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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ROYCE

Driving around only brought me to one grim truth: I’m going to be the worst father to ever walk the earth. How could I be a good father with all the shit in my life? With one psychotic asshole trying to hunt down my family and another psychotic fuckhead running my family?

I’m a walking disaster and I’m going to drag Bianca down with me. Even standing in her doorway and watching her sleep reinforces that thought.

I can’t shake the dread seeping into every inch of my body, burying itself into my bones. Bianca shifts in her sleep, as restless as I feel inside. I wasn’t there for her first steps or her first words—hell, I barely know what she likes for breakfast.

How the hell can I be the dad she deserves when I don’t even know what that looks like?

Outside, the wind is still howling, snow whipping around with it, the icy shards as dangerous as the monsters lurking in the shadows of my life. Right now, in the warmth of this room, everything is safe. It’s calm.

In this moment, I can focus on being the dad Bianca deserves… though trying to do that before I know that she and Gia are safe is near impossible.

Bianca stands up in her crib, dark hair a mess as she clutches the side and rocks back and forth. The pink footie pajamas she wears bunch up around her heels. “Hi!”

I can’t help the smile that crosses my face as I turn on the lamp in the corner, casting a hazy yellow glow through the room. “Hi, kiddo.”

She laughs and reaches for me as I lean over the crib and scoop her up. I get her changed before rummaging through her drawers for a little purple plaid dress and some dark tights.

It only takes a couple minutes for her to be set on the ground, her diaper going flying across the room while she races in the other direction.

My jaw drops. “Bia, you get back here right now.”

She shows off a little smile before giggling and running to the other side of the room when I try to catch her.

This is horrible, even though it is funny.

If Gia were to walk in right now, I know she would tell me that I’m a failure as a father. She would make it known that she’s better off doing this on her own just like she did last night.

And I hate that I agree with that.

She would be the first in line to point out everything I’m doing wrong, taking me down peg after peg until there was nothing left. Not that there’s much left to begin with. My father and brother saw to that when they turned me into what I am.

“Bianca, come back here.”

She laughs and keeps running around, not caring one bit that she is naked.

I don’t know how the hell Gia has been doing it for as long as she has.

By the time I finally catch Bianca and get her properly dressed, I feel like I’m half out of breath and ready for a nap.

Bianca giggles as I hold her close and sit in the rocking chair in the corner. She tugs on my shirt, standing up in my lap and reaching for one of the kid’s books behind me.

I take down the book and flip it open, reading the story to her as we rock back and forth. It feels strange to be doing something this normal while knowing that Noah is out there, searching for us.

I have to treasure this as much as I can.

Footsteps creak in the hallway and my spine stiffens. I hold Bianca a little tighter, pausing to listen, my foot drawing up onto the edge of the rocking chair so I can reach the gun strapped to my shin.

The steps grow louder. They don’t sound heavy enough to be boots.

Gia.

I breathe a soft sigh, foot going back down on the ground. As I loosen my hold on Bianca, she shifts, her head tilting to the side, a sleepy little smile on her face.

Everything is okay. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you.

Gia appears in the doorway as we get to the end of the book, her eyes shining as she looks between the two of us, but her mouth pinched into a tight line. “I could’ve gotten her.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and count to ten.

When I open them, she’s still standing in front of me, but now she’s closer.

I hold Bianca a little closer, setting the book to the side. “I’m not going to sit here and fight with you again, Gia. I don’t have the energy for it and to be honest with you, I may not know anything about being a parent, but I know Bianca doesn’t deserve two parents who keep arguing with each other all the time.”

Gia swallows hard, pausing in her stride across the room.

It feels like she’s hovering on the fence between snatching Bianca from me and waiting to see what happens.

I hate the limbo we’re stuck in.

She slumps against the changing table, running her hand through the messy strands of hair. “I’m trying to be better at this, but she’s been mine and mine alone for months. It doesn’t come easy, and I keep lashing out at you, even though I know that this is my fault.”

My lips press together as I stare at her, trying to figure out what’s going on in that beautiful mind of hers.

I get up, balancing Bianca on one hip until I get to Gia. “I wouldn’t want to raise a child like how I was raised, and how I think you were probably raised too. I know it’s our job to raise the next generation, but I don’t know why we have to do that when they start walking. They should be old enough to choose between right and wrong.”

Gia reaches for Bianca, and I let her take over, brushing past her out of the room. I don’t have time to deal with this right now.

Going around in circles with Gia is only making me miserable.

I’m tired of being miserable.

* * *

“Can we talk?” Gia stands in the doorway to my office after lunch, looking the same as she did this morning, her eyes wide and her bottom lip between her teeth.

I nod and get up, leaving the work behind. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I was thinking we could take Bianca outside to play on the swing out there.” Gia shifts her weight from one side to the other, her hand on her hip before it falls to her side.

“Sounds good.”

We pull on some coats and boots before stomping through the leaves to the playset. Gia puts Bianca into the baby swing, giving it a soft push.

As Bianca giggles, we take turns pushing her back and forth. I don’t know what to say right now. In fact, I want Gia to be the one to break the ice.

For the first time since she got here, I want to know everything going on in her head instead of the things she deems too much to tell me.

The secrets got old over two years ago, and they’re even more exhausting now.

I want her in my life. The good parts and the ugly ones.

She’s the mother of my child.

Gia hums for a moment before biting the inside of her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

My eyebrow arches as I give Bianca another push, grinning when she bursts out with another round of giggles. “About last night?”

“And this morning.” Gia shifts to the side, coming to stand beside me. “I know that I should be more open to how willing you are to help with her, but it feels like a piece of me is being erased if I do that.”

