King's Baby - A Bad Boy Romance (32 page)

“Don’t bother taking
it out, the doctor will just knock you out and put it right back in,” my daddy
says.

He’s sitting in a
chair next to my bed with his arms crossed and a stony expression on his face.
The curtains are open, the sun is pouring in, my sheets are clean, and so am I.

“What are you trying
to do, Holland? Do you think letting yourself die is going to help find King
and Juliette? I didn’t raise a selfish daughter. How dare you even consider
giving up? They aren’t the only people in your life who love you, ya know.” His
brows pull together in a tight scowl as he shakes his head back and forth.

“I’m so disappointed
in you.”

Disappointed? I can’t
believe he just said he is disappointed in me. Doesn’t he realize that
my baby has been stolen by the only man I’ve ever loved
?
Doesn’t he get that there is nothing left to live for?
Obviously
not.
The IV fluids have me hydrated enough that I’m able to part my
lips, and for the first time in over a week, I speak.

“You don’t know.
Nobody knows how much it hurts. How can you be disappointed in me? I didn’t ask
for any of this. My baby is gone. I’ll never see Juliette again.” They have
pumped me full of enough fluids that I’m able to fucking cry again. I’m so sick
of crying. The tears fill my eyes and spill onto my clean pillowcase, but Daddy
continues to look at me with frustration.

“I raised a fighter,
not a quitter. If you want your family back, eat something and get your ass out
of that bed and go find them.”

Daddy’s yelling. He
never yells. I can’t remember a time in my life when I’ve seen him truly angry.
He was upset when I got pregnant. He almost turned white, and that’s a hard
thing for a black man to do. When he found out the father of my baby was a
twenty-five-year-old drug lord, he wasn’t happy either, but he never once
yelled at me.

Maybe he’s right.
Maybe there’s a chance I could find them. If I still have access to King’s
money, I could hire a private investigator to figure out where they went. The
problem with all of that is I know he doesn’t want to be found, and if anybody
in the world had the resources to disappear, it’s him.

In his letter, he
said that he couldn’t be the reason I didn’t follow my dream of becoming a professional
musician. It said, “I can’t rob the world of your talent” or some stupid shit
like that. He said I would never be safe as long as I was linked to him, he
said my life would always be in danger. I would have taken the risk. I would
have looked over my shoulder every day for the rest of my life to spend it with
them.

How dare he make that
decision for me? I wanted him and Juliette. How could he be unhappy with that?
Unless he never really loved me at all.
This could have been
his plan all along. Maybe he sold Juliette on the black market and took off to
live in the jungles of Columbia with a harem of women and his drugs.

Okay, so that’s
taking it a little far. In my heart, I know he loved me, but he sure has chosen
a monstrous way to prove it. Did he seriously think I’d say ‘Well, that’s that,
they’re gone, guess I’ll go on to Juilliard and become famous’?

A sudden new spark of
emotion shoots through my body. It’s anger, and it melts a miniscule part of my
frozen soul, inadvertently giving me hope. He can’t just run away with my
daughter because he thinks it’s best for me. I won’t let him.

I sit up in bed with
newfound optimism, and Daddy moves to my side to adjust the pillows. When he’s
made sure I’m not going to topple over, he cups my cheek in his hand.

“Now that’s my girl.
I knew you were still in there. Let’s work on getting you better so you can get
busy finding them, but you have to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that, Daddy?”

“That you’ll kick his
ass for putting you through this when you do find them.”

“That’s a promise I
can definitely keep. Daddy?” I reach out and cover his hand with mine.

“Yeah, baby?”

I bite my lip, and a
single tear runs down my cheek.

“Thank you,” I say
with a catch in my voice.

“Of course.”
      

His eyes are warm now.
The disappointment is replaced with encouragement.

“Daddy?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.” We lean
together simultaneously and wrap our arms around each other.

No words are
necessary. Daddy holds me tight for a while.

I needed this reality
check, and Daddy was just the one to give it to me. I sit back against my
pillows and start planning my next move, but first I’ll have to actually
move
. I need to eat and get my strength
back, but while I’m still stuck in bed I can start making some phone
calls—which reminds me.

“Daddy, have the
police been notified that King kidnapped Juliette?”

He’s quiet for a
moment before he answers. “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

“Why not?”

“My guess is because
Sebastián doesn’t want the authorities involved in King’s business.”

