children.
As I walk out of a stuffy and impersonal meeting room, each step torture, my thoughts drift back to the way Lucia looked at me the first time we tucked in Camille as coparents. Her voice trembled when she expressed shame about not recognizing us sooner. She said it felt like she’d failed, that although it is understandable she didn’t look closely at Camille since she believed she had birthed a boy, it should have taken more than a beard and a costume for me to be unrecognizable.
She clearly forgets how much we both drank that night.
Our faces were also hidden behind masks—both literal and otherwise.
You don’t realize how anonymous you are until one magical night strips you of a cloak you never want to wear again.
Lucia also isn’t solely to blame. I’d wondered why the sparks died so fast when Anna pretended to be Lucia, but I never implemented steps to get answers as to why everything was so different. I sensed something was off with Anna, but I believed her lies since I was incapable of imagining such cruelty.
I could have avoided months of pain if I had looked deeper into the loss of our connection, but when someone shows up at your door, claiming you fathered their child, you run your DNA through the system. You never think to compare the mother’s.