Page 108 of Desperate Games

Custody.

The word rattles around in my brain like a bullet ricocheting off steel.

I grip the phone tighter, jaw clenching as the lawyer explains the paperwork, the timeline, the fucking audacity.

Julio wants rights to a little girl he never once held, never fed, never tucked in. A little girl who calls me Dad.

Blood might be DNA, but family? Family is who shows the fuck up.

And that’s me. Always me.

I hang up, the happy haze I’ve been living in gone in a blink.

Because now I have to go home.

And I have to look into Andy’s hazel eyes.

And I have to tell my wife that the life we’ve been building, the love we’ve been living in, is under attack from a man I didn’t see coming.

Julio Castillo just declared war.

But what he doesn’t understand? No one—no one—takes what’s mine.

Chapter Thirty-Six-Andrea

I know something’s wrong the second Remy walks in the door.

It’s in his eyes. Those green eyes that usually look at me with hunger and pure joy.

Tonight? They’re darker. Harder.

He doesn’t kiss me.

Doesn’t scoop me up like he usually does when he’s been gone even a few hours.

Instead, he shuts the door, sets the bags down, and drags both hands over his face like he’s trying to erase something.

And suddenly my heart is in my throat.

“Remy?” My voice is small.

Too small for a woman who’s supposed to be his wife. A stepmom. A soon-to-be mother herself.

“What happened?”

He meets my gaze, and the weight there nearly crushes me.

“Julio Castillo filed for custody of Callie.”

For a second, I think I didn’t hear him right.

“Who? What?”

My brain scrambles, refusing to process.

Callie’s giggle floats in from the den where she’s coloring, her little pink backpack still dumped out on the rug from preschool. The sound slices me open.

“He’s Callie’s biological father according to the birth certificate. He was my sister’s dealer, but he never got in trouble for any of that. He’s been MIA for years. But now he wants custody,” Remy repeats, quieter this time, but no less brutal.