Rocco

by Lagomarsino, Giulia

  “See? You’re already talking like I have the gene. You’re acting like I’m about to die right now, which is exactly the way I don’t want to feel. If I get tested and it comes back positive, you’re going to be planning out the rest of my future until I fucking die. Do you really think that’s the way I want to live?”

  “Oh, I forgot, you don’t need anyone. You don’t have to have a plan or a steady job or even fucking health insurance. Which now doesn’t even make any fucking sense!”

  “Having health insurance won’t save my life. There’s nothing that can be done, so pardon me for not wanting to know. And I never said that I didn’t need anyone. I just choose my friends carefully. I don’t surround myself with people that don’t really give a shit about me and I don’t make friends just for the sake of making friends.”

  “You know,” he laughed humorlessly. “It all makes sense now. You choose boyfriends, only to find the flaws in all of them, so you don’t have to actually connect with anyone. Why did you fucking choose me? You could have gone on with your pathetic life and dumped the next guy that came along because his hair was a half inch too long, or because he didn’t tie his shoes the right way.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I spat. “Hair can be cut and I can always teach someone to tie their shoes properly.”

  He glared at me, but I was too pissed to care. He just took all my life choices and narrowed them down to one pathetic box. I didn’t push away people because of this fucking gene. I just didn’t like people. And I didn’t refuse to have health insurance or a life plan because of this either. It was just the way I had always been. Call it lack of parenting or just wanting to go my own way. This was just the way I was, and I wasn’t about to have Rocco shove me into a category to make himself feel like he knew me and could understand me.

  “You don’t know me as well as you think you do if that’s what you think. I am the way I am, and it has nothing to do with this. You either accept me the way I am or you choose to walk away.”

  His jaw clenched and he nodded. “I’m sorry, but I won’t put my daughter through that.”

  I scoffed at him. “So, you’ll stand by me if I have it, but if I don’t bow down to your commands and do something that I don’t want to, then you won’t stand by me.” I felt my eyes fill with tears and the pain in my chest intensify.

  “I’m sorry. I won’t change my mind on this.”

  A tear slipped down my cheek and I quickly brushed it away. “I thought you loved me.”

  “I do love you, but that has nothing to do with this.”

  “It has everything to do with this. Once I know, I can’t undo that. I can’t go on with my life like I have, living by my own rules. Because once I know, nothing will ever be the same again.”

  I shoved past him and ran to my room that I hadn’t used since I had moved in here. Pulling out my phone, I dialed Sebastian’s number. The tears were pouring down my face now and the sobs building in my chest were almost uncontrollable.

  “Hello?”

  “Sebastian,” I sobbed. “It’s…Brooke.”

  “Brooke, what’s wrong?”

  “I need….to stay…somewhere else,” I cried, clutching onto my chest.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Please don’t ask,” I rushed on. “Just get me somewhere else to stay.”

  “Alright, just sit tight. I’ll call you back.”

  I nodded even though he couldn’t see me and sank down to the floor to stare at the wall. Every emotion that I seemed to have bottled up over the years was pouring out of me now. I couldn’t control it, and I controlled everything in my life. I stared at the wall for what seemed like hours. The light outside changed before I heard the knock at the front door. Footsteps sounded outside my room and then there was a knock.

  “Brooke,” Sebastian’s voice called out. “Can I come in?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stood and swiped at my face again, though my tears had long since dried up. Sebastian stepped into my room and shut the door. There was no sign of Rocco or Evie behind him.

  “I have a new placement for you. Craig and Reese said that you could live with them. But I have to ask you to be sure. I talked to the judge and he said that you could be moved, but he would only allow you to move once.”

  “That’s fine. I won’t change my mind.”

  He nodded. “Well, the police can’t come out until Friday, so you’ll have to stay here until then.”

  My shoulders sagged, but I nodded. It was fine. I could handle two more days. I could stay in here and avoid Rocco and Evie for the rest of my stay. Maybe I could talk Reese into coming over with some food.

  “Brooke, whatever it is, just think about it before you make any final decisions. I don’t know what’s going on, but things can always be solved by talking them out.”

  “Not this time,” I said quietly.

  “Alright. We’ll be by Friday morning.”

  With that, he shut the door and left me with my thoughts.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Rocco

  “What the fuck is going on?” Cap asked as he walked into Reed Security the next day.

  I had Evie on my lap and I was going over some paperwork I hadn’t filled out from the last assignment. I bounced my knee and tried not to think about all the shit running through my head right now. I was really fucked up after what happened yesterday and I didn’t know how to handle it or what to do with what I knew.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the kid on your lap. Did we suddenly become a daycare?”

  “Well, Brooke isn’t exactly talking to me right now, so I couldn’t just leave Evie and hope that she would watch her.”

  “What about Cara?”

  “She’s still not feeling well. I wasn’t about to add another kid to the mix.”

  Cap sighed and flopped down in a chair, picking up the phone that sat on the conference room table. “Yeah, can you send Natalie up here? Thanks.”

