It was a really nice thing for Devon to have done, but she was wise to his game now. He'd done it because he loved Jacinta and Hamish, they were like foster parents to him, and Sascha knew he loved them more than he'd ever loved his own. Neither of his folks liked visiting London, so they tried to visit Glasgow at least once or twice a quarter so the older couple could get to know Tin and vice versa.
Their old home had been small. Not small by most people's standards, but Devon wasn't most people. The reason he'd built them a castle from scratch was because Hamish loved history and, being the clever monkey he was, he’d constructed an adjoining building to the property at the same time.
An annex that would have made a city stockbroker weep in envy. She knew the first time she'd seen it, she'd been both astonished and overjoyed at the prospect of spending time there. It was like if a pool house back home was the size of an eight bedroom house. Yeah. ‘Annex,’ her ass.
It had its own separate entrance, its own drive too. The only link was the land both properties sat on and the covered pool they shared.
The castle-like property was old-fashioned and traditional. It even had moss on it, and all kinds of ivy growing down its front facade as though the building hadn't been completed two years before.
Inside, Devon had let Jacinta have full sway and it was traditional to a tee, with Sascha's favorite room being the library, which came complete with an authentic Adam fireplace and four, yes, four Chesterfield sofas around it.
That was where Hamish usually sat. With a book on his lap, his reading glasses perching and almost toppling off the end of his nose, and a tumbler of whiskey at his side. Jacinta, the complete opposite of her husband, preferred soaps. She had the TV on twenty-four hours a day, even when she slept, and unlike Hamish who preferred whiskey, she had a preference for sweets.
Of all variations.
From candy to cakes.
She was going to be the death of Sawyer, who was as anti-sugar now as he'd been all those years ago when Sascha had first entered the men's lives.
Her lips curved at the thought as she pressed the doorbell this time, fearing her mother-in-law hadn’t heard her knock. When, seconds later the door opened, she saw Jacinta's concerned face and frowned. "What’s wrong? Did Tin have a nightmare?"
When they stayed in Glasgow, they often went out on an evening, leaving Tin with his grandmother. There'd never been a problem before, but the worry in Jacinta's eyes had Sascha's heart rate soaring.
"Cinta? What’s wrong?"
With her thumb she beckoned behind her, the older woman, with her hair as bright red as it had been when she was a young lass—because of a bottle of dye Devon had assured her, not by the grace of God as Cinta swore—whispered, "Not Tin. Sean."
"Sean?" Sascha blinked. "Sean? He's here?"
Sawyer's mother nodded. "Aye. Arrived about an hour after you three left, and could I get any of you on those damn phones you carry about? Could I? Hell!"
Sawyer's brogue was thick, but after years of living down in England, and of being in a household of Southerners, it had worn down a tad. All these years later, Sascha still needed Sawyer to translate for her when Jacinta was feeling particularly heated.
Which was, unfortunately, now.
Tugging at her ear, Sascha asked, "What?"
Cinta snorted then grabbed her arm. "Come and see to him."
"But Sawyer and Devon are in the car."
"They'll figure out that they need to come in when you don't make an appearance." Cinta cackled. "They're supposed to be bloody geniuses, aren't they?"
"I guess. But..." Allowing herself to be dragged forward, Sascha's earlier laissez-faire attitude about walking to the front entrance of Cinta's home with Sawyer and Devon's cum still very much present in her body disappeared.
She could feel it. Slipping down to the top of her thighs, and walking in heels while trying to keep her thighs pressed tightly together...? Yeah, that took some maneuvering.
When Cinta carried on dragging her down the hall toward the back of the house where the kitchen was located, Sascha tugged back. "Wait a minute," she pleaded, then when the older woman stopped, looking harried, she hopped out of her heels and grabbed them in her hand. "That's better. I can walk faster now."
"Good! The boy's looking worse for the wear."
Sascha frowned. "What on earth's happened?"
"I don't know. He won't say. Just arrived, took up a spot at my kitchen table, ate the stew I served him, and had too much of the whiskey Hamish offered him." She tutted. "He'll have a right head in the morning."
Sascha winced—Sean never drank. Like, ever. Not even wine at their evening meal anymore, not since Tin's birth anyway. He'd done it out of solidarity. They all enjoyed a glass of fine wine with dinner, but when she'd learned she was pregnant, and after Valentin's birth, had breastfed, he'd carried on not drinking. The habit had stuck.
As far as she was aware, he didn't even drink at business meetings, so that meant he was drinking now for the first time in close to thirty months.
Racking her brain for what could have happened, she followed Jacinta, but then the doorbell rang. She tutted. "Why none of you won't use yer keys I'll never know," she grumbled. "It would save this woman's feet the trouble if you just used the damn things."
"We don't want to impose," Sascha said softly.
