Chapter Eleven
Caroline
Present Day
The next morning came earlier than I wanted it to. But my four-year-old daughter could only sleep for so long. Especially when she’d fallen asleep yesterday afternoon.
She was bouncing on the bed, pinching my face, and in general, super excited to be reunited with her favorite person—me.
“Mommy!”
I peeled open my sleepy eyes and smiled at her, recognizing my morning breath for what it was—zombie corpse bad. “My baby girl!” I cheered excitedly and crushed her against me.
“I’m never leaving you again!” she said against my hair. “Not ever.”
“I’m one-hundred percent okay with that.”
I relaxed my hold and she nestled into the crook of my arm, playing with the ends of my messy hair. “Can you please never make me see those people again?” Her little voice was stern and serious. “I hated them.”
Under any other circumstance this was the mom moment I would jump in and remind her that we don’t hate people. We try to love people, no matter their differences from us and blah, blah, blah. But this time, Juliet was right. “I hate them too,” I agreed.
She gasped, pushing up painfully on my boob, totally unaware of my discomfort. I flinched and moved her hand to a safer area. She stared down at me with wide eyes and an open mouth. “Did you just say hate?”
Holding her gaze, I nodded. “We’re allowed to hate bad things,” I told her honestly. “And when that man took you, that was a very bad thing. And when he made you stay with him and wouldn’t let you see me, that was a very, very bad thing. I hate that someone took you away from me. And I hate them for taking you. You’re my daughter, Jules. You belong with me. I’m never going to let that happen again. I promise you. I will never let anyone take you away from me ever again.”
Her little chin wobbled and she sniffled back tears. “I believe you, Mommy.”
She gave me the sweetest kiss and my heart broke in half, destroyed by the tragedy we’d barely escaped.
Maybe we still hadn’t escaped. I thought over the pakhan’s task for me. It seemed impossible. I had no idea how I was going to clear their name and get them out of prison.
Even more impossible, I had no idea what would happen once they were out.
Would they take the opportunity to kill me then? Take Juliet again?
God, I couldn’t even think that far ahead. I had to focus on my To Do list now. That made me think of Maggie. The urge to call her and catch her up to date was strong. But how could I explain this? How could I even begin to unravel the elaborate lie I’d built in Frisco?
I should also call the Frisco PD. But I couldn’t bring myself to make the call. They would have too many questions, too many assumptions. They’d already left several voicemails. My daughter was safe now and that was all that mattered. It felt somehow sacrilegious to make nice with the police in Colorado while planning to break several laws in DC. Ignoring them was the better option. At least until after coffee.
Instead of facing my Frisco responsibilities, I used Maggie’s efficiency tactics and made a mental list of all that needed to get done today in this city. It was extensive.
First up? Leaving this bed and this bedroom.
That task was a lot more difficult than it sounded.
I turned on my side, putting a little distance between Juliet and me. “Jules, there’s someone I want you to meet.”
Her eyes got big again. “I don’t want to meet anyone else. I want to go home.” She looked around at the foreign room. “Where are we?”
I tapped her chin, returning her attention to me. “Listen to me, babe. We need to talk.”
The fear left her gaze and I melted at the sweet sound of her voice. “I’m listening.”
“Do you know your friend Hannah?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Who does Hannah live with?”
She thought about it for a moment before she said, “Her mommy and her daddy.”
“And who does Nora live with?”
She thought about it again. “Her mommy and her daddy.”
“Have you ever wondered where your daddy is?”
“I don’t have a daddy,” she said simply. “I have a mommy and a Aunt Francesca.”
I opened my mouth and then shut it again. Clearly I had some explaining to do.
Quite possibly, I should have gone over this before today…
“Well, that’s not totally true…” Although I didn’t blame her since I’d never mentioned her father to her before, not even in a passing comment. And she, bless her heart, had never asked about him.