All this time, I’ve
been thinking of Sebastián as my friend, the only one who could imagine what
I’m going through because we both lost people we loved. He could be in on it,
though. In fact, that would make perfect sense. Sebastián can’t be out of touch
with King. He’s his right hand man. Now that I think about it, he was calm and
unruffled the day I came home to an empty house. He kept saying everything
would be okay and they’ll be home soon, but he knew . . . he knew they would
never be coming home . . . ever.

The first thing I’m
going to do is notify the police. Then I’m going to check the bank account King
set up for me and see if I have enough money to pay for a private investigator.
Then I’ll start spreading their picture all over social media, which is the
equivalent of slapping a kid's face on the back of milk cartons in the
seventies, only better.

I have new purpose,
thanks to my very smart daddy, who always taught me to be sensible.

Ideas are coming fast
and furious now. The desire to find them is quickly replacing my depression. I
thought I would die there in the fourth stage of grief, and I’m not sure I’ve
moved on to acceptance, because I will never accept that King leaving with
Juliette is what’s best for me. In fact, I think I may be clear back on step
two, anger. I’m focused and pissed. I’m going to do exactly what Daddy made me
promise to do, I’m
gonna
find King and Juliette and
kick his ass for putting me through this torture. This, Mr. Romero, is
unforgivable.

Chapter Thirty-Two

King

Home . . . The house
feels strange without my father in it. I haven’t been back since he died. Mom
has been gone longer, but Dad was the primary presence in this house, so being
here without him almost feels wrong.

The absence of
Holland also feels wrong. This is for
her own
good. I
keep telling myself that, and I truly believe it, but that doesn’t make the
pain any less devastating. Mine is meager compared to Holland’s, however.
Sebastián makes sure to tell me that every day . . . more than once.

I lost her, but she
lost both of us, and I’m not sure she even gives two shits about losing me
right now. She’s angry—well, angry probably isn’t a strong enough word.
There is no word that adequately describes what she’s going through.

I almost went back to
her yesterday during a weak moment. Sebastián informed me that she hadn’t had
anything to eat or drink for over a week. When I spoke to Gloria, she told me
she had a plan to get some IV fluids into Holland while she was tranquilized. I
didn’t like that idea. It was sneaky and invasive, but from the sounds of it,
she was going to starve herself to death in our bed if they didn’t do something
drastic.

I was still going
back and forth about it when I found out that Holland’s dad was back in town
and he was going to visit her. Robert always had a way with Holland. She
trusted him as much as she mistrusted her mother, and that’s a lot.

“King?” A voice
floats up from the balcony beneath mine. Every window and door to the outside
is open, and the perfect Puerto Rican breeze is blowing the sheer white
curtains into the room. As unhappy as I am without Holland, my childhood home
provides me comfort, which in turn fills me with guilt because Holland has
nothing to comfort her. I’ve taken everything she cares about, ripped it from
her unsuspecting hands, and left her to bleed to death in our absence.

That’s how she sees
it, but I know better. She has something to take comfort in. She’s just
forgotten it. Without Juliette and me to focus on, I’m positive she will
finally turn back to the thing she loved most before us, the thing that makes
her who she is . . . music.

“She’s awake,” Candy
calls up.

“I’ll be right down.”

I enlisted Candy to
help with Juliette for a few weeks. I wouldn’t trust just anyone with my child,
but Candy is a mother, and she is in a relationship with my lifelong friend and
head of security. She’s safe. She didn’t want to do it. She doesn’t want any
part of my plan, and neither does Sebastián, really, but he’s more tolerant
because he knows how real the danger of being a part of my life is. She hated
detaining Holland at the grocery store while I cleared out of the house, but
she didn’t have a choice. It was in her personal assistant contract . . . sort
of. Candy was so happy to have the job that she didn’t think to have a lawyer
look over the terms and conditions with a
fine toothed
comb. She trusted me because of my close relationship with Sebastián. Big
mistake. There are only a handful of people that I wouldn’t think of fucking
over in this world, and she’s not one of them.

Essentially, she is
contracted to be my assistant in any way I deem necessary, with the exception
of sex. When Juliette and I are in a regular routine, I’ll let Candy go home to
Houston. I want her to keep close tabs on Holland until I’m able to come back
or until she makes the very bad decision to quit.