  “Natalie? She’s an instructor for the kids, not a nanny.”

  “She can start working with Evie.”

  “Evie’s only just about to turn two.”

  He shrugged. “I’m guessing that she has plenty she can get started with.”

  “I’m not sending Evie to school yet.”

  “You don’t have a choice. You lost your daycare and there’s no-one else to watch Evie. That means that she needs some form of daycare. We happen to have a training center for kids, and I’m sure that Natalie could find some preschool activities for Evie. I’m sure there’s a color by numbers version for Reed Security.”

  “You know, oddly enough, I’m not looking forward to see what that might be.”

  “Hey, boss, you wanted to see me?”

  “Yeah, Rocco lost his daycare, so we’re going to add Evie into the mix. Do you have a program set up for kids her age?”

  “Yep. I’ve been preparing for this since you had your fourth kid,” she said with a grin.

  “Great. Rocco,” he said, turning to me. I rolled my eyes and handed my kid over to Natalie, along with her diaper bag.

  “She’d better not get her hands on any knives yet,” I grumbled.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take very good care of her.”

  “You’d better. I only have the one kid. I can’t just pick another like Cap,” I shouted after her as she walked out of the room. I kicked at the table and stood. What the fuck was I supposed to do now? My kid was going off to warrior camp and I was left holding the pieces of a failed relationship with a woman that never fucking wanted it to begin with.

  “So, what happened with Brooke?”

  I scoffed. “Why don’t you ask Knight? He’s the one that inserts himself into everyone else’s lives without asking.”

  “Ah, so you found out something that you weren’t supposed to know.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “So…”

  “So, what?”


  “So, what did you find out?” he asked irritatedly.

  “I’m not going to tell you. It’s none of your business.”

  He groaned and picked up the phone again. “Get your ass up here.”

  “Who did you call?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  I pointed at the phone, irritation rising inside me. “Who the fuck did you call?”

  “You’ll find out in a minute.”

  “Then why don’t you fucking tell me?”

  “Why won’t you fucking tell me?”

  “What? Are we in third grade?”

  “No,” he snapped. “Because if we were in third grade, I’d just beat your ass on the playground until you told me what I wanted to know.”

  “Yeah,” I scoffed, “like you ever kicked anyone’s ass on the playground. You can’t even tell your wife no when she tells you to get a vasectomy.”

  “Hey, you have no fucking clue what Maggie is like when she gives an order.”

  “I’ve seen what Maggie’s like. What I haven’t seen are your balls lately.”

  “Hey!”

  I turned and glared at Knight who was standing in the doorway.

  “Seriously, if you don’t want a guy to go out and commit murder, you don’t have him work in an environment where he constantly wants to kill people.”

  “Why the fuck did you call him?” I said angrily.

  “Because he knows what happened, and if we’re going to have to change every good fucking thing that I did around here for you, I need to know why.”

  “Don’t you fucking say a thing,” I pointed at Knight.

  “His girl might have Huntington’s,” Knight said, not even sparing me a glance. “She doesn’t want to get tested and he demanded that she do it or get the fuck out.”

  “You what?” Cap said incredulously.

  “That is not what I said.”

  “That’s pretty much what he said,” Knight said boredly. “If you want to watch it, I have it all on DVD.”

  “You have it on DVD?” Cap asked.

  “Yeah, I pretty much have their whole lives for the past couple of months recorded. The days are pretty boring, unless Brooke is trying to watch Evie. That’s pretty entertaining. I would suggest having popcorn around. The sex scenes aren’t bad.” He turned to me. “I’ve seen better.”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked him.

  “I was looking out for you. You had a felon in your house.”

  “That doesn’t mean that you record and watch every single second of my life.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t do it all myself.”

  “Who else was involved?” I asked, fuming and ready to go pummel the first person he named.

  “Maggie and Cara watched quite a bit of it for me. They let me know if I needed to make myself known.”

  “You had my wife spying on other members of Reed Security?” Cap asked.

  “What the fuck did you expect her to do? She’s knocked up with triplets. And Cara’s on bedrest. The ladies needed some entertainment and I needed information.”

  “Can we get back to the topic at hand?” Cap said, running his hand through his hair. “This is too much fucking information for one day,” he grumbled. He took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay, this can be fixed. You just go back and tell her that you fucked up. Tell her whatever it is that she needs to hear so she’ll take you back.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because you fucking love her,” he said as if I was stupid. “He does love her, right?” he asked Knight.

  “Unfortunately.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Well, you did choose a felon,” Knight said.

  “And Kate chose a fucking assassin. You don’t see the rest of us shitting on her,” I spat.

  Knight shrugged and leaned against the door jam. “The difference is, I’m handsome and hard to resist. Your girl is just some chick off the street. There’s nothing fucking special about her. She’s a fucking bartender that doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything in life, including you and your kid, since she isn’t even willing to have a simple fucking test to tell you if she’s going to get a crippling disease that will essentially destroy your life.”

