Roman's Redemption: Roman: Book II (Roman's Trilogy) (13 page)

“…is your mommy with her daddy, and I believe your uncle Rick at Disney Land.”

“What is wong wit her hair? Daddy, it looks wike she put her finga in a light sogit.”

“A light socket?” Roman chuckles and my eyes flood with tears when I realize what Ivy is referring to and the memories of that day roll against me in waves.

“Yeah, the thing I was puttin’ you keys in da utta day and you yelled at me, a light sogit.”

When I step across the threshold, what I see is enough to make kingdoms fall to their knees. Roman is sitting behind his desk in a black v-neck t-shirt and dark gray flannel pj bottoms with his bare feet crossed over each other and resting on top of his desk. He’s reclined back in his office chair laughing so hard his head is thrown back and as he pulls Ivy closer to him to lift her above his head, her tiny hands cup both sides of his face and she nuzzles her nose against his.

After his laughing subsides he whispers, “Angel, it’s called an electrical outlet, and your mommy’s hair was crimped. And for Pete’s sake, don’t let her hear you say anything about you, keys, and or electrical outlets.”

“It’s okay, I mean I heard, but it’s okay, what are you—I mean, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude, I’ll just—“ Before I can turn around Roman is rounding his desk holding Ivy.

“No, no, mouse, you’re not interrupting anything. We were just looking at some photo albums Jen brought over for Ivy of you and your brothers when you were kids. How are you feeling?”

He stops when he’s standing before me and when I see Ivy snuggling closer to him my heart breaks and my eyes water as my lip quivers. The tone of my voice sounds even more pathetic when it cracks, “Fine. I’m fine.” I pull my sleeves down covering my hands before using the soft material to wipe away the tears threatening to fall. “I’ll just, I was just coming to find Ivy, to see if she wanted to spend some time with me, or I don’t know, talk, or play a board game. I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation.”

I quickly turn to retreat to the safety of my room before the sobs I’m barely holding in escape, but then I hear my daughters’ sweet voice, “Don’t go mommy, pwetty pwease. Daddy likes to play chessckers, I like Candy Land, but if you wanna pay your bard game, we can. But ya gotta tell us how to play, doe.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t turn around. I can’t speak. All I can do is just stand, frozen in place two feet from Roman’s office door.

When I feel her soft little warm hand slide into mine before she tugs me further back into the room and closer to where Roman stands, I look down into my daughter’s navy blue eyes, “Or if you juss wanna talk, we can do dat too, mommy. Otay?”

Her smile lights up her whole face and before I know what’s happening I’m on my knees and my sweet baby’s arms are wrapped around my neck and her legs are circling my waist while I whisper against her ear, “Baby girl, the only thing I have or will ever want is to hold you just like this, for as long as you’ll let me.”

I don’t know, nor do I care what happened to change Ivy’s reaction to me, I’ll eagerly take whatever I can get in order to strengthen the bond between me and my daughter.

The shrill ringing of Roman’s office phone pops the bubble of our little family reunion.

“Hello?” Roman asks the caller.

I look down at Ivy and in an effort to continue the seemingly progress we’re making and say, “Do you know Candy Land was my favorite game when I was your age? My brother, Rick, the one in the picture—“

She nods, smiling, “Yeah, mommy, I know who untle Wicky is.”

“Well, out of all my brothers, he was the only one who would play it with me.” Without thought, without questioning my actions, I scoop my baby girl up and smile at Roman before heading towards the exit, “Is your Candy Land game in your room?”

She nods again, “Yup, at da top of my cwasit.” I feel her fingers twirling the ends of my hair as she rests her head on my shoulder and yawns.

“How about this, you and I will play, but you might have to help me out because it’s been a while since I played. Then after that I’ll read you a bedtime story and get you tucked in just like I did every night when you were a teeny tiny baby, sound like a plan?”

