Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
And finally, he thought, they were almost complete.
Once she was here, of course.
They were all just waiting on her.
*
Lina Siena Marcello did not come as easily into the world like her brother had—she refused to turn, and wouldn’t be moved. And with every intervention that was tried to make the girl move into the correct position for birth, the more determined she seemed to be to simply stay right in her place.
And maybe that should have been John’s first clue.
Maybe he should have known, then ...
His daughter was going to be stubborn, and difficult.
And entirely wonderful.
“Lina Siena Marcello, you did not put sparkly nail polish on Daddy’s shoes,” John said, holding the shoe in question between his fingertips like it was a fucking cat that might come alive and bite him or something. “Again.”
“Theys pretty now,” his daughter said.
She looked just like her mother.
All caramel curls framing her delicate face.
Big, blue eyes.
Innocence and life.
“They don’t need to be pretty,” he told his daughter. “They are my shoes, Lina. Just like the walls don’t need to be pretty, and like Lucky’s trucks don’t need to be pretty. They are fine the way they are.”
His three-year-old girl pushed up from the floor with a loud sigh like he was testing every bit of patience she had left today, and she just didn’t have time for it. Yeah, just like her mother. And every other woman in his family that had come before her.
No doubt about it.
Her pretty pink, sparkly dress matched the polish she had used to paint his damn shoes. That had probably been an intentional choice, knowing her.
Once she got close enough to him, John bent down so he was at eye-level with his girl. “Bambina, you don’t need to make Daddy’s shoes pretty. Thank you, but they just don’t need to be pretty, okay?”
Her sticky palm came up to pat him on his cheek, and he swore it felt condescending.
Her next words confirmed it. “Daddy, everything needs to be pretty.”
His daughter.
Was.
Well, everything.
The muffled laughter from the next room had John’s gaze narrowing. “I can hear you, Siena!”
“I can’t help it!”
So was his life.
He didn’t mind.
Much.
The Cycles
“That’s a whole sleeve of cookies,” Andino muttered.
“Shut up,” John grumbled around the half-eaten Oreo. “Don’t need or want your opinion.”
“That’s enough sugar to kill a horse, man.”
“Said shut up. What part of shut up don’t you understand?”
“Yeah, shut up, Zio Andino.”
John patted his three-year-old son on the top of his head, and passed the boy a cookie for his good work. Some might call it rewarding bad behavior—he didn’t much give a shit what people thought about how he raised his kid.
Andino mock glared as he dropped onto the couch in John’s living room, and used his two fingers to point between his eyes, and Lucky. “Got my eyes on you, kiddo.”
Lucky glowered right back, and mocked Andino with the finger motions.
All three years of him.
Already thought he was ten feet tall, and bulletproof.
John loved it.
Siena worried.
What could you do?
“Can’ts watch me,” Lucky told Andino, “when I is already watching you, Zio.”
John almost choked on a fucking cookie he tried to keep from laughing so goddamn hard. His son was damn serious, and he didn’t want to downplay the kid’s efforts by laughing at him. That did fuck all for somebody’s self-esteem.
Andino gave Lucky an appreciative nod. “You’re gonna do great things, kid.”
Lucky smiled. “I know—Da tells me so.”
John gave his son another cookie for that one.
“You don’t even like mint,” Andino nodded, gesturing at the chocolate mint flavored cookies in John’s lap.
It really was a whole sleeve of the cookies.
The last sleeve.
They were his wife’s. He probably should have made a run to the store, but fuck ... he just needed sugar, and he needed it in his mouth right now. He didn’t care if it was fucking cookies that he didn’t like.
“Med changes,” John said in explanation to his cousin with a shrug. “Leonard wanted to test a drop in dose considering how calm shit’s been for two years. It’s fucking driving me crazy—not literally,” he was quick to add when Andino gave him a look. “Just with food, and energy. I want to eat and be on the move and fuc—”
John’s gaze quickly dropped to his son who was staring up at him with big eyes before he said, “And the other four letter thing with my wife that we don’t say around this one because he repeats everything.”
Andino laughed. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Anyway—that’s why. The new meds.”
Andino lifted a brow. “And you were good with that—the change, I mean?”
“I trust my doctor.”
That trust didn’t come easily by any means, but Leonard was always careful with John, his disorder, and how he went about treating it. He let John have a voice, and that made a hell of a lot of difference at the end of the day.