by Demi Vice
“Shut the fuck up. You’re the reason I have five kids to look after instead of four,” I growled.
“No, no, no, no, no. You can’t count your own kids. What the hell is that about?”
“Fine,” I gritted. “Three instead of two.” I lied, and Fidget called me out.
“Although.” Fidget turned a one letter word into a full sentence. “Aren’t the Bayne twins also your kids?” he got smart with me.
The answer was, ‘yes.’
Turns out, the World's Worst Parents Award goes to—drum roll please—Seth Bayne and Nani Bayne. They short version of the shit show that happened last year.
Seth and Nani Banye had abandoned their children.
They’d always been selfish parents, giving more love to each other than sharing it with their children. And once Ahri and I were in the picture, they found, and I quote, ‘no reason to stay in Chicago.’ They moved between The Bayne Hotels, New York and California, living their lives with no responsibilities.
Emilio was pissed, and why wouldn’t he be? He raised his son to be like him, family oriented, but Nani reversed all of Emilio’s and Rocky’s parenting. Crazy what ‘love’ could do. After a year of no Seth or Nani in the Bayne twins lives, Emilio and Rocky made the biggest decision of their lives.
Seth and Nani were given three options.
Option number one: be better parents. Actual parents.
Unfortunately, parenting wasn’t something that could be forced onto a couple. And it’s not something that should ever be half-assed. I would know. Ahri would know. You’re either in the kid’s life because you want to be or you’re not. There was no middle ground. No reason to come and go as you pleased, or worse, stay because you’re being paid.
Option number two: become disowned—completely broke—while also taking Savvy and Bash along with them.
This option was a bluff. Emilio and Rocky (as well as Ahri and I) would’ve fought to hell and back before Seth and Nani took Savvy and Bash away. This option was more to scare Seth and Nani with the ‘completely broke’ part.
And option number three: give up custody of Savvy and Bash, and get paid millions and millions of dollars to stay the hell out of their lives. (Win-win, right?)
This option also involved disownment, but Emilio might or might not have forgotten to mention that part. In the far future, when Emilio and Rocky passed away—knock on wood—neither Seth or Nani would see a penny of the Bayne fortune, which was going to cause some drama. But that was for the far, far, far, future. Nothing to worry about now.
Needless to say, it only took Seth and Nani less than a second to think about their life-changing decision. Option number three. They took their millions and left.
Since then, our lives had changed drastically.
Ahri and I were now the guardians of Savannah Olina Bayne and Sebastian Omar Bayne. If anything were to ever happen to Emilio or Rocky, we’d become the Bayne twins, legal guardians.
Sadly, I think deep down, Emilio always knew neither his son or daughter-in-law were cut out to be the parents Savvy and Bash needed. They had kids to have kids. To spread the famous Bayne name. Maybe that’s why Emilio wanted his glorified babysitter so badly, who the fuck knew. Either way, Ahri and I were bound to Savvy and Bash as if they were ours. And the same went for Emilio and Rocky with our boys.
Maybe it started the day Savvy and Bash accidentally called Ahri and me, Mommy and Daddy, and neither Emilio or Rocky corrected them. Or maybe it started the day Atlas and Zeke told Emilio and Rocky, Pops and Nana, they loved them. Whenever it started, that’s when our confusing family began.
Although, our kids didn’t see the confusion. That’s the innocent beauty behind a child's mind. They didn’t see family as who was related by blood or not. They saw family as who was there for them, who loved them, who cherished them, and who would turn the world upside down to keep them safe and sound.
On top of becoming the guardians of Savvy and Bash, the whole Baron family owned twenty percent of all The Bayne Hotels. California, New York, and Chicago. I still remember the first conversation I ever had with Emilio Bayne when we joked about giving me five percent of the shares to The Chicago Bayne in exchange for my services.
If only Past-Jack knew what was to come.
Even though I was a man with more money then I could possibly need to live a hundred lifetimes, Emilio still loved to tease me by calling me his glorified babysitter. Kind of hard to be called a babysitter when it’s your kids and your working 24/7.
