The next thing I knew there were kids running around the house. I looked around for my wife and the sheets were cold. How the fuck long have I been asleep?

Her knock out punch pussy had done it again. I scratched my rumbling gut and rolled my ass outta bed. I checked on Cody first but he was already out of bed.

The noise level on the first floor was off the charts and I thought long and hard about leaving Kat’s conniving ass to handle her kids on her own.

In the end I manned up and made my way into bedlam. “Daddy, daddy, daddy…” You’d think they hadn’t seen me in years.

I hugged each one in turn including my eldest who was helping her mom get dinner together. That one gave me a smirk and waddled her ass to the stove.

“Nice nap?” She set me up! I walked over to her and put my lips to her ear so my nosy ass kids

couldn’t get into my shit. “Tonight, that ass is mine.” She laughed and swatted at me while the little one was giving me looks.

I answered a million questions while eating and trying to feed Cody who was once again on my lap to give his mom a break and because whenever daddy’s around he’s the high chair.

I heard all about school and what was going on all the while just happy that no one was calling my damn house to complain about shit.

Catalina was her usual self, annoying the hell out of her siblings until they escaped her tyranny and made a beeline out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with this nut.

I could tell she had something on her mind but bit my tongue not to ask. Knowing her, if it’s important enough she’d tell me in her own time.

“Leave those Kat, I’ll take care of it.” I sat the baby in his chair and tackled the dishes while she sat with a big cup of some crap that she was sipping on.

“Quit playing Kat!” She kept giving me that look like she’d taken me down. Her pregnant ass is

about to bite off more than she can chew. “What? I didn’t say anything.” I love the fact that I can still make her laugh.

Not one of those fake shits either, but a real genuine from the gut laugh that made her eyes twinkle. I still feel that shit in my gut. I was almost tempted to let her off the hook. Nah! I have to represent.

“You need me to make any runs?”

“Nope, I want to sit in the den and watch a movie with you.” I dried my hands and grabbed the kid for his bath and sidestepped Mengele and her shit.

Kat’s ass fell asleep half an hour into the movie so I guess I was gonna have to put my revenge fuck on hold. I carried her up to bed and stood over her until she got settled before heading back downstairs.

I never go to sleep before my kids, especially Mengele, that’s a recipe for disaster. So after reminding them for the one thousandth time what time bedtime was, I headed up to my office.

“Daddy?” Shit, this kid! Where did she come from? I didn’t let her know she’d caught off guard again.

“Yes Mengele?” I guess she was practicing her secret spy shit, sneaking up on me. Her uncle Hank has been teaching her ninja skills apparently, and she was even more of a pain in the ass with this shit.

“What happened to Jessica?”

“Who’s Jessica?” I kept tapping away on the keyboard hoping she’d get the hint and make this quick whatever this was.

“My friend from school.” It was the tone of her voice that had me looking away from the invoice I was reading over to give her my full attention.

“I don’t know you tell me.”

She wrung her hands and twitched from leg to leg with a very serious pout on her face. That’s never fucking good.

“I don’t know, nobody would say, but she’s gone.”

“What do you mean gone?” What the fuck do I know? Maybe the kid had moved like Todd the fuck.

She shrugged her shoulders and looked at me with the saddest eyes. Now my little henchman is scary as fuck on a good day, but when she gets like this I

know I better sit up and take notice.

“Teacher just said that she wouldn’t be coming to school anymore and everybody was crying. Well the teachers were anyway, but they won’t tell us anything. Sam said the bad man got her.” My gut started to hurt like a son of a bitch.

“Come here baby.” I pulled her into my lap and pumped her for information. By the time she was done I had a pretty good idea what had happened to her little friend.

I played it off though, I wasn’t about to scare my baby with that sick shit. But as soon as I sent her off to harass her siblings I was on the computer looking for anything I could find.

Just as I thought, it was in all the newspapers. Raped and murdered a few miles from here. Too fucking close for comfort.

It would be easy to pin it on the guy who’d just been released, but I’ve been to the Rodeo before and I know sometimes it’s not the most obvious answer.

Sometimes others wait for an opportunity because they know the mob’s gonna have tunnel vision. So as much as I wanna head over to his place and pound the shit out of him, I’d rather catch the right one.

That led to me checking my alerts, nothing. I’m supposed to get alerts on my phone anytime a child goes missing within the county and sometimes the state, but there was nothing but crickets.

I sifted through everything they had on the internet and of course the cops had already questioned a person of interest.

That’s when I learned that there were more than a few of those assholes within a fifty mile radius of the outskirts of my little haven.

