Now, I’m nearly twenty, about to marry the most impressive man in the city, with two twin boys. That chapter and those feelings are slithering back—eerie as a snake. Some snakes are poisonous.
But so is the Monarch.
I touch the necklace around my throat, the one with the diamond Monarch butterfly. I am different. I am special now. I could prove it to her. Show her how I’ve grown.
Should I invite her to the wedding?
Will she see theCosa Nostrafor what it is or just another wealthy Sicilian family? I feel small and afraid, guilt coiling around my thoughts.
What if she’s changed?
What if I was the problem?
“Who is it from?” HJ’s question pulls me from my spiral, from getting stuck in past Fawn’s trauma and neglect.
“My foster mother.” I stand the card upright on the counter. “It’s an engagement card. Congratulations.” Pitiful hope suddenly fills my chest. “Do you think…” I start, knowing the words will sound as pathetic and desperate as they feel. “Do you think maybe she might actually want to know me? Now that I am an adult? I can be funny?—”
My voice breaks.
Ugh.My lower lip wobbles.
Why didn’t she like me?
I cast my eyes to the tiles.
“Now you listen to me.” HJ ducks to catch my line of sight as I blink tears away to the floor. “You are funny. You’re kind. You hear me? Self-deprecation is not the new sexy. Got it? Anyone would be lucky to know you.”
I lift my teary gaze.
He smiles. “I knowIam.”
"Thank you," I whisper, my cadence catching on each word.Really. Thank you. For everything…
HJ nods once, as if he heard that.
Firmly, he returns to his coffee.
A high-pitched cry suddenly cascades through the mansion. Luca's sleepy screams crash from the nursery, probably rousing the entire house.
“I’ve got him,” I call out, because during the day, this house is alive. Maids. Gardeners. Cooks. And I so often go to the nursery to find two maids, two henchmen, a hawk, a rabbit, and the X-Men waiting outside the room, hovering, just in case no one comes to Luca’s beck and call. Basically, all theCosaNostraservants, beauty and brawn, young and old, female and male, ready to fuss over the little heirs.
Just like that, the past recedes.
This is my present. My sons. My life.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
fawn
It’s nine-p.m.
The moon perches high, bright and white, through the nursery window. A cloud ghosts across its bright white face, mimicking breath, pluming the sky and stars.
Ash, named after my mum, suckles at my breast. I envision the engagement card in my mind and the words, ‘the only daughter I ever had.’ My foster mother didn’t have children of her own, so she wouldn’t have breastfed, but maybe my real mum used to stare at the moon, baby Fawn clutched to her chest, feeding eagerly. I’m sure she did—her bohemian beliefs were part of her identity. Crystals. Dreamcatchers. Magic.
Mother Earth.
She was wonderfully strange, a conspiracy theorist, with a deep dislike of authority figures.
