“No, they don’t! They live in the forest!”
“What princess lives in the forest?”
“Sleeping princess!”
“I thought she lived in a tower?”
“No! That’s Rapunzel,Papi!” Clearly, I needed to brush up on my Disney films. “The sleeping princess lives in the forest with the fairies, then pricks her finger because of the evil fairy and falls asleep.”
“Okay, well, she still has clean hair.”
“No. She’s sleeping.”
Why the fuck was I arguing with a four-year-old? I’d never win.
“As you should be! Out you get, then.”
I picked her up and wrapped her in a huge towel, forcing her out of her mood by tickling her as I dried her, then flipped her upside down and walked towards her bedroom with her flung over my shoulder. How she still had so much energy after running around, screaming and playing for hours was beyond me. She kicked and roared with laughter until I stopped dead at her bedroom door. What the—
I slowly put her down and let her race into the middle of the room, which had somehow been transformed into a movie set for a fantasy twilight scene while I had been bathing her. Who the hell had done this? Elle? Alessio? It was… incredible. I stepped into the room, my eyes wide, taking in the magic as Nerina squealed even louder with every new thing that caughther attention. There was a projector hidden discreetly in the middle of the room, inside a soft tree trunk made of twine, wool and sparkling woven threads, which reached up to the ceiling of her room, where fake flowers, leaves, and floating fairies hung from all the branches.
The walls were illuminated with moving images from the projector. Fluffy pink clouds on one wall,My Little Ponycharacters and unicorns flying through them. On another was a forest scene with rabbits hopping over logs and butterflies and fairies fluttering between the trees. The third wall displayed rainbows, with Nerina’s name lit in neon beneath. A large fairy castle made from real sticks and twigs sat by the forest scene, and a life-sized cuddly Rainbow Dash stood against the cloud wall next to a beanbag throne, with a hanging sign reading ‘Princess Nerina, Ruler of Equestria.’ My heart flipped when I saw it.
Rainbow Dash is the best.
No, surely not.
“Papi!” Nerina flung herself at my legs, squeezing me tightly. “Grazie, Papi! Grazie!”
“I, uh, this wasn’t me,” I whispered as she dashed over to the fairy castle and started playing. Yeah, there was no way I was getting her to bed on time. I glanced over my shoulder and beckoned Filo over, Nerina’s main bodyguard. “Who the hell did this?”
“It all arrived an hour ago.SignoraBarbieri signed it off and oversaw it being put together before she left.”
Elle. I pulled out my phone and called her. She answered on the second ring.
“Finn.”
“I don’t know whether to tell you that you’re the best godmother she could have or to kill you, because there’s no way she’s going to sleep after this.”
Elle laughed down the phone. “Don’t do either. It wasn’t from me. I just helped set it up.”
I frowned, my heart doing that traitorous flip again because I knew. “Who’s it all from?”
“Enzo.”
My jaw clenched, and I gripped the phone a little tighter. I wanted to be furious. I really did, but the radiant joy on Nerina’s face wouldn’t let me.
“He called me an hour ago and said he had a surprise for Nerina and asked me to help with it. He didn’t even want me to tell you it was from him. He said I could pretend it was from me. He just wanted to do something nice for her birthday.”
“He doesn’t even know her,” I gritted through my teeth, turning my back on my daughter so she wouldn’t hear, not that she was paying me any attention. She was too busy having the time of her life.
“I don’t know,” Elle said softly. “He seemed to know all her favourite things.”
“Lucky guess,” I groaned, rubbing the nape of my neck. “Most four-year-old girls like ponies, fairies, and unicorns. Still, that doesn’t give him the right to try to win her over with this shit. I know that’s what he’s doing. If he thinks he can use my daughter to get back into my life, he’s twisted, and I won’t stand for it.”
“Calm down, Finn. I honestly think he heard it was her birthday and wanted to make her happy. Did he go a little overboard? Yeah, okay, he could have just bought her a Barbie, but this is Enzo.”
“Exactly,” I growled, hanging up. I shook my head, pinching the bridge of my nose. Fucking Enzo, always doing shit I couldn’t ignore.