I reached for the phone to call Jared but thought better of it. Let him have one more night of peace because sure as fuck this was going to keep us on our toes. As it would any man or woman with a kid to protect.

Right now my biggest worry though was what I was going to tell my kid. Knowing her she’s not gonna let it go and I don’t want her knowing this fucked up shit. I don’t even want Kat knowing.

Which means I have to play this shit off and find a way to keep her from looking it up. I could either distract her with some shit, or piss her off, either one would work to keep her mind occupied.

I found Mengele with her siblings playing a board game. My heart hurt just looking at my little girl and knowing that something like this was this close to her.

She looked up at me with a smile, that little spark of innocence from my little terror touching something inside me. I’ll protect her from this shit as long as there’s breath in my body.

I’m not keen on lying to my kids, but some shit like this, I don’t think I have a choice. Then I had to wonder if the older ones knew about it as well. Sure as shit they’d know the real story if that was the case. Fuck!

Should I bring it up, or should I wait for her to ask me again? “Aidan, a minute.” My boy put down his fake money and followed me out of the room.

“Did you hear about little Jessica?” I looked to make sure the little one hadn’t followed us out the room with her sneaking shit.

“We know dad, but Caitie said we shouldn’t tell Catalina. That’s why we’re playing games with her so she doesn’t think about it too much.”

I’ve never been prouder of my kids. “Thanks son. I’m gonna have to tell her something because she’s gonna come back to it. In the meantime don’t tell your mom about it yet either.”

“We know, she cries a lot because of the babies and this would just make her sad.” I’m raising a first rate kid here.

“Thanks again, I’m going to tell your mom later. I need you and your brothers to look after your sisters when you’re away from the house.” He nodded and I let him head back to his game.

I went back to my office and sat for a while thinking and rethinking shit. I’m a non repentant protector of my wife and kids. I’m not interested in what other people do or how they handle shit in their homes.

As far as I’m concerned, no child should have to deal with that mental fuckery and my pregnant wife doesn’t need that shit in her already crowded head. Decision made.

I made sure my house was locked down tight, had a little powwow with the security team who I was giving serious thought to sending back to school with my kids.

The asshole principal had made a stink when I did that shit last time. But if assholes are gonna be fucking with kids then I’m gonna have to do what I gotta do.

I checked on Kat to see if her evening nap was over and found her just waking up. Her tummy looked bigger to me, bigger and lower.

“Babe, you feeling anything over there?”

“What do you mean?” I dropped down on the bed beside her and cupped my hands around her stomach.

“You’re not ready to pop are you? What’s today’s date?” She gave me the squinty eyes and I realized too late that I might’ve slipped up.

“You and your boys taking bets on my pregnancy?” Go on the offensive Colt that’s the only way you’re gonna win this one.

“We’ve done it for all the others why should this one be any different?”

“I want in.”

“No can do, no females allowed.” She huffed which was better than I expected.

“What’s the bet?”

“Jared the fuck, who always win, says they’re coming a week early. Me knowing my luck say a week later because you like to fuck with my ass.”

“Your logic floors me. Sure, I want to walk around with an extra seventy pounds just for kicks.” She sure does love to exaggerate shit.

She started rubbing her gut with that look in her eye and I knew what was coming. “What flavor you want?” She grinned and gave it some thought.

“Caramel gelato with bananas and chocolate syrup.” Her greedy ass was vibrating on the bed. I laughed as I left the room and jogged down the stairs.

I rapped on the door post of the family room because it was getting close to bath time and bath time for five kids, one of them a damn bedtime manipulator is like traversing the second level of hell.

“Catalina, bath time baby.” She looked at the cards in her hands and gave it some thought before starting her shit. “Five more minutes daddy…five.”

She had to hold up the number of fingers like I didn’t know that shit. I know this game and wasn’t about to play it. “No, now. You three.” I pointed to the boys.

“Hit the showers.” I didn’t need to tell Caitiebear what to do, she has her own bathroom while the others share the other three between the four of them.

Of course Mengele made her way to mine while I was getting her mother her shit. Then I had to listen to Kat’s fuckery even though I’ve told her not to let her kids use my damn bathroom.

“I told her not to turn on the jets calm down.”

“When her little ass drowns in that shit they’re gonna haul your ass outta here in cuffs.”

Damn kid likes to fill my Jacuzzi with bubbles and turn the jets on, which only fucks that shit up. I set the tray down on her lap after finding it under her mountain of belly and tits. She shoveled the first bite between her teeth and hummed. Greedy fuck!