Rock Hard Neighbor

by Hart, Rye

  Every time I looked into the beautiful blue eyes of my sweet baby girl, I was reminded of him, but I couldn’t let the ache overshadow the beauty that man had brought into my life.

  The beautiful child he had given me was the best thing that ever happened to me.

  Putting my life on hold for this little girl hadn’t been easy. Any dreams of returning to culinary school got tossed out the window. But there wasn’t a second that went by that I regretted any of it. I loved my brother and my daughter with a fire I hadn’t known I was capable of, and when Cassie and I teamed up to get through these tougher days, there was nothing that could stop us.

  My shift finally ended and I raced home in my rundown car, anxious to wrap my arms around my makeshift family and pull them close to my chest.

  “I’m home, you guys!”

  “Cassie’s upstairs with Ana,” Kevin said. “She threw up on herself.”

  “She threw up? Is she feverish? Rashy? Constipated?”

  “Yes, no, no, and no,” Cassie said as she came down the steps with Ana. “She ate too many hot dog.”

  “Hot dogs, yummy!” Ana exclaimed.

  “Ah, we overate again,” I said as I plucked a naked Ana from Cassie’s arms. “Why do you always do that, hmm? Last week, you ate too many Cheerios.”

  “I want Cheerios!” Ana said.

  “Of course you do,” I said with a sigh.

  “Wanna know how things at the bookstore went?” Cassie asked.

  “I didn’t realize there was much to tell,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “They want to promote Cassie to full-time employment,” Kevin said.

  “Thanks for spoiling the surprise, dork,” she said.

  “Cassie, are you serious?” I asked. “That’s awesome!”

  “I guess,” she said, shrugging. “I’m not sure if it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life, but it’s money.”

  “That’s what happens when you don’t think about the direction you want your life to take,” I said as I put clothes on Ana. “You end up in jobs you don’t like.”

  “Hey, it helps with things around here, right?” she asked.

  “But I also want you to be happy,” I said.

  “Cassie says happiness is a choice, not a destination,” Kevin said.

  “Cassie also says ‘bottoms up’ to whole bottles of tequila on a Wednesday night,” I said.

  “And it sure tastes good going down,” she said.

  “But not as good coming back up in our bathroom,” I said, grinning.

  “Pee pee,” Ana said.

  “You need to pee pee?” I asked.

  I put Ana down, and she ran for her little potty in the corner. I was in the middle of potty training her while trying to get Kevin comfortable with school. He was going through that awkward stage where he didn’t really know where he fit in and I was trying to get him to open up a bit more. We talked a lot, and he and Cassie really bonded, but I think that’s because he thought Cassie was pretty more than anything else. For a thirteen-year-old boy, sitting next to a curvy girl with long brown hair and deep blue eyes was the equivalent of propping open a Playboy magazine.

  “Ana is doing well with her potty training,” Cassie said.

  “She is,” I said as Ana ran back to me. “I’m proud of her.”

  “Now, we just gotta get her pooping in the potty. Then she’ll be ready to get a job, too!”

  Kevin laughed while I shot her a look. I could see the playful smirk playing on her face while her and Kevin started up a game of Minecraft. It was something Kevin had become addicted to after playing it at a friend’s house, so Cassie and I saved up all our money and got him a gaming system and that specific game last Christmas.

  “You sure you don’t want me to take Ana to her appointment tomorrow so you can catch the lunch shift?” Cassie asked.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “I really want to take her to this appointment, especially with there being shots involved. You’re welcome to come, but I’ve already got someone covering my shift.”

  “If you contracted your shifts out, you could probably scoop up some of their tips as payment,” Cassie said.

  “You’re the weirdest person I know, you know that?” I asked.

  “Oh, I make it a point,” she said, winking.

  “Wanna build a castle?” Kevin asked.

  “We built a castle last time,” she said. “Can we blow up this one?”

  “Only if we build it with bricks,” Kevin said. “They scatter farther when you blow ‘em up.”

  “I’m gonna go lay Ana down to bed and then I’ll be back to watch the festivities,” I said.

  “Better hurry up! Countdown to explosions in T-minus twenty minutes!”

  I shook my head and walked up the stairs as I headed to Ana’s room. She was already falling asleep on my shoulder as I laid her down in her crib, and the moment I covered her with her blanket, she was closing her eyes. I stared at her for a while, admiring the hairpin curve of her lips as she drifted off to sleep. She looked so much like him. It was uncanny. I’d pick her up in the morning and be hit with those big blue eyes and, suddenly, I’d be thrown back to that night.

  That night I spent with my deep, dark prince.

  I rubbed my neck, feeling the spot he’d marked three years ago. Back then, I’d covered it up for two weeks while it faded. But now? I’d give anything for it to be back.

  I bent down and kissed Ana one last time before I ventured back downstairs. As I watched Kevin and Cassie giggling on the couch, I realized I wouldn’t trade this for anything. No matter how much of a surprise Ana was and no matter how much it hurt to lose my parents, I had the family I wanted.

  The family I’d pieced together from the remnants of my life.

