Page 9 of Possessive Mafia Vows

SIENNA

Life is good.

I have my gallery. Victoria and Caleb have Holly. It’ll soon be the holidays, and the world is already twinkling like the sky spewed fairy lights everywhere.

There was a time when I believed that Christmas was for other people. The ones who still harbored that tiny kernel of belief in their hearts that a man with a fluffy white beard and a red outfit could travel around the planet in one night and spread joy and happiness. But over the years I’ve grown to enjoy it because I get to share it with people I love.

People I choose to love.

The ones I keep in my life because they’re important to me.

The holidays were different when I was a little kid. Instead of waking up at the crack of dawn, too excited to sleep, I would lie in my bed, waiting for the house to reveal whether it would be a day for smiling or a day for hiding in my room, trying not to make a sound.

Images pop into my head before I can stop them.

I wake up on Christmas morning to snarling voices reaching me from the kitchen. I climb out of bed and sit on the bottom of the stairs to listen, shivering from the cold. The living room door is open, but the Christmas tree is dark, the baubles clinging to the branches, waiting for the fairy lights to bring them to life.

“Who the fuck do you think pays for the electricity?” My dad’s voice is filled with sickly yellow anger.

“It’s Christmas, Hooch.” That’s what everyone calls him. Hooch. Including my mom. “She’s just a kid. Let her have the lights. Just for today.”

He snorts. “The stupid fucking lights or dinner. Your choice.”

There’s a pause before my mom replies. “But we all got to eat. You’re gonna make her sit in the living room and go hungry because you don’t want the lights on the tree?”

I’m glad I can’t see his face when he says, “You’ll be sitting right next to her.”

“What about dinner?” My mom’s voice is pleading now.

“I’m going out. You enjoy your fucking fairy lights. I’m sure the kid will understand that you chose them over putting food in her belly.”

“Hooch, you can’t do?—”

There’s a sound like a cupboard door being slammed, and I jump. It’s the same sound that always precedes my mom telling me that she walked into the door.

We have fairy lights on the Christmas tree that year. Mom and I sit on cushions in front of it eating cheese sandwiches and orange slices, while the bruise on her jaw turns black and purple and she dabs the blood from her swollen lip with a kitchen towel.

I shiver despite the perfect temperature inside the gallery.

I wish I could go back and tell five-year-old me that it will get better. That it won’t be long before he leaves us for good, and that one day, long after my mom’s passing, I’ll learn that the holidays bring out the best in people. It’s probably due to cheesy Hallmark movies, but still, it’s the one time of year when people raise their heads from their phones and smile at one another.

I’m still smiling when I go to lock up the gallery and switch off the lights.

The door opens, and someone steps inside, shaking raindrops from his suit jacket.

Kyle.

I never got a chance to tell him at the opening night, but his sabbatical has done him good. His brown hair is longer, wavier, curling around his ears and over his shirt collar, adding to the rock-star look that comes with the ear piercing and the tattoos sneaking out from under his cuffs. His eyes are brighter too, like Ireland managed to put the sparkle back in them.

Now, he’s less the suited-and-booted mafia lawyer, and more the man I met in a nightclub years ago. The man who spoke about giants and legends and told me that everything he made me feel, was all me.

“What are you doing here?”

“Can we talk?”

I peer outside at the rain zigzagging like lightning down the windows and catch a glimpse of my reflection on the glass. I look ghostly, drab, barely here beside Kyle’s renewed energy, and my confidence slips through the keyhole as I close the door behind him.

Raising my head, I face him and try to ignore the way my pulse races, his green eyes taking me straight back to New Year’s six years ago. I swear I can still feel the music thrumming inside my chest.

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