“I understand that you feel like I want to erase you, but I don’t. I have no clue what I’m doing when it comes to being a father, and I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be a horrible father, but I still want a place in her life. Even if it means that I have to work a million times harder than anyone else.”

Gia clears her throat. “I wish I could believe that.”

Irritation flows through me as I give Bianca another push. “You were the one who left, and you were the one who robbed me of the chance to get to know my own daughter, so why can’t you believe me when I tell you that I want to be part of her life?”

“Because I’m holding my breath and waiting for you to leave again.”

It hits like a ton of bricks straight to the chest.

I take a step back, not sure what to say to her right now.

After all this time, she still wants to focus on the fact that I left. She doesn’t seem to care that she lied to me for a year about who she was.

“You pushed me away every single time I asked about your family,” I say, trying to keep my tone as even as possible despite feeling like I want to explode. “You didn’t want to tell me a single thing about yourself, and I was so in love with you that I didn’t care even though I know I should have.”

Gia’s eyes water. “I loved you too. How was I supposed to tell you the truth when I knew you would act like this?”

“You didn’t!” I snap, voice rising before I lock eyes with Bianca and make a funny face, sticking out my tongue and crossing my eyes.

She laughs with delight, banging her hands on the side of the swing.

I laugh, but the amusement dies when I look back at Gia. “You did a fine job of ruining everything we had just because you didn’t want to tell me who your brother was. I didn’t push you on it either. I just wanted to know that the woman I wanted to marry was someone who wanted me in her life.”

Her step back is staggering. It feels like there’s an entire ocean between us as we stare at each other, breath coming out in white clouds to fill the void.

She blinks back tears. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Of course you didn’t, because every time I brought up something deeper with you, it was like you couldn’t get away from me fast enough. You didn’t want anything to do with me and I wasn’t going to fight you on that. Not when you finally told me who you were after a year of pushing me away.”

“Royce.”

“No, Gia. Just don’t, okay? I don’t want to hear how you try to justify this again because the truth is that if you had told me who you were back then, I wouldn’t have cared. You were the only person I wanted, and you fucked me over.”

“Fuck!” Bianca shouts, her shrill voice slicing through the tension.

Gia’s eyes nearly bulge out of her head. “You just taught her how to swear.”

I smirk and kiss Bianca’s cheek when she swings toward me again before I push her away. “A cursing prodigy.”

“No.” Gia sighs and tucks her hands into her pockets. “You’re right about everything. I was scared of losing you. I thought it would be easier to just never tell you about Noah and the rest of my dad’s side of the family. I thought that if you did find out one day, I would have a good excuse for hiding it.”

“Why did you?”

It’s the question I’ve been terrified to ask since the day I found out.

I had prepared myself back then to hear that she couldn’t trust me or that she was never going to picture a life with me. That she thought I wasn’t worth the truth because I lived a life enforcing what Aiden said.

Gia sniffles a little. “I just wanted one person in my life to not have their opinions on me shaped by my brother and who he is. You were sweet and you made sense, and I didn’t want to ruin that.”

“And look where it got us.”

“If I could go back in time and change it, I would. I would’ve told you who I was—probably after the sixth date—and then we could’ve figured it out.”

I can’t help the way the corner of my mouth twitches. “The sixth date, huh?”

She shrugs, a small smile lighting up her face. “I thought the fifth might be too soon, but the seventh sounds like I’m asking for bad luck.”

Snorting, I shake my head. “We’re a fucking mess.”

“Yeah.” She nods to Bianca, love radiating from her every pore. “But we made a cute kid together.”

“We did do that.” I look down at her, trying to figure out exactly where we stand with each other. “I think it’s time we call a truce. Let go of the past, work on being friends for the sake of our kid. I don’t want the only version of us she knows to be the one where we’re fighting all the time.”

She nudges me with her elbow. “We could even be best friends.”

“Let’s take it one day at a time and see where it gets us.” I give Bianca another push before turning to Gia again. “Do you think there’s a world where we’re going to figure out this entire co-parenting situation, or do you think we’re going to spend the rest of our lives bickering?”

“We’re going to figure it out.” She blows a kiss to Bianca. “But I think we need to get through this current situation before fully committing to a plan. I could be dead any day now, or you could be.”

“Comforting. You know all the right things to say to make a man feel better, don’t you?”

Gia leans against the playset, snow falling down around her. “I think that if we don’t laugh about what’s happening right now, we’re going to cry.”

“Who knew we’d end up some really fucked-up version of Romeo and Juliet?”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Bianca chants, kicking her legs with each repetition of the word.

Gia motions between her and me. “This is your fault. If I do die, you can’t be teaching her more cuss words. I don’t want her growing up like some feral little beast. She needs to grow up and be better than the rest of us.”

“You’re not going to die, so I don’t think we need to worry about what horrible things I’m going to teach her.”

“I might die. Noah wants me dead. You know that. By being here with you, I’ve betrayed the family. And your brother isn’t my biggest fan either. Honestly, the question is who is going to be the first to kill me.”

I falter in pushing Bianca for just a moment, the swing hitting me in the stomach and knocking the air from my lungs. Doubling over, I shift to the side, trying not to get hit as the swing keeps moving.

Gia steps into the way, giving Bianca another soft push. “We have to be realistic about this. I’m going to die. I do have a will. I’ve had once since Bianca was born. When I die, she goes to you.”

I straighten up once I can breathe again and take her face in my hands, my gaze searching hers. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“I don’t think you have a choice.”

That’s where she’s wrong.

I have all the choices in the world; it’s just the matter of picking the right one that sends ice water rushing through my veins. I could kill Noah. Going against Aiden would be risky, but it would be worth it to save Gia.

I might have to kill Aiden.

Could I do it? Could I kill my brother to save the mother of my child?