  There wasn’t any part of it that I would change, no matter what.

  Chapter Ten - Camillo

  Three Years Later

  I chopped up the vegetables and threw them into the pot while the water came to a rolling boil. Junior was sitting at the table, playing some sort of game on his handheld gaming system, lost in the world that was unfolding before him while I made our stew for the night. I threw the rest of the vegetables into the water before I started trimming down the meat, removing all the gristle while I watched him out of the corner of my eye.

  The day my brother died was the worst day of my life. I’d walked into his home and found my brother and his wife slaughtered, with their blood coating the walls. I’d heard Junior crying out from the closet, urinating on himself in fear as he clutched a very bold knife. I scooped him up into my arms at only nine years old, wrapped him in my jacket so he wouldn’t see the carnage, and carried him away from that house.

  In the past three years, he’d gone from a lively, vivacious young boy to a closed off, angry little man. That first night that I kept him in my New York City penthouse, he’d cried himself to sleep on my lap. He’d yelled out for his mother in the middle of the night and screamed for his father. The only thing I could do was hold him close to me while his little fists pounded against my chest. It was in that damn moment I’d made a decision to take him the hell away from this lifestyle. I was no longer willing to allow this legacy to bury any more of my family.

  I was fed up with the horrific system my nephew was being exposed to. It was the same system that ripped my entire family away from me. My mother. My father. Countless cousins and my brothers. In that moment, with Junior wailing against my chest, I knew I had two choices.

  I could stick around and watch my nephew suffer the same fate, or I could put an end to it all and begin a new life for him.

  A new life for us both.

  The decision was harder than it should’ve been. Every cell in my body wanted revenge for what had happened. I wanted to lay waste to the entire Del Vecchio family with my own two hands for what they’d done to my brother and his wife. I wanted to seek revenge for the little boy I cradled in my arms night after night, who cried for his mother and pleaded with
me to take him home.

  Everything in me screamed to spill the blood of that disgusting, ruthless, piece of shit family and line the city streets with their corpses.

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk putting my nephew in harm’s way any longer. I had no idea what he saw that night—he still wouldn’t talk about it—but I knew I had to get him away from it all. I knew I had to do what was right by my brother as his son’s legal guardian and get him away from the same nightmares that still woke me up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night.

  My only choice at making a new life for us was to get off the grid. I had to move someplace secluded in order to get away from all my connections to the mob. I sold off my penthouse and gave the club over to someone else. I liquidated all the assets I could and stored it in offshore investment accounts. I funneled the money through various investment firms to clean it up before purchasing a cabin in an isolated area of Pennsylvania. It took longer than I’d have liked but, finally, after two and a half years, we moved into an isolated cabin.

  A place near the Poconos. The only place I’d ever known to have any sort of beauty.

  Back during my empire days, I’d taken many trips there to ski. I ate at many of the diners and sampled many of the homebrews in the bars that peppered the area. It was beautiful in the wintertime and it was the first time I’d ever gotten a good look at how secluded and isolated some people could live. I encountered people who were completely self-sustained. People who’d cashed in their riches and their businesses to live a slow life, out from beneath the prying eye of the public. At first, I thought they were insane for leaving behind their fancy lives of opulence.

  But when I purchased that cabin under a random alias near the mountain side of the Poconos, the only thing I could think of was my songbird.

  That beautiful woman who talked of a place she loved like it was the only place she ever wanted to be.

  The cabin was completely off the grid. I kept a gas generator going for electricity during the winter months, but the solar panels on the roof kept us going during the summer months. The kits were easy enough to purchase and install and the few weeks of summer we had experienced here proved I’d installed them correctly. Every other day, I’d go outside and chop up firewood, storing it inside for the cold winter months to come. The fireplace in the cabin was the only source of heat in the house, but the air ducts that shot off and lined the ceiling poured heat into the other rooms while casting the smoke outside.

  Where we were, I could hear anyone and anything coming. We lived off the beaten path and I took to homeschooling Junior, which was fine with him because he didn’t seem to trust people anyway. For now, we had to venture into town to get fresh vegetables to eat, but once we got past this first winter in the Poconos, that wouldn’t be the case. I’d been making plans to plant a garden in the backyard and, coupling that with the hunting I did, we’d be completely self-sufficient.

  At that point, the only thing I’d need to run into town for was gas for the generator, which I stored away by the gallons in a shed I’d built with my own two hands out back.

  Every day I woke up, I thought of her. The innocent little songbird that sang among these mountains. I wondered what she was doing, or if she ever thought of me. I’d wanted to track her down years ago when my body craved her the most. Just to see what she was up to. Just to make sure she was okay and happy.

  But I’d stopped myself on many occasions. I couldn’t risk the Del Vecchio family finding out about my weakness for a woman whose name I didn’t even know. She was too pure. Too good for me. Besides, developing any kind of personal relationship with her would put her in danger.

  Danger she didn’t deserve.

  But now that Junior and I had settled into our new lifestyle—now that I had left all of that bullshit behind—it was finally the right time to check in on her.

