AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I fight back a sigh.
“We’ve been having fun, haven’t we?” she asks the children.
“Tessa has a lot of nice makeup,” Lana nods.
Ava has shrunk down beside the vanity until she’s almost as small as Lana, avoiding my stare.
“So,” Contessa continues, a dangerous grin in her voice. “What would you like for your appointment, Mr. Mori? A makeover? Maybe a manicure?”
“Is ‘no’ an option?” I grumble.
“Not on my menu.”
“She’s a natural artist, Sal,” Vinny declares.
“You could pass for a clown,” I tell him.
“I know,” he cries dramatically, clutching his chest, “it brings out my true nature so beautifully…”
“He did that to himself,” Contessa explains, wanting no credit for the monstrosity on Vinny’s face.
“Here you go, Uncle Sal,” Nate says excitedly, coming at me with a tube of lipstick. I disarm him and scoop him up off the bed.
“Uncle Sal’s allergic,” I tell him.
I expect that to put an end to it, not to make Nate swipe his face against my shirt claiming that he’s allergic, too. When he looks back up at me, he could be mistaken for a county fair winning tomato. He leaves the rest of the color in an imprint on my shoulder.
I set him on the ground, but the damage is done.
“Oh, no,” Contessa says, caught between laughing and being faintly horrified. She goes after Nate with a makeup wipe, erasing the rest of the evidence. I can’t help but notice how she looks like this—down on his level, laughing as she chases down the endless smudges of red all over his cheeks and nose. Like she’s done it a dozen times before. For a brief moment, it’s easy to picture her with a baby of her own on her hip, and another in her belly.
But I catch the sight of the lipstick out of the corner of my eye, just brief enough that I could mistake it for blood. I scrub my hand over my face, trying to chase out the image. Christ, she ignores the way he fights like a cat getting a bath.
“Ta da, magic,” she says, when Nate is cleaned up. She bounces back onto her feet, then winces at the sight of the stain. “I don’t have any magic that works on that.”
As if I care about a single shirt. One of my black suits in my ‘black suit collection’ as she put it. That little observation shouldn’t still be living at the back of my head, but apparently, it is. I wonder if she doesn’t like the monochrome nature of my wardrobe. Then, I wonder why it fucking matters.
“Ava, go put the kids to bed, and see that they stay there,” I say. “I don’t care if they sleep. Just make sure you keep an eye on them.”
“Yes, sir.” Ava corrals the kids out. I catch Vinny on the way by.
“I need you to cater an event for this weekend. Maybe 20 people. Nothing heavy, just a Sunday afternoon engagement party. Can you manage?”
“Short notice and high stakes? That’s my element,” Vinny grins. He claps my shoulder. “I’ll have it done.”
“You can leave the makeup off. If I want a clown at the party, I’ll outsource.”
He hangs his head.
“One passion at a time, I suppose.”
His dramatic rendition of something from I, Pagliacci fades in the stairwell, taking the last of the energy in the room with him.
Contessa stands alone in the chaos, makeup littered over the floor, glitter sparkling over the vanity like a minefield. She stands rigidly, as if lined up for the firing squad.
“Don’t bother,” I growl, shutting the door. “I’m too angry at her to be angry at you, too. How much did they hear?”
“With the window closed? Nothing much. Some yelling. Nate didn’t seem to care, but I think it bothered Lana. We could tell it was their mom’s voice, at least. What happened?”
