He moves over to the side of the bed and rearranges the pillows around me so I can recline back comfortably against the headboard.
“You look tired,” I comment, noticing the purple smudges under his eyes the same color as his unique irises. Violet-colored eyes like my own.
He pulls a chair over from the corner and sits down, then reaches across the bed to take my right hand.
“I never thought I’d ever have kids of my own. Didn’t want them, to be honest,” he confesses. “The type of life I live isn’t one to subject an innocent child to. But I’m so damn glad that you’re my daughter, Andie.”
Tears I seldom shed immediately gather in my eyes and spill over.
Declan stands up, a look of love, regret, and remorse marring his face. “I love you. You will always come first. I will gladly sacrifice anything for you.”
His words rip me open, but they also heal a deeply buried part of me. The part that is the little girl who grew up yearning for a father to love her, not to abuse and hurt her. But Maximillian Rossi isn’t my real father. Declan is.
“I love you, too,” I whisper, and he smiles wistfully. Like what I said is the most wonderful, beautiful thing he has ever heard.
Bending over me on the bed, he presses a kiss to my forehead, and I soak it up, so starved for the tenderness of a parent. “Get some rest. I need you ready.”
A mask falls over his face when our eyes meet. It’s a mask I’m all too familiar with after growing up as a child in the mafia. The man before me is no longer my father.
“Ready for what?” I ask. But I already know.
“War.”
Epilogue
Liam kisses me tenderly on the lips. “Pick you guys up outside,” he says and walks out to get the car.
I think I blush a thousand shades of red as Declan gives me a knowing look, but he doesn’t say anything about what he just witnessed. I know he will. It’s only a matter of time before he finds out that I’m with all four guys. I really don’t want to be present when that conversation happens.
“I told you I was okay,” I tell him, raising my splinted and wrapped finger in the air. He just arches a blond eyebrow at me.
“Thank you, Mike,” Declan says to the man in the blue button-down and jeans as I hop off the examination table.
Mike, with his disheveled brown hair and shaggy beard, looks more like a recluse who lives in a log cabin on the side of a mountain, than a typical doctor. During our small talk as he poked and prodded me, I found out he was a special forces medic who served two tours before an IED took half his leg and ended his military career. Helping people had always been his passion, so instead of letting depression over his circumstances sink him under, he went to medical school.
Mike hands Declan a bottle of painkillers that I’m supposed to take but won’t, and leaves after quickly going over the aftercare instructions with me.
It’s been one day since I escaped from Alejandro, but in those short twenty-four hours, I’ve been pampered, coddled, babied, and driven out of my ever-loving mind by overbearing, obstinate men who mean well. And now, I’m about to leave a private practice clinic that I was dragged to this morning so Mike, who Declan has on his payroll, could examine me from head to toe and take X-rays of my hand to show what was already glaringly apparent. I have a broken finger.
Declan cradles the elbow of my right arm and guides me out of the white-walled room that smells like rubbing alcohol and disinfectant. I don’t protest the help, even though I don’t need it.
“How about an early lunch?” I suggest.
When we left Falcon Tower, the morning sun was bright and full, and I’m not ready to go back there to be smothered to death.
“I can ask Pearson to prepare something.”
I finally met the exclusive Pearson last night. He was not at all what I was expecting. The man is massive, as in total brickhouse huge. The side of his face is scarred from what looks like a nasty knife wound that didn’t heal properly, and he has more ink on him than Jax.
“It would be nice to get some fresh air. We can grab some food from a street vendor and find a bench at Greenway Park,” I reply.
There’s a nearby city park with a small koi pond just a few blocks from us. I need the space of the open outdoors right now after Alejandro had me locked in a cage, then strung me up like a pig carcass in that small room.
We push through the clinic doors and step out onto the sidewalk. Liam should be arriving with the car any moment. I peer down the street and see the black Range Rover coming out of the parking garage exit and heading our way.
I turn and look up at Declan when he doesn’t give me a yes or a no about lunch. “Pretty please?”
I know he’s about to give in when he smiles down at me. But that smile never completely forms.