Sebastián will never
let that happen. He loves her, and being the head of security and the disposer
of problems, he would never let Candy become a problem.

Hurrying down the hall
in my bare feet against
the the
cool marble floor
reminds me of being a kid and running through this rambling mansion. Growing up
in this house, we had rules—lots of them—but most were meant to
keep us safe from the many enemies that my father acquired over the years.
There were heavily armed guards at the gates and every entrance to the house.
My father built this house so that the back yard faced the ocean. He said it
was easier to guard the house. He thought it was safer and easier to guard
somehow. Ironically, he was murdered in his own bed by a hit man who swam
ashore after jumping off a boat.

I have triple the
number of guards my father had when I was a child, and I’ve installed the best
security system money can buy. I’m not taking any chances with Juliette. My
plan is to disassemble the Romano drug empire piece by piece over the next
three or four years while Holland finishes college. By then, she will be an
established musician well on her way to fame, and with the danger of the drug
business behind us, I can return Juliette.

Descending the
stairs, I hear the soft cries of my little princess, and when I enter her
nursery, Candy is swaying back and forth with Juliette in her arms on the
patio, trying to calm the storm.

“She’s getting hungry
I think. Do you want to feed her, or should I?” Candy’s hand shields Juliette’s
face from the sunlight while she bounces and sways.

“I’ll do it. Here,
let me take her.” I reach out and she passes me a perfect little replica of
Holland.

“Thank you, Candy,
really. I want you to know how much I appreciate your taking such good care of
her.”

“It’s not like I have
much choice, King. You’ve sort of trapped me into being an accomplice to
kidnapping.”

She’s pissed. She
probably hates me, but there’s no one else I trust to keep quiet about all of
this. She has a lot to lose if she doesn’t.

“You know it’s for
her own good, Candy.”

“No, I really don’t.
You weren’t there, King. She was so happy and proud . . . when she pulled out
her phone and started showing me pictures of Juliette in that grocery store, I
came this close to telling her to go home and stop you.” Holding up her thumb
and pointer finger a millimeter apart, she shows me just how close I came to
getting caught and, unbeknownst to her, just how close she came to losing her
life if she had.

“But you didn’t.”

“No I didn’t. I’d
like to keep my head securely attached to my body, thanks. For the record, I
think this is all wrong. You can’t make decisions like this for her. She wanted
to have a family. Maybe she would have gone back to the violin, but King,
priorities change. People change. She had a
baby
,
for Christ’s sake. How do you just rip that all away from her? And she loved
you, like out of this world, crazy, bonkers love, and you just threw it away.”
Her hands fly up above her head in frustration.

“I don’t expect you
to understand, Candy. Being with me put her life at risk. Drug dealers are
ruthless and evil. Some of them like to torture people just for the fucking fun
of it. Every single cartel out there knows I wanted out, and they know she’s
the reason why. If my business were to dissolve, theirs would too. They would
lose their lavish lifestyles, their bottomless bank accounts, their status and
respect. My staying painted a target on her back no matter how you look at it.
I’m trying to save her damn life.

“And Candy, have you
ever heard her play? Seen the way she melts into that instrument and becomes
one with it? It’s spectacular . . . no, that word doesn’t even do her justice.
Her talent is profound. She absolutely cannot waste it. We agreed when we
decided to be together that she would still go to Juilliard, and I would get
out of the drug business, and she didn’t keep her end of the deal.”

“Neither did you.”
With her hands on her hips, she squints in the sun, watching me struggle to
make sense of this for her.

“I was trying.”

“But you hadn’t done
it yet, and maybe she was trying, too. You just didn’t know it. Maybe she just
needed some time.”

She’s treading on
thin ice, making me justify my actions and my love for Holland, and I’ve had
just about enough of her smart mouth. She knows that if anyone else were saying
these things, there would be no sunrise for them tomorrow, but she also knows I
need her, and that’s making her brave . . . too brave.

“That’s enough,
Candy.” I turn my back on her and head to the kitchen. She’s quiet as I
leave—at least there’s that. I sigh and hold a kiss on my fussy
daughter’s wrinkled up, angry forehead. She’s had trouble adjusting to formula,
but thank God she’s doing much better. Those first few days were hell. It hurt
knowing she wanted her mommy instead of the rubber nipple of a bottle, and
honestly, I can’t blame her a bit. I want her mommy, too, but this is the best
thing for her. I’m sure of it.