Page 73 of Daddies of the Underworld

Some days it did. Sometimes it scared the hell out of me.

They were there every minute of every day. It should have felt like an invasion and an intrusion on this life that Sofia and I had carved out for ourselves.

Instead, it felt like coming home. Every night after Sofia went to bed they came to me. Or I went to them.

At this point, pretending there was a difference felt like a waste of everyone's time.

I told myself the first night was grief, shock, and five years of missing them crashing through my common sense. Then it happened again. Then again. Then in the shower when Luca claimed he needed to borrow shampoo, which was a lie so pathetic I should have made him leave in principle.

Maybe my boundaries needed work. Or maybe Matteo, Dante, and Luca had always been the one disaster I'd never known how to survive.

“Mama.” Sofia dragged the word out from three feet ahead of me. “You're doing the staring thing again.”

I blinked and realized all four of them were looking at me. We stood outside the Children's Science Museum because Sofia had asked if rocks could grow and Luca had decided the answer required tickets, snacks, and what he called a quest for knowledge. Matteo had researched exhibits before breakfast. Dante had checked all the exits before we left the apartment. Luca had bought Sofia a plush volcano from the gift shop before we even made it past the lobby.

“I'm not staring.”

Sofia's eyes narrowed. “You were staring at Dante.”

Dante looked away too slowly. Traitor. “I was looking past Dante.”

“At what?” Sofia giggled and attempted to wiggle her eyebrows. “Because it looked to me like you were looking at his butt.”

“Sofia.”

“What? He has one.”

Luca made a strangled noise before bending over with one hand on his knee. “God I love this child.”

Sofia grinned and shoved her hand into his. “Can we go through now?”

That was another problem. She adored him. Sofia had taken one look at Luca’s dramatic hand gestures, warm smile, and willingness to make up entire back stories for pigeons and decided he was the most interesting man alive.

Luca knew it too.

She grabbed my hand with her free one, swinging both our arms as we walked inside. I did my best not to look at our joined hands and think about how normal we looked. Me, Sofia, Luca on one side, Matteo and Dante behind us. A family.

The word pressed against the inside of my ribs, looking for a home. I refused to give it one. Someday, maybe. But not yet.

At the lobby entrance, Dante stepped ahead and held the door open. His gaze swept the room before he let Sofia through.

Sofia sighed. “Dante, do you think dinosaurs are hiding in the bathroom?”

“No.”

“Then why do you always look first?”

Dante shot a look at me, his eyebrows furrowing together as he considered his options on how to answer this without scaring our five-year-old daughter. “This way I know where everything is.”

“Is that really why you do it?”

“It's to keep you safe.”

She let go of my hand long enough to pat Dante’s arm. “Thank you.”

We started with the rocks because Sofia had developed an obsession about geodes after one library book and a 10-minute video Matteo should not have shown her before breakfast.

She pressed both hands to the glass case, her nose nearly touching it. “So, the outside looks boring, but the inside is sparkly?”