Chapter 2 #3
My vision fills with a sharp-focus, Technicolor memory, complete with sounds and sensations, of my hands splayed across nineteen-year-old Cristiano’s glorious, muscular chest. He’s pressing me down into the mattress, working himself in and out of me in a fierce rhythm that makes me weep and shatter.
While I’m overwhelmed by the memory, Cristiano does something unexpected.
Leon has approached him with an armload of toys, and he lowers himself down from his great height, sinking slowly onto his heels until he’s at Leon’s eye level. My son chatters happily and passes Cristiano one toy after another that he accepts with interest.
I stand frozen, pressing my sweaty palms to my polyester pants, heart slamming against my ribs as I stare at Cristiano holding a truck in one large hand and a dinosaur in the other.
Leon is drawn to him like a magnet. He’s always like this around men.
Rosa’s husband Kevin, the fathers at the playground, even the mailman.
Starved for something he doesn’t have. He gravitates toward any man who’ll give him five minutes of attention, and it breaks my heart every time.
As my eyes move from Cristiano’s face to Leon’s and back again, I realize something that I’ve tried to block out for a long time. Leon gets his rich brown hair from me, but otherwise my baby looks just like his father.
And if I can see it—
A gasp tears from my throat as I lunge for Leon and snatch him up, holding him tightly against me and backing away like Cristiano was threatening my child, not playing with him.
“You have to go,” I say in a shaky voice, tears blurring my vision. “Please, just go.”
Cristiano rises slowly to his feet, still holding the plastic dinosaur Leon gave him.
“His father,” he says, turning the toy over in his large hands. “Is he in the picture?”
The question catches me off guard. I blink hard and brace for the judgment that always comes. “Leon’s father has never been part of his life. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
I wait for the pity. The slight curl of the lip. The assumptions about the kind of woman who raises a child alone.
Cristiano’s expression doesn’t change. But there’s a flicker in his amber eyes. Something that looks almost like satisfaction.
“I see.”
He sets the dinosaur down on the bookshelf carefully, like it’s precious, and moves toward the door, collecting his coat and umbrella as he goes. He pauses with his hand on the knob, his back to me.
“I frightened you.” It’s not a question. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.”
He turns his head just enough that I can see his profile.
“Good night, Mina. It was good to see you again.”
The door closes behind him.
I stand frozen, Leon squirming in my arms, my heart pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
He’s gone.
My legs give out. I sink onto the couch, Leon still clutched against me, and press my face into his hair as the tears come, hot and fast and unstoppable, all the terror I’ve been holding back flooding out in ragged breaths.
“Mama?” Leon pats my cheek. “Mama, why are you crying?”
I force myself to stop. Force the sobs back down. I swipe at my eyes and paste on a watery smile.
“I’m all right, baby.” I smooth his hair back from his forehead.
He accepts this with the simple trust of a four-year-old and wriggles free to return to his toys. I watch him for a moment, my son, my whole world, and then I rise on unsteady legs and head for the bathroom.
“Leon, baby? Come here for a second.”
He appears in the bathroom doorway, a truck clutched in his hand.
“Hold still.” I crouch down, tilting his face toward the light. “Let me take these out.”
He holds obediently still while I work. I pinch the edge of the first lens. Then the second. Brown contacts slide away.
Leon’s amber eyes stare back at me.
Montoni amber eyes. The same eyes that just looked at me across my living room.
The same eyes that belonged to Leon’s dead grandfather.
Agnello and Cristiano Montoni, dangerous, unstable men who only understand violence.
But unlike his father, Cristiano is calculated and clever.
He can hide who he really is for a few days, a few weeks.
Sometimes for years. But the golden-eyed monster lurks inside him, waiting for you to let your guard down.
I won’t let him fool me again, and I won’t let Cristiano poison my son the way his father poisoned him.
I’ll die first.
I’ll kill first.
“Can I go play now, Mama?”
“Yes, baby.” My voice is barely a whisper. “You can go play.”
He scampers off, and I lean against the sink, gripping the porcelain edge until my knuckles turn white.
From the living room, I hear Leon making dinosaur noises, crashing his toys together in elaborate battles. My son. My beautiful, perfect son with his father’s eyes.
Some loves leave scars. Some leave children. Mine left both.
Despite everything, I can’t bring myself to wish I’d never met Cristiano Montoni. Because that would mean wishing Leon out of existence, and Leon is the best thing that has ever happened to me.