I swallowed. “I promise. Your pretty little heart is safe with me.”
“It is?” he asked, the hint of a different meaning passing between us.
“It is. Completely safe.”
He nodded. “Good. I will call off the hit on his mother.”
“Jesus—”
His lips covered the loudness of my voice as he hugged me to his body possessively. When he broke away, his eyes searched mine. “No more talk of that man. It upsets me.”
“Duly noted.”
He supplied me with a firm nod. “Would you like to see who the children you rescued will be staying with?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Zahra
The children were playing outside in the expansive backyard; many booths had been set out for them to participate in different games, get healthy snacks, or get their faces painted with all colorful things. The tiny voices, innocent laughter escaping through mouths with braces and several ones with a few gaps here and there, filled me with a peace I had never once experienced.
By the side of the booths, clowns made children laugh, and a small kids’ band was also close to that area.
A huge fort was set up close to the building in case the kids were tired from all the fun and games and wanted to rest while they were there and work was being done inside.
The innocence of the surroundings made me smile.
“I have secured a building not far from here; that is where they can rest for the night until the work inside is done. They will come here every day if they wish to have fun. The manager here arranged everything, and I just paid whatever expenses she might have needed,” Elio said.
“It’s like a little camp for them. They don’t look tired at all.” My smile widened but didn’t reach my eyes.
“Hm.” Elio shifted closer, putting his arm around my shoulder and pulling my body to his.
“I honestly didn’t think you were this generous,” I told him, accepting the warmth his body provided.
He shrugged. “Children should not have to spend their childhoods being sad. They have their adulthood to cover that.”
I looked up at him, scrunched my nose as I raised my hand, and poked a finger into his hair, pushing his head slightly.
“Ouch,” he said, not a muscle shifting on his face to indicate that my action had hurt him.
“You say the most fucked-up things sometimes.”
“Stating facts is not ‘fucked up,’” he answered. “Everybody gets sad sometimes; it’s harder on some of us adults because when we were kids, we did not have a childhood. We did not play outside. Did not laugh freely. Did not…” He trailed off, his eyes distant as he watched the kids. “Did not know what true happiness felt like.” His voice was quiet.
A solemn kind of calm washed through me. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Now that we are adults, the least we can do for the children around us is to make sure they do not grow up knowing what being an adult feels like before they actually become adults.”
The care in his voice almost caught me off guard. I had seen how he was with that kid back at the tattoo place, and I didn’t think for one second that though he might have frowned at the kid like he wanted the poor boy to melt, he still cared.
“What do you think of them?” he asked.
“What?”
“What do you think of kids, of children in general? Would you like to have some of your own one day?” he asked, head dropping as he looked down at me.
My hand went to my throat, playing with the butterfly pendant around my neck as I swallowed. “They’re precious little beings; what woman wouldn’t want to have them?”
