AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The chubby cheeks and those smiling eyes were the reason why we were here. They were the only reason why we decided to abandon our previous place of hiding in Prague and to come back to this side of the world, this close to Winworth. We both knew there was too much at stake. We were only a couple of hours away from the predator we wanted to take down, but we had to do this.
For Casimir.
For his future.
There were not many things I regretted in my life, but I knew I would forever regret not being able to keep him. Not being able to watch him grow old. I wouldn’t be able to hug him tightly on his first day of school. I wouldn’t be able to tell him how much I loved him, how proud I was. I wouldn’t be able to do any of those things as long as Judah Blackwood lived.
A wayward tear rolled down my cheek, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t cry anymore. Casimir didn’t deserve to know what sadness meant—not yet. He deserved to know only love and happiness, and if Lazarus and I weren't the people who could give him that, then there was one person who could.
“Dani.” Lazarus’s voice broke my resolve to stop crying, and as if the dam broke, they started rolling down and down and down until my chest squeezed painfully while my finger traced invisible shapes on Casimir’s tiny stomach. “God, you’re killing me, baby.” His voice turned gruff and before I could hide the emotions fighting to break free, he was next to me, kneeling next to the bed, his own eyes filled with so much sorrow, so much pain.
I sometimes forgot that I wasn’t the only one who was losing a son today—he was too. But we were so consumed by our sorrows, our own pains, that we forgot to talk to each other these last couple of days. If I’d learned one thing over the last couple of years, it was that holding too much inside tended to destroy you at one point or another.
Lazarus leaned over our son, pressing his lips to his chubby cheek, closing his eyes as if trying to hide the pain living inside him.
“Laz,” I murmured, pressing my hand to his cheek. “It’s okay to be sad.” My voice broke as another sob rocked through my body. “It’s okay to miss him even though he’s still here.” Lazarus shuddered, his pain becoming a living, breathing thing. Before long, he climbed onto the bed on the other side of Casimir, looking down at him with love so strong that this tiny organ in the center of my chest squeezed even harder, telling me I chose well.
I chose better than well, and if I had to, I would go through ten more fires if it meant being with him in the end.
“He looks so happy,” Lazarus choked out, pulling out another avalanche of tears from my body. “I don’t know if I can do this, Danika,” he mumbled, looking up at me. “I don’t know how to say goodbye.”
I understood that. If there was one thing I understood it was this sorrow that fell over us from the day that Casimir turned five months. It was the wake-up call both of us needed.
We’d lived for too long cocooned in this little world of ours, thinking that nothing and nobody would be able to find us.
Until they did.
Until they almost killed us both along with Cas.
Until my heart nearly broke when Lazarus screamed for me to run, to take Casimir and get away while he held the men Judah had sent away from us.
“I don’t know how to say goodbye, either,” I uttered, looking down at the biggest love of my life. His happy smile was enough to brighten every single day, and living without it for as long as it was necessary wasn’t something I ever anticipated having to do.
I never even wanted kids. Never had I ever thought about having a family, but one look at Casimir after they brought him to me in that dimly lit hospital room, and I was in love. The entire time during the pregnancy, the only thing I felt was fear and uncertainty. But when he looked up at me, when he cooed for the first time, I knew I would give my life in order to save his.
And if giving him to someone who had more money and better connections in this very moment meant saving him, then I knew we had to do it.
“Laz.” I looked at the love of my life, still unable to believe that this man with a kind heart and even kinder words was someone I had with me. “This is not forever,” I said. “But keeping him with us won’t give him everything he deserved. We’re getting ready to take Judah down, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to Casimir because we were too selfish to let him go.”
“I just…” he stammered. “I just want him to be happy, to be loved. How do we know that all that would happen?” There was defiance in his eyes, but I knew that these were the last attempts to change both of our minds.
Lazarus knew as much as I did that our next plan meant he would have to disappear, and I would have to, well, infiltrate the one place I never wanted to set foot in. But I had to, no matter what.
“He’s going to be happy,” I pushed out even though it pained me to say that. “He’s going to be the happiest kid ever known to mankind. He’s going to be everything the two of us never had a chance to be. I want him to have a boring, happy childhood, Lazarus, without having to change schools every few months, and having to meet new people over and over again. I want him to be a normal kid.”
One eyebrow arched up, and with just that one look from him, I knew what he meant to say. Casimir was our child, which also meant that we would still need to keep an eye on him. We were happy with who we were, but we both knew that society looked down on people like us.
People who disregarded the carefully curated rules they wanted to bestow upon us, and I had a feeling that Casimir would be an extraordinary child, if given an opportunity.
“Come on.” I pushed myself up, rubbing my face dry with the palm of my hand, trying to numb myself from all the emotions. “We need to get going.”
“Dan—”
“Lazarus.” I looked at him. “You know we need to do this. I don’t wanna do it anymore than you do, but we have to. We promised we will always do what’s best for him, and this is us doing it. This is us removing him from this crazy life and making sure that he has a chance. A chance neither of us had.”
“I know,” he admitted, defeated. “I just hate that I won’t see him grow up.”
It was as if the weight of the entire world laid on his shoulders, and the way he hovered over our son told me that this hurt him more than he let on at first.
