《Painfully Sweet》Epilogue 2
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Zophisa P.O.V
17 years later (from first epilogue)
"What's up Chi Chi?" I asked my 19 year old daughter as she walked into our office.
"We need to talk to you guys," she said nervously. She reminded me a lot of myself, very strong until it came to her family.
"We?" Luka asked, taking off his glasses. He had aged gracefully. His salt and pepper complimented his olive skin well.
"Get in here," she gritted, making the rest of the kids walk in. Zoey, Adrian's 17 year old daughter, walked in first with her head down, she was always a little shy. Then Sincere's twin girls, Marie and Zyra, who were both 16. Then my twins, Sincere and Marco, who were also 16. That's right, he talked all that shit about me being pregnant and he had a pregnant girlfriend in New York. Then, finally, Fefe and Alesia.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, pointing to Fefe as she walked in.
"Moral support," she said with a shrug as she sat across from us at the desk and turned her chair toward the kids.
"We're ready to hear our positions," Zoey said once they were all standing in front of us.
"We've talked about this," Luka sighed.
"We know you guys said the quads are too young but papa they're almost done with training," Chiara expressed.
"Plus we're not asking to take over right now, we're just curious," Alessia said, backing her up. We had agreed to treat Alessia like one of our kids in the terms of rank since she trained with them and was just as skilled.
"Let me ask this," I started, "What do you want to do?"
"I want to lead the mafia," Chiara said.
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"We want to go to New York and run the gang," both sets of twins said.
"All four of you?" I asked.
"Well we all share a mind," Sincere started.
"So it's really like having two people," Marco finished.
"I want to take over the legit business," Alessia said.
"I want to go to law school and be the guy on the inside," Zoey said.
"You guys actually thought this through?" I asked, impressed. They all nodded.
"We'll think about it," I said. They nodded again before dismissing themselves. Once they were all gone I let out a sigh and looked at Luka.
"Kids am I right?" Fefe asked with a sigh.
"Speaking of kids, where are yours?" I asked with my eyebrow raised.
"With my mom," she said with a shrug.
"Why are you even in Italy?" I asked her.
" Kids are gone, siblings make me sick, this place has good food," she explained.
"How do I even respond to that?" I asked, speechless.
"Go home," I said after a long silence. She just sucked her teeth before getting up and walking out of the room.
"What the hell just happened?" I asked Luka.
"I don't know," He answered while shaking his head.
"Our kids want to take over," I stressed as I stood up from my chair and sat on his lap.
"It's okay amore," He soothed, "Look at it this way, the sooner they take over the sooner we can retire and grow old together."
I just chuckled as he rubbed my back. I looked at him and gave him a quick peck on the lips.
"What do you want to do?" I asked.
"The twins are too young. There is nothing we can do about it right now," He said, I just nodded.
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"Our daughter wants to take over the mafia," I said with a groan.
"How do we tell them they have to test into their positions?" He asked. I just shrugged.
"Rip the band aid off," I suggested. He just nodded.
After we finished up our work and decided what to tell the kids, we decided to have a family game night.
"You're an idiot!" Sincere yelled at Marco.
"Me?" Marco yelled, "You're twintuition sucks!"
"I don't know where they get that from," I said as I took a sip of my wine. I looked up and saw Luka, Chiara, and Alessia looking at me like I had two heads.
"Our turn," Zoey said to Chiara. I watched as Chiara guessed all of Zoey's charades correctly.
"They're cheating!" Sincere stressed, "Ma, they're cheating."
"You're a sore loser," Marie said to him.
"Our turn," Alessia said to Fefe.
"Why are you still in my house?" I asked Fefe.
"You wish I would leave when you tell me to," she said as she looked at the cards.
After playing for an hour and eating four boxes of pizza we were all in the living room, the kids waiting for the news Luka and I had yet to break.
"We don't really know how to say this," Luka stated.
"Getting your positions is not as simple as us just giving them to you," I explained.
"What do you mean?" Zoey asked.
"There's a test," I said, "Physical and mental challenges to place I exactly where you belong. That's only for the mafia. And I'm sorry to tell you guys this but I no longer have authority over the gang. That's up to Adrian and Sincere."
I watched as they took in that information and to my surprise they weren't disappointed.
"What if we don't want to take the mafia test?" Marie asked.
"You don't have to," Luka said, "Even if you do you can give up the spot you are given. But that's it." The kids just nodded.
"What about marriage?" Zoey asked.
"Are you engaged?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. She just blushed and shook her head no, making me chuckle.
"If you get married to someone outside of the mafia, they marry in or you marry out," Luka explained after chuckling.
"What determines it?" Alessia asked.
"They do," I said.
"Why can't we just have arranged marriages like you two?" Marie asked.
"It wasn't arranged," I corrected.
"What was it?" She asked.
"A business investment," Luka said with a smirk.
"Mom was it painful giving up everything and moving to Italy with a stranger?" Chiara asked.
"Ummm," I said, looking between them and Luka, "Painfully Sweet."
"That doesn't make sense mom," Marco said.
"It was painful to leave my life behind. But my new life was too sweet to leave behind," I explained.
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Painfully Sweet is officially over! Thank you guys so much for the love and support for this story ❤️
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Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. 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I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. 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