Eternal Temptations (The Tempted Series Book 6) (4 page)

Nikki bursts into a fit of laughter as I collapse over her.

“Laugh it up, Princess,” I mutter against her shoulder.

“I love you, Mikey,” she whispers, glancing at me over her shoulder.

“Love you too,” I murmur, pressing a kiss to her cheek before I slowly pull out of her. “Go let them in and I’ll fire up the grill.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, we’ll feed them and send them to your mother.” I wink, bending down to pick up my pants. “Just make sure your aunt keeps her clothes on until she leaves and we’re all good.”

She grins at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and squeezing me tightly.

“I can’t wait to marry you, Mikey.”

I can’t wait either, Princess.

My eyes flutter open at the sound of my sweet, baby girl’s cries. Turning over, Adrianna groans beside me, I feel around the nightstand for the baby monitor. Sitting up, I lean over my wife, extending my arm over her shoulder to turn the video monitor to face both of us. Crying at the top of her little lungs, Victoria kicks her legs in the crib. I bend my head and kiss Adrianna’s bare shoulder.

“Go back to bed,” I murmur. “I’ve got her.”

Her head falls back on the pillow with a thump as she closes her eyes.

“Are you sure?” She asks, already half asleep.

“Sleep, Reese’s,”
I whisper. Throwing my legs over the side of the bed I pick up my sweatpants from the floor and pull them on.

I pad through our bedroom, across the hall to our daughter’s room, and head straight for my princess.

“Hey, hey, hey, what’s all this noise about?” I chastise, trying my hardest to perfect that gentle, baby voice that everyone seems to use when they talk to babies. I’m sure I sound like a fucking idiot, but I don’t give two fucks.

There isn’t a damn thing I wouldn’t do for my kids.

I used to think the mob was everything, that being a gangster meant I was someone, but I was nobody, just a regular street thug—until my son Luca called me daddy.

Being a dad—that’s everything.

And now there are two little lives I am responsible for.

Leaning over the side of the crib, I lift my crying girl and cradle her against my bare chest, right over my heart where her and her brother’s names are tattooed. I would have added Reese’s to the growing list of names, but she already occupies my back. It seemed only fitting that the girl who has had my back since the day I met her was inked over that part of me and the two blessings she gave me placed right over my heart.

Adrianna loves the tattoo on my back and sometimes when we’re lying in bed, she outlines the entire piece with her finger. She traces the year on top, the year that symbolizes when our life first began. Then she bypasses the A, which takes up most of my back and runs her finger along the year we supposedly ended, the year I went to jail. She finally acknowledges her first initial by pressing a kiss to the center of my back.

We weren’t supposed to get this happy ending we’re living, but we defeated the odds. I tried to stay away from her. I came home from jail after spending three years doing time for a crime I didn’t commit. I Did everything in my power to push her away. I made her doubt everything we were, all the love we had for one another and forced her into the arms of another man.

I can’t say I regret my actions because then we wouldn’t have Luca. I’m only going to say this once so you have a better understanding of who Adrianna and I are. I’m not Luca’s biological father but that doesn’t make him any less my son than Victoria is my daughter. I was there when he came into the world, and the minute I held him in my arms, was the minute he became mine. It amazed me how much I could feel for someone. At first I rationalized my feelings as Luca being an extension of the woman I loved but it was so much more than that.

It was the way he looked at me.

The way he squeezed my finger with his tiny hand.

The way he ran to me whenever he saw me.

It was the way he said my name and asked me to lift him onto my shoulders.

I love Luca for the little boy he is and not for his DNA.

After the shootout at Temptations, when Adrianna shot and killed Rico—the gunman who was about to whack me—we decided life was too short and we weren’t going to waste any more time not loving one another. Victor released me of my obligations to the mob and encouraged me to give his daughter a good life.

It was Victor who originally tried everything in his power to keep us apart, it made me uneasy at first as I didn’t know what to make of that. He took the rap for killing Rico, gave me his blessing and told me to enjoy the family I deserved. In essence, the man who stole my happiness was the one responsible for giving it back to me.

“Tell daddy what’s bothering you, princess. Are you wet? Let’s change your diaper and then we’ll get you a fresh bottle,” I whisper as her cries begin to ease and walk her over to the changing table. I tickle her belly, and that smile that Adrianna keeps telling me is gas, appears, melting my heart.

A heart I used to think was black.

I change her, reposition her onesie before lifting her back to my chest and carry her down the stairs. I fix her a bottle before heading back upstairs. I settled myself in the rocking chair I bought Adrianna after she told me she was pregnant. Rocking to a steady rhythm I stare at the perfect life I had a hand in creating. Victoria looks just like her mother but she has my blue eyes, something we weren’t sure would stick.

“How about a bedtime story?” I ask, nuzzling her cheek, drinking in that addicting smell of a baby.

I may not know a single fairy tale, but I know a great love story, the one I created with her mother.

“Once upon a time there was this guy who thought he had everything figured out. He thought running on the wrong side of the tracks made him a man. He wanted respect on the streets and didn’t care what he had to do to get it. It wasn’t until a princess came along and turned his whole world upside down. It was then he realized no one respected him. They feared him and that was something completely different. So, this guy, he tried not to fall for the princess, but she made it real hard. She was a spitfire, a girl who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it. I was the lucky bastard. Shit, I mean, I was the lucky guy she wanted.”

