Page 159 of Auctioned to the Mafia Don
Erin decides she loves it before we are even inside.
“There is a swing,” she says, pressing both hands to the passenger window. “A real swing. Not one of those tiny plastic ones that breaks when you look at it.”
Heath leans across the seat to inspect it with more caution. “It might be old.”
“It is supposed to be old,” Erin says. “That makes it better.”
“Old things break.”
“So do new things.”
Heath gives her a look that says she has missed the point entirely.
I sit beside them in the backseat, one hand resting against the small contour of my stomach underneath my coat. It is too early for anyone else to notice. Too early for the world to see what has changed. But I feel different anyway. Not in some mystical way. More like my body has become a room I have to learn again, filled with new limits, new fears, and a future already rearranging everything around it. And even now, as I gaze ahead to the house, I want this to be right for them and worry what it means to let them go.
Stefano’s hand finds mine between us.
He does not squeeze.
He just leaves his palm open.
I slide my fingers into it.
The social worker is waiting on the porch when we arrive. She is smiling too intensely, the way people do when they are trying to make difficult things feel celebratory. Victor stands next to her in a dark coat, one hand tucked into his pocket. Alex is behind him, nervous enough that he keeps smoothing the front of his shirt even though it is already perfectly straight.
The house looks warm through the windows.
There are curtains in Erin’s favorite color in the upstairs bedroom. A stack of books sits beside a reading chair. Someone has left a small basketball hoop in the driveway for Heath, along with a new bike that looks just large enough to feel grown-up without being impossible to ride.
They thought about everything.
That should make this easy.
It does not.
Erin runs ahead before I can stop her, racing up the porch steps and throwing herself into Alex’s arms. He catches her with a laugh, lifting her off the ground while she talks too quickly about the swing and the upstairs rooms and whether she can paint her bedroom wall.
“Not today,” Alex says, smiling against her hair. “But we can talk about it.”
“You said I could choose.”
“I said you could choose a color.”
“That is basically the same thing.”
Heath stays beside me.
His hand slips into mine without looking at me.
I hold on.
Victor crouches a few feet away, keeping his voice subdued. “There is a room upstairs with your name on it.”
Heath studies him. “What color?”
“Whatever color you want.”
“That sounds like a trick.”