Officially, I was Emilio’s right-hand man, helping him with a second opinion on anything he needed. Contract deals, investments, a new color theme for one of the private lounges. Whatever it might’ve been, I was Emilio’s man. Not to mention Emilio was slowly teaching me how to become the world's most successful businessman and hotel manager, like himself.
So much for your retired life, Jack.
I’m starting to believe the most impossible dream I’d ever concocted was this so-called fantasy word: retirement.
Getting the penthouse? Easy-peasy.
Getting millions of dollars? Piece of fucking cake.
Getting the wife and kids, plus two bonus kids? Best part of my life.
But the retirement? Fuck you, Jack. Just, fuck you.
“So, on that technicality, you’re technically only babysitting Lunetta.” Fidget got way too smart with me.
I deadpanned.
“You did say Lunetta’s a sweetheart, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I did,” I growled through my confession, rubbing my sore eyes. “But that still doesn’t change the fact that I take care of five kids.”
“I wove you, Jacky,” Fidget babbled again.
Fidget knew my life was as wild as my kids.
My youngest, Zeke, was madly in love with Lunetta and he tried, by all means necessary, to get her attention, which involved him doing more stupid shit. But Lunetta didn’t give two shits about what Zeke did. She was five years older than him, and she thought he was, ‘Crazy, irritating, and way too much,’ but try telling Romeo that. Zeke’s eyes turned into little hearts when he saw Lunetta.
Atlas Hamlet Baron was my oldest by three minutes then came Zeke Romeo Baron. If I had won my little bet with Ahri—guessing the gender of our kids—their middle names would’ve been their first.
My sleep deprivation could be clearly pinned to my three boys. Atlas, Bash, and Zeke. Don’t get me wrong, Savvy wasn’t as innocent as I’m making her out to be. It just so happened that the boys acted as if none of the rules applied to them. Not gravity, and especially not the consequences or punishments that came from their plans.
They stole the bellhop carts and raced them down the hall, climbed any piece of furniture they could and jumped off of it, and one time the troublemakers thought it was a great idea to stick their fingers inside the Piranha tank. After the almost finger-losing incident, my office was on permanent lockdown.
All four kids were practically superglued together (and I’m not talking about the time my boys actually super glued their clothes together, and I had to cut them out, leaving them butt-ass naked in my penthouse). But they each had their pairs.
Atlas and Bash.
Savvy and Zeke.
As Savvy and Bash considered Ahri and me their parents, they considered Atlas and Zeke their baby brothers. But sometimes, even they needed a break from their biological twins.
Zeke was the youngest out of all of them, and he was exactly like me. Cocky, crazy, goofy, and full of life…possibly even wilder than I was. It was as if someone had fed him sugar for all his meals with how much energy he had. He and Savvy were the mad geniuses behind the plans that wreaked chaos in my penthouse or at The Bayne. While Zeke suggested the ideas to the other boys and joined the madness, Savvy stayed in the background and enjoyed the mayhem.
Atlas, on the other hand, was quiet, grumpy, and a hothead like his mother…possibly even feistier than Ahri. He had strong opinions and thought they should be taken t
o the grave. Bash was just as stubborn, but the difference between them was that Bash could admit when he was wrong (it was rare, but it’d happened), and Bash wasn’t afraid to tell Atlas when he was wrong. Which usually turned into a lot of screaming amongst Atlas and Bash, followed by fist fights, which then made Zeke want to join the ‘fun.’
I’m fairly certain they secretly loved the fights since they came out with small injuries and enormous smiles.
Usually, Bash was the first to throw fists. For the boy who frequently spoke English, he somehow always managed to cause destruction. I say, ‘frequently spoke English,’ because Bash was multilingual. At age five, he could speak four languages. Italian from Emilio, Polish from me, French from Rocky and Marcel, and English ‘cause…America. Currently, he’s learning Spanish from Lunetta and me, and his actual teachers. Surprisingly, no one forced Bash to be multilingual, he just happened to find his passion in life at a very young age.
