My Darling Husband(88)

But I’m already almost there, jogging across the lawn, calling to him across the driveway. “I gave him to Tanya, Cam. I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?” He stops at the edge of the grass, taking me in, his brow crumpling. “Oh, babe, your face. I’m so sorry he did that to you.” He reaches out a hand, stops just short of touching my broken cheek with his palm. “I’m sorry for a lot of things.”

I shake my head, tears smearing my vision because now is not the time for apologies. I need Cam to hear me. I need him to understand.

I clamp my fingers around his forearm, the one wrapped around Beatrix’s back, and give it a good shake. “Tanya is Sebastian’s cousin. She has Baxter.”

Understanding flashes on Cam’s face, and from deep in the house come shouts. A child’s scream. A deeper voice barking orders. With a jolt, he shoves Beatrix in my arms and takes off at full sprint for the door.

The police officer isn’t fast enough to stop him, but she stops me, pulling me back by an arm.

Her grip is like a vise on my wrist. “Wait. Wait until it’s safe.”

But when will that be?

I clutch Beatrix tight and think of my sweet, funny baby boy, picturing him safe on Tanya’s couch, blissed out with a belly full of pizza. I think of what I’ll do if that’s the case, all the sacrifices I will make to repay the universe. I’ll see to it that that vile man’s daughter gets her lungs. I’ll donate my house, my jewels, my car if I have to. I’ll do anything.

“If you really want to quit violin, you can, you know.” I press a kiss into my daughter’s hair. “I’m sorry I pushed you so hard.”

All my prodding for Beatrix to log her practice hours, my tiger-mom tendencies and inflated expectations for her future, my pushing her into auditions or the spotlight whenever my friends came around. I told myself it was because as her parent, I was responsible for ensuring she honors this magnificent gift she’s been given by God, by the universe. But maybe her perfectionist tendencies come from me, in an effort to please me.

Which can mean only one thing.

Beatrix is not the one who needs to change.

I am.

I make a silent vow: no more dragging her across town to lessons three times a week. No more hiding the remote because it’s practice time or dismissing her tears because she’s sacrificing yet another social event for the violin. No more bandaging calluses and bloody fingers—not unless she chooses to put them there herself. From now on, whenever Beatrix tells me she wants to quit, I will shower her with kisses and tell her it’s up to her. I will hand her the controls, allow her to dictate the contents of her own life. My daughter can be anything she wants to be. Who am I to decide?

Slowly, she shakes her head against my shoulder.

“Seriously, Bea. You can play piano or softball or take art lessons, or you can lie on the couch and do nothing at all. This is your life, not mine. You get to decide how to fill it.”

“But I don’t want to quit. Not until I get the Locatelli, and even then.” She shakes her head again, and her voice is quiet but resolute. “I don’t want to quit.”

“Then why did you say you wanted to?”

She leans back just enough to give me a sheepish grin. “My legs were tired. At least with the piano you get to sit down.”

Miss Juliet’s schoolmarm voice barks in my mind. Back straight. Spine aligned. Head up. Violin begins with good posture, always. Most parents want their children to grow up. Cam and I should have spent more time coaxing Beatrix to grow down.

I drop a kiss on her nose. “You are my hero, do you know that? What you did this afternoon was so brave, and I am so unbelievably proud to be your mother.”

She wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes, her curls tickling my ear. “Did Daddy really do that to the bad man’s daughter?”

My mind stutters back to Cam’s coerced confession, the heartlessness and money problems Sebastian dragged into the daylight, offenses that sometime in the past ten minutes I’ve already forgiven. There’s nothing like watching your firstborn daughter wielding a gun to illuminate the things that matter. Cam. The Bees. I can get past anything but losing one of them.

“I don’t know, baby. Maybe. But none of it matters without Bax. Let’s get him back first, and then we’ll think about how we fix our family.”

And I will fix this family. No matter what happens next, Cam and I will claw back the power Sebastian took from us when he stepped out of the shadows and forced his way into our home. Some things are impossible to put behind you, but this will not be one of them. If it’s the last thing I do, I will fix us.

Suddenly, there’s commotion at the front door. A cluster of bodies emerging, big and small. Tanya’s kids, the Montgomery twins from down the street, Cam with a Baxter-sized body balanced on an arm. My heart stops, and I squint into the darkness, unable to move.

And then a small voice, soft and scratchy and as familiar as my own pulse, the most beautiful sound in the world: “Whoa. How come there are so many cops?”



S E B A S T I A N


Ten Minutes Earlier


No money. A bullet in my shoulder. The whole house shaking from the cops busting in downstairs. This wasn’t exactly how I planned for things to go.

And all because of that sneaky little Beatrix, wriggling out of her bindings not once, but two times. She looked so cute when I fixed them a snack. An adorable little Houdini in a pink polka-dot shirt. It’s why I underestimated her, because she reminded me so much of my Gigi.