Page 677 of The Tempted

Chapter Three

My eyes flutter open at the sound of my sweet, baby girl’s cries. Turning over, Adrianna groans beside me, I feel around the nightstand for the baby monitor. Sitting up, I lean over my wife, extending my arm over her shoulder to turn the video monitor to face both of us. Crying at the top of her little lungs, Victoria kicks her legs in the crib. I bend my head and kiss Adrianna’s bare shoulder.

“Go back to bed,” I murmur. “I’ve got her.”

Her head falls back on the pillow with a thump as she closes her eyes.

“Are you sure?” she asks, already half asleep.

“Sleep, Reese’s,” I whisper. Throwing my legs over the side of the bed I pick up my sweatpants from the floor and pull them on.

I pad through our bedroom, across the hall to our daughter’s room, and head straight for my princess.

“Hey, hey, hey, what’s all this noise about?” I chastise, trying my hardest to perfect that gentle, baby voice that everyone seems to use when they talk to babies. I’m sure I sound like a fucking idiot, but I don’t give two fucks.

There isn’t a damn thing I wouldn’t do for my kids.

I used to think the mob was everything, that being a gangster meant I was someone, but I was nobody, just a regular street thug—until my son Luca called me daddy.

Being a dad—that’s everything.

And now there are two little lives I am responsible for.

Leaning over the side of the crib, I lift my crying girl and cradle her against my bare chest, right over my heart where her and her brother’s names are tattooed. I would have added Reese’s to the growing list of names, but she already occupies my back. It seemed only fitting that the girl who has had my back since the day I met her was inked over that part of me and the two blessings she gave me placed right over my heart.

Adrianna loves the tattoo on my back and sometimes when we’re lying in bed, she outlines the entire piece with her finger. She traces the year on top, the year that symbolizes when our life first began. Then she bypasses the A, which takes up most of my back and runs her finger along the year we supposedly ended, the year I went to jail. She finally acknowledges her first initial by pressing a kiss to the center of my back.

We weren’t supposed to get this happy ending we’re living, but we defeated the odds. I tried to stay away from her. I came home from jail after spending three years doing time for a crime I didn’t commit. I Did everything in my power to push her away. I made her doubt everything we were, all the love we had for one another and forced her into the arms of another man.

I can’t say I regret my actions because then we wouldn’t have Luca. I’m only going to say this once so you have a better understanding of who Adrianna and I are. I’m not Luca’s biological father but that doesn’t make him any less my son than Victoria is my daughter. I was there when he came into the world, and the minute I held him in my arms, was the minute he became mine. It amazed me how much I could feel for someone. At first, I rationalized my feelings as Luca being an extension of the woman I loved but it was so much more than that.

It was the way he looked at me.

The way he squeezed my finger with his tiny hand.

The way he ran to me whenever he saw me.

It was the way he said my name and asked me to lift him onto my shoulders.

I love Luca for the little boy he is and not for his DNA.

After the shootout at Temptations, when Adrianna shot and killed Rico—the gunman who was about to whack me—we decided life was too short and we weren’t going to waste any more time not loving one another. Victor released me of my obligations to the mob and encouraged me to give his daughter a good life.

It was Victor who originally tried everything in his power to keep us apart, it made me uneasy at first as I didn’t know what to make of that. He took the rap for killing Rico, gave me his blessing and told me to enjoy the family I deserved. In essence, the man who stole my happiness was the one responsible for giving it back to me.

“Tell daddy what’s bothering you, princess. Are you wet? Let’s change your diaper and then we’ll get you a fresh bottle,” I whisper as her cries begin to ease and walk her over to the changing table. I tickle her belly, and that smile that Adrianna keeps telling me is gas, appears, melting my heart.

A heart I used to think was black.

I change her, reposition her onesie before lifting her back to my chest and carry her down the stairs. I fix her a bottle before heading back upstairs. I settled myself in the rocking chair I bought Adrianna after she told me she was pregnant. Rocking to a steady rhythm I stare at the perfect life I had a hand in creating. Victoria looks just like her mother but she has my blue eyes, something we weren’t sure would stick.

“How about a bedtime story?” I ask, nuzzling her cheek, drinking in that addicting smell of a baby.

I may not know a single fairy tale, but I know a great love story, the one I created with her mother.

“Once upon a time there was this guy who thought he had everything figured out. He thought running on the wrong side of the tracks made him a man. He wanted respect on the streets and didn’t care what he had to do to get it. It wasn’t until a princess came along and turned his whole world upside down. It was then he realized no one respected him. They feared him and that was something completely different. So, this guy, he tried not to fall for the princess, but she made it real hard. She was a spitfire, a girl who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it. I was the lucky bastard. Shit, I mean, I was the lucky guy she wanted.”

I’m still getting used to keeping things PG around the kids but I try to make a conscience effort. Even started setting my alarm a half hour before everyone wakes up so Luca doesn’t realize me and his mother never wear clothes to bed.

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