  A knock came at the door just as I threw the meat into the stew. Junior looked at me with fear in his eyes and my gut pulled with guilt. I knew I’d made the right decision by leaving that lifestyle behind. Just the look of fear that rattled across his stare was enough to make me sick, even after all this time. I walked over to him and kissed the top of his head, telling him to stay put while I saw what was going on.

  Then, I made my way to the door with a gun holstered on my hip.

  “Don’t panic. It’s just me.”

  I sighed with relief, and I opened the door. The private investigator I’d hired to track down the girl held a massive manila envelope in his hand. I ushered him in and we sat down on the couch. Then I called out to Junior and told him everything was just fine.

  He didn’t say anything back, but I could hear him pressing the buttons on his gaming system, so I knew he had settled himself down again.

  “Did you find her?” I asked.

  “I did,” he said. “Since you knew she lived in the area, she wasn’t hard to track down. I didn’t even have to risk tapping into the old footage of the club you owned in order to find her.”

  “Good,” I said. “How is she?”

  “She’s… as good as can be expected,” he said.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked. “Has something happened to her?”

  “She does still live in the area,” he said. “She lives just on the other side of this mountain. Works at a diner called Stevie’s. Ever heard of it?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said.

  “It’s not too far from here. Maybe a thirty-minute drive. Anyway, you said you encountered her three years ago, right?”

  “Yes, what’s happened to her?” I asked.

  “Take a look inside.”

  He handed me the manila envelope, and I practically ripped the top off it. My heart was pounding in my chest and my blood rushed heavily through my ears. I pulled out page after page, tossing everything to the floor as a picture of her finally came into view. Those beautiful peridot eyes and that milky skin were exactly like I remembered, matching the image of her I’d had burned in my brain. My heart ached at the sight of the black hair that had felt so soft against my fingers and those beautiful, luscious lips I’d dreamed about for years.

  I studied her luscious curves, noting their subtle changes. Her breasts were a bit larger, and her hips were a bit wider. Her thighs were a bit thicker and her cheeks were a bit fuller.

  And then I saw it. The “thing” that happened.

  I flipped over to a picture of my songbird sitting in a park. She was nestled beside a woman with brown hair and tan skin, while a teenaged boy was settled at her other side. And there was a girl looking over her shoulder, with big blue eyes, radiant tan skin, and dark black hair.

  Hair just like her mother’s. And eyes just like mine.

  I flipped through picture after picture of the little girl and my stomach sank to my toes. I did the math in my head as I shuffled through the papers on the floor. I found the little girl’s birth certificate and clocked her birthday.

  Eight months and three weeks from the first time—and only time—I’d ever plunged myself into my songbird’s warm, wet, inviting body.

  “Her name’s Rose Brugman,” the detective said. “She’s twenty-four years old, takes care of her thirteen-year-old brother since her parents died in a car accident when she was nineteen. She dropped out of culinary school for that and took a steady job at the diner once she figured out she was pregnant.”

  “With my child,” I said, whispering.

  “She looks just like you,” the detective said.

  I couldn’t believe it. This beautiful, picturesque woman was the mother of my child. Her body had swelled with my seed, rounding out her features perfectly while she blossomed with my child. For three solid years, she did nothing but sacrifice to take care of this family. The family that fate had brought together through tragedy and chance. Her family that she’d become the foundation of.

  “The woman next to her in the park is her roommate and cousin, Cassandra Anderson,” the detective said. “
Cassie for short.”

  But I didn’t care about any of that. Not right now. My perfect princess—my innocent songbird—was working at a diner to make ends meet while she raised my daughter. She was sacrificing everything in her life, becoming as strong as she needed to in order to support the family she loved. I ran my fingertips over the face of my smiling daughter, who seemed to know exactly where to put her eyes every time this detective took a picture of them.

  “Thank you for your service,” I said.

  “I assume the money’s just gonna… appear in my account?” he asked.

  “I put it there a couple days ago,” I said mindlessly. “Remember the NDA you signed.”

  “I do, don’t worry. If there’s one thing I can get behind, it’s the protection of children. I don’t even know what you look like.”

  He stood and left me with all the information I needed right in the palms of my hands. Pictures of my daughter. Rose’s address. The people she hung out with. The people she loved. Where she worked and when she usually worked.

  Everything I needed to easily find her in this mountain town.

  I was determined to be a part of her life. I was determined to be a part of my daughter’s life. I was determined to make her life easier. To show her what it meant to me that she was willing to carry my child and take care of her.

  I wanted to show her what that night three years ago meant to me and, now, I finally could. Now that Junior and I had escaped our horrid past.

  Chapter Eleven – Rose

  I picked up the dinner shift after I took Ana to her doctor’s appointment to make up for the loss in my tips. It still wasn’t enough to completely make up for it, but it would help to make ends meet until the Sunday lunch rush. The last customer had just left and I was honestly considering locking the doors fifteen minutes early. I wanted to get home to Ana to see how she was doing after having all of her shots. I knew Cassie had a handle on things, especially with Kevin really taking a liking to her, but all I wanted to do was hold my little girl and comfort her.