“I moved the money, by the way,” Marko said, stirring me out of my reveries.

“Three hundred big ones?” I asked.

“Yep, all put aside in the car at Location R.”

We’d divided up the money soon after the attack. While I’d been on the hospital bed, Marko had unburied all of it in case somebody really had found out everything. We later thought up places that would never be known. We never wrote down the locations anywhere – that would have been as dumb as what Ricardo did with his book – and we relied, instead, on our memory.

“Good,” I told him with a firm nod. “That means everything should be solid.”

If it wasn’t, I was going to be a fucking dead man.

*

The men were smiling at me oddly as I made my way to the office after lunch. I was tempted to tell them to turn their fucking eyes inside out or I’d do it for them. Instead, I breathed through my annoyances and opened the door.

Immediately the sound of a tiny voice caught my attention. On the floor beside my desk was Kayden and Allie.

“Here he is!” cheered Allie.

When Kayden saw me, his eyes widened and he stood up. He rushed to me and I kneeled down just in time for his hug.

“Daddy!” he shrieked.

“What’s this surprise?” I asked. I truly hadn’t expected this. It wasn’t often they visited me here with Allie’s busy schedule.

“Biday,” he answered.

I raised a brow at Allie and she laughed and translated, “Birthday. He knows it’s your birthday. I thought we’d show up and surprise you.”

“My birthday? I didn’t even remember.”

“Naughty daddy,” she teased. “Anyway, he wanted to give you something. Kayden, what did you want to give to daddy?”

Kayden left my arms and went to Allie’s purse. She held it out for him and he dug in and pulled out a piece of green construction paper. He hurried to me, a giant Ryker-like smile on his face that made my pulse quicken. I took the piece of paper from him and stared down at a set of round scribbles.

I didn’t know what the hell I was looking at, but I raised my brows and stared up at Kayden like he was Pablo Picasso.

“This is the best picture I’ve ever seen in my life,” I told him, and I actually meant it.

“It tells a story,” Allie explained, seemingly giddy about this. “About you. What did you call daddy, Kay?”

Kayden smiled shyly, retreating into his shell a little as he whispered, “Hewo.”

“Hero?” I asked.

He nodded.

“He said you were a hero, and that he wants to fight like you,” Allie explained, looking warmly at him.

He’d never actually seen me in a real fight. Sometimes Allie had come and he’d watch me spar or help train the guys, and he seemed really enamoured by it.

I took Kayden to me and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. He wrapped his arm around my neck and kissed me back. “You want to fight like me when you grow up?” I muttered to him. He nodded and I chuckled. “Then you’re going to fight like me. I’m going to make you into the best fighter there ever was. A real one. Not some silly little underground fighter like me. Something even better.”

Kayden’s eyes brightened and he nodded enthusiastically at all that I said. I raised my hands out like I always did with him, and he formed his hands into fists and punched them each clumsily. His coordination needed work, but he was giving it his best, and that was all that mattered at the end of the day.

The thought of me doing this with him for fun as he grew made me excited for the future. He was two and calling me a hero, and I had to breathe through the deep emotion that stirred in me. If someone was going to fix me emotionally, it was going to be Kayden through and through.

“You’re not silly,” Allie then said, frowning. “And you haven’t fought in a long time. I actually wondered if you missed it.”

“No,” I told her with conviction. “I don’t miss it at all. It wasn’t the right way to make money. It was just a shortcut. And now I’m just glad I don’t have to come home bloody and bruised for Kayden to see.”

Allie crawled over to me, interrupting Kayden’s punches. I immediately brought her close to me and kissed her softly. I loved that she melted into my side like she was as affected by my touch like the beginning. We watched Kayden draw on a fresh sheet of paper for a half hour, and it was nice forgetting all the bullshit for a while.

“I’m going to make you dinner tonight,” Allie told me. “And it’s going to taste like ass, but you better eat it and appreciate it.”

I pushed her hair aside and kissed her soft neck. “Of course, babe. Anything for you.”

“Then you’re also going to be in a happier mood. A smile more often wouldn’t kill.”

“I smile on the inside.”

She elbowed me in the ribs. “You know what I mean, asshat.”

“Your asshat.”

Her face turned to me, and the warmth there stirred me from within even more. Scratch out what I said before – Kayden and Allie were going to fix me through and through.

“I miss that humour,” she whispered softly. “I see only little bits of it here and there. I want more of it.”

“Then you’ll get more of it,” I promised.

She seemed very happy about that. When it was finally time to go, she gathered Kayden in her arms.

“See you for dinner,” she said to me, giving me a final kiss on the lips.

“See you, Al.”

I watched her leave in that short fucking dress that made my cock stir hungrily. I slapped the head of a man nearby when he began to check her out.

“Not on my fucking watch,” I snarled at him.

When I returned inside my office, I picked up Kayden’s paper and hung it on my wall. I stared at it for minutes on end.

He wanted to be a fighter. He wanted to be like me.

Kayden was going to get there, and I was going to help him.

Sixteen

Allie

I was running around the kitchen. My thoughts were a frenzy as I fried up the steak, squashed the mashed potato, and then whisked the one minute gravy all while tending to Kayden. He was laughing hysterically at my frazzled state, and I stuck my tongue at him several times, causing that laughter to increase in volume.

“Mommy silly,” he said as he built his blocks and purposely knocked them down. I nearly tripped over them three times.