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Making my way downstairs, I find Mama sitting in the living room with a book open on her lap. The open fire is cracking and lights dimmed just enough so she can read.
“Hey, baby, everything okay?” Mama’s first language wasn’t English, although she learned it during her school years in Cairo.
I smile at her, lowering myself down onto the chaise directly opposite. “Mama, we can still leave?”
Her eyes narrow on me and she closes her book silently while looking over her shoulder. She leans in closer, her bright blue eyes a contrast to her dark hair. “Habibti, I love him. I told younot to worry about it.” My father met my mother while he was in Cairo for abusinesstrip when she was fresh out of college. They fell in love, but as hard as he loved her, was as hard as he controlled her. He never hurt her, or me—ever. But last month I caught her packing her bags with tears strolling down her face.
I told her I would leave with her, but she swiped the tears away and shook her head, telling me I had misunderstood. I knew I hadn’t. Papa may love us, but he has no problem entertaining other women. I’m guessing that’s what it’s about.
“Mama, we can go back to Cai—”
“There’re my two queens.” Papa enters the sitting room and I sit back a little straighter, smiling up at him while swallowing the rock that’s formed in my throat.
Did he hear me?
“Papa, what is happening? Why are they here?”
“That’s what I wanted to come down to talk with you both about.” He replaces my mother on the chair and gently directs her down onto his lap. I used to admire their love, because it was one you could feel when you were around them, but after seeing the tears of Mama, the hero badge Papa once wore on his expensive suits has now since rusted. Maybe it was gold-plated, not solid.
“Are they living with us now?” Papa was anything but conventional and he never played by the rules. You could never see what he was cooking until it had already been baked.
“Si, they are.”
I stare at him blankly, but he gives me the same look back. I’m no daddy’s princess. I’m Papa’s nightmare, and since I share that same fiery Sicilian blood that pulses through his veins, he damn well knows it. “And what is he going to do for the outfit?”
His eyes snap back to me. “Cara, you don’t get to question anything right now,” he mutters beneath his breath in Sicilian as my mother strokes his thigh affectionately.
He takes a small sip of his whiskey, his honey eyes resting back on mine. At times, I think it’s where I got my eyes from. When I’m in the sun, they’re green; in the dark, they’re honey-gold. The strangest thing. I probably would have got bullied for my eyes had people not known who my father was.
“They will be living with us and you will befriend them both, butcara, if you get too close to Wicked, I’ll act as I see fit.”
He leans back against the chair as my mother glides her finger down his jaw. I know she’s doing it to calm him down, but it still annoys me.
“Don’t forget your obligations to the Family.”
“May I be dismissed?”
He nods. “Night, princess.”
“So let me get this all the way straight…” Betty, my best friend since kindergarten, shuffles in closer as I unload my books into my locker. “Papi moved in two new kids, like, random ass kids, who have probably killed their parents or some weird shit like that, and told you to play nice but not too nice?”
I slam my locker closed and hold my books close to my chest. “Yes. I don’t know. But this is my dad we’re talking about.” Betty follows me down the long corridor and up the stairs to our first class.
“Right, I get that. Your Papi, the capo of the Sic—” I glare at her and her mouth slams shut. It’s not that I ever told Betty about my father, it was that she grew up around me so she came to learn it. With weird men walking in and out of our home and all of our money and cars, fancy holiday homes, and private jet, she figured it out.
“Hey, Ruby!” A girl walks past, waving. I smile at her.
“Morning, Rubs!” Jake Bishop smirks at me, twirling a basketball on his finger.
I flash him a smile.
“I know,” I say to Betty. “So that’s what makes me nervous about the whole damn thing.” I follow her through the science lab, dropping my books onto the table toward the back of the class.
“Okay, so how about a distraction?” Betty folds her long leg over the other, brushing her straight blonde hair over one slender shoulder. “How about we go to a party tonight—since it is Friday—and you invite your orphan lamb?”
“I don’t know…” I ignore her insensitive comment about Poppy. “I don’t know if that’s her scene, and her brother seems really overprotective of her.”
“And?” Betty leans onto her empty desk, ignoring the fact that the rest of us already have our books and laptops out. “You’re, like, the most protected girl I’ve ever known and evenyouhave a life.” Mr. Winsor rushes in like a wind of chaos. He’s always late to class. Betty whispers under her breath, “Just ask. Seriously.”