In her mind, we’d just always been a family with Francesca. She was too young to notice the difference between our family and others and I had always been afraid to even whisper Sayer’s name out loud lest I bring the hounds of hell down on us.
Turns out, I didn’t have to say his name; I just had to occasionally think it. That had been enough to open the gates of Hades.
Her head cocked to the side, tangled curls falling over her shoulder. “What are you talking about, Mommy?”
“You do have a father. A, uh, daddy.”
She barely seemed phased. “I do?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Where is he?”
A smile pushed at the corners of my mouth, but I tried to maintain a straight face for her sake. “He’s here. This is his house. He helped me get you back from the bad people.” Her eyes lit with a million questions and I watched her for a minute as she tried to process all of this information. “Would you like to meet him?”
The question took my breath away and I silently struggled to come to terms with what was about to happen. At four, she hadn’t learned to hold a grudge against Sayer for being absent from her life or blame him for childhood trauma. But she never needed to hold the grudge when I’d been holding it for her.
And now the two of them were going to meet, giving Sayer a permanent place in Juliet’s life forever. It was probably too late to decide if I wanted that or not. It was going to happen with or without my permission.
Obviously, I didn’t believe Sayer was going to push his way into her life if she didn’t want him there. He’d had plenty of time and opportunity to do that already. But circumstances out of our control had led us to this moment and there was no getting around it. Not unless I put a pillowcase over Juliet’s head, covered her ears with my hands and snuck her out of the apartment.
Except she’d been traumatized enough over the last couple days… so that wasn’t a viable option.
Juliet nodded shyly to my question, agreeing to meet her dad. But her little hand on my forearm held me in place. “Is he nice?”
The question hung in the air, like an elephant suspended between us sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Was Sayer nice? No. Not even a little bit. He was a criminal. He was an ex-con. To everyone that wasn’t me and even sometimes me, he was scary and dangerous and lethal.
On the other hand, he was fiercely loyal and protective and endlessly thoughtful. He wasn’t nice in the traditional sense of the word… but his best attributes were better than nice. He was a more complex man than simply nice. The word didn’t fit him, but that didn’t make Sayer less than. He was better than nice. He was more giving and considerate and devoted than nice.
But would he be nice to Juliet?
The question stumped me. I had no idea. I’d never seen Sayer around a child before. I’d never seen him interact with younger people at all unless they’d worked for the bratva, and then he’d been their boss so it had been a different kind of situation.
Was Sayer nice?
Would Sayer be nice to Juliet?
I nibbled my bottom lip, knowing I was taking way too long to answer this question and that even a four-year-old could become suspicious. “He’s very strong,” I said instead, trying to fit this into terms that she would understand. I didn’t want to disappoint her or scare her, but I also didn’t want to give her unfair expectations that Sayer could never meet. “And he loves you very much.” Okay, I was fudging a little bit. Maybe… I didn’t know that for sure. But I did know Sayer’s character or at the very least what he was like up until five years ago. And the Sayer I knew back then would have loved his daughter, would have done anything for her.
Except we’d never talked about having kids together. We’d never discussed marriage. It was a well-known fact between us that he loved me and I loved him, and we planned to stay together forever. But we hadn’t even talked about moving in together.
Now I knew that his dad was a psycho and his parents’ marriage had ended in about the worst way possible. It made sense that he hadn’t wanted kids or even to marry me. Looking back, I knew that he had a strong aversion to traditional relationship ideals. And I remembered him avoiding the children of our bratva brothers. But what did he think about having his own?
Oh my God, I’d basically talked myself into a panic attack.
“He’s here in the house?” she asked with big, scared eyes.
I smoothed out my smile and tried to reassure her. “Yes. And he wants to meet you.” Again, another possible lie. But we couldn’t hide in the bedroom for the rest of our lives.
Ignoring the impulse to bury my face in the pillow and scream in frustration, I realized I should have had this conversation with Sayer last night. We should have made a game plan. We should have discussed how involved he wanted to be in Juliet’s life and what our long-term plan as parents was going to be.
