Under His Control (Constella Family #3)

1. Liam

1

LIAM

I spent the last several years on planes and flying off to all kinds of locations. Most were dangerous destinations. The missions were for combat or to offer backup for those fighting. My fellow passengers were the other members of my troop.

But no flight had ever given me so much terror and confusion as this one.

“She is just adorable !” the gray-haired woman seated next to me exclaimed. Her glasses lifted up on her nose as she used her whole face to smile a full-wattage grin at the person sitting on my lap.

The toddler— or is she a baby still? —peered up at me in utter bewilderment.

“How old is she?” the woman asked, making silly smiles at the infant.

She was mine. But I drew a blank and couldn’t answer right away. My mind was still lagging on the you have a child shock. The paralysis that came with the thought of you are a dad was even worse. “Uh, over one.”

The woman blinked as the plane lifted for takeoff. “Over one?”

I nodded, glancing back at Olivia Marie Gannon. My daughter, courtesy of a one-night stand two years ago. She would now become Olivia Marie Gray, but I wasn’t sure if she or I knew how to make the transition of her being my kid or my being her father.

Taking a closer look at me, raking her curious gaze from my buzz-cut hair that was already growing out too fast to my shirt and jeans, then finally my boots, she twitched her lips. “Ah. You’re military, huh?”

“ Was .”

“Thank you for your service,” she replied kindly. “Recently discharged? If I may ask.”

“Yes.” In hindsight, maybe it was the universe giving me a sign or something. When it was time to sign up for another tour with the alternative offer of a medical discharge for an injury from combat, I considered how my grandfather passed away with one regret—not spending enough time with my grandma when he could. I didn’t have anyone but my troop members. I was a bachelor for so long, I doubted I could be anything else.

I hesitated to sign up for more of the military, something in lighter duty with the scars I’d received. When I received word that I’d fathered a baby with Pamela Gannon, a one-night stand who’d passed away, it seemed something else was in store for me. Fatherhood, because I was the dad and no one else could take the baby.

“I won’t waste time asking if she’s yours,” the woman asked, gesturing at Olivia. “She looks so much like you.”

“Yeah.” I sighed and looked at Olivia again, wondering what in the hell was going on in her little head. What did babies think about? Or was she a toddler? I was so clueless, I couldn’t recall the difference.

“But she’s new in your life too, huh?”

“Very new,” I admitted.

“Aww…” She gazed at Olivia, then me, with hearts in her eyes. “And now she can meet her daddy. I love these welcome-home stories. My son, bless his heart, died several years ago in ‘friendly fire’. Mind you, he was only engaged at the time, so he wasn’t leaving a little one behind, but I still remember every time he flew home and how we’d make signs and all.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

She dipped her chin. “Thank you. Forgive me for being so chatty. Flights make me nervous. I can just tell you’re military. You’ve got that look. That stance.”

That inability to ever shut off the instinct to be alert and assess every moment of your life for dangers and threats? Yeah, she’d recognize it in me, but I didn’t care. It was who I was. I was a fighter, a protector, a provider. It looked like I would now need to refine those traits into something that would pass as being a parent, but I’d figure it out one way or another.

Olivia shifted on my lap, not quite wiggling but moving.

Just like I had in the few hours since I picked her up in Utah, where Pamela had lived before passing away unexpectedly in a car accident, I tensed and waited for another cue. Baby— toddler? —cues weren’t a language that I’d learned yet. I doubted anyone could know how to read a toddler after a mere few hours and be aware of what the hell they wanted or needed.

When she cried in the car ride to the airport, I damn near had a breakdown trying to troubleshoot what she wanted. Googling wasn’t fast enough. The uber driver only spoke Russian, but with gestures, he got me to try a bottle of formula that Olivia’s daycare owner had told me to use. Thank God I gave her my email. Those lengthy tutorials and typed-out instructions were now the manual I’d swear by.

What is it now? What do you want? What’s wrong? If she cried on this plane… Fuck. All the passengers would riot because I had no clue how to help her.

“I think she’s tired.”

I jerked my face toward the woman next to us. “How? How do you know?”

She smiled softly. “You’re really new to this, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I didn’t know Olivia existed until a couple of days ago.”

She raised her brows. “Oh, Olivia is such a beautiful name.”

I shrugged, watching Olivia as she scrunched her face like she was about to wail. “Her mom named her, then never told me that she existed. She was killed in a drunk driving accident a week ago.” I didn’t make a habit of talking to strangers, much less about my personal life or that of my daughter’s, but I’d never see this woman again. This wasn’t a covert mission. Enemies couldn’t be listening. I was a civilian now, not in the service. That adjustment was just as hard—if not harder—than suddenly being a dad.

