You have a purpose in this world
Every day the world is brighter because you’re in it
It’s yo fucking world and everybody else just exists in it
It’s favor over your life
You are hope
You are joy
You are passion
You are love
You are light
You are resilient
You are brilliant (I know I already said you smart but I ain’t as good at this shit as you are)
You are the blueprint
You are the inspiration
You are the reason I open my eyes every day
You are my everything
You are the mother of my daughter. My legacy.
I love y’all, Calista Glee. Kiss my baby for me. I fucking love her name. We made a beautiful ass baby, and I can’t wait to make more, if that’s what you want. Enjoy your birthday, beautiful. Next birthday, we’re going to be on somebody’s island. Daddy coming home to y’all. That’s a promise.
Pressingthe twenty cards to my chest, the tears flowed down my face.
He knew.
He fucking knew.
Chapter 16
Shio Cuppacio
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped. The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped. The Lord is my strength?—”
Waaaaaahhhh Waaaaahhhhhh!
I didn’t want to disrupt their flow, so I ignored the first few minutes of Shya’s crying. She’d started by the time I finished my stretches and hadn’t stopped. Thirty minutes of nonstop screaming was excessive, though. Pressing the pause button, the treadmill’s belt slowed. My calves burned but that didn’t stop me from leaving the gym and climbing the stairs two at a time. Reaching the top, I headed toward the room where the cries came from. The heavy scent of fresh lemon filled the air since the housekeepers had been by yesterday. My floors squeaked under my gym shoes, and the wood was so polished that I could nearly see my reflection. I paid the team a hefty salary, but each time they left my house squeaky clean, I found myself thinking about giving them a raise even though I was paying them much more than I was initially quoted.
Waaaaaahhhh Waaaaahhhhhh!
The sight of me didn’t stop the tantrum she was throwing. Shya sat on the bed, the collar of her pajamas was soaked with saliva dripping from her mouth. With each squeal, snot poured from her nostrils, and her chubby cheeks were soaked with tears. Her hair was still in two spiral-tipped buns at the top of her head, split by a part. Yesterday, she’d worn a lime green dress from the clothes I picked up for her last week, and the matching bows were still in place. Bahati hadn’t changed the hairstyle, but she’d been refreshing it, or else it would have been a fuzzy mess.
Scooping Shya from the bed, I bounced her in my arms to calm her, my clothes slightly damp with sweat. There had been so much I’d been handling that most days I was gone before she woke and home by the time she’d cried herself to sleep. I checked in on them by watching my cameras, and Shya spent most of her day crying. I had questioned Bahati a few times when I came home, and she would be in the kitchen trying to get me to eat her food, but she assured me time and time again that she was just spoiled and in an unfamiliar setting.
Bahati had the patience of a saint. Most of the time, when I looked in on them, she was either trying to calm Shya or letting her cry it out. Like now, Bahati was on her stomach, the bed cover tangled under her, with her ass hanging out of the panties she wore. The oversized T-shirt was bunched up at her waist while she slept peacefully. The phone I’d loaned to Bahati was on the nightstand, and most days, it stayed there without her touching it. I didn’t want them stuck here all day without some means of communication, although I had assured Bahati that she was free to use the Range Rover to travel anywhere she pleased. She had a spare card, the keys, and her full day to herself, and the most she’d done was shopped online for her and Shya. However, most of the purchases were for herself since Shya already had plenty.
Not wanting Shya to wake her mother, we headed to the kitchen. At the halfway mark, she had begun to calm down. As soon as I flipped the kitchen light switch, the spices from whatever Bahati had cooked the night before greeted me. Shya wiggled from my arms. The moment I let her down, she steadied herself and went into the half bath. When I saw her approach the toilet, I turned and let her do her own thing. It almost looked like a phenomenon, seeing something so small on two legs and walking. We had babies in the family throughout my life, so I wasn’t oblivious to the anatomy of a human being, but being that this one belonged to me, I couldn’t help but be amused. It was good that she was walking, though, especially since Bahati’s arm would be in the cast for another month or so.
