Chapter Sixty
Sena
It was lunchtime. I made mac’and’cheese cause that’s all she’d wanted lately. The house was quiet, and that only meant one thing. She was outside. She had found her daddy.
I walked to the back patio and opened the door, leaving the screen door closed cause I hated mosquitoes, but especially in the house. My darling girl was there, sitting on her daddy’s lap. She was dressed in denim shorts and a white tank, my silver hoops hanging humorously from her ears.
Ah, so she’d gotten into my jewelry again.
Anton spoke to her quietly, pointing out all the different parts of the engine he was rebuilding for some old Mustang I was too clueless to name. Golden-hour light cast over them, making the whole thing look like a movie scene. It was moments like this that made it easy to forget.
Forget that there were monsters lurking in the shadows waiting for me. For my daughter.
It was easy to forget my husband was one of them.
“Lunchtime, my loves!” I called.
Anton looked back and smiled, placing a three-year-old Nadia Viramenta Slade Stonyanov on her feet to wobble her way back to me. Try saying that three times fast.
“What are you thinking about, moya svyat?”
The diagnoses I just got that I had yet to tell him about. The fact that I wouldn’t be here to watch them grow old. That I would miss so much, and I hated it.
“Nothing. Just how happy I am.” I smiled, kissing him and leading them both inside.
For now. We were happy for now. Soon, Olympus would call on Hades once more, and my husband would no longer be the man I loved so dearly. He would rejoin them and take on his responsibilities once more. He would do nefarious things, and he would not blink an eye. He would corrupt our child.
And I would not be here to stop it.