It took me fifteen minutes before I’d calmed down enough to rejoin the family upstairs while she showered. I still don’t feel fully recovered.
Seeing Marianna fight is one thing, but fightingwithher, being the sole focus of her attention like that—I fear it’s too much for me to handle.
“Hi, little,” Mary says to Angel, but she stops by my side and squeezes my shoulder. I remember her plea that Ilook in love with her, for her niece’s sake, and follow her lead, turning to kiss the back of her hand. She smells clean, and like the subtle perfume she wore on our wedding day.
With one steady look of affection, we’re the picture of a loving couple. Her siblings and their spouses freeze, watching the exchange, and pink tinges Marianna’s cheeks.
“Hi,” Angel scurries up to Marianna’s side and gives her a hug. She’s nearly as tall as her.
The boy is taller, and he gives Marianna a side hug too before sliding in his socks across the wood floor back to the living room to resume the video game he’s been playing with Leo.
“Maxim was teaching me Russian words,” Angel explains. Marianna raises her eyebrows and leans against me.
“What have you learned then?” she asks.
“She learned hello,” I say.
“Privyet,” she supplies and I nod.
We go through the other handful of words like this, me saying them in english, Angel repeating them back in Russian;baby sister, thank you, ice cream, art. She’s written them all down in her drawing notebook, and I’m impressed at her pronunciation. Charmed, too. I haven’t spent much time around teenagers, and I’m not sure if they’re all this way or if she is just a particularly nice one.
“Oh, and he taught me this,” she looks up at her aunt with a grin and haltingly recites the phrase from her notes, “Ya lyublyu tyebya.”
“And what’s that one?”
Angel looks at me expectantly, still smiling. I clear my throat and am all too aware of my grip on Marianna’s waist.
“I love you,” I say, and then repeat the phrase in Russian.
Angel repeats it again and yells it to her mom in the kitchen, who says “Good work, hon!” not tuned in to the conversation at all. Marianna has stilled at my side, her torso under my hand suddenly tense. I look up at her, her eyes already on me, and then she lets out a breath and smiles at her niece.
“You’ll get your teenager card taken away if you keep being so sweet,” Marianna says.
“Don’t listen to her!” Willa says as she enters the room. This is the first I’ve seen her, though Marianna has been visiting most days to help with the baby. Two weeks after her Cesarean, she’sin better spirits than I’d expect after an abdominal surgery. “Just because you were a devil, doesn’t mean all teenagers are.”
“Yeah,” Nate agrees, coming in with a stack of plates. “Only most of them.”
Marianna extricates herself from being pressed up against my side, charade over, and I feel the absence of her heat immediately. Getting a good night’s sleep without her last night was not a possibility. I told every guard and Jean to call me if she returned and spent the night sulking around in my office above the nightclub.
I slept for a short two hours in one of my chairs and woke with a dry throat and a twinge in my neck. Miserable. That’s how I would describe myself without Marianna Morelli after two fucking weeks. She’s turned me into half a man without her.
She looks tired, too, gray under her brown eyes, but I won’t let myself believe that this is because of me. Marianna has made her lack of affection clear. There is friendship between us at the best of times, disdain and scorn at the worst, and chemistry only when we’re having sex or making out in her sister’s basement. The rest is a farce.
From her carrier, the little baby starts fussing and Marianna is closest, so she rubs a pump of sanitizer on her hands before she scoops up the newborn and rocks her a bit. She looks at the baby with such tenderness it makes my stomach ache.
“Are you hungry, Miss Clara?” Marianna coos, and lightly swipes her pinky over the baby’s forehead.
“She’s always hungry,” Willa groans. “Huh, tiny girl?” She leans over her baby in her sister’s arms, and both of them talk to the baby in light voices for a moment before Marianna hands her off.
This is how the Morelli house always is; comfortable, soft smiles and laughing, warm food, teasing over a table, quick jokesand quicker comebacks. It’s a delight to be with this family. I don’t believe any Orlov guest could say the same about mine.
Marianna sits to my left at dinner, and Angel to her left. The two of them mutter quietly about things I can’t hear during the meal. It’s like they’re friends, not an aunt and a teenager. It endears me as much as it intrigues me, and I wonder what I would have to say to a thirteen-year-old girl beyond the novelty of teaching phrases in a different language. I think she would tire of me quickly, the bore that I am.
When I asked Marianna what the kids knew of the business, she admitted that it was very little, but an increase every day. They’d kept them mostly sheltered all their lives, but after the events of last year, figured they had to start teaching them.
I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about my father’s crime dealings, but then again, I was a very poorly adjusted child. Marianna, too, if I had to guess, which is probably why she’s so protective of these children.
“So you’re like our new uncle then?” Artie asks me. I halt mid-chew; with all of my siblings still childless, I’ve never been called uncle in my life and the sentiment surprises me. Nate speaks for me.