“Oh, honey.” The woman placed her hand on my forearm. “That’s just terrible. You’re really thrust into all of this, huh?”

“Yes.” Fuck.

Olivia’s lips trembled so much that her pacifier fell out. With that indrawn breath, she braced to let out a mighty cry.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “No. No, no, no.” I grabbed the pacifier and offered it to her. “Don’t cry. Please.” I doubted begging would work, but I had to make her hear me.

“Can I help?” the woman asked.

I whipped to face her again. “You can do that?” She said she had a son who was killed in combat. She had been a mother to a baby at one point.

“Sure, sure.” She chuckled lightly, holding her hands out. “I’m Jessica. Oh, Olivia, you sleepy little thing.”

As I handed my daughter over to the grandmotherly woman, she cooed and smiled, acting all receptive and sweet and nice. All things that weren’t me or how I knew how to pretend to be.

I cared. Even though this was all so fucking new and shocking, I cared. At first glance, seeing that Olivia was mine, I loved her on the spot. But love and goodwill did not in any way make up for experience or knowhow—of any kind.

“I’m a nurse at a pediatric office too.” Jessica winked at me.

I tried to smile to show my genuine gratitude as she held and cuddled Olivia, but I couldn’t stop watching and trying to memorize all that she did. The way she held her, how she rubbed her back. All these tricks of the trade that I’d need to figure out on my own.

Unless I ask Jessica if I could just follow her and learn this dark magic of soothing a kid.

All the while, she talked me through steps and suggestions for how to soothe her and hold her better. When Olivia was sleepier, Jessica handed her back over, teaching me how to keep her in my arms—not like she was a bomb about to go off, but as a little human needing security.

Throughout the flight, she lectured and rambled. It was a beginner’s course to handling a baby, but I absorbed every single word. I was clueless, and past the surprise that I was a dad, I wondered if I would ever actually get used to this dynamic of being two. Not a bachelor. Not a soldier. A father-and-daughter duo.

“When was she born?” Jessica asked, still smiling at Olivia now sleeping in my arms.

I told her what Olivia’s daycare owner told me. That was how little family Pamela had. She’d dropped Olivia off on her way to go to work, and when she didn’t come back to pick her up, the daycare owner called the cops and kept her with her until the law enforcement and Children’s Services could get involved.

“Oh, okay. So she’s thirteen months old.”

“I told you that,” I said.

“No. You said over a year.” Jessica smiled again. “In these years, you go by months.”

I furrowed my brow. “For how long?” That seemed kind of strange.

“Well, if you ask my daughter-in-law who never visits me enough, until they’re three years old.” She giggled at my incredulous expression. “I know. I know. Sounds silly. Usually, until they’re two. You stop and shorten it to fifteen or eighteen months. I think most parents generalize from eighteen months to ‘almost two’ for brevity’s sake. Otherwise, you’re putting people on the spot to do math.” She winked.

For the rest of the flight, she showed me websites, social media groups, and even books that she would recommend for me to read and follow. “Don’t go listening to every damn social influencer out there, now.” She rolled her eyes. “Most of them don’t know what they’re talking about and are just pushing a product for affiliation money.”

I nodded. That was true of any kind of social media, I assumed, and that was why I seldom used it or went on it.

“Are you flying home, then?” she asked near the end of the flight.

I dreaded saying goodbye to this helpful woman. I didn’t often get superstitious or believe in the otherworldly, but she was like a guardian angel just appearing when I needed help, even just to talk and ask questions of without sounding like an idiot.

“Not yet.” I wasn’t sure where home was or where it could be anymore. I grew up outside New York, raised by my grandparents, but they were both long-gone. I didn’t know where I should raise Olivia, but I needed a place to stay and a job to start our future together.

“I’m flying to catch up with an old friend.” Tessa West and I had grown up together, sort of. She was younger, but we played together in the apartment building.

“Oh, that’s good. Find your village and lean on them. It really does take more than one to raise a child.”

I didn’t take offense. I knew she wasn’t saying that as a dig at me, that I was a single dad. And she was right. Tessa and I had that kind of childhood, growing up in the same building with all kinds of adults and other kids around.

A couple of hours later, after disembarking and getting a ride to the address Tessa gave me, though, I had no clue what to expect from where she’d ended up in life.

Our calls were sporadic since I left the military, but she’d given me some details to wonder about. She recently met her fiancé. She’d moved to his place. And she would love to have me come stay with her for a while and catch up.

Without any other landing strip or directions for where to go and how to adjust to Olivia, I took Tessa up on the invitation. That was how few people I had in my life.