Ivy yawns again and nods, snuggling her nose into the crook of my neck and whispers in a sleepy tone, “Duss make shore I hab my gway bwanket. I can’t sweep wiffout it.”

As I round the corner in the hall, Roman’s words are spoken almost too quietly for me to hear what he’s telling the caller, “Well there were already pictures. The police already have them, what are they asking for and in exchange for what? Me? Why do you need to know where I was?

“Oh. He did, did he? FUCK! No, I know who it is, it’s Sebastian. No, I don’t know why, just pay his fucking ransom, I’ll transfer…”

Ivy’s door clicks closed behind us. After my daughter wiggles from my arms and waits for me to get the game from the top shelf in her closet, we set it up. She lays her head in my lap and tells me, “Mommy, you go first.”

In less than five minutes, I’m tucking my gray blanket around her in bed and snuggling up behind her when the realization of what my life has become settles around me.

My brothers.

My husband.

My daughter.

They all believed I have been dead all this time. I had a funeral. Someone was buried,
AS ME
. There is a headstone with my name, my date of birth, and my supposed date of death.

Who exactly is Sebastian Gorman? What in the hell is Roman talking about, and to whom? Does Rome know Sebastian was the person who held me prisoner for two years?

Dammit, there are so many questions and people involved, and I don’t know who to trust and who not to trust.

Sebastian waited on me hand and foot during my entire pregnancy. He was my only ally. He was never anything except kind, attentive, loving, funny, and charming. What happened to make him just…flip? I don’t understand. What caused him to go from being my Seb to the evil, sick perverted bastard who kept me shackled with rusty cuffs and chains?

When Mace was behind the wheel while we were in captivity, I didn’t get the chance to ponder over these questions. I was suspended in a peaceful stasis where confusing facts and betrayals couldn’t reach me. So now, as I lay beside my daughter in my home, everything, every thought, every question, every lie, every scar, everything rains down on me. It’s so damn overwhelming I feel Mace struggling to take over, fighting for my conscious mind.

I slowly slide from Ivy’s bed before making my way towards Roman’s office. But the mental struggle between Mace and I does something and it effects my equilibrium. I stumble, swaying side to side before leaning against the wall of the hallway to steady my steps while staggering the rest of the way. When I walk in, Roman is hanging the phone up and raking his long fingers through his thick ink black hair, exhaling an exasperated sigh. He stands from his chair and turns his back to me before looking out the window behind his desk.

Do I love my husband? Yes.

Do I hate my husband? Yes.

He may seem the worst possible choice to place my bets on and go all in. Yes he has secrets, he’s caused the world enough pain to last a life time. But I’d rather have the man who doesn’t hide the ugly parts of who he is- sins, transgressions, and all. Because I also know Roman as well as what lies beneath his sins.

And now I know I can’t change him. My love will never wash away the blood staining his hands and soul. I wish I knew how to tell him that I’ve seen the dark side too, and nothing I learn about Roman William Payne, nothing can ever make me love him any less. I need not only Rome, but I need my husband back. I need him to continue being the perfect father he doesn’t realize he already is, but more than anything I need him to fix me, to bring me back to life, because he’s the only one who can.

Chapter 20

Roman

I feel her presence the moment I release a sigh of all the pent up exhaustion that’s been wearing on me for as long as I can remember. When I first heard my Heather was alive, I wouldn’t allow myself to believe it. I just kept thinking, ‘This can’t be happening. I don’t deserve a blessing like this. This can’t be fucking happening.’ But then I saw her.  When she walked from the cell hiding her thin, pale, gaunt face behind her long, stringy thin hair I realized it was happening, and this blessing was going to be a long, hard earned one that would require the patience and devotion of all three of us, Heather, Ivy, and myself before it ever transformed into the blessing I originally believed it to be.

Patience, though, has never been my strong suit.

And my devotion has always dangled on the razor sharp edge of morbid obsession.

“I apologize, you and Ivy don’t need to hear the bones of the skeletons rattling at the back of my closet. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again, mouse.”

