When Hidden Lanterns Glow We Find Roads Toward Peace by Ryn Arlo Dane 5

Second Chance for the Mafia Prince 

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Found Part I 

It was still in her nostrils. Five days after the skunk debacle, or as her mother had taken to calling it, the day her granddaughter destroyed their home, the aroma of skunk was still clinging to her skin. 

Her mother had hired a professional team of cleaners from Burlington at a very expensive rate to come in and wash the entirety of the house down. They’d washed everything from beddings to curtains, cleaned the carpets and wiped down all the walls. They’d gotten all the laundry in the house cleaned. They’d even detailed her 

car. 

Yet it lingered in her nostrils like a punishment from God 

himself. 

Kaylee was obsessed with checking on the thing which seemed to be thriving in the habitat created for him at the wildlife sanctuary. January considered it better to watch it from a distance, and it was very cute to watch it drink from a bottle and how it toddled around it’s little cage foraging for the grubs the staff hid amongst the shavings in the bedding. 

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However, her memory was now forever tainted by the fact it was too close a call. The entire drive home she’d been looking over her shoulder on the off–chance Gulliver Crane was following her. There had been an entire year, from the time Kaylee was two until she was three, where January considered that perhaps he would have forgotten about her, wasn’t looking for her, and she could start to live her life freely. 

Then an update from a colleague of Davis who told her that Gulliver was still asking around for her. He told her there was a meeting where Gulliver was under surveillance at a restaurant and his brother came in and let him know that the lead was a bust and that January was not in the building as they’d hoped. It told them they were still looking. He impressed upon her the fact that men like Gulliver Raptis were prideful and arrogant and when something belonged to them, and he would consider her a possession, they didn’t let them go. If she wanted to stay alive or forced into a relationship where she was a canary in a gilded cage and her child was treated as a commodity, then she needed to lay low. 

They’d helped her over the years. She’d not finished her degree, but she had only been a semester away from Completion. She sold her handmade jewelry, initially a3 a 

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Found Part I 

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site for people who sold their own crafts but eventually they’d helped her create a website where she could support herself and her daughter. They’d helped her create a nom de plume for her design work and she’d steadily grown a following on social media. Eventually she’d made enough money to have a small brick and mortar jewelry store in the small strip mall in the town where they lived. 

She maintained her anonymity. Rarely did she know who was ordering from her shop. Her shop manager, Lottie, a single mom in the small town where they lived, was excellent on preserving her privacy. They met when they both were working in the only café in the town and eventually over a snowy, boring Sunday afternoon, she’d confided in Lottie her tragic tale, minus the names of her 

1. ex. 

Somehow, Lottie had discretely made it so everyone in the town knew it was important to keep her and her family’s privacy. How much she’d divulged, January didn’t know but there was an evening where she’d been working late in her design studio out back and she’d come outside to find that the older man who ran the hardware store across the street was sitting in his car. She’d not thought anything of it until she’d got in hers 

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Found Part I 

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and he’d watched carefully until she was driving in the direction of her home. This little town was protecting her in a way that she knew she’d never see if she was in New York. Hell, in New York, her own so–called bestie, kept massive secrets and let her fake–marry a man with ties to the mob. 

However, none of them were able to help with the stench still sitting in her nostrils. For all of the protection the town gave her, not a single one of them offered any kind of help other than calling out comments about baking soda and peroxide mixed with dish soap and tomato juice. Now she was working alone in her design space, a giant magnifying glass over the tiny delicate chain she was crafting. As she put it together a moment of inspiration hit her, perhaps because of the scent of the skunk in her nose, but she had a sudden desire to affix a piece of black tourmaline. She pushed back from her desk and made her way to the front of the store. 

She smiled at Lottie. “The black tourmaline piece we had on display. We didn’t sell that did we?” 

“No. It’s in the side cabinet,” Lottie smiled at her. “I think I moved it a bit to the back of the cabinet because the fellow citrine was getting some attention, so I wanted it u 

Found Part I 

bit more front and center.” 

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“Good call.” She moved to the cabinet and squatted down low and was looking at the stones in the cabinet and got excited. “Ooh, I could use the agate too. The black and white one.” 

“Are you inspired by Henry?” 

She giggled at the question from Lottie. “Maybe?” 

“While you’re digging there, I’m going to run to the washroom.” 

“Sure. Sounds good.” 

She was picking up several stones, holding them in her hands, looking at them up in the light and trying to envision which ones would require more work if she needed to shape and mold the stone to fit the delicate chain she was working on. 

The sound of the chimes on the door opening almost had her standing up but then her stomach clenched at the words from the customer coming in. 

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Found Part I 

“Oh, my goodness! Gully look at it. It’s exactly what I envisioned.” 

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