Guesss what?!!!!! It's NOVEMBER 22= My Birthday!

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Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The annoying sound of the large grandfather clock could be heard in a room full of people, that surely gives you the idea of how awkward and quiet the room had gotten as soon as my father and the guys entered the room. Everyone looked around at each other waiting for my parents to make a move...to do something.

"Victoria it's a pleasure to see you after all these years my dear!" Don Ernesto walked over to embrace my mother in a hug.

My mother smiled at the man and patted his back. "It's been so long Ernesto, you haven't changed at all my friend."

He laughed. "I could say the same."

Mom glanced behind Mr. Bustamante and her eyes landed on my brother Martin, he made his way slowly to stand in front of my mother who had teary-glassed eyes. She put a hand over her mouth as she stared at my brother with so much love and adoration, the adoration of a mother who hadn't seen her son in years..

"Mira como has crecido mi niño" she reached out to touch his cheeks gently. (Look at how much my little boy has grown)

I smiled when I saw my brother reach out to hug her and my mother returned to gesture by squishing him in her arms tightly, but I know he didn't mind at all.

"No sabe cuanto la eh extrañado madre. Mire que flaco estoy desde que no como la comida deliciosa que usted cocina!" He gestured down at his stomach. (You don't know how much I've missed you, mother. Look at how skinny I've gotten since I don't eat the delicious food you cook)

I rolled my eyes. Of course Martin would say something stupid like that after seeing my mother for the first time! He's always been one to avoid uncomfortable situations.

I'm not surprised he decided to skip over the long and emotional talk my mother and him are supposed to have since he decided to stop talking to her after my parents divorce.

She choked out a shaky laugh. "We have a lot to talk about Martin, but we'll leave that for another time."

Aha.

He nodded and stepped back to let Alejandro greet my mom. Dad just stood off to the side rooted to his spot as he watched the small exchange with a half-smile on his face. I bet he's dying to hug my mother, right now.

"And who are these young men?" Mom asked curiously, her eyes looking over at the four guys standing awkwardly by Don Ernesto's side.

Mr. Bustamante grinned and walked over to put his arms around his son's shoulders. "These are my two boys!"

"Oh of course!" she smiled walking over to shake their hands. "I met you two when you were babies. How could I forget!"

"Nice to meet you M'am" Santi smiled politely.

"You're the oldest one-umm- Santiago, right?"

"Yes"

"My oh my you've grown into a very handsome young man!"

Oh Mother...

Joel snorted causing my mother to turn to him.

"You too Joel" she gave him a warm smile. "I remember holding you in my arms when you were just a baby."

That made him smirk, and he turned to me with a smug look in his eyes. "Your mom thinks I'm handsome, Gabby"

"I heard."

"Well" Don Ernesto turned to look at everyone. "I think we should let the Romano's have a private talk for a few minutes."

Everyone bid a quick goodbye to my mother and followed after the Don, leaving me alone with my parents and my two older brothers.

Seeing us all together made me miss all the old times we spent together as a family. Dad walked over to the couch and waved us over to take a seat with him, Alex and Martin took a seat on the large couch with him while I sat next to my mom on the couch across from them. The seating arrangement couldn't be anymore ironic.

"I'm glad to see you made it here safely." dad spoke first.

"Thank you for sending out for me" my mother said gratefully. "I would have gone insane if I didn't have Gabriela by my side" she put her arm around my shoulder, hugging me closer to her side.

"I figured" he responded with a small chuckle. "But you know I'm perfectly capable of looking after my own daughter."

She scoffed. "With the dangerous life you lead? I don't think so..."

That made him angry. Not even ten minutes and this thing is about ready to blow up. Figures after all the unsolved issues we never talked about.

"Why do you always have to bring that up? This job is the one that has fed this family for all these years, if it weren't for this job we wouldn't have anything."

"THIS FAMILY?" my mother questioned humorlessly. "We're not even a family anymore, Salvador. That stupid business of yours is the one responsible for breaking this family apart."

He pointed an accusing finger at her "You're the one who walked out. You left me!"

My brothers and I stayed glued to the couches, listening to our parents fight like they did the night they decided to get a divorce. Martin had his jaw clenched angrily but kept his mouth shut, Alex walked over to my couch and pulled me into his arms. I struggled to keep my tears in as a sense of déjà vu came over me, I had already gone through this shit and I was going through it again.