  In two steps, I was in front of him, slamming him up against the wall. I could feel the vein throbbing in my forehead as my blood pulsed hard. “Don’t you ever fucking speak about her that way. She isn’t just some chick off the street. She’s the fucking love of my life. And so what if she’s just a bartender? She lives her life the way she wants and she’s really…trying with Evie. She’s funny and smart and she doesn’t behave like half the chicks around here, getting pissed when I do something fucking stupid, like leaving the toilet seat up. She’s amazing, and she isn’t selfish. This test would turn her fucking world upside down, and I have no fucking right to demand that she do it, no matter how much I want to know. I’m fucking lucky to have her in my life, and I just pray that she’ll be around to spend the rest of her life with me.”

  I was breathing hard and barely holding onto my cool when I finished that little speech. Knight just smirked at me and Cap started clapping from behind me. I slowly turned my head, keeping one eye on Knight as I gazed over at Cap.

  “Holy shit. That was fucking brilliant, man. I thought it was going to take at least half the guys to convince him that he fucked up. But you did it, and in like, five minutes. Just fucking brilliant.”

  I slowly stepped back from Knight, releasing him as I moved back toward Cap. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Well, obviously when Brooke called me and told me that she needed to go someplace else, I had to know what was going on. And it was so fucking clear that you weren’t going to be talking anytime soon.”

  “You set me up?”

  “Did you hear what you just said?” Cap asked. “You just admitted that you were wrong and you shouldn’t be pressuring Brooke. Do you think you would have come to that conclusion without a little help?”

  My mouth dropped open and I didn’t know if I should be fucking pissed or amazed by them. But they were right. All it took was an attack on Brooke for me to realize what I had in my life and what I was risking by taking that stance against her.

  I turned back to Knight, but he just smirked at me and walked out of the room. “You’re welcome.”

  I shook my head, but then chased after him. “I want those fucking cameras removed!”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Brooke

  “So, it finally came out, huh?”

  Reese plopped down on the couch next to me and took a bite of her chocolate bar.

  “You know, you don’t have to sound so smug about it.”

  She shrugged. “You know, I told you when you first found out that you should just get it over with. But you’ve always gone your own way, so…”

  “So, what?”

  “So, now you have a man and a kid that you love, but you’re losing them because you’re stubborn.”

  “How is it being stubborn to not want a test that could potentially destroy my life?”

  “How is it fair to want to share your life with a sexy man, but not give him all the information going in? Sorry, but you’re being selfish.”

  “I am not,” I said stubbornly, though I knew that a part of me was being selfish. “Why is it that I have to do this? You know, he didn’t even ask me if I wanted the test? He just demanded that’s what we would do. You know, I’m a pretty reasonable person. I don’t get pissed over the small stuff and I am always willing to hear the other person out, as long as that person isn’t a fucking moron. But he didn’t even give me the opportunity to talk things out. He just demanded. Why do men do that? Don’t they know that if they just sit down and talk to us about stuff that things would be so much easier?”

  “No, men have absolutely no idea how to deal with women,” she said matter of factly. “Take Craig, for instance. He wanted to date m
e, but did he ever actually take me out on a date like a normal man? I mean, he could have waited a while and then run into me one day, totally out of the blue, but no, he stalked me. And when that didn’t work, he planned to kidnap me. He manipulated me into marrying him and sold my house out from under me. So, I think it’s pretty safe to say that men really have no clue how to deal with women.”

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s Craig. Give me one other man that acts like that.”

  “Okay. Cap continually impregnated Maggie against her will. Sinner proposed to Cara with lollipops. Derek laughed at Claire when she told him she thought he was Superman. Hunter planned to stage a break-in at Lucy’s apartment to scare her into needing him. Knight threatened to kill Kate just to make her back off and think that he didn’t love her. Burg bought Emma pictures of sheep. Apparently there’s some kind of sheep fucking joke between the two of them? Gabe invited Isa’s six year old over for a sleepover without Isa being there. Jackson fucked Raegan for the first time in a pile of mud. Storm let his woman get taken away to a psychiatric clinic. Jules completely forgot about Ivy, and she’s still with him!”

  I shook my head, angry that she was able to come up with so many examples. “I said name one.”

  “The point is, good or bad, men are always going to fuck up with women. It’s just part of their nature. But Rocco loves you and wants to be with you. And he’s right, even if he’s wrong. He needs to give you the space to talk about this and decide what you want to do, but you have to remember that you can’t make this decision for yourself anymore.”

  “But it’s my life! It affects me the most. Shouldn’t I get like…ten more votes on the matter just for that?”

  “You would think, but I think he actually gets more votes because his kid is involved.”

  “How does that make any sense?”

  “Look, let me lay this out for you.”

  “Fine,” I sighed.

  “He loves you and he would do anything for you, but face it, when a man has a kid, that kid becomes number one in his life. He has to protect her and take care of her, because there’s no one else to do it. You may be the love of his life, but she’s this thing that he created and he will always put that kid first.”