Page 274 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
My eyebrows raised. “Breakfast in bed?”
“Only the best fordonna mia,” he explained with a little shrug as he sat on the edge of the bed and put the tray beside me.
I stopped tickling Aurora so I could lean over to accept his warm kiss. He cupped my cheek in one hand and brought me back for more.
“Gross!” Aurora yelled, rolling back onto my legs so she could watch us kiss with her tongue sticking out.
Dante pulled away and bopped her on the nose. “You’re gross. I bet you didn’t brush your teeth this morning.”
“Yes, I did!”
“If I check your toothbrush, will it be wet?” he questioned with narrowed eyes.
I lay back against the pillows, snagging a piece of bacon from the tray to watch their normal morning routine.
“Si.”
“Because you splashed water on it or because you actually brushed your teeth?” He raised a brow. “Come here, let me smell your breath.”
Rora glared at him for a second, then huffed, rolling off the end of the bed to stand and stalk sassily from the room.
“You better wait for me to open her presents!” she shouted on the way to her bedroom.
Dante stared after her bemusedly. “Diohelp me when she becomes a teenager.”
I laughed, fisting my hand in his black tee to bring him closer to me for another kiss. “Her papa is an infamous mafia Don. I don’t think you have to worry about boys around her until she’s fully grown.”
“It’s not the boys I’m worried about,” he muttered, moving the tray over my lap so he could sit beside me, curling an arm over my shoulder and taking the ends of my long hair between his fingers. “She’s enough trouble on her own.”
I laughed again because this was undoubtedly true.
“Happy Birthday,cuore mia,” he murmured, drawing his nose from my forehead to my ear. “Are you a happy twenty-eight-year-old?”
I beamed at him. “I don’t think I could be happier. I barely recognize myself sometimes.”
He chuckled as Rora came sprinting back into the room in her pajamas and dived onto the bed at my side.
She snagged a piece of my bacon and chewed it noisily as she asked, “Can we give her our presents now?”
“I think so.” Dante leaned over the bed and handed me a long, wide, flat-wrapped present. “This one is mostly from Rora.”
My sweet girl grinned at me, propping her arm and chin on my thigh as she watched me open it.
I tore the paper off without an inkling of what might have laid beneath it, so I wasn’t prepared when I saw the adoption papers signed and notarized in my hands. I had signed them months ago when we first got the papers back from Gideone, but we hadn’t asked Aurora yet how she would feel about being our daughter.
My mouth hung open, my wet gaze snapping between Dante and Rora.
“What?” I whispered.
“Rora came to me a few weeks ago and asked why we hadn’t adopted her yet,” Dante explained, as he reached across the bed to draw his big hand over her hand. “She thought we didn’t want to keep her.”
My eyes darted to Rora, horrified. “How could you ever think that?”
She shrugged a little weakly. “You guys could have your own babies one day. Maybe you wouldn’t want me then. I just wanted to know where I would go if that happened so I could be prepared.”
My heart tore inside my chest with an audible ripping sound that echoed in my ears.
“Rora,gattina,” I murmured through the tears in my throat. I cupped her sweet face, staring into those big brown eyes that were much too worldly for a seven-year-old. “We would never want you anywhere but at our side,capisci? We didn’t want to rush you into becoming our daughter legally. You’ve been through so much.”
