Page 19 of Savage Daddies

“Felix Fernando is yourhusband?” Wrangler’s eyes stay wide open.

“Go on. Say it again.” Zoe rolls her eyes.

It’s a struggle to wrap my head around the fact thatFelixis responsible for the burn.

For many years, the man has been my biggest inspiration. He didn’t inherit wealth. He built it from a tiny, two-bed foster family home that didn’t give two shits about him. During an interview with Jimmy Fallon around a year ago, he spoke about how his foster parents apparently owned a drug trade and illegally employed all these underage kids, some as little as twelve, to deliver drugs for cash. Felix, sitting reclined in his interview chair wearing a Merrion Supreme bespoke suit and Rolex, said he had wanted no part in it, and kept his head down in school so he could escape at the age of eighteen and move away to college. He worked two jobs apparently, and when he made his first million, sued his foster parents who now reside behind bars.

That was the only interview I watched, and it was because I caught it live at a bar once in Vegas. The TV was the center of the room. Everybody was watching. Vaguely, I remember a question being asked about his wife. Felix answered that he prefers to keepZoeand his daughter’s lives private.

Only now it’s just coming to me.

“You have a daughter.”

“How did you know that?”

“You’re…” I avoid saying Felix’s name. “His wife. Everybody knows you have a child.”

“And everybody recognizes my face except apparently you three.”

“We prefer to keep off the grid,” says Poet.

That brings a smile to her face. “Me too,” she says. “But I don’t have much choice in the matter anymore.”

I watch Zoe. The poised way she sits up on the bed. She could lie down, slouch into the pillows and rest her back, but she chooses to rest on the mattress like it’s a seat. To be honest, it doesn’t even look like she’s resting. It’s as though somebody has woven a string through her spine, and they’re pulling it up out of her head, keeping her straight.

“Felix controls you?” Poet asks.

“He brands himself a very particular way. Everything must be designer.”

“He sounds like a loser,” Wrangler chuckles.

“Or psychotic,” Poet adds.

“He’s both,” laughs Zoe. She spreads her nails out in front of her and examines the one missing. Grimacing, she looks up at me. “He won’t be happy when he sees nine nails instead of ten.”

“We’ll get it replaced before we return you,” I tell her.

“Ifwe return her.” Poet shoots me a glare. “I don’t think she can go back there.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

Poet frowns. “Heburnedher. You saw it yourself. What’s wrong with you?”

The question I ask myself every day. Whatiswrong with me?

That’s the trouble—nobody understands. Not even people at the club. The only person whowouldunderstand is Felix Fernando.

Maybehecan answer that question for me.

He knows what it’s like to be the last collected student at school. To be the outsider with no friends or parents. Mine fostered me when I was young, and for fourteen very long years, they prioritized their actual, biological son, Michael, over me.

Oh, Michael. The sweet little boy who could do no wrong. You could call him a synthetic brother, but even that was a stretch. He didn’t have my back. He once invited his entire grade around to the house when his parents were away for the weekend, and then blamed it on me.

Even though I was a loner.

I think his parents saw through the lies, but for some reason they continued to blame me.

Felix lived the exact same childhood as me. He gets it.

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