Page 106 of Disgrace

John frowned, and scrubbed a hand down his jaw. Rolling to his back, he stared at the ceiling. “I never gave it a lot of thought—settled myself on the idea it just wasn’t going to be something I moved forward with.”

“See, that kind of sounds like a strong no.”

He looked over at her. The intensity of his gaze made her still in place.

Siena still managed to speak. “This is a hard line for me, John. I want children. I have always wanted children.”

He nodded. “I never did.”

Ouch.

“Until this, and you,” he added in a murmur.

Relief so sweet it was almost poisonous swept through Siena’s insides. “Oh?”

“Mmm.” John sighed, and went back to staring at the ceiling. “Like everything in my life, I can’t go into something like that without planning for it. It’s a huge change, and—”

“I get it.”

Quickly, Siena crossed the space between them, and crawled back on top of him. She straddled his waist, tangled their fingers together, and looked down at him.

“But there isn’t, by the way,” she said.

John cocked a brow. “What?”

“Something wrong with you. There isn’t.”

“It took me a long time to figure that out, though, Siena. I’m thirty-one now. I still wake up some mornings and think, why can’t my brain work like everybody else’s? I wonder why I have to struggle with emotions, and processing them, not to mention everything else that comes along with being bipolar. It took a long time to figure out nothing was wrong. It was hell.”

“But you did. That’s what matters most today.”

John didn’t deny it.

Siena felt like that was a battle won for him.

• • •

Siena’s attention drifted between her brother saying one last goodbye to the closed casket keeping Kev’s body hidden from view, and the sunlight streaming in through the colorful stained glass windows. She should have been more present, or at least, made the effort to seem like she gave some kind of damn.

She couldn’t do it.

At least, she had managed to put on a proper black dress, sweep her hair into a simple chignon, and brush her face with a bit of makeup. It wasn’t the effort she would usually put into getting ready for church or a funeral, but it was the best she could do for today. Anything more, and it might seem like she cared.

She didn’t.

Darren nodded to one of his men when the guy came closer. It seemed like her brother had more of those—men to do his bidding—than she cared to count, now. Unlike Kev who only worked with a couple of people, and kept Darren the closest, her other brother was entirely different. He kept many men at his side, and handed out orders like a tyrant who was unwilling to be questioned or challenged.

The change had happened instantly.

Practically overnight.

Siena supposed she now understood what her father had meant when he once told her that while many bosses came into the position by chance, far more bosses in this life were simply made that way. Men born to be in a position of power because they had the temperament, control, and mindset to do the job.

Her brother was not the man born to do the job, but rather, one who had come into the seat by chance, and was making the best of what he had to work with. Sometimes, it was a fascinating show to watch, and other times, it was incredibly disconcerting to Siena.

Darren was a chameleon—able to change the exterior he offered to someone depending on the situation at hand. He might not be a boss on the inside, but he was fully capable of presenting the image of a boss on the outside when he needed to.

Unlike John.