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I tightened my hold on her hands when I felt her tense. “Your sister is okay. She didn’t get hurt.”

“What about Daddy?”

“Daddy got hurt.”

Maylee stared at me. I could see the exact moment she understood what I meant.

“He got shot?”

“Yes,” I said as I nodded slowly.

Her mouth fell open, and before panic could take over, I continued.

“But listen to me. Daddy is okay. He had surgery yesterday, the doctors took very good care of him, and he woke up afterward. I was with him. I talked to him. He was awake when I left the hospital last night. Uncle Ty and Uncle Sha are with him, so you know with the two of them they must be making him feel better.”

Tears filled her eyes anyway.

“How many times?”

I hesitated. I didn’t expect her to want to know the details of everything, but I should have known better because all my children got their nosiness from me.

There was a part of me that wanted to tell her that didn’t matter. She didn’t need the image of three bullets tearing through her father’s body in her head the way it had been in mine since the doctor told me. But I also didn’t want to lie to her. She was only getting older, and after everything with Maliah, Malik and I had agreed to start being honest with all of our children.

“Three.”

Her face crumbled.

“Oh my God,” she gasped as her little eyes filled with tears.

“Come here.”

I pulled her against me before the tears even started falling. Maylee buried her face against my chest and wrapped her arms around me, and I held her as tightly as my stomach would allow.

“Why would somebody shoot Daddy?”

“I don’t know all of that yet.”

That was the truth as far as Maylee needed to know it. She pulled away enough to look at me. “Was Maliah there when he got shot?”

“Yes.”

“Did she see it?”

I brushed the hair away from her wet face.

“She was there, but your sister is okay. She’s with Tahari right now.”

Maylee wiped underneath her eyes.

“Daddy protected her? Didn’t he?”

The question caught me off guard, so I looked at her with this puzzled look.

“How you know that?”

“Because that’s Daddy.”

My throat tightened. Of course she knew. All three of my children knew exactly what kind of father they had. I was proud of the man that I had started a family with. He would burn down cities to protect us, and that is why, now that he needed us, we all had to step up and assist where we could. Maylee lowered her head and started crying harder. I pulled her back against me and rubbed my hand over her hair. There wasn’t anything I could say that would make what happened less frightening. Malik had nearly died protecting one of our children, and now I was sitting here trying to explain it to another.