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Voices made their way to us. Voices I recognized immediately. And then they were running to me. Two little boys who owned my heart and soul. It hurt so damn much to kneel down and take them both in my arms at the same time, but I didn’t care, not then, not ever. Because finally—finally—they were back in my arms, safe and sound.
“Momomomomom,” Reed repeated over and over again.
“I missed you so much, Mommy,” Kian gasped out, holding on to me with such a fierce grip.
“I missed you too,” I choked out, tears running down my face. “I missed you so so much.”
We didn’t move for what felt like hours, but in reality it was only minutes. I wanted to stay attached to them for as long as I could, but the pain was becoming unbearable, and it must have been plastered all over my face because the next thing I heard was, “Boys, let Mommy come in and get settled and I’ll make ice cream sundaes.”
Ace. I glanced up at him, hating the sorrow I saw reflected in his eyes.I love you,he mouthed, followed by,I’m sorry.
I nodded, smiling at him, knowing I didn’t need his sorry. He’d been just as manipulated as I had. And maybe I could have held that against him. Maybe I could have been mad for him not seeing the signs. But it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but the man who did it.
Now wasn’t the time for dissecting the past, but instead focusing on the future. A future that wouldn’t be full of violence or suffering. A future that wouldn’t have me on tenterhooks every single day.
A future with Raf.
I turned to face him, knowing he’d been waiting so patiently for me from the moment the door had opened and I’d stepped inside. His lips pulled up into a grin as he moved toward me, his hands wrapping around my waist and bringing our bodies together as he whispered, “Welcome home, mama.”
Home.I smiled, inhaling a deep breath, knowing that it would never be this house that was my home, but the man standing next to me.
Raf had shown me what it felt like to love somebody unconditionally, but more importantly, to be loved without consequence.
Raf was my home. Forever and always.
EPILOGUE 1
RAFAEL
I wrapped my arms around her from behind, my palms resting on her stomach on instinct. My imagination couldn’t help but wonder what she would have looked like now if she was still growing our baby in her belly. Two months had gone by in the blink of an eye. So many things had happened over those eight weeks, yet things also stayed the same.
Travis was still on the run, just like he’d been from the moment he left Peyton to die on the floor of the bathroom. I ground my teeth at that thought, hating how it had come up so easily, along with the mental image of her bloodied face when she video called me.
But the difference now was, she was safe, between myself and Ace, we were making sure of it. If one of the soldiers from the Beretta Mafia weren’t watching the house, then Ace had permission to send some of his. We were working as a team, just until it was all officially over. But it meant we were all in limbo, on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
We were still in our state, but right on the edge so that we were closer to Ace. I was just over an hour away from the Beretta mansion, and an eighty-minute drive away from Ace’s place. It was the perfect distance between the two, but that didn’t mean I forgot where I belonged. The Beretta Mafia blood ran through my veins, and my loyalty was to them…and Peyton.
The best thing of it all though was that Peyton and the boys were living with me now. They taught me that it wasn’t the house that made the home, but the people inside of it.
“Dada,” Reed called, hobbling over to us, then handing me one of his toys before flouncing back into the living room. I grinned, not correcting him, because to him, I was the one constant man in his life. When he’d first said it a couple of weeks ago, I’d been shocked as shit and hadn’t known how to react, but when Peyton hadn’t told him to call me Raf instead, I went with it. We’d both been gaging the other, and it was then that I realized we were on the same page. We were in it for the long haul.
I had no intention of ever leaving, so I would be a father to Reed, just like I would be to Kian. They may not have been biologically my kids, but in my heart, they’d carved out their own little sections that no one else could ever replace.
“You okay?” Peyton asked, turning in my arms so that she was facing me.
I nodded, placing the toy on the counter, then burrowing my face in her neck. The road to recovery hadn’t been easy for her. She’d needed so much help, but the problem with Peyton was that she hated to accept it. So it had been a constant battle for us all, but Ace had finally put a stop to her refusals. I had no idea how he’d done it, but I was damn grateful. It was probably that sibling bond, just the same as Romeo and I had.
“Just thinking about what could have been,” I whispered, holding her a little tighter. Her breath caught, and I hated how I’d taken her to that place but…I couldn’t help it. It was a weird feeling, mourning something that I’d never seen. But it was the possibility of whatcouldhave been. Every week I thought about how far along she would have been. Whether we’d have started to tell people now that she would have been past the three-month mark.
Our lives would have been on an entirely new track, if only I hadn’t have let her walk away with Ace that day. But the reality was, she wouldn’t have let me stop her anyway, not with her boys in the car, ready to be taken from her.
We’d had so many conversations over the last couple of months, trying to figure out if anything I would have done would have changed the outcome, and the conclusion that we came to was that the moment they had taken the boys, she would have done anything and acted however they wanted her to just to make sure they were okay.
She was a fierce mama bear, but I was a cutthroat papa bear, and I’d sworn the moment I saw her in that hospital bed that I would never let her down again. Or the boys.
“I love you,” I whispered, pulling away just enough to look into her eyes. It wasn’t the first time I’d told her, and it wouldn’t be the last. I’d let her know every day for the rest of our lives just so that she didn’t forget.
She sighed, her lips lifting up into a sated smile. She was happy—happier than she’d ever been. At least, that was what she kept telling me. “I love you too, Raf.” She lifted up onto her tiptoes, pressing her lips against mine. And I wished that her brother wasn’t in the next room because, fuck, I wanted to take her on every damn surface in this room.