"Well, you're imposing by not using them. This house is tae big and my legs tae old to be wandering the halls like this." Cinta gestured toward the kitchen. "Right. I'll go let the boy geniuses in, and you go and see to Sean. I dinnae like the look of him. He looks wrecked. It hurts me heart tae see," she said gruffly, and without waiting for a reply from her, retreated to the front door to let Sawyer and Devon in.
Even concerned for Sean, Sascha's lips twitched, for, only Cinta, would call them ‘boy geniuses.’ Both were very much in their forties, the men having left boyhood behind a long time ago.
And thank Christ for that, she thought, with no small sense of satisfaction.
A contented smile tried to curve her lips, but it was destroyed by the fact Sean was here. In Glasgow.
Not that she didn't want to see him. On the contrary. She hated being away from any of her men when she visited Cinta and Hamish. But it was rare that all five of them could get away with her, and it was usually Sawyer with one of the others who would come up with Tin and her for the visit.
To have three of them around was a luxury. Well, it would have been were it not for the fact that something was obviously wrong with Sean.
Her eyes were pinched as she hurried down the thickly carpeted hallway and headed into a large kitchen.
Devon, knowing Cinta's love for cooking, had dedicated a large chunk of space to this room. There was an Aga stove that ran the full length of the back wall, and the rest of the country kitchen was designed with her in mind.
The length of the scrubbed oak countertops were loaded with gadgets and gizmos that Cinta had purchased on television programs—they were her true vice. She spent a fortune on them, and because Sawyer had a fortune to waste on such trite crap, since nothing was ever said, Cinta spent to her heart's content.
It was a shame most of them were dust gatherers, Sascha thought wryly as she looked at a cake pop machine and a spiralizer that were plunked next to each other.
There was also a fireplace, with two armchairs in front of it. They were spindly and old-fashioned, but they were a great place to enjoy hot chocolate. That was where she found Sean. His arms hung over the armrests, and he was slouched over.
Drunk?
Well, Cinta had claimed as much.
In a creased suit, with his hair a mess, and his chin brushing his chest, he still somehow managed to look gorgeous. With those piercing blue eyes of his closed, his impressiveness was hindered, but he was a beautiful man. As beautiful to her as he’d been all those years ago when she’d walked up the steps to the Kensington house and had met him on the front doorstep.
At the sounds of
her padding feet, Sean tilted his head a bare half-inch to the side. "Sascha? Knew you'd come." He didn't look at her, just said the words on a low sigh. As she approached, she saw his eyes were still closed, and he didn't open them. "Wanted Tin," he said, the words slurring even more. "But Cinta said he was sleeping. Plus, he doesn't need to see his fuck up of a father." He raised his tumbler for another sip, the amber liquid sloshed against the sides and the ice cubes within tinkled in a pleasing way.
She cocked her head to the side and looked at him as she took a seat in the armchair opposite. The minute she did, she did a kind of grimace and sigh combo. The grimace because cold semen never felt good against your butt, and the sigh because damn, it felt good to sit down.
"Since when are you a fuck up of a father?" she asked him after she’d gotten over the relief of being off her feet after a long night on them, but her tone was cool. Mostly because, well, the last thing he would ever be was a fuck up, and there was no way she was going to let him waddle through the quagmire that this pity party was centered around.
If anyone was doing any waddling, it was her. Not her guys, who were great dads. The men all brought something to the paternal role. None of them were perfect, and she wouldn't have wanted them to be. None of them were, in any way, terrible either. They were exactly what Tin needed. Each one providing something the other couldn't.
It didn't matter that, biologically, Andrei was the dad—and there was no disputing it thanks to the little boy's coloring—they were all his fathers.
And that was exactly how she wanted it to be.
"I messed up, Sascha. Badly." His face crumpled, but she only caught a glimpse before it was hidden behind the double-size tumbler he raised to his lips.
Grimacing at how much whiskey he must have downed, she wondered how she could get the tumbler away from him. First things first. "How?" she crossed her legs, grimacing again at the slickness between her thighs as it made itself known. God, she really hadn't been ready for a discussion of any level of severity tonight.
She was tired and sleepy. She'd wanted nothing more than to grab Tin, tuck him into his bed in his room at the annex, then snuggle down between Devon and Sawyer to sleep for ten hours straight.
Sean's problems were her priority, but she just wasn't prepared for him to have a problem. Sean never had a problem.
It was the way he was.
Because of that, she hated that she wasn't in her best form for him. It was for that reason, with no real prior experience to guide her in problem solving for him, she hefted her fat ass out of the armchair and took the few steps over to him. When he didn't look at her, she just sat on his knee and tilted herself back against his chest.
Not saying a word, he wrapped his arms around her belly and instantly tucked his face into her throat.
He was hiding again.
Sean never hid.
