Page 137 of Beauty and the Daddy
Six years of peace, and it only takes three words to drag me back to that night. Back to Belle bleeding on the floor. Back to Declan's gun pressed against her belly.
I'm already moving, weapon drawn, when the next sound hits me.
Giggling.
Pure, delighted, absolutely unhinged giggling.
"Leo Moretti, you give me back my crown this instant!" Sofia's voice carries from the kitchen, pitched high with indignation, but threaded with laughter.
My heart rate doesn't slow immediately. Can't. Years of living with a target on my back don't just disappear because your biggest threat is now a six-year-old hopped up on sugar and mischief.
I holster the gun and stride toward the chaos, shaking my head at my own paranoia.
The kitchen is a war zone.
Leo, my son, my carbon copy in miniature, stands victorious on the marble island wearing Sofia's plastic tiara like a battle crown. Peanut butter coats the jeweled plastic, his dark hair, and most of his face. He brandishes a wooden spoon like a royal scepter, grinning with the unhinged joy that only small children can achieve.
"I am the Peanut Butter King!" he declares to his kingdom of breakfast chaos. "And I decree that we shall have cookies for every meal!"
Sofia, twelve and convinced she's practically an adult, plants her hands on her hips in a gesture so perfectly Belle that my chest tightens. Her dark hair cascades past her shoulders in waves I helped braid last night, and she's wearing the diamond studs I bought her for her birthday. Real ones, because she's a Moretti and we don't do fake anything.
"He's completely destroyed my good crown," she announces with the dramatic flair of someone auditioning for Broadway. "Papa, please tell me I was never this mortifying when I was his age."
"You were worse," I tell her solemnly, stepping fully into the kitchen and surveying the carnage. "Significantly worse. I have photographic evidence and witness statements."
Belle snorts with laughter from where she's locked in mortal combat with our youngest. Three-year-old Elena, named for the woman who would have adored her fierce spirit, has inherited Belle's emerald eyes and my legendary stubbornness. The combination is devastating, especially when packaged in a tiny pink dress and combat boots that she insists match everything.
"Down! Down! Down!" Elena chants, arching her back like she's performing an exorcism instead of avoiding breakfast. "No chair! Want cookies like the Peanut Butter King!"
"You can't have cookies for breakfast, baby girl," Belle says with the patience of a saint, though I can see the exhaustion creeping around her eyes. "We've discussed this. Cookies are not a food group."
"Why not?" Elena's bottom lip juts out in a pout that could bring down governments. "Leo gets to be king!"
"Leo is not actually royalty," Belle explains, shooting our son a look that promises retribution. "He's just sticky."
I clear my throat, and three sets of eyes turn toward me. Belle's sparkling with barely contained laughter, Sofia's rolling with pre-teen exasperation, Elena's wide with the hope that I might overrule the breakfast tyranny.
"I thought I was the only king in this house," I say mildly.
"You're the king of the scary men with guns," Sofia informs me matter-of-factly, like she's explaining basic mathematics. "Mama's the queen of everything else. Leo's just the king of making messes."
Smart girl. She's not wrong.
Bruno, now ancient and dignified, lies sprawled across the kitchen floor like a living rug, his once-black muzzle now completely silver with age. He observes the chaos with the weary patience of a veteran who's seen too many battles. His tail thumps once against the marble when he sees me, but he doesn't move from his strategic position where he can catch any food that hits the floor.
Meatball perches on the windowsill like an orange sentinel, his fur gleaming in the morning sunlight as he surveys his domain with typical feline superiority. The cat has outlived two goldfish, a hamster, and Sofia's brief but intense obsession with hermit crabs. At this point, he's practically a founding member of the household.
"Papa," Leo says, still wearing Sofia's crown like he's conquered nations instead of a breakfast table, "can we have pancakes? The kind with the faces?"
Before I can answer, Elena chimes in from her high chair fortress: "Mickey Mouse pancakes! With chocolate chips for eyes and whipped cream hair!"
"And extra syrup," Sofia adds, because she's never met a sugar opportunity she didn't embrace. "The good kind, not that fake stuff."
Belle looks at me over their heads, eyebrow arched in challenge, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "Well, Your Majesty? Think you can handle cartoon pancakes without declaring war on the kitchen?"
I set down my coffee and roll up my sleeves, catching sight of the thin white scar across my knuckles as I do. The mark is barely visible now, faded to almost nothing, but it's there. A permanentreminder of the night I killed my brother with these hands. The night I chose love over blood, chose Belle and Sofia over the twisted loyalty that would have destroyed us all.
The scar used to remind me of violence, of the beast I could become when threatened. Now it just reminds me of what I'm willing to do to protect what matters.