Savvy, on the other hand, stuck with English when it came to talking people’s heads off. She, too, knew Italian and French, but only used it when she spoke with Pops and Nana. When she wasn’t talking, she spoke with her body. She was a dancer through and through, our little cute bubbly ballerina. But her cute, adorable exterior was nothing to be compared to when someone did her wrong. She turned worse than all the three boys combined. If you took a bite out of her, she’d come back and have a full course meal out of you. As I liked to call it, she turned into Savvy the Savage.
The boys, surprisingly, knew their limits around Savvy. She held grudges with her soul and only forgave when she saw sincerity, which was sometimes as simple as saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ Zeke wasn’t afraid to admit when he was wrong which was why they got along so well. Even though Zeke messed around with Savvy a little too much, he always knew when to stop or apologize when it got too far.
Then, there was Lunetta, an old soul. She was calm and gentle, never raising her voice, and rarely getting tempted (I mean corrupted) by the twins and their fun. She was the newest addition to the group, and I only agreed to look after her for a massive favor. Her father, Mateo Flores, was head chef at The Bayne restaurant. I told him I would take care of his little girl, as long as he knew that in the far, far, far future (eight-and-a-half-ish years from now) I would need a big favor.
A favor for Fidget.
Fidget still wanted to be a chef with all his heart, and he might as well learn some tips and tricks from the man who ran one of the best restaurants in the state. It’s not like Fidget was going to get accepted into any culinary schools with his criminal record, so, I got him the best next thing: a man who was one of the top five chefs in the States.
On top of getting him the best underground mentor I could. I got Fidget a future job at Three Sinful Bastards Brewery. Yep, they finally picked a name. Three Sinful Bastards Brewery had skyrocketed in popularity over the past years, and so had my investments in the company. The brewpub was one of the top places to hang out and get drunk if you wanted a good time. If you’re wondering if Gory Jack was as addictive as I am? The answer was ‘yes.’ It was their most popular beer, followed by Cali Blue, a golden beer dedicated to Link’s sister.
When I wasn’t being a hardcore dad (aka, when the kids were finally asleep, or Emilio and Rocky were taking care of them), I hung out at the brewpub with Ahri and the Bastards. Link and I were back where we belonged, and everything was going along just the way I imagined it should. I’d even met Link’s parents a few times over the years, and each time they apologized greatly to me for how they treated me. Did I forgive them? No comment. They only apologized to me after they found out I was a hotshot investor worth millions living at The Bayne Hotel. I couldn’t say I liked Link’s parents, but they were good people all in all when they weren’t close-minded, judgemental assholes.
Overall, life was fucking perfect. Ahri still couldn’t help but blame herself for ‘ruining’ Fidget’s life, but on the contrary, I’d gotten my new baby brother’s life all set and ready for his release.
Not only did Fidget have a mentor and a job, but he also had a great sum of money. I took Ahri’s, ‘Luke Account’, and invested it in anything I could. I turned Fidget’s thousands into a million—singular—but it could only multiply with time. We never spent his money. Ahri and I decided to hoard it for safekeeping and pay for whatever he wanted with our money, which was mostly things from the prison commissary or clothes Ahri found at the thrift store that she knew Fidget could never pass up.
One of our biggest gifts was going to be purchasing the suite right across the hall from ours for Fidget. By the time he got out, Fidget would have his very own penthouse. Just as Wallace had pampered me for my faux crimes, I was doing the same for Fidget. I was now his Wallace, showering him with gifts because Fidget’s sentence got me everything I’d ever asked for and needed in my life.
You could say Daddy Jack took very good care of his family. Because he did.
“Got any pictures of my little nephews and niece?” Fidget already knew that answer to that question.
I loved that Fidget understood our odd family.
His odd family.
I pulled out a stack of photos, staring at the first image of Atlas and Zeke posing for the camera in their boxers. They definitely didn't take after Ahri when the camera was pointed at them. The same went for Savvy and Bash, who were with Emilio and Rocky at the time of the photo. The Bayne twins lived with Emilio and Rocky, but a few times a week they had sleepovers, either at our place or Emilio’s.
I sighed happily, handing Fidget the photos.
