Page 62 of Second Chance Daddy

“Look!” She grins, shoving a piece of paper in my face.

The drawing’s a disaster—stick figures with spaghetti arms, heads too big, colors bleeding outside the lines—but I know exactly what it is the second I see it.

Three figures. Me. Her. Cassie.

All holding hands.

“Family!” she announces

The word doesn’t just hit—it detonates. A wrecking ball to the chest, clean through ribs, straight to the heart—my father spent years forcing me to forget.

I swallow the lump clawing its way up my throat and force my face to stay locked down. Can’t let her see the quake under my skin.

I ruffle her hair and manage some tight-lipped smile like this is just cute, just innocent.

But inside? Inside, the storm breaks wide fucking open.

Because here’s the thing—whoever she belongs to, I’m already all-in with this kid. And that terrifies me more than anything Gino Esposito’s got in his arsenal.

Because if she’s mine? Every fucked-up piece of me will burn this world to ash, keeping her safe.

If she’s not? Doesn’t matter. I already made the call.

She’s mine anyway.

Every wall I’ve built cracks down the center.

She has no idea the fuse she just lit.

And there’s no putting that explosion back in the box.

The house isdark when I move through it hours later, when everyone’s gone off to bed.

I should be sleeping too. Hell, I should be anywhere but here, pacing like a goddamn ghost with a vendetta. But my head’s spinning, and the drawing—the one Aria shoved in my face this afternoon—has been rattling around in my skull on repeat.

Family.

The word shouldn’t mess me up as badly as it does, but it cracked something loose. Made it impossible to ignore the itch in my chest—the need to go beyond guesses and get to the cold, hard truth.

I tell myself it’s because I need to know what I’m protecting. Because that stalker’s orders from the other night still ring in my head like a loaded gun—Confirm paternity. Then terminate.

But deep down? I know it’s more than that.

It’s the way she looks at me. Like I already belong to her. Like I’ve been hers longer than I’ve been anyone’s.

I end up in the storage closet off the old guest room, dragging through dusty boxes like a man hunting ghosts. Tina and I dumped all this shit here when we took over the house—half-forgotten family photos, junk, pieces of a past I never cared to keep track of.

But tonight? It’s precisely what I’m looking for.

It takes hours. Dust sticks to my hands, cardboard boxes collapsing under their weight, but finally, in the attic upstairs, I find the bin: old photos, the faded snapshots of another life.

I go through the memories, and then I find it.

A faded photograph.

I’m barely sixteen in the picture, still not grown into my jawline. Staring back at me is the same wild stare, same blue-gray eyes, and the same deep-set eyes I’ve been staring into every morning.

My stomach knots, and my fingers curl tight around the edges of the photo.