I’m still getting used to keeping things PG around the kids but I try to make a conscience effort. Even started setting my alarm a half hour before everyone wakes up so Luca doesn’t realize me and his mother never wear clothes to bed.

“It was hard not to fall in love with everything about her, including the way she ate her popcorn, mixing in Reese’s Pieces into the bucket whenever I took her to the movies.” I smile thinking back to the first date she conned out of me. I was supposed to escort her and Mike Valente to the movies but the two of them set me up. Mike took off to chase a piece of ass and Adrianna reeled me in—hook, line and sinker.

I was a goner.

“We were young, real young, and foolishly we thought we’d be together forever, that nothing could ever stand between us,” I continue, staring down at Victoria. I feel the lump form in my throat thinking about the first time Adrianna told me she was pregnant with the child we lost. Closing my eyes, I recall the words I spoke as I broke Adrianna’s heart, telling her the baby didn’t survive. A part of both of us died that day, and even now, after the healing, there’s still an empty spot in our hearts for the baby we never met.

“Things happen, baby girl, and as hard as you try, sometimes you can’t stop them from taking over. They pull you away from the things you want most and make them so far out of reach you give up, but I know you are going to learn, and you will learn from your mommy that you keep fighting for what you believe in. Let no one stop you from going after what makes you happy.”

If I had one wish for my daughter, it would be that she grows up to be a strong woman like her mother. Someone who won’t back down from a challenge. Someone loyal to both herself and those she loves. A woman who knows her worth, knows what she wants, and is the only one in control of her heart.

“I promise you I’ll never be the dad that takes away your smile because I’m too scared to watch you walk away. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to screen your dates and follow you around with a baseball bat, but when the time comes, and you find someone who loves you more than they love the air they breathe, I won’t be the dad that takes that from you.”

I won’t do to her what Victor did to us.

I’ve forgiven him.

We both have.

Our daughter is named after him for crying out loud.

Instead of harboring resentment we took what happened to us as a lesson in parenting. For me, I know now I have eighteen years or so to prepare myself for the day my daughter tells me she’s in love. I look at Victoria and as much as I don’t want to understand why Victor did the things he did, I understand his fear. Looking down at the baby I created, knowing these days and nights are the shortest part of her life, they’ll go by in a flash and she’ll grow up before I know it. That’s fucking scary. She’ll bring home a guy and with my luck, he’ll be like me, and I’ll feel like I’m losing a limb as she walks out the door holding his hand.

I glance down and watch her wrap her hand around my pinky.

I won’t stand in her way though.

I’ll think back to these moments, hang onto them with all I am, and remember that she was once the little girl who wrapped her hand around my pinky but also the girl who wrapped her whole self around my heart.

We give our kids roots and then we give them wings and watch them soar.

That’s the kind of dad I want to be.

“Well aren’t you going to tell her the best part of the story?” My wife asks, pulling me away from my thoughts. I lift my head and watch her lean against the frame of the door, tightly tying the satin belt of her robe around her waist.

The beauty of life is some things are just meant to be, nothing and no one can stop them from happening.

Me and Reese’s.

Meant to be.

She pads into the room, making her way over to me and our baby. Wrapping her arms around my shoulders she leans over and smiles down at our daughter.

“They proved everyone wrong and lived happily ever after,” she whispers, pressing her lips to my cheek.

“Yeah, they did,” I agree, as she drops her arms from around me and steps in front of me. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“The monitor was on,” she explains with a smile placed firmly on her plump lips. “You’re such a great dad,” she whispers, eyes shining bright. “I thought I couldn’t possibly love you any more than I did when I was fifteen but then we had kids and…well…my heart is so full,” she rasps.

Patting my knee with my free hand I adjust our daughter with the other and reach for Adrianna, pulling her onto my lap.

“Love you so fucking much, Reese’s,” I murmur against her ear.

“This is the good life, babe, the one we never thought we’d see, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, this is the good life,” I confirm, and even as I say the words they don’t seem to adequately describe what we were living.

“She looks wide awake,” she says, running the back of her hand over Victoria’s cheek.

“She’s a wild one,” I agree, glancing over at our smiling baby.

“Wonder where she gets it from,” Adrianna teases, crinkling her nose as she leans her back against my chest.

“Mommy? Daddy?” Luca groggily calls from the door.

“Hey, buddy,” I reply, watching as he wipes the sleep from his eyes and stares at us.

“Is it morning?”

“No, baby, it’s not. Your sister woke up for a bottle,” Adrianna explains, holding out her arms. “Get over here.”

Luca runs over to us, jumping into his mommy’s arms and lets her pull him onto her lap.

“Tori, you need to sleep,” Luca tells his sister, leaning closer to her. “It’s okay though. I don’t like to sleep either. You can’t play when you’re sleeping,” he says while yawning.

Cherishing the moment, despite the pins and needles shooting down my leg, I wrap my free arm tightly around my wife and son as I continue to cradle my baby girl with my other arm. It was one moment ingrained into my heart and soul—a moment I’d remember when my kids were all grown up and their mother was still sitting on my lap.

The good life.

Right here in my arms.