Atlas and Zeke were everything I ever asked for and more. They were absolutely fucking perfect, just like the fiery, breathtaking, Goddess who gave them to me, even though it almost came with a cost.
Ahri’s life.
Ahri's pregnancy had been calm and steady with little to no symptoms by the end of it. She spent the last three months on bedrest, dying of boredom, and after she delivered the twins,. She died. Just shy of three minute, Ahri was taken away from me.
I’d never been so fucking terrified in my entire life than the day I saw my baby girl’s face turn white and the flatline ring in my ear. The nurses rushed my empty body out of the room and forced me into the hallway where it hit me like a punch to the center of my face.
What the hell just happened? I remembered thinking.
I cried and screamed at the top of my lungs in the hospital halls, trying to kick down the door to see Ahri. Before I knew it, a security guard had tackled me to the ground. I punched my way through him to then be pinned down by another two guards. I created a pool of tears on the floor and screamed Ahrianna’s name until I lost my voice and passed out.
I was miserable and happy.
Completely and utterly confused.
On one hand, I got my boys, but on the other, Ahri left me, and it damaged me more than any crime I had ever committed. I physically felt my heart shatter into a million pieces until I was slapped awake by the doctor who told me that Ahri was alive and well.
I’d been through a lot in my life, but not once had I ever had nightmares or cried my eyes out like I did when I thought I’d lost Ahri. Even to this day, I woke up dripping in sweat, my heart violating my body until the sweet scent of Ahri’s hair and the softness of her bare body pressed against mine, cooling me down.
Every time I woke up gasping for air, I woke up Ahri.
“You had the nightmare again?” Ahri grunted in her sleep, pressing her body closer to mine. She knew very well I needed to feel as much of her as possible. I could have every single inch of her body pressed against mine, but I’d always beg for more.
I let out a faint nod. Wrapping my arms around Ahri, I figured out how to breathe again. I took in her natural scent and buried my face deeper into her long messy wavy hair. Even after all these years, her hair remained that unforgettable Twinkie-color.
“I’m fine, baby boy. I’m a lucky, invincible bitch.” She joked. It always made me chuckle as I fell
back to sleep with Ahri where she belonged.
With me.
I treated my Ahri like a Queen. My boy’s like Prince’s. And my baby girl like a Princess.
I told myself I would be the best stay at home dad and take as many pictures as I possibly could of my little spawns, and I did exactly that.
Fidget laughed at one particular photo. Atlas pushing his tongue between his two front missing teeth. Savvy came up with the classic string-and-doorknob plan, while Bash and Zeke executed it. They all found out a certain special tooth fairy—me—gave out two-dollar bills and one-dollar coins, so they’ve been trying to knock some baby teeth out, regardless if they were loose or not.
“They’re idiots.” Fidget smiled. “I can’t wait to meet them…two more years to go.”
“You know, I could just bring them over next week. I don’t get why you’re putting a timeline on when you want Atlas and Zeke to visit you.”
Unfortunately, Emilio made it very clear that he didn’t want Savvy or Bash to visit Tavernville Penitentiary. I understood where he was coming from, but Ahri and I decided that we wanted Atlas and Zeke to meet Uncle Fidgy before he got out.
“I told you, I don’t want them to see me in here.”
“What? Two years from now, you plan to steal a Shawshank Redemption scene right out of the movie?”
“I just want them to be older when they meet me. To understand that sometimes people do bad things for good reasons.” He sighed, looking at the picture of Atlas, Zeke, and Ahri, cuddled and reading a Spiderman comic book.
I inhaled slowly and let out a heavy, sharp breath. “Well, you’re missing the fun years.” I rubbed my eyes.
We talked for the remaining thirty minutes until I had to leave. I’d see Fidget again, same time next week, but this time I’d be with Ahri when we had someone to look after the kids. Aka, it was Emilio’s and Rocky’s turn.
“Alright, see you next week, Fidget. Goodbye, Wilma.” I kissed Fidget’s rock and tossed her to him before we hugged our goodbyes.
“BARON! HANDS!” Diaz yelled.