Instead, I’d lost my damn mind and transformed into a total hoebag. My cheeks heated with the memory of last night; of how I’d let Sayer have his wicked way with me.
I hadn’t even put up a protest. Or considered the consequences. Like both long-term and short-term as far as birth control went. I’d already been through one unplanned pregnancy with this guy, and the jury was still out on whether we’d survive it or not. I didn’t need a second one.
“Oh my God,” I groaned out loud, flopping my head back against the pillow.
Juliet’s face appeared over mine. “What are you doing, Mommy?”
I shook my head back and forth. Wasn’t that the million-dollar question? What was I doing? “I have no idea,” I told her honestly. Resisting the urge to curse, scream, and run away, I sat back up and swung my feet over the edge of the bed.
The reality was, I couldn’t sit in bed all day or even hide in Sayer’s apartment for longer than necessary. I had work to do. I had Russian criminals to clear. I had Atticus to murder. I had a million things to do and truthfully, Sayer was on the bottom of the list.
I felt like Maggie as I stomped around the bedroom, pulling ripped jeans on and searching for a decent shirt. I settled on a middie gray sweatshirt and a flowy silk cami underneath. Pulling Juliet into the bathroom with me, I helped her brush her teeth while I brushed mine and then we washed our faces and wrestled our hair into submission—which meant messy bun.
That was the most important step. There wasn’t a whole lot on the planet that couldn’t be dealt with in a messy bun. Everybody knew it was the most courageous hairstyle.
Smiling at Juliet’s matching expression of determination, I turned to my daughter and asked the question that would change both of our lives forever. “Ready?”
She twisted her fingers together and looked so unsure my heart hurt. “I don’t know…”
I kneeled down so I could meet her big blue eyes. This had turned into a quick decision, but it wasn’t an easy one. And for reasons I wouldn’t have expected.
It wasn’t necessarily that I wanted to keep her away from Sayer, but her entire life it had been the two of us. I had brought her into this world alone, raised her alone, with Frankie’s help of course, but mostly by myself. I was the only parent she knew, trusted and loved. I felt like walking out there to meet Sayer was giving up half of all of that. It wasn’t just that we would have to figure out joint custody or shared rights or whatever, but we were going to have to share her. Her love. Her affection. Her little life.
And I hated the very idea of not having all of her.
“I won’t leave you,” I promised her, giving a voice to my own fears. “Just because you meet your dad, doesn’t mean you lose your mom. I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me for the rest of your life.”
Her little lip trembled, and I realized how terrified she was of losing me again. Damn, Atticus, Roman, and the entire Russian syndicate for putting this fear inside her. “Promise?” she asked.
“I swear it,” I whispered, my words were broken with emotion. “And that’s better than a promise. That’s the most serious promise you can make.”
She threw her arms around my neck. “I love you, Mommy.”
I crushed her against my chest, holding her as tightly to me as I could. “I love you too.”
There was a knock at the door and a tentative, “Caroline?” from Sayer.
Regretting having to pull back so quickly I looked Juliet in the eyes and quirked a brow. “That’s him,” I whispered. “Would you like to meet him now?”
She nodded. It was all I was going to get from her. “We’ll come out there,” I told him.
We walked hand in hand to the living room. Juliet stared in wide-eyed wonder at the apartment, taking everything in with open curiosity. I looked around for Frankie, but she was nowhere to be found. Either she was still sleeping or she’d found something to do to give us this time.
Sayer stood in the middle of his living room, freshly showered and looking achingly grownup. His still damp hair had been pushed back from his face and he wore a light blue collared shirt beneath a gray cardigan with navy blue pants to match. He was even wearing his glasses and rocking back and forth on his heels nervously.
I couldn’t look at him. He was too good-looking. Too put together. And at the same time too emotionally disheveled. My heart hurt, and my body ached for him. My mind spun with everything I didn’t want to feel… didn’t want to face.
