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“Who Sani? He bounced back immediately. The next day, he was in love with some cartoon character.”
“That was good! Okay next!”
“I once caught Boss and Maximus learning how to kiss using apples when they were young boys.”
I roared with laughter, leaning forward to hit his shoulder again. “No way! Oh my god, I bet they have never been able to look you in the eye again! What did you do?”
“I did the only thing I could have done. I grabbed an apple and taught them myself.”
I slammed my hand over my face as my body shook with uncontrollable laughter and the tears started to roll down my cheeks. “You didn’t?”
“The way I saw it, I only had two choices. Make it awkward for all of us or just go with it. They were grateful for the tutorial.”
“Oh, this is just gold. I can’t wait to use this on them at some point.”
“No! This stays between us. Otherwise, I will never tell you anything again,” he warned, narrowing his eyes on me. I nodded and pretended to zip my mouth closed. I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time. It felt so good.
“What about Elle?”
“Oh, I have too many stories about Elle,” he laughed. “She’s always been the rebel, so I have caught her many times thinking she could sneak out. When she was sixteen, I caught her stealing your gin from your office and refilling the bottle with water. I wondered what she was going to do with it, so I held back and followed her. She made her way to her art studio in the garden where she and Sephie had turned it into a mini nightclub. They had a disco ball in there, a karaoke machine that they couldn’t actually plug in because there was no electricity and were both wearing tiny, sequin dresses.”
“That little! I always blamed Gio for stealing my alcohol! It was her, the little thief! Did you crash the party and confiscate my gin?” I smirked, knowing that is what I would have done.
He thinned his lips and gave me an apologetic look, “No. I let them be. Instead, I sat under a tree in the shadows and kept an eye on them until everything went quiet. They had passed out around midnight on the wooden floor. I took out some pillows and blankets, making sure they didn’t freeze and left some water with paracetamol next to them. That was a cold night sleeping under that tree,” he laughed, but I just stared at him.
“You really did that for her? Why?” I asked quietly, his smile fading when he saw my serious expression.
“I know I should have stopped the girls and reported it to you or Vincenzo, but Elle always just seemed so…” he looked away from me, searching for the right word. “Lonely. She has always been such a powerful force, moving at one hundred miles a minute. But I realised once I really looked hard enough, that it was all a distraction. A way to keep her busy from her loneliness. So, I allowed her that night of fun and turned a blind eye. Sorry. I know that wasn’t my call to make.”
I didn’t know what to deal with first. The guilt and sadness that constricted my heart at the view of my daughter’s loneliness that I had never seen or the fact that Marco had been there for her, even without her knowing.
“No, you did the right thing. She was a teenager and she should have been allowed to do stupid things like other kids out there. Thank you, Marco. Truly. For everything you have always done for my family. For me.”
He shifted uncomfortably under my gaze and looked down at his wine glass in his huge hands. Hands that I wanted to reach out and hold.
“There is something I have been meaning to tell you, Cecilia. About Soraya. But I wasn’t sure how to—” he paused, placing his glass on the coffee table and rubbed his hands down his face. He looked suddenly stressed and it made my heart speed up.
“What about Soraya?”
Turning to face me, I could see the worry in his eyes and I swallowed my own. Whatever this was, it was hard for him to say.
“A few nights ago, you had just put them to bed and I waited outside their doors like normal until I knew they were asleep. Soraya called out in terror. I went into her room and she was sitting up in her bed, tears running down her sweet face. She had a bad dream about monsters under her bed. I gave her a cuddle, told her there was nothing to fear—there was no monster under her bed—and proved it by crawling under myself. She asked me to sit in her room until she fell asleep, so I could scare them away if they came back. I agreed and turned the light off. She mumbled, ‘Grazie, papi.’”
I froze. “She called you papi?”
He nodded. “I thought she might have just said it in her sleepy state, but then she called me ‘papi’ again yesterday. I asked her why she called me her papi and she said because I protect her and am kind to her and that’s what papis do.”
Tears started to well in my eyes and my bottom lip trembled. I placed my glass down and dropped my head in my hands to hide my overwhelming emotion.
“Cecilia, I am so sorry. I swear I have never tried to replace Vincenzo and I told Soraya that I wasn’t her papi, but I would always be there for her. I know this must be hard to hear.”
I wiped my eyes and inhaled deeply, “She was so little when he died, Marco. She doesn’t even remember him. The others—they all have memories to cherish. But Raya doesn’t. I found it too difficult to talk about him for so long and now she doesn’t even know who he was. This is all my fault. I feel so bad.”
I felt his comforting hand on my back as I dropped my head down again. “It is not your fault, Cecilia. None of this is and you have to give yourself a break. Stop blaming yourself for everything that happened. Raya is young. She is confused. She will know who her papi is because she has all of you to share memories of him with her.”
I sniffled and nodded, knowing he was right but finding it hard to accept. An overwhelming feeling bubbled to the surface. The traitorous thought that I had never dared to say out loud because once I did, I knew I could never take it back. But in this moment, with his caring nature and my weak emotional state, I had to get it off my chest. I had to tell someone.
“You know Marco, sometimes, I-I-”