"Y-you want to know something?" she stood up from her seat walking over to stand in front of my father. "I'm going to say this and I'm never repeating myself again" there were tears running down her eyes. "My kids mean the world to me, I won't let anything harm them. If keeping Gabriela safe meant I had to leave you... then I did the right thing!"

"You didn't even think about us" Martin growled at my mom. " And you still wonder why I stopped talking to you?! Dad suffered a lot when you left him and I had to stay with him to take care of him and learn more about the business."

"See what you did? Our son is just like you..."

"Don't blame it all on dad!" my oldest brother shook his head. "If there's anyone to blame it's you!"

"Martin" dad turned to glare at him. "You don't have to yell at your mother like that."

"Well it's all her fault!"

That did it. That little prick never thinks before speaking. I jumped up from my seat and pushed my brother back with all my strength, making him stumble back into my dad's arms.

"Shut the fuck up Martin!"

"Gabriela calm--" My Pa' began to say but I cut him off.

"NO EVERYONE IS GOING TO LISTEN TO ME NOW!" I glared at everyone in the room. "EVERYONE IS GUILTY HERE!" I turned to my father. "DAD, MOM GAVE YOU THE CHOICE OF CHOSSING BETWEEN YOUR FAIMLY AND YOUR JOB AND YOU CHOSE YOUR STUPID ASS JOB SO DON'T GO YELLING AT MOM FOR LEAVING YOU!"

My glare changed over to my stupid brother. "And you!" I jabbed a finger to his hard chest. "You could have gone with us but you decided to stay with dad and join the business. This God damn job will only lead you to jail or even worse...death. Have you ever thought of that, Martin? Mom only did what she thought was right, she was trying to protect me, unlike you assholes!"

"I'm sorry mi princessa" Dad spoke calmly, aware of the anger radiating through me and evident in my blazing eyes. "I didn't mean to upset you, we shouldn't have argued in front of you."

"I'm not a little girl anymore, dad" I snapped at him. "I don't care ifyou guys argue but the thing is you guys always point accusing fingers at each other when we've all screwed up!"

"I think we should leave you guys to talk alone" Alejandro said to my parents and walked over to push Martin towards the door.

"I want to stay!" Martin whined like a little kid.

When my brothers were out of the room I slowly made my way towards the door but before closing the door I turned to look at my parents. "No more fighting, just talk."

My Ma' nodded. "We promise."

I started walking up the stairs but after thinking it over for a few minutes I decided to go through the back doors that lead to the large beautiful garden. I really needed some alone time.

If there was something I loved about this house it was the garden. The fresh air that hit my face as soon as I walked out felt refreshing, the big argument between my parents had taken a lot of energy out of me. Walking down the large stone path I looked around at the bright flowers all around me. There was literally all the flowers you could think of, and every single one of them was breathtaking.

I wish I had a garden like this back at home.

The garden was so big that there were even a few trees planted here and there but the one that caught my attention was the one rooted in the right-back corner of the garden. It's sturdy brown trunk looked like it would be a nice place to rest and when I took a seat leaning back on it I was proven right. It had a lot of green leaves shading me from the shinning sun which I was grateful for.

As I let my thought wander off they went back over the argument I just had with my family.

It was all bound to happen no matter what. We had all made the wrong choice of distancing ourselves from each other and let the anger build up inside of us day by day. The thing about the Romano's is that we're too stubborn and that stubbornness makes us do crazy things that we never think over which lead to bad consequences. We only have ourselves to blame for this shitty ass life.

A strong masculine hand on my shoulder made me jump up and knock over the person over me. I let out a small groan as the person landed on top of me.

I opened my eyes to see a pair of blue eyes staring down at me.

"Santiago?"

He used his arms to pick his weight off of me but didn't bother to move away from his spot, still staring down at me with those beautiful blue eyes. "I am so sorry. I didn't mean to scare you, I've been calling your name for the last five minutes but you wouldn't answer me."

I shook my head. "It's not you're fault, I was kind of in my own little world."

"Is there something wrong?" he asked looking into my eyes worriedly.

I blushed at the intensity of his gaze. "W-Why would you think that?"

He reached out to touch the corner of my eye. "You look like you've been crying"

Oh my god. I probably look like crap right now and he's very close to my face!

"It's nothing" I sighed. "My parents just made me upset and I always cry when I'm angry which kind of sucks."

"What happened?"

"I don't feel like talking about it right now"

He nodded understandingly. "You can tell me later."

"Yeah" I responded.

