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A smile stretched across my sister’s face. “Thanks, Gabe.” She punched me playfully as she pulled away from the hug. “But whatever you do, don’t hurt my best friend because then I might have to beat the shit out of you.”
She was a tiny thing yet it was always a joke that she could take me in a fight. Hell, maybe she could, I knew Ava was fierce.
“You got it,” I said. “I have no intention of hurting Bella. I care about her, Ava. I’ve known her since she was in kindergarten, I’m not going to be careless with her heart.”
Ava nodded. “I know you’re a good guy, deep down. I just worry.”
“No need to worry.”
Ava frowned as she dug her phone from her pocket. “It’s Roman.”
“He’s calling you nonstop too, huh?”
“I guess since he can’t reach you,” she said. “Do you have any idea what this is about?”
“Dad wants to sell the Riverview property.”
Ava’s eyes grew wide. “You can’t be serious. That property is to stay in our family, he knows how important it is to us.”
“I know.”
“And Roman and Dante? They agree with him?” she asked.
“I assume so,” I said.
“I can’t believe it. They care about that property as much as you and I do,” she said. “Hell, they have more memories of being there than me, since I was still pretty young when we stopped visiting the place.”
“Right, but you know Dad got his claws into them, they only care about money now.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” Ava said, leaning back into the couch. “Well, I know my share isn’t that large, but I absolutely refuse to sell.”
I patted her on the hand. I knew my sister would be on my side. She always was. The only one I could count on to do the right thing in our whole goddamn family.
“I’m not going to sell either. They can’t do a thing without me signing over my portion, so I guess they’re going to have to find another piece of property to build their casino.”
“They want to tear down that gorgeous house, with the views of the river and the woods all around, to build a fucking casino?”
“Yep.”
Ava shook her head, still in disbelief.
“You know, one of the few memories I have of Mom is at that place,” she said, her voice low. “We were playing in the garden; she gave me a little shovel to dig holes and she dropped in tulip bulbs. She made it seem like I was such a good little gardener, but really, I know she was doing most of the work.”
“Grandma loved her tulips,” I said. “I remember getting in so much trouble once when Roman and I were playing and I fell into the tulip beds, but Mom was there to tell me it was okay, that she understood that accidents happened.”
“She was a good mom,” Ava said, her voice cracking.
“That she was.” I looked over at Ava and saw tears in her eyes.
Although I felt robbed of my time with our mother, Ava, her only daughter, got even less than I did. It was such a sad shame—I knew Mom would have loved raising her.
“I also remember playing hide and seek in the house with Dante,” she said with a low chuckle. “It was so easy to get lost in there, and I was hiding in a cabinet in the upstairs hall.I think he gave up on trying to find me. Mom eventually found me after I started crying.”
“I remember playing hide and seek there too. Dante never had the patience to finish the game, if he didn’t find you in three minutes, he found something else to do instead.”
“So it wasn’t just me?” she asked.
I laughed. “Oh no, it wasn’t. Roman and I learned pretty quickly to never play with Dante, unless he was the one doing the hiding.”