“No. It’s, Roman I believe it’s well past time you and I begin being honest with one another. Drag the skeletons out, we’ve both been wronged, hell we’ve both been wrong. I won’t judge you. I know after Ivy was born I did everything in my power to push you away, I know I shut you out on the day of our wedding, but Rome, your vows, I wasn’t ready to hear them. Especially after you’d taken away your promise of my brothers becoming a part of our life. But all of that was then. Let’s have the night I returned home be our starting over point, can we please?”

Her hands barely brush my shoulders before her thin arms circle my waist and she rests the side of her face between my shoulder blades and continues, “We both have scores to settle now, Roman. Don’t we?”

Her tone alone sends chills down my spine and I briefly wonder how much of the torture she endured has changed the woman I love before I feel her hands slip into my flannel sleep pants and grasp my cock. Immediately any thoughts or worries dissipate as the blood supplying my brain with oxygen detours directly to where her hands are. “Holy mother of God, mouse.” I brace my hands against the windowpanes and breathe in slow breaths through my nose before exhaling it through gritted teeth.

I feel her hot breath through the cotton of my t-shirt, “How long has it been, Rome? Do you need me?”

Damn lights flicker behind my eyelids as my sluggish brain tries to make sense of her words.

Before I can answer she’s in front of me, shoving me back into my office chair, slipping her top over her head and her silky pj bottoms pool around her feet. She tugs my sleep pants down further until they're around my ankles, and then my wife is kneeling between my legs dragging her tongue along the crease from under my balls to the tip of my cock and moaning as she laps up the beading precum before taking as much of me as she can into her mouth. Her head turns slightly left then right and the head of my cock slides though the ring of muscles at the back of her throat and instantly my hands fist her hair on their own accord as my head lolls back my hips thrust upward. “Shit. Goddammit, Heather, what are you doing to me?”

Her only answer is regaining control of administering the brand of head that would be awarded alongside the elite Oscar, Nobel Peace, and Pulitzer if rewards were ever handed out for blowjobs. 

I cannot explain it. The sheer force of the abrupt orgasm tearing its way through me and pouring down Heather’s throat catches me so off guard it rocks me to the core as unintelligible growls and shouts emit from my chest.

When my labored breathing slows and my erratic pulse returns to normal I loosen my grip tangled in Heather’s hair when I realize tears are streaming down her face and she’s choking on my cock, hardening again because I’m a sick, twisted bastard who still fucking loves the sound of my wife gagging around my shaft.

I remain silent trying to mentally coax my erection away, but when Heather lays her warm, tear soaked cheek on my thigh while caressing her fingers across the other thigh I concede a battle my heart was never in to begin with. “Rome, please, I need you to be careful with me, tonight.” Her husky voice cracks, without moving her head from my lap she swallows before continuing, “I need you to make slow and gentle love to me, be firm and dominating when demanding what you want of me, but most of all, I need you to whisper soft, warm and affectionate words to the battered, abused, broken little girl who lives inside my heart,” I watch her as she looks up at me from kneeling on the floor between my thighs and smiles, “she has always only ever loved you.” I can’t take it another minute, I have her scooped up, swiped my forearm across the office mahogany desk sending two Tiffany lamps, alongside a laptop and whatever else is of no importance, crashing to the floor before laying Heather on its surface and draping her thighs over each of my shoulders.

I run my nose along the crease where her inner thigh meets her pussy, groaning as the essence of my mouse slams into me for the first time in years.

   When I pin her eyes with mine, my voice is harsh when I ask, “Heather, are you sure this is okay?”

I lick up her pussy and as the taste of her hits my taste buds, I groan, “I need you, mouse. And if this isn’t okay, you only have a few seconds to stop me before I fucking take what is mine. Now answer my goddamn question, is this okay?”

Without blinking or looking away from me she whispers, “I already told you, Rome. I need you.”

Chapter 19