A silence passed and it was kind of awkward being in this position with him but he didn't seem to realize he was still on top of me.

"Santiago...can you-umm- can you get off me?"

"Oh" he looked around bewildered. "I forgot about that" he stood up looking slightly embarrassed as he reached out to give me a hand up.

"Why are you out here all alone, anyways?" he asked.

I shrugged, dusting myself off. "I needed to take my mind off of things" I glanced around at the flowers. "But it didn't really help."

"Mhhhmmm" he put a hand to his chin thoughtfully. "How about I help you take your mind out of things for a little while?"

"Help me?"

"Yeah"

"How would you do that?"

He took my hand leading me to a back door I hadn't noticed on the gate of the garden. "I'm going to take you somewhere"

"But I'm not allowed to leave without my father's permission"

"We won't be going very far" he informed me, closing the door behind us after we were out of the garden. "The place I'm showing you is part of this property" he said gesturing around the large land where his mansion was located.

"Fine" I said grabbing on tighter to his hand. "But if I get in trouble I'm blaming it all on you."

He laughed. "I don't care"

I hadn't noticed there was a large forest in the back of the house which looked a little intimidating as we made out way towards it.

Was he really taking me to the forest?

We reached the first few trees and I scooted closer to him feeling a bit scared as we started walking through the small path leading into the intimidating place.

He glanced down at me with an amused smile on his face. "Scared?"

"A little"

"Nothing's goanna happen to you while I'm here"

My heart fluttered at his words.

After walking for a few minutes my worries started kicking in again and I looked around worriedly. We were already in very deep into the forest I couldn't even see the mansion anymore.

"Are we lost?"

"No" he smiled "But we're almost there."

"Almost there?" I asked impatiently. We've been walking for almost twenty minutes and I haven't seen anything different other than trees, trees and more trees. "Can you tell me where you're taking me?"

"You're a very impatient girl aren't you?"

"Yup" I responded, stomping my feet a bit loudly. "I don't like surprises."

"Well, I'm still not going to tell you"

"Santiago"

"Gabriela" he mocked me.

I rolled my eyes at him. "Can you at least give me a hint?"

"It's a place that's very special to me" he said keeping his eyes forward. "A place only one other person knows about."

"So it's a secret place?" I asked excitedly.

"Yes" he grinned at my excitement. "And you can't tell anyone about it. You promise?"

I nodded eagerly sticking out my pinky finger and latching it with his. "I pinky promise."

He stopped walking and I looked forward to see a us standing in front of a curtain of green plants hanging down from a large plant that was on top of a few of the trees around us.

"This is it"

What the hell. Is he kidding with me right now? I don't see anything secret about a bunch of green things hanging off a tree!

"Okay..." I said awkwardly.

Grinning, he stepped forward to pull the curtain of green plants open. "Get in"

What. Oh no, I am not walking into that weird green plant thingy.

"I don't think so,hottie"

"What did you call me?" he laughed.

Oh crap. "Buddy. I called you buddy!"

"Yeah sure" he said sarcastically. "Now go in there. There's nothing to be scared of, trust me."

Should I?

I hesitated for a few minutes before stepping slowly in through the plant curtain. I put my hands over my eyes and walked forward, feeling terrified of how dark it would be.

"Gabby what are you doing?"

"I'm scared to look"

He placed his hands over mine and leaned his head on my shoulder, his lips close to my right ear. "Open your eyes. There's nothing scary about this place." he whispered.

Letting my hands fall to my sides, I slowly peeked through one eye and was surprised to see little lights all around me. My jaw dropped as I took in the setting in front of me.

This is the most beautiful place I've seen. A place you would only see in the page of a fairytale book.

And I was in it with Santiago Bustamante.

____________________________________

Whoooo! Go Shawty! It's my Birthday, I'm going to party cuz it's my birthday. I'm gonna sip bacardi cuz it's my birthday, and I don't really give a fuck cuz it's my BIRTHDAY!

Yes I'm finally 17. I can go see Rated-R movies. Lol.

I decided to do this chapter today because I'm feeling extra hyper and I can't sleep -_- Tomorrow (Or rather later today) I'm going to the movies with my friends for MY BIRTHDAY to see BREAKING DAWN! Yes I know it came out on Nov. 18 but I conviced my friends to go for my b-day and I'm sooooo excited!

Well enough of that! I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter :D

Comment, Vote, Fan or Send me a BANNER as a Birthday gift, maybe?

Love you all

wendy122