Page 102 of The Woman in the Warehouse

“Remember when I got Keith’s friends to build Ant and me smart watches with GPS, but ones that couldn’t be traced through the company?” I asked, swiping to the map. Obviously, Ant didn’t want the government knowing where he was all the time, but given his tendency to get hurt, I wanted access. The Family too, if they needed it. So we’d needed someone to tweak the watches for us.

“Vaguely,” my mom agreed.

“Well, I made sure the fall alert was on for Anthony,” I admitted. “And it sends the alert right to my phone the second of impact,” I told her as I looked at the map, then turned and rushed toward the front of the building.

Where I found Ant pulling himself up off of the ground where he’d fallen, dropping three coffee cups, the contents splattered all over the sidewalk.

“Great,” he said, neck going red as he saw us rushing out, “an audience for my humiliation.”

“I got the fall alert,” I told him as I bent down to pick up the tray with their empty coffees.

“Let me see your hands,” my mother demanded, slipping Fury’s leash onto her wrist to reach for them herself. “Not too bad,” she said. “But you need to wash them ASAP.”

Ant nodded at that, then bent to press a kiss to my head. “How are things going?”

“Been busy. We’re almost ready to be up and running,” I told him.

It was all falling into place.

Anthony finally got that promotion he’d been wanting for years, getting his own neighborhood to control, and the ability to run his own crew.

We’d officially moved in together two months after having technically been living together since the day after the shooting.

And, now, we had the business almost up and running.

Little steps toward our future.

I couldn’t wait to see what might be next.

Anthony - 3 years

I didn’t know which was worse.

The baby screaming his head off for almost an hour straight.

Or his mother just as hysterical because she couldn’t calm him down.

“He’s fed. He’s changed. I rocked. I sang. I pushed him in the stroller…” Saylor said, sniffling hard.

I thought I’d brought out a softer side of Saylor over the course of our relationship. But motherhood had revealed whole other facets of her softness.

It was likely all compounded by her insecurities about motherhood.

Sure, she’d been around a fuckton of babies since we’d gotten together. But she’d always had the luxury of handing said babies back to their parents when they got too fussy.

It was a whole other thing to her to be fully responsible for the wellbeing and happiness for a tiny human that was completely dependent on her.

I’d only left for five hours, needing to square away some issues with my crew. But it was the first time she’d ever been fully alone with the baby for longer than how long it took to shower or walk Fury.

“It’s alright,” I told her as there was a key in the lock.

I was expecting my mother, who’d been around every single day since we brought the baby home from the hospital.

She’d made herself invaluable. Cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, taking the baby for a few hours, so Saylor and I could get a few uninterrupted hours of sleep.

But it was actually Keith with a basket, and a newly svelte Petunia who made their way inside.

Once he’d committed to her, Petunia had become his whole world. He bought her the best food on the market, treated her many rolls with specialized salves and ointments, and organized a daily walking group with himself and Petunia, my mom and her new dog, Halle and her dog she’d rescued from the woods, and Brio with his half dozen or so fosters.

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