Chapter 4 - The Rules Of A New Home
Bringing Marisol back was like flipping a switch in a haunted house. The morning after she returned, I walked downstairs expecting the usual heavy, oppressive silence. Instead, I smelled pancakes. I heard something I hadn't heard in fourteen months. Laughter. I stood in the doorway of the kitchen, frozen. Leo was covered in flour. Mateo was stirring a bowl of batter. Little Elian was sitting on the counter, clapping his hands. Marisol was at the stove, flipping a pancake high into the air. She caught my eye and gestured with her spatula. "Don't just stand there, Boss," she said, a small smile playing on her lips. "Grab a plate. You're late for breakfast." My men called me Boss with fear. She said it like a joke. I sat at the table. It felt awkward, like I was a guest in my own home. But Marisol didn't let me hide. She forced me to engage. "Tell your father about the dinosaur project, Leo," she prompted, pouring coffee into my mug. Slowly, hesitantly, Leo started to talk. Then Mateo chimed in. Before I knew it, I was laughing. Real, genuine laughter that made my chest ache in the best possible way. This was the new normal. Marisol was a force of nature. She didn't just care for my children; she began to fix my family. Every evening at 6:00 PM, she would march into my home office, no matter who I was on a call with. "Dinner," she would announce. I would hang up on powerful smugglers and dangerous men, simply because Marisol Bennett told me to. After dinner, she made me sit in their bedrooms. She taught me how to read to them. Not with my stern, commanding voice, but with different voices for different characters. I felt ridiculous at first. But when I saw the way Elian looked at me, his eyes wide with wonder, the embarrassment vanished. I sat down with Leo and explained, in age-appropriate terms, that his mother died from a sickness in her brain. I assured him that no bad men ever touched her. I promised him that no one would ever touch them. The night terrors slowly began to fade. The boys stopped trying to sleep in my room. Instead, they slept peacefully in their own beds, knowing I was down the hall, and Marisol was right next door. But as the weeks turned into months, a new problem arose. I found myself lingering in the kitchen just to watch her cook. I found myself looking forward to her demanding I leave my office. I started to notice the way the morning light caught the gold flecks in her brown eyes. I was a man of darkness, built for a world of violence and shadows. And I was terrified to realize that I was falling desperately in love with the woman who had brought the light back to my home.