Or not. I glanced at Olivia still sleeping against my chest as I climbed out of the Uber. I would always have Olivia with me now. It hadn’t sunk in as a reassuring thought yet, still too new and more like a responsibility to oversee than a companionship to know I wasn’t a true loner.

“What the hell?” I muttered, gazing around at this lavish, manicured area. A fucking mansion? Immaculate landscapes, privacy gates, and patrolling security guards?

What in the fuck? Just who the hell was she marrying? Someone rich, clearly, but that made me more guarded.

I glanced around as I walked up the path leading toward the huge house.

“Good evening, sir.” A guard at the gate raised his brows at Olivia waking up in my arms.

“I’m…” I huffed. “I’m lost.”

The man smiled as his partner stooped down to pick up the pacifier Olivia dropped. He brushed it off and handed it to her. “Where are you headed?”

I blinked and shook my head. “I’m supposed to catch up with my friend, Tessa, but?—”

“Right this way, sir,” the first guard said. He looked me over. “Liam Gray?”

I gaped at him. “What the fuck?” I whispered. I was in the right place? I didn’t know how or why, but I figured, like everything else of late, that I’d roll with the goddamn punches. After finding out I had a kid and that I’d be a civilian now, learning that Tessa was marrying up shouldn’t have been too out there. I supposed, in every sense of the phrase, that anything was possible.

The guard led me toward the side, across an enormous patio, then opened the doors to a small gathering inside.

There she was. Tessa looked gorgeous, so happy—and shocked. Her mouth hung open as I entered, reacting just as I figured she might when I revealed what my big surprise was.

“A baby ?” she exclaimed.

I shrugged and tried to smile when scoping out the room. “Surprise.”

A tatted-up man pressed his fingers up under her chin so she’d close her mouth.

“Since when…” Nina, Tessa’s old friend, shook her head, walking up.

“Well.” An older man strode forward. “Since they’ve forgotten how to say a simple hello, welcome to our home. I’m Dante Constella.” He held out his hand, and I shook it the best I could while holding Olivia, who wanted to squirm.

“Nice to meet ya.” I glanced him up and down, wondering who he was.

“A daughter ?” Tessa asked. “You have a daughter?”

“Yeah.”

“But… how ?”

“I got a letter that I had a kid, and…” I whooshed out a long breath. “And here I am.”

“Recently?” Nina asked.

I nodded, raking my hand through my hair as I looked them all over. “Yeah. Very recently. Olivia is a very recent discovery in my life.”

Olivia took that moment to pout, then sniffled with pending tears. With everyone dressed up for this engagement party that I was already late for, I felt my eyes go wide, preparing for a wail that I wouldn’t know how to stop. Already, the advice Jessica gave me on the plane was forgotten. “Shit. Which cry is this? What’s wrong?”

“Oh, darling,” a tall, Black woman cooed, rushing from the kitchen where she’d been lingering, away from the guests. “Want a hand with her? I’m the family doctor, Danicia.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said as I let her take her. “But she’s not ill.” I hope? I don’t think she’s ill? Babies just cry, right?

She smiled, regardless of Olivia’s cries. “Oh, of course not. But you look petrified and clueless.”

I nodded, amazed at how a little bounce in her step and sway distracted Olivia.

Do they teach a course on that? Bounce and sway? How does it work? I grimaced, watching how Olivia settled quickly. God, I have so much to learn.

The man with Tess chuckled as the family’s doctor bounced and swayed with the toddler. “What would you like to drink?” he asked as he held Tess’s hand and brought her closer.

“Hi, Liam,” Tess greeted, belatedly, as we hugged. She stepped back to the man. “This is Romeo, my fiancé.”

I shook his hand, but before I could get a good read on him, Romeo—seemingly quick to notice my discomfort and figuring out that I needed saving—repeated his drink offer.

“Got any decent beer?” I asked, half joking and half sarcastic.

As a member of the kitchen staff nodded and went to fetch my drink, I was again rocked by how posh and extravagant this place was. A family doctor? Staff to wait on them? Holy shit.

“Danicia seems to have Olivia smiling and happy,” Tess commented as Danicia and Nina cooed at the girl.

I grunted a laugh. “Better than I can.”

“Rough going?” Romeo guessed.

“Yeah. Very rough,” I admitted. “Sorry I’m underdressed for whatever you’ve got planned tonight.”

Tess patted my arm. “You’re going to have to fill me in on a lot more details. But later. Right now, I’m excited for you to meet the family before we join the party.”

Meet the family? Funny, I just met more of mine—family I didn’t know I had.