Frowning harder at the fire Hamish must have lit for Sean's benefit, as they never used the kitchen after dinner, she raised a hand and began to stroke his head, letting her fingers drift through the undercut, then glide over the brutally shorn sides. He shivered a little, then pressed deeper into her.
A faint noise came from the hallway, and she saw Sawyer and Devon elbowing each other in their haste to get into the kitchen. She rolled her eyes at them, but knew that their need to get in here was for Sean's benefit.
Sean was, to put it frankly, the spine of the household.
It might sound nuts, or a little exaggerated, but that was the way of it.
He was the one person who everyone went to when they had an issue. His office was where they congregated when they needed to work or to hash out a problem. He was their backbone. And when that backbone was sloshing around drunk, well, that tilted the balance.
Not in their favor.
Devon was scowling, and she could tell, because she knew him so damn well, that his eyes were worried.
Thanks to Vasily, Andrei's grandfather, Sascha had spent a fair bit of time around horses. Whenever they visited, he insisted that she visit his stable and have a few lessons so that she could learn to ride. He said that in his family, all the men had to ride.
"I'm not a man," she told him with a huff when the learner horse, Daisy, had bitten her, and she'd tried to refuse to go on another lesson.
"No, but Tin will be, and one day, he will see his mother and be ashamed that she cannot ride as well as he can."
That logic had made no sense then, and it made no sense now, but a snickering Andrei hadn't backed her up and Vasily hadn't once been a Pakhan of the Bratva for no reason at all. The man's glower could pack a punch.
She'd seen a horse in full panic. The eyes that practically rolled and the sweat that came from their hides... Devon’s baby blues reminded her of that. Without the stink that came with it.
It was cold. Cinta wasn't frivolous with the central heating, and they'd just walked in from the outside. There was no reason at all for him to be sweating, but she knew that was because Sawyer's mother had told both men about Sean's presence and condition. His eyes were wide, flared with tension as concern about Sean overwhelmed him, and the gleam on his skin spoke of a terror that was born in his emotions.
Devon couldn't be overwhelmed.
He was too fractious, his mental health too unstable even as, in many ways, he was one of the strongest men she knew. Yet another dichotomy that made no sense where he was concerned, yet made absolute sense too.
Knowing he needed her, but that Sean did too and that he wasn’t about to let go of her anyway, she held out her hand to him and he rushed over like a piranha was attempting to bite his ass. The minute her fingers enfolded his, he sank low onto his knees at their side. She winced because the stone floor was not only cold, it wasn't exactly comfortable.
"What is it? What's wrong?" he demanded, his gaze raking over the seated pair.
Sawyer walked a little more leisurely towards them. That wasn't to say he wasn't as concerned, but he didn't crowd. That wasn't in his nature. He took the armchair Sascha had just departed and sank back against the spindles which made up the backrest.
"Sean needed a drink or two."
"Or six," he gurgled against her throat. The words and the vibration made her smile a little as the sensation tickled.
"Or eight?" she teased back.
He nodded. "Needed it."
"You just never said why."
"I did." He heaved a deep breath. "Told you. I'm a fuck up of a father. Tin shouldn't have a man like me in his life."
Sawyer reared back at that. "What the hell, mon?"
Devon scowled. "What could possibly have made you think that?"
"He was only three. So close to Tin's age, and with his hair too. So goddamn white. Like a cherub, but with a naughty smile too."
"Who was?" Sascha insisted, concerned now.
There was no answer though. Sean began rubbing his forehead against her throat, and then she felt it.
It.
The wetness.
Tears?
Sean was crying?
Her own eyes flared wide with distress now.
"Sean, you're starting to scare me, baby," she told him, her voice shaky. And she spoke no word of a lie.
He was freaking her out.
"The third one, and I was too late."
"The third one what?" Sawyer snapped, his tone not as careful as hers.
"The third child snatched!" he snarled, and pulling his face away from her throat, he growled at Sawyer. "The third child I failed!" His eyes sparked with a fire, burning them all with his rage at the unjust world they lived in.
Even as he pulled away to glower at Sawyer, his arms curved around her belly tighter, and she didn't protest even though she felt a little squashed.
"Why would that make you a bad father?" Sawyer was calm in the face of Sean’s rage.
"I let them down. What if I let Tin down? This baby down?"
Devon shook his head. "You're not making any sense, Sean."
&nbs
p; Trust Devon to be the voice of reason, Sascha thought on a sob as she pressed her face to Sean's hair and let her own tears fall amid the messy dark locks.
"Sweetheart, you always do everything you can. We know that. You have to know that too. You didn't hurt those little boys. Some sick bastard did. It isn't your fault."
"I was too late. Too late, and I told them. I told them he’d strike quickly if they let the parents do a news interview," he repeated, his voice turning to a whisper.
"I