“Dr. Davison’s office is full of stuff for kids. She’s used to patients having to bring their kids sometimes. It’s fine. Will you bring her suit to the pool?”
“Yeah.”
Alexis came back around the corner of our bedroom door, still dressed in her pink and blue pajamas, but had adorned a pink tutu and a scarf for some reason. “Ready!”
Alessandro looked like he was going to puke. “Um. No. You’re not going in that.”
Alexis’s eyes started to well up, and I could already see Alessandro losing resolve. “Lexi, if you wear your black pants, you can keep the tutu and shirt.”
“Okay, Mama.”
She fluttered away, and Alessandro sighed. “Thank you.”
I laughed, listening to Alessandro and Alexis argue about every little thing while they got ready to go. Once they were out the door and Adrian was finished eating, I got up and started getting us ready, as well. His morning nap allowed me the leeway I needed to take a shower of my own and prepare a bag with a swimsuit for Alexis, trunks for Alessandro, a handful of towels, and all of the things that I needed to take care of Adrian while we were out of the house. I walked into the living room for the first time to grab some snack foods for Alexis and smiled. There were balloons and roses sitting on the dining room table, with a bag with tissue paper sticking up out of the top. A notecard in front of the bag simply read, “From me and the kids.”
I pulled the tissue paper out and pulled out a rectangular, velvet box. I tipped it open and smiled. It had a sterling silver necklace in it with four pendants hanging from it that said, “Alessandro,” “Willow,” “Alexis,” and “Adrian.” I immediately laced it around my neck and smiled.
I went back to getting myself and Adrian ready to go, and then I set the security system in the front hallway near the front door and walked out of the house. I took in a deep breath of the beautiful array of flowers that had been planted in the front of our home, and Adrian babbled happily at the butterflies that flew around them from his stroller. I carefully navigated his stroller down the sidewalk and started off down the path that led from our house to our new estate’s swimming pool.
We were excited to put the life behind us, but the Varasso family wasn’t interested in being too far from one another. As such, Luca purchased twenty acres of land in Maine and had four houses built on the property. Each family started with a four-bedroom, four-bathroom home, with room to expand if needed, and each had their own unique additions. Our house had a garden, and I also had a huge design studio in the basement. Alessandro had a man cave of sorts that was a confusing amalgamation of gaming systems and screens, all that he’d all magically rigged to work together. He loved to go in there and tinker with his tech until he’d totally lost track of time.
Gabriel and Stacy’s home had a built-in yoga studio, and their backyard had a hutch where they raised rabbits. Sundays were typically reserved for all of the wives—and Gabriel—to gather for a personal yoga session from Stacy while Luca, Marco, and Alessandro watched the kids and let them play with the rabbits. We had attempted to get them to give yoga a try, but after Luca fell into Marco while trying one of the poses, starting an all-out brawl, all while Alessandro was asleep after never getting up from one of the other poses, we decided that Gabriel was the only of the guys suited to the hobby.
Marco and Kelly’s house had a full gym in the basement that the pair loved to use together. It had a large enough track ring that they could jog in the mornings and a full set of workout equipment that they welcomed any members of their family to use. Once every few months, Kelly would host a field day for the kids and let Anna and Antonio invite their friends from school. Marco always went a little crazy, buying prizes and making sure that there was at least one activity that each kid would excel at. There was no guessing why Marco and Kelly had risen to the coveted position of being the cool aunt and uncle, the ones who the kids wanted to spend most of their time with.
Luca and Molly’s home had a full-scale restaurant-style kitchen that Molly spent most of her time in, and Luca had developed a particularly strange hobby of crafting, something he did in a studio in their basement. They finally got the beach vacation they were dreaming of after things were over with the Binachis, and after the
y came back, Luca started using the shells he’d collected to make a variety of different things. For someone who lacked patience of any kind, he could sit in his studio for hours, meticulously putting together different designs, and whenever Anna needed creative help with a school assignment, her dad was eager to help. Molly officially adopted Anna, as well, and they became something of a dynamic duo in the kitchen, with Anna already saying she wanted to be a chef when she grew up.
Another home had been built on the property for Ricky and Sasha, with a mother-in-law suite for my mom. She still got into her weird hobbies, but Ricky and Sasha were pretty used to entertaining her, so it didn’t bother them to have her around. Sasha was still a big-time movie star, and Ricky was still her number one fan, although he’d taken to starting his own law practice in his spare time. He was the only one who I told about the conclusion I’d reached about the other three crime families, and he kept it safely locked away, just in case. He was still a retainer for the Varasso family, but only for their very above the board, professional consulting business.
None of the Varasso men were particularly good at just sitting around, but they were good at running a business. They considered starting a goods or service-driven business of their own but couldn’t agree on what they’d sell. It was Ricky who pointed out that maybe they could make their fortune in helping other people make their fortunes. Luca was really good at leadership and could train upper-level management and corporate officials on how to be good bosses. Marco had become a master at organizing security and could teach companies how to protect their employees, their businesses, themselves, and their assets. Alessandro was a techie and could modernize a company in the blink of an eye. He could have a company’s entire ten-year-old filing system uploaded to the cloud within seconds, complete with a system for finding and organizing their entire life’s work. Gabriel, the Varasso underdog, knew exactly how to master hierarchies and could help a company run efficiently from the CEOs down to the janitors.
A single consultation, depending on the size of the company, brought in five thousand dollars, and if the company decided to hire the brothers to revamp their entire company, they could bring in fifty thousand dollars for two weeks of work. In less than a year, they’d replaced what was left of the Varassos dirty money with hard-earned income that supported our new mini-community twelve times over.
Stacy’s parents lived off the property but still close enough to get to us using a golf cart. Gabriel thoughtfully had their house built into a forest surrounding the property, so they were back to the more naturalistic surroundings they appreciated as opposed to the big city life they’d settled for to be near Stacy.
“Hey! Happy Mother’s Day!” Molly greeted when she noticed me approaching the pool. She ran over and ducked her head into the stroller. “Hi, Adrian! How’s Auntie’s baby doing?”
In the center of our property, Luca had a pool, a playground, an additional garden, and a greenhouse built. Tables were scattered around, and a small, outdoor kitchen and dining area allowed us to meet as a family often for meals and playtime with the kids. Anna and Antonio were already running around at the park, and Luca was messing with the dials at the pool, no doubt getting the heat turned up. May in Maine was a bit of a crapshoot—it could be warm or cold. It was a very nice day, if not a touch too cool, so the pool was heated so that we didn’t have to tell our children they couldn’t swim.
At the end of the day, we were all eating out of the palms of their hands.
Molly walked around to kiss my cheek, and I gave her one back. “Happy Mother’s Day to you.”
“You’re the first to arrive, but I just got a text from Stacy, and they’re on their way down.”
“Okay.” I strolled Adrian over to one of the lounge couches that sat outside the pool and pulled him out of his stroller. Luca was at my side a wink later, pulling him from my arms.
“Hey, there’s my favorite nephew.” He kissed his cheek and then smiled down at me. “Happy Mother’s Day, Willow.”
“Thank you!”
Everyone else arrived slowly over the course of the next fifteen minutes. Ricky and Sasha arrived at the same time as Alessandro and Alexis, with Alexis held happily in Ricky’s arms, chattering away to him. They walked over to where we were situated, and Ricky set Alexis down to go and join her older cousins at the park.
Ricky knelt down and gave me a kiss on my cheek. “Happy Mama’s Day, Willow.”
“Thank you. Did you remember to text Mom?” She was spending her Mother’s Day in Germany.