Page 162 of Made in Love and Blood

“Kinda wanted to tell you to fuck off today,” she said then.

He nodded, smirking. “Grow up and do it; I get it. Let’s be adults. I’m here no matter what. I’m your father; that’s my job.”

“I’m not gonna tell you to fuck off.”

“Good,” he murmured.

“And I don’t really want to go over what happened in Chicago, because then the next four weeks are going to be even worse. Feels like it every time I have to bring it up again, anyway.”

Salvatore did it for her. “He OD’d.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Doesn’t matter,” her father replied, suggesting nothing different. “What matters is that I hope you learned something from that experience and that’s a phone call I will never have to worry about getting where you are concerned.”

She nodded shakily. “Yeah, never. I promise.”

“Stay here,” Salvatore said then.

Frankie sniffled away the scattered tears, wiping at her cheek. “What?”

“While he’s there, stay here. Your pets miss you. The girls miss you. I definitely miss you. We’ll patch the dam for a while, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered back. “I love you, Daddy.”

He pushed away from the counter, grabbing a square velvet box on the island as he did so. He found her with a hug that helped to make the rest of the room disappear for a little while. Kisses peppered the top of her head as she breathed in the woodsy, smoky scent of the soap he like to use.

“God, I love you, too,” he hushed atop her head. “So much, kid.”

“Can’t keep calling me that if I’m supposed to be an adult, too,” she teased.

“Wrong.” He dropped to his knees in front of her, smiling as he met her gaze and placed that velvet box in her lap. “Someday, when that amazing boy you love gives you children of your own, you will understand. I’m always going to be your dad. You will always be my kid.” Tapping on the box with one finger, he said, “And this is from us, although Carina came up with the idea as a way to share the news.”

She opened the box, but looked up at him to ask first, “When did you know I loved him?”

Salvatore eyed whatever was in the box, but she still watched him. “Probably when you were still too young to know what that kind of love was but somehow knew anyway. You asked about him every day for months after we found you in that bathroom together. You eventually did stop asking about him, but I kept hearing you all the same. It’s gotten louder lately.”

Salvatore cleared his throat, his attention darting to a different time despite landing somewhere on the table. “But I couldn’t fucking help him back then and barely had a safeguard around my own kid and wife by that point. So, I suppose you two just had to wait.”

He came back to her, then, gesturing at her lap.

“Carina said she had to do it white gold, because of the blue sapphires,” he said.

A white gold bangle embedded with blue sapphires rested in a pile of black silk. She plucked the bracelet up and spied an inscription along the inside as soon as she brought it closer.

For my big sister—SJ

“It’s a boy?” Frankie asked, head snapping up.

Her dad nodded, and she could see what the news meant to him carved into the panes of his face. “Yeah, it’s a boy.”

21. — her choice...

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Lower Manhattan, New York

Nico, Greenwich Village