Page 31 of King of the Dawn

But my daughter just rolled her hazel eyes, then pursed her lips. She planted a fist on her hip and looked at me, as if she was waiting for me to calm down.

“Where does it end, Dad?” Her brown eyes looked at me with a sadness I wasn’t sure I could understand.

“What do you mean, kiddo?”

“I mean, we’re supposed to be the good guys, right?” Rose said, her brows furrowing in concern.

“Of course, we are.”

“Good. Because that’s what you told me.” She was playing with a small vase. She was holding a pen out in the light that shone down from my lamp. It cast a straight shadow over my desk. “You said we work in the shadows, where the light can’t touch.”

I knew what she was saying. This had been my pitch to her when she was running away from the bratva. It was how I first sold her on this life as a freelance agent.

“We’re supposed to bring down organized crime. We needed to end the triangle trade.”

“What is your point, kiddo?” I was growing impatient with her, and I was never impatient with my own kid. Or my sister for that matter. But I was getting annoyed with both.

“My point, Dad…” She shook her head. She was looking at me like I had grown another head, or something. She was livid. “Is that I don’t think slitting the throats of men at your wedding serves that purpose…”

“Rose Marie!” I so rarely ever said her full name. It was Rose, Rosie, Juju, or any other number of endearments.

I expected her to pause and understand that this was about to be a reprimand, but I had another thing coming.

“Now we are conducting a manhunt not to bring this man to justice, not to bring him to the authorities, but for one reason only.” Her voice trailed off as she stared me down. My own kid. She might not be my flesh and blood, but she was my child nonetheless. Was she too old to be grounded?

“What?” I said impatiently, when the silence rang on too long.

“Revenge.” She shook her head, as if the word disgusted her. “It’s one thing to hunt and fight to protect, but you want this man for revenge.”

“And what about it?” I clenched my fist, because I knew what she would say next. I knew it with every fiber of my being because I was her teacher. I was her mentor.

I wanted to give in to the parental need to scream: “Just do as I say!”

But instead, I tried to hold on to my sanity, and let her say her piece.

“The law is reason free from passion … Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.” Great. My child was quoting Aristotle to me. How the turns have tabled… I chuckled at my mental sarcasm.

It felt good to be sarcastic again, even if no one else got to hear it. Kiddo must have thought I was laughing at her, because her eyes narrowed.

“This is not justice,” she finally said.

I leaned back in my seat, staring her down and wishing she would be the kind of woman to cower. But she wasn’t. I knew that. Anyone with a working brain cell knew that.

“You want this kind of blood on your hands?”

“One kind of blood is as red as another,” I answered, feeling the rage building inside me. A rage I tried to tamp down because I was in control of this.

Her eyes were unwavering as she placed a hand on her belly. It was growing, in a small way. I started to notice an extra roundness in her arms and legs. Nothing that would be outside the norm, if you didn’t know her. But those twins were making their presence known in many ways.

“Will they still be fighting the same battles?” She asked, looking down to where she was holding her children inside. “Will we go so far off course that Jericho and Jocelyn will still be dismantling the same organizations that we set out to stop?”

I felt myself melting into my seat. I thawed like a snowman, caught in a warm front.

“Jocelyn?” I asked, tilting my head.

“I wanted them to have the same initials. Jocelyn sounds nice,” My daughter smiled. She often petted her stomach, loving the little things she carried in it. The little kickers. “Joss and Jer.”

I liked the nicknames. Of course I did. She could call them Leopold and Lobe, and I’d love them.

---