Chapter 18 – Poppy
He’s a really good dad.
It pained me to admit it. But only a little. For a Tuesday morning, the zoo was quiet. There were tourists, and lots of moms with kids of various ages in tow. A lot of the dads were on their phones or looking bored.
Not Ivan.
“Tatko, tatko!” Brady pointed enthusiastically to the next encloser. “What’s that?”
Ivan narrowed his eyes—as he’d done several times, I noticed—at the sign. “A…kl-ip-spr-ing-er. Klipspringer.”
The habitat sign showed they were native to Africa.
“Huh, the females grow slightly larger than the males,” I read from behind. “That’s odd.”
“Why, mama?” Brady turned his face up to me.
“Because normally the males are bigger and stronger to protect their families.” Ivan wasn’t looking at the boy as he spoke.
He was staring at me.
Things had been tense since the other night when he’d done the most marvelous thing: made his house a home. For us. And little old me, tired and wrecked from the kiss, exploded on him over the small detail of Brady’s sleeping location.
For the hundredth time, an apology welled up inside me. My reaction wasn’t the smart way to handle it. But I didn’t want to apologize for a parenting choice. When it came to that boy’s safety, I was relentless.
And so the awkwardness continued, festering like a poisonous green wound.
“They’re tiny,” Brady observed the miniature deer with his nose scrunched up. “Can we eat them, tatko?”
Ivan scrunched up his nose. My damn heart did another little flip. They were identical, these two. The last five years had revolved around Brady. I knew every look, every emotion that crossed his face. It was surreal to see them naturally occur on the bigger, hardened version of a man.
He’s going to become like his dad if we don’t leave.
That made my heart ache.
Brady was too sweet, too good! How could I let him shape himself into a ruthless monster from the criminal underworld? No mother wanted that for her son. I might not have carried him for nine months and birthed him, but I was every bit his mother.
It wasn’t going to happen.
I wouldn’t let it.
“I suppose if we were hungry enough,” Ivan was saying.
“Not much meat. Now a white tail buck, that’s good eatin’!” Brady chirped.
A smile, small and secret, formed on the savagely handsome face. Ivan looked down at his boy with an appreciative air. “What do you know about white tail hunting?”
“Heeps! Cousin Mikey said I could come out to the deer stand this fall, and in a couple of years, when I get my hunter’s safety certificate, I could shoot one of them bad boys,” Brady rambled enthusiastically.
“Have you ever shot a gun?” A line formed in Ivan’s brow.
Brady shook his head. “Cousin Theo has shown me some of his. But you never touch one. And always treat them as if they’re loaded. And you never point them at anything you’re not ready to kill. Like humans. You don’t point them at humans. Ever.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Ivan no doubt had very different views on the matter.
“Look at the horns on that klipspringer!” I said by way of a distraction technique.
“You’re right, Brady,” Ivan said solemnly. “Guns aren’t toys, and you never point them at people.”
My jaw dropped.
Ivan chose that moment to look up at me. “A bug’s going to fly into your mouth if you keep it hanging like that.”
“Have you ever been hunting?” Brady was blessedly oblivious to the sudden shift in energy.
“Many times,” Ivan responded with a nod. “But never for white tail. It sounds a little boring.”
“It’s not!” Brady argued.
“Let me get this straight, you sit in a deer stand and go ‘Here little deer-deer, come over here’ and you wait for them just to stroll by?”
“No,” Brady drawled, as if that were the stupidest question. “You sit in the stand, very quietly and wait.”
“You’re still just sitting there, hoping one comes by.” Laughter twitched on Ivan’s mouth.
“Exactly.” Brady planted his hands on his hips. “And then you shoot ‘em, clean ‘em, and eat ‘em.”
Ivan couldn’t hold his laugh back any longer. It was a loud boom, rich and full of mirth. “Son, someday I’ll take you to the mountains and teach you how to stalk your prey. It’s much more exciting than freezing your ass off at the edge of a corn field.”
“Let’s go see what animals are over there,” I bargained.
Ivan nodded, and we moved away.
There was no way in hell Ivan hadn’t pointed guns at people. Men like him lived or died by their weapons. And yet he supported the education we’d instilled in Brady. I was…confused. It didn’t make sense. He’d said he wanted Brady to be his heir. To take over his organization.
My eyes absently trailed over the next plaque, seeing but not reading the words.
“You seemed surprised,” Ivan said quietly, as if he were reading my mind.
I flicked a glance at him. “I am.”
“I’m not some monster, Poppy,” Ivan murmured. “No matter what you think of me.”
His mouth said one thing, but reality begged me to consider the alternative.
“Brady’s lived a life I could only dream of. He’s had a good upbringing. I’m not here to ruin that.” Ivan looked at where the boy had his face pressed between the bars, staring down at whatever animal prowled about its enclosure.
That might be his intentions. He might not want to corrupt his son. But at the end of the day, Ivan was a mob boss. With that came choices that most people mercifully didn’t have to make. He couldn’t be a good dad, the kind of dad I wanted for Brady. No matter what he said.
I took a long breath. The sooner we left, the better. I couldn’t afford the little heart to become any more attached than it already was to the monstrous sire.