Page 28 of Rent a Mob Boss

She lowers her hands and looks around the playroom. Then she looks at Lillie, who has gone so still with anticipation that I’m not sure whether she’s breathing.

“Okay,” Quinn decides. “Yes. Okay.”

Lillie’s shriek is a physical force. She launches herself at Quinn so hard the tiny chair tips backward, and they both go down in a pile of limbs and laughter and eyeshadow palettes. I sit in my tiny chair, and I watch the two people I love most in the world roll around on the floor, and I think: this is it. This is the thing I’ve been building the wall to protect.

I just didn’t know it yet.

It’s past eight, and the living room has gone golden with late sun. Lillie is draped across Quinn’s lap on the sofa, where the three of us have been watching a movie. Lillie is fighting sleep the way she always fights sleep—with increasingly absurd conversation topics and eyes that keep drifting shut before snapping open.

“Daddy?”

“Yeah?”

“If Poptart had a brother, what would his name be?”

“I don’t think we need another Poptart.”

“But if he did.” She then lets out a yawn that damn near splits her head in two.

I look at Quinn. She looks at me. “I think it’s time to brush your teeth,” Quinn decides.

The routine is familiar, but there’s a new shape to it tonight. It’s Quinn who carries Lillie to her room, because Lillie won’t let go of her. There’s nothing for me to do but follow along. We brush teeth and negotiate pajama choices, and I read a page and a half of a book about a rabbit who doesn’t want to go to bed. Talk about a relatable topic.

Then Lillie says, “Quinn? Can you tuck me in?”

Quinn tucks the blanket around Lillie with the practiced care of someone who has done this many times. Then she smooths the hair back from her forehead, leans down, and presses a kiss against her temple. Lillie’s eyes are already closing. “Night, Quinn.”

“Goodnight, sweetheart.”

“Night, Daddy.”

“Goodnight, baby.” I kiss her head. She smells like strawberry shampoo… and horses. She always smells faintly of horse nowadays.

We leave the door open a crack, then step into the hallway. Quinn leans against the wall and lets out a breath like she’s been holding it for an hour. “She’s perfect.” Her smile is so full of love, I can hardly breathe. “You know that, right? She’s really, really⁠—”

“I do know that.” The fact that she sees it opens my heart wider than ever.

She pushes off the wall and takes my hand. Her fingers lace through mine, and it’s easy, natural, like we’ve been doing it for years.

We make it four steps before Tristan appears at the end of the hall. He doesn’t walk toward us. He materializes out of thin air the way he does, standing where the hallway meets the landing, hands at his sides, face flat. He looks at Quinn, then at me. Then he looks at our hands.

“A minute,” he says.

Quinn’s grip tightens on my fingers. I feel the tension arrive in her body before I see it on her face. The way she goes slightly rigid, the small animal instinct that tells her this man is something more than what she’s been told.

“Go ahead,” I tell her. “My room. Get ready for bed. I’ll be there in a minute.”

She hesitates. Her eyes move from me to Tristan and back. I see the questions forming. The same questions she almost asked this morning at the breakfast table, about extra guards and unfamiliar faces. The things I told her not to worry about.

She doesn’t ask them. She squeezes my hand, lets it go, and walks past Tristan toward the bedroom. He doesn’t watch her go. He watches me, and his flat expression says what it always says, which is everything and nothing.

I wait until I hear the bedroom door close. Then I step toward him, and whatever’s in his face makes the thing that settled in my chest just a few minutes ago get up and start pacing again.

“Talk,” I say.

11

QUINN