Coming Home (Morelli Family 6)

I roll my eyes. “I’m not going to let him kill you. If I won’t let him kill Vince, I’m surely not going to let him kill you. Goddamn, I’m going to have to start charging for this service. I can’t keep any more people alive! I’m at capacity.”

“Well, if there’s another random shooting at my piano bar, you know why.”

“That’s not funny,” I tell her, semi-glaring. “You may have taken the gold for shittiest friend this year, but it’s not like I’ve never placed.” I flash her my engagement ring, in case she needs a reminder.

“Well, yeah. But there’s accidentally stealing back a man with your weird siren call, and then there’s intentionally telling your sister’s wife’s psychotic ex where he can kidnap her.”

Inappropriate laughter bubbles up and I can’t hold it in. I try, but I can’t, and my eyes get watery from the effort. This is so not funny, but it’s so ridiculous that I can’t stop laughing. “Oh, my god. The things we will do for this man.”

Although reluctantly, Meg cracks a smile. “I know. He’s the worst.”

Chapter Twenty Seven

Mia

I thought we were on pretty good ground when Mateo left the house earlier today, but after he got back from his meeting with Dante he was in a darker mood. Then I had the poor luck of experiencing morning sickness at dinner. When I came back to the table, Mateo’s mood was completely dark.

After dinner, instead of coming upstairs with me, he called Adrian into the study and shut the door.

He does not come to bed early tonight. I text him to ask if he’ll be up soon, and he doesn’t even respond. Since I know he’s home, I know he’s just avoiding me, and that sucks.

Ordinarily I’m the calm to his storm, the release at the end of his long day. Now, with Vince’s baby almost certainly polluting my womb, I am an added stress on the shoulders of the man I love. I don’t know how something I’ve looked forward to for so long could hurt this much, but boy, it sure does.

Being an adult and going through one of Mateo’s storms is also much different. When I was younger and free of responsibilities, I could just curl up in bed and make the world go away when things got bad. The nine-year-old dark haired little girl currently lounging in the chair by our bed with her nose in a book is a pretty clear reminder of why that’s no longer a possibility.

“What are you doing in here?” I ask, gathering my damp hair and settling it over my shoulder. The room was empty when I went in to take a shower. Thankfully I put on my white satin bath robe before I came out.

Bella glances up from her book. “Homework. I have to read a chapter tonight, but then I have to do this exercise about choices. I’m conflicted about a problem like the girl in the book. I have to come up with two or three possible choices, write down the pros and cons to each one, then assess my options and make a choice.”

I could use some help with that myself. “Do you have a real problem, or is this a strictly fictional problem?” I ask instead.

Bella sighs lightly, turning her gaze back to her book. “I dunno.”

That wasn’t convincing. Quirking an eyebrow, I walk over to Mateo’s side of the bed and take a seat so I’m close to her. “Spill.”

“I do have a situation,” she admits, tactfully. “I don’t know if I’d call it a problem. But I’m going to use it for my assignment because it’ll be easiest, and you know, when you break a problem down and actually list the pros and the cons, it does feel like you have a better grasp of it. Do you make lists when you have a problem?”

“Not really.”

“Well, how do you decide what to do?”

My honest answer would generally be, I just let your dad decide. Doesn’t take a pro and con list to realize I need a better answer than that to give her. So I say, “Well, in the past when I’ve made big choices, I would look at all sides. I would guess at the outcome of both options—though I wasn’t always right—and I would think about how it would make other people feel. If one of my choices hurt someone else, but one of them didn’t, I would choose the option that didn’t hurt anyone because that felt like the right choice.”

“But what if it would make you feel really good to make the choice where someone maybe did get hurt? What if that person had been really mean to you, and now you knew something that they didn’t want other people to know and you could get back at them by telling?”