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Marcella paused, then put her hands up. “What am I s’posed to do about a can-do attitude like that? Alright, Bonetto,” she gave you a thumbs up, “I’ll see how much oomf is behind that confidence. But, Lolo? You better be ready to work your butt off, if you’re serious about this.”
“Uh huh.” But he was occupying his mind with something else.
“Between you and me though,” Marcella leaned forward and muttered, “If he’s serious about that, best to send him to Naukland or Emre for a few years after Lyceum…”
Those, and not the Azure Halls? Well, to be honest, while the Azure Halls did deal more than respectably in Material Sciences, their most prestigious departments were of humanities, and not heavy machinery…
“That taken care of,” Marcella said, “I’ll consider that an early birthday gift, Bonetto. Thirty-five years old in a week, hooray!”
Lorenzo blinked, and thought. “Won’t you be forty?”
“Do I look forty, Lolo?” Marcella asked with a tinge of threat.
“…Er, no.”
“Then I’ll be thirty-five.”
“Yes.”
“What a good boy you and Yenny have raised, Bonetto,” Marcella said with smug sweetness.
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The next day. The New Year Celebration was coming soon enough, and you intended for Luigi and Benito to be friends again by then, with the first step in motion. Wrangling Chiara Leone into not being the problem, if she was.
She was not forthcoming with who she liked. Being a thirteen-year-old girl, she didn’t want to share, not with her parents, and her brother proved similarly recalcitrant. She did let slip one thing though- the object of her affection…was no eleven-year-old boy. So that decided what you actually needed to know.
That left the boys then. Something assuredly less simple.