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Mine.
Shit!
I nod my approval which makes her light up. I spin back to my desk and scrub my hands down my face. What have I just done?
Balthazar clears his throat. “I’m going to show her the rest of the house.”
I don’t turn around. I can’t. I’ve got to get my shit together. “You do that, son. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Once the door shuts, I drop back into my chair. Yet I’m too agitated to sit still and jump up again.
This renewed momentum triggers a restlessness I’m not used to. I pace to the bar and pour a double, drowning the whiskey in one long swallow. Warmth burns down my throat into my chest. Except the fire from the booze can’t touch the inferno inside me generated from Seraphina.
What is it about this girl that impacts me?
Her innocence?
Her sweetness?
Her sunshine?
Doesn’t matter. She belongs to my son. I’ll eat and make my excuses to get the hell out of there. Away from her.
The thought kills me.
But I’m an asshole and deserve to suffer for what I’m feeling.
I fix another drink and grab the remote to bring up the cameras. Somehow, I have to be imagining my connection to Seraphina.
Wrong.
When I catch sight of them in Balthazar’s childhood bedroom, my pulse sprints through my veins. She glows, spinning around to check out his trophies and old video games, before racing to the balcony. The way she looks up at him when he opens the door for her confirms how docile she truly is.
He scoops her up and carries her to the bed with her giggling and squirming. I cut the feed. I can’t watch something so intimate. Especially since I want that too with her and hate myself for craving something I can’t have.
After Balthazar updated me about her parents, I knew I was protective of her just because of the trauma she’s experienced. No child should suffer like she has from having a father addicted to painkillers after a work accident and a mother who wound up in prison because of his crimes.
With a life sentence and no chance of parole, she ended things herself rather than suffer without her children. The woman probably thought they were better off. What a fucking ironic joke.
Now my feelings of concern have exploded to an obsessive level I can’t comprehend. Or act upon.
I gulp down my alcohol and stride to the den. The housekeeper sets out dishes at the wet bar. She pauses in her work and nods to me.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Wiseman. Dinner will be ready in about an hour.”
“Thank you, Mary.”
Her head bobs again, and she departs to the kitchen.
Damn it.
How the fuck am I going to withstand this temptation for that fucking long?
Balthazar
What in the fuck was that?
Seraphina seems just as affected by my father’s intense reaction to her. Silent and skittish, she clings to my arm during our tour. A bit of her normal exuberant personality returns when I take her to my bedroom as a kid. She spins around slowly, taking in my old board games and sports equipment.
