Chapter 70

Chapter 70
The next couple of weeks passed in a haze. Melina was working long hours closed up in her office with Cristina and Penelope. Penelope was as brilliant as Melina thought she would be, and she created the main frame of the site already.

Cristina was working on her advertising plan, so they could reel in as many new customers as possible when they were ready and Melina was having appointments after appointments to secure vendors.

By the end of the second week, they had made more progress than Melina had hoped for, so she decided to give the ladies the rest of December off to celebrate Christmas. They agreed they would reconvene the second week of January.

Having stopped the work, she finally found the time to decorate the house, but she needed first to buy the decorations themselves. After the incident with Chang, Marco was not very happy with her leaving the house to go shopping, but Melina was adamant. 

These would be the first Christmas they would spend together, and she wanted to go the extra mile. After long negotiations, he hesitantly agreed, but with the condition that Melina would go with 3 guards, including Matteo.

Melina didn’t really care if he sent a whole army with her, so she didn’t have any issues with it. A few hours later, she returned with a huge artificial Christmas tree, wreaths, garlands and countless baubles and decorations for the whole house, all in white and silver. 

She had placed an order for small Christmas trees for each guest bedroom, all in accordance to the colour scheme she had selected – white and silver. 

She had her guards helping her setting the outdoor decorations, with string lights, garland around the door, wreaths and stack of fake presents on each side of the door. 

The Christmas tree was decorated with baubles and other decorations and for the Christmas topper, Melina had ordered a beautiful dog angel.

Once she was done, the house had a winter wonderland vibe and Melina was very happy with the outcome. She was planning to do some Christmas baking as well, once she was done shopping for presents.

The following day Melina dragged Marco in a long visit at the mall, so they can buy presents for everyone for Christmas and by the end of that trip Marco vowed to never go shopping again. 

When they got back home, Melina wrapped all the presents in festive wrapping papers and placed them under their Christmas tree. The only present she kept still hidden was Marco’s, as she didn’t want to take any chances for his to figure out what she got him. 

One thing was certain though. The one who would get the most presents, would be Johnny, as she went the extra mile and bought him multiple presents and she knew that her parents and her friends had bought presents for him too – the benefits of being the baby of the family.

The small Christmas trees were delivered, and Melina prepared 4 guest rooms for her parents, brother, Stella and Sissy. Once she was satisfied that everything in the rooms were perfect for the next day that they would all arrive, she went to kitchen and started baking.

She made gingerbread men cookies and vanilla cookies that she decorated herself, but she also made a 2-tier chocolate orange cake in the shape of a Christmas tree. She made also some traditional Greek Christmas cookies, called Kourabiedes and Melomakarona.

While she was cleaning the kitchen, Marco came in.

“Amore, maybe you overdid it a bit. It looks like you are planning to feed an army” he said.

“I just want everything to be perfect. I am super stressed” Melina said.

“Why are you stressed amore?”

“Well, let’s see. You will meet my family and friends, my family will meet your family, oh and let’s not forget that my family and friends don’t know what you actually do for a living, so I am kind of stressed what will happen with that”

“Do you want to tell your family and friends the truth?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to hide things from them or lie to them, but honestly I don’t know how they would react if they find out”

“I imagine that they will be worried about you, which I will completely understand” Marco said.

“If that is all, then I can live with that”

“You think they might not approve of me?”

“I don’t know boo. I know they are looking forward to meeting you and they are happy that I am happy, but dropping the ‘I-am-dating-a-crime-lord-king’ bomb, might be too much” Melina said.

“Crime Lord King? Have I been promoted?” Marco smirked.

“Please don’t joke about this. I am really stressed. And I haven’t told them I was fired and now I am setting up an online casino for you”.

“Why haven’t you told them?” Marco asked incredulously. 

“I don’t know. I was worried what they would say and I kept avoiding the subject and then I had avoided for that long, that I didn’t know how to bring it up” Melina admitted. “When it comes to my parents, I still feel like I am a toddler that I did a mischief and is waiting to get caught”

“Amore, you are a grown woman and from what you have told me, your parents are very supportive of you. I don’t think you have anything to worry about”

“I hope so. I hate to disappoint them. That’s my brother’s job” Melina said.

“Your brother disappoints your parents?” Marco asked.

“Thalis doesn’t really care about what anyone says, including my parents, so he always does what he wants. Which is good for him of course, but I had always had to be the reliable child that does what is expected of her, so I can balance my brother’s ‘I-don’t-give-a-fuck’ attitude. And it has worked well for him. My parents have always been relaxed with him and I had all the pressure.”

“Sounds like you have too much pressure on your shoulders, amore. And it sounds like you have put it there by yourself.”

“You know, it’s funny that you say that. When I asked my mom, why they would always put so much pressure on me, but not on my brother, she said ‘I asked you if you wanted to learn how to play the piano, you said yes. I asked you if you wanted to learn a second foreign language you said yes. I asked you if you wanted to do ballet, you said yes. So you did all these. I asked your brother if he wanted to learn how to play the guitar, he said no. I asked him if he wanted to learn a second foreign language, he said no. I asked him if he wanted to train in the pool, he said no. So he didn’t do any of this. It didn’t really feel like a choice to me” Melina pouted and Marco laughed.

“So you have always been an overachiever” Marco winked at her.