Page 79 of Mafia Boss's Fake Wife

Well. That’s not true. He drank plenty of tea when I made it for him at the cottage…

“I was wondering, um…” my mom gives Marco a meaningful look, waiting for him to supply his name.

“Marco,” he grunts.

“Marco. If I might have a moment alone with my daughter?”

“Whatever you say to Roisin, you can say in front of me,” he rasps.

Her eyebrows raise. “I think she’s the one who is supposed to tell me that.”

There’s steel under her voice.

Marco’s jaw clenches, but I wave him off. “It’s fine, Mum. Whatever you want to say, Marco can hear.”

Her eyes flash to him. “What’s his last name, love?”

I’m not about to give away that Marco is a DeLuca. For some reason, part of me wants to hold that back. The part of my brain that’s been conditioned for years by Interpol kicks in.

She might not tell me everything if she knows Marco is mafia too.

“Smith,” he supplies.

I don’t react.

Her eyes narrow. “Marco Smith? You’re expecting me to believe a man who is clearly more bloody Italian than a box of pasta at Tesco is named Marco Smith?”

“Family name. Dad’s English,” he says with a hint of a sneer.

“Lord have mercy. He even talks like one of them,” she sighs.

“Talks like who, Mum?” I ask.

My mother looks at me. She hands me a cup of tea, and I sip.

“He talks like your father.”

The tea freezes in my hand.

Mum sighs. “Well, I can’t say I didn’t fall for it too. I don’t know who your family is, boy,” she gives him a look that’s pure venom. “But I assure you, if you hurt my daughter, then there will be hell to pay.”

“Mum. From who?” I whisper.

She shuts her eyes.

“Well, I suppose you’ll want some answers then.”

The teacup rattles slightly against the saucer as I set it down.

My mom nods. “I made a bargain with your father, the night… before you were born. If I bore him a child, I could choose which portion of their life I wanted. A ten-year span. I chose the first ten, because I had met men like him before. I was in university at the time, and I studied child development. The first ten years of a child’s life are the most important, you know,” she says, her voice taking on a flat tone. “It’s when you learn the skills that make you into the person you are.”

I breathe. “Why the hell did my father do this to all his children?”

She shrugs. “He was an evil man, love. Evil men love to destroy things.”

The fact that he couldn’t just raise a child, all on his own, isn’t shocking to me. William MacAntyre wasa horrific man.

Well. I suppose he did raise Kieran.

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