Borrowed Bride: Chapter 30

“What?”

The world falls away, and the people in the room all fade away to nothing. Nothing exists except Gianna standing before me, and the sniffling child in her arms.

A father? I have a daughter?

All my anger at Dante and my conflicted feelings over Leonardo and Fawn suddenly don’t matter as I stare into the eyes of a child whose ice blue matches mine.

“I’m a father?” I repeat as Gianna adjusts the crying girl on her hip, and nods.

“This is Freya. Your daughter.”

She’s grown. Gianna holds an actual small person in her arms, not a baby. A real child who fusses at the strangers in the room and repeatedly hides her face in her mother’s neck.

A daughter.

My daughter.

I don’t know what to say. My mind is blank. Thankfully, Gianna seems to know what to do because a second later, she’s taking my hand and leading me from the room. I follow, unable to take my eyes off the child.

Gianna leads me through to a different bedroom that’s filled with toys and stuffed animals. It’s definitely Freya’s room. She sits herself on the bed and settles Freya in her lap.

“It’s okay,” Gianna soothes softly, rocking Freya back and forth in her arms. “You’re okay. I’m right here sweetie. It’s okay. Don’t cry, it’s okay.”

Freya wails loudly for a few long minutes, then she begins to calm when Gianna presses a stuffed hippo into her small arms.

I can’t fathom how this is possible. We’ve been apart for so long, but this child is mine? I try to calculate back, estimating what age she could be based on when we last slept together but my memories from around the explosion are fuzzy because of the coma.

Does this mean poor Gianna had to go through pregnancy all by herself? She had to give birth by herself? Suddenly, the new scar I found on her abdomen becomes crystal clear in my mind and I bite back a soft noise of pain. She had a caesarean and she was all by herself?

That pain bleeds into the anger that beats in my heart. Dante had Gianna hidden for five years which meant he knew there was a child. Maybe he suspected the child belonged to Leo but given how my father seems to operate, I doubt that’s the case.

“Freya,” Gianna says with a warm smile. “I want you to meet someone, okay?”

Freya nods, clutching at her hippo.

“This man is your Daddy, Freya. This is your Daddy and he’s so excited to meet you!”

“Daddy?” she says, and my heart melts the second I hear her voice. “Like—like in my story books?”

“Yes,” Gianna nods. “Exactly like the book we were reading last night! You would be Baby Bear.” Gianna pokes Freya’s tummy. “I would be Mommy Bear and this is Daddy Bear. Do you want to say hi?”

I sit beside them on the bed and suddenly my palms break out in a nervous sweat as they rest against my leg. My heart races as I watch Freya peek through Gianna’s hair and stare at me with eyes almost as big as her mother’s.

This is a lot to take in so quickly and I try to arrange my face to be as pleasant as possible for a child. It’s difficult since I have exactly zero experience with children outside of hugs from the ones I’ve sent off to a new life. I have no idea how to talk to a child, how to care for one, or how to make sure I don’t scare them. Being a father was always a distant thought for the future, and now reality is here with a fully formed child.

“He’s not scary,” Gianna assures Freya. “He’s just big because he does a lot of work, like Santa!”

The comparison seems to work for Freya because her eyes widen and she leans forward to get a better look at me. “Daddy?”

That single word is like a punch straight to the heart and my lower lip quivers even as I smile. “That’s right,” I say hoarsely. “And you’re my … my Freya.”

Freya watches me for a few seconds, then she nods and begins to wiggle so much that she slides from Gianna’s lap to the floor. Then she moves off to one of the play mats set up on the floor and dives right in.

My heart pounds and I curl my hands into fists. Was that a good reaction? Did I do something wrong?

I look at Gianna, and she’s watching me with a slightly nervous smile on her lips.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Gianna says softly. “She’s little. The concept of another parent will be difficult for her for a while, but she didn’t cry like she did when she met Cherry for the first time so you’re doing good.”

I laugh softly, rubbing my palms along my thighs. “Okay. Okay.”

“Play with her.” Gianna tilts her head down to where Freya is playing.

“I don’t know how.”

“There’s no rule book,” she says, reaching for my hand. The warmth of her contact blooms across my knuckles. “Just do what she’s doing.”

It’s more nerve-wracking than charging into a room full of armed men all wanting to kill me. This impossible small human is mine, somehow, and as I settle on the floor next to her, I can’t take my eyes off her. She has the cutest button nose with hair like her mother’s.

“Can I play?” I ask softly.

Freya shoves a plastic spoon into my hand and orders me to cook, and from then on I become the head chef at the cafe/restaurant she’s running. It’s terrifying at first. My mind races with the fear that I’m doing the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing, but Gianna never corrects me and Freya doesn’t seem to mind anything I do.

After some time, she ends up shuffling around with her toys and resting against my leg. The contact burns, but I’d rather chop my own leg off than move and risk disturbing her. During play, we have to deal with an unruly customer who refuses to pay and Freya punishes them with too much salt in their food.

Then she begins to yawn and rests heavier against me.

“Tired?” Gianna asks. “It’s been a long day.”

I glance at the clock. A whole chunk of time has just vanished, either because of the earlier meeting or because of play with Freya. Either way, she isn’t the only one that could benefit from a nap.

As Gianna stands, Freya suddenly turns against me and raises her arms. I glance at Gianna for permission—who nods quickly—and then as carefully as I can, I scoop my daughter into my arms. She barely weighs anything and immediately settles into my hold like she’s been there a thousand times already. Through Gianna’s direction, I tuck her up into bed, and then together, we read her the hungry bear story until tiredness pulls her into an afternoon nap.

Gianna then takes me back to the bedroom and remains silent until she prepares my medication. “I’m sure you have questions.”

I ease down onto the bed with a grunt as all my aches pull and squeeze. “A few.”

“You can ask me anything.”

“What age is she?”

“Six, nearly six and a half.”

“Six?” I count back and had expected the child to be from when my memory was hazy but instead, I have to go back further.

“When Tara was attacked,” Gianna begins, sitting next to me. “That was when I found out I was pregnant. I was going to tell you once you had gotten your father back but then Cherry appeared and threatened me. Of course, she was working for Fawn, and they were convinced you were a sex trafficker, so they were scaring me to stay away.”

I nod slowly.

“All I knew was that I had to keep the baby safe from everyone so I just … I left. And I stayed hidden until she was born and Fawn tracked me down. She also wanted to keep Freya safe and it was her idea for me to go to Leo. She told me the truth of who she was, and I would have told you when we met at the safe house but there wasn’t enough time.” Gianna sighs deeply. “Anyway, that’s why I went to him because I didn’t know the truth. I didn’t know anything and all I wanted to do was keep her safe. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Even in that apartment Dante put us in …”

She shakes her head and tears sparkle in her eyes.

“I’m sorry I never told you. All the time I was pregnant, maybe if I’d reached out, then things would have been different⁠—”

“Hey, hey.” I stop her immediately and cup her face, caressing her cheek. “Don’t talk like that. You’ve been through this constant hell, with a child to protect all through that. I’m the one that’s sorry. If I hadn’t been so blinded by grief and hate all of the time, then maybe I would’ve seen clearly sooner. I’ve been blind to so much, my father included. You did what you had to do.”

Looking deep into her eyes, a small grateful smile flashes across her lips.

“You did all of that alone, and I can’t imagine the strength that took. So don’t you dare apologize, okay? Don’t you dare.”

Moving in, I kiss her deeply and pour every ounce of my love into the action. Gianna murmurs softly, then her hands slide around my neck and she pulls me closer.