My heart screamed, why did you ever leave him? At the same time my mind demanded that I grab Juliet and run.
Forget the Russians. I wasn’t going to survive Sayer. I wasn’t going to survive this thing between us that had stopped having a name and purpose, and instead had become a big, ambiguous something that threatened to destroy everything I knew and believed and thought to be true.
Like a tsunami.
Like a black hole.
Sayer’s searching blue eyes found mine, hitting me hard with uncertainty and bald hope. “Is this okay? Or did you want me to leave?”
I licked dry lips and managed to nod. “Juliet and I had a talk this morning. She’s ready to meet you.”
“You’re my dad?” she said with nothing but childish curiosity, as if she couldn’t believe that this man was capable of being anyone’s dad.
His mouth kicked up in a cocky half-smile. Gone was the nervous, insecure man from seconds ago. And in his place was the man I knew, all confidence and intensity. Apparently, he liked being called Dad.
Wreaking more havoc on my heart.
And my uterus.
“You’re my daughter?” he asked, squatting down to her level.
She giggled. “I’m Juliet.”
“I’m… uh, Sayer,” he told her. “You can call me Sayer if you want.”
She looked up at me with a confused expression. Turning back to Sayer, she said, “Why would I call you that if you’re my dad? That’s a weird name.”
I laughed this time too. “Dad is fine, kiddo. We want you to feel okay talking to him.”
She didn’t say anything, she just clung to my side, squeezing my hand tightly.
Sayer glanced uncertainly at me. I tried to give him a reassuring smile, but I was just as freaked out as he was.
“You’re four years old?” Sayer asked after a while. She nodded. He looked at his hand pretending to count. “Wow, that’s almost a whole hand.”
Juliet giggled. “I’ll be a whole hand when I turn five!”
“That’s going to be amazing.” He grinned at her. “Are you so excited?”
She nodded again, but this time her whole head bobbed up and down, her messy bun flopping around wildly. “Yes!”
“Me too,” he told her. “I’m so excited.”
“Will you still be here?”
“Still be here when?” Sayer asked, missing the note of confusion in her voice.
“When I turn five,” Juliet explained in her sweet, childish voice. “Or will you be somewhere else?”
My breath caught in my throat as I waited for the answer. I didn’t know what I expected from Sayer or what he would say, only that I hoped he would lie to Juliet.
He held her gaze, not looking at me, not even seeming to notice I was still in the room. He only had eyes for our daughter. “I’ll be here,” he told her. “And not just for your next birthday, but for all the birthdays to come.”
He let one knee drop to the floor, bringing his body even closer to hers. She glanced up at me unsure what to do. I nodded my head toward Sayer, motioning for her to keep listening to him rock her world. Oh wait, maybe it was my world he was rocking.
“Juliet?” She turned back to him. “I’m sorry I was away for so long. I was in a place that wouldn’t let me leave. I wanted to come and be a part of your life, but I couldn’t. And I’m sorry that I missed so much. I wish I could have seen you as a baby. I really wish I could have heard you say words for the first time and take your first steps. I wish I could have been there for your first birthday and your second and your third and fourth. I wish I wouldn’t have missed so much of what has made you you. But I want you to know that I’m not going to let that happen again. I plan to be here for all the big moments to come and most of the little ones. I know that I’m your dad, but I’d also like to be your dad. Do you think that would be okay?”
Most of the gravity in Sayer’s voice went right over Juliet’s head, but she seemed to be more comfortable by the end of his speech. I, on the other hand, was a blubbering mess, just barely restraining a flood of tears. It took everything inside me not to launch myself at him and capture him in a reassuring hug that erased every bad memory from his childhood.
“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” she asked, like it was no big deal he’d been absent for four years or like her mother hadn’t been planning to keep her a secret from him for the rest of our lives if I’d been given the opportunity. “You’re my dad.”
Sayer stared at her, his eyes turning glossy with unshed tears. “You know, I thought I should ask. My dad never asked me if anything was okay. I thought it would be nice to give you the choice.”
I died. I died right then. My heart had obviously jumped out of my body and fled the scene. This was too much. How was I supposed to keep up my defenses, my tried and true suspicion? How was I supposed to not fall totally and completely in love with this man all over again?
It was impossible. The way he looked at Juliet like she was the single most amazing thing he’d ever seen. The way he talked to her so carefully. The broken little boy in him still trying to make sense of his childhood. The way he studiously ignored me as if he couldn’t bear one more expectation, one more misguided look of pity, one more person’s acceptance. He only had eyes for our little girl. He was only after her acceptance, her expectations… her heart.
“I like you,” she told him completely out of the blue. Then surprising us both, she walked forward and patted him on the shoulder. Sayer stilled completely. I thought he might have even stopped breathing. “You’re going to make a good daddy.”
I was helpless to hold the tears back after that. They fell in big, fat drops. I tried to wipe them away discreetly, but they poured out of my eyes like someone had turned on a faucet. My only saving grace was that they were silent.
Sayer seemed dumbstruck. He didn’t move. He didn’t react. He just stared at Juliet like she was an alien. An alien that had offered him salvation and resurrection all at once. His eyes remained bright with unshed tears and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he struggled to swallow. He’d grappled his emotions under control, but his restraint was paper thin.
Oblivious to both of us and our battle with our own emotions, Juliet turned to me and tugged at my cami. “Mommy, I’m hungry.”
I wiped at my wet cheeks with the back of my hands, thankful I hadn’t bothered with makeup yet. “I, I don’t know if there’s anything to eat here.” I looked down at Sayer.
He stood up and gave me his back. “Frankie and Cage went to get groceries for us.”
His body shook with a long shiver. It started at his shoulders and rolled down his spine. I caught his profile as he walked out of the living room and saw the ghost of the man I knew, a wrecked, damaged version of him that I had never been given permission to see before.
“Where is Daddy going?” Juliet asked innocently as he hurried for the bathroom in the hallway.
I looked down at her, hoping my smile didn’t come off completely deranged. “To the potty, silly.”
The bathroom door slammed shut in response. I stared down the hallway, wondering what to do. Did I go to him? Ask him if he wanted to talk about it? Or did I let the change take root inside him and allow him to come to terms with it on his own?
“Can I have a drink?” Juliet cut through my concern and reminded me that there was somebody else in this apartment. And she wasn’t going to be ignored while I had an honest conversation with her father about his childhood.
“Yes.”
“Are you sad, Mommy?”
I picked her up and dropped her on a bar stool. “Me? No. Of course not! I just got my baby girl back. These are happy tears.”
“Were Daddy’s tears happy too?”
My chin trembled as I valiantly tried not to crumble on the floor and weep for Sayer. “Yep,” I hiccupped unsuccessfully. “Those were definitely happy tears.”
And probably a mixture of gruesome memories, disappointment, regret, hope, and new life, and that indescribably beautiful, weighted, purposeful feeling of being a parent.
A dinging noise drew my attention to the counter. My phone sat on the edge of the island where I hadn’t noticed it last night. I’d just gotten a text message that somehow felt strange in light of everything happening around me.
Glancing at the closed bathroom, I ignored the ominous feeling snaking through my stomach and walked over to check who was messaging me.
Praying it would be Mags, I pushed the button so the screen would light up.
I know you’re in town. Meet me. Same time. Same place. ~M.
Son of a bitch.
Mason Payne. After all these years, how did he get my phone number? A sinking feeling tugged at my arms and legs, urging me to sit down and absorb the weight of this news. I fought it, choosing to face the newest development in this horrible twist of fate on my feet, ready to run.
How the hell had the fucking FBI found me already?
Oh, right. The damn sign in sheet at Central Detention— one more reason to loathe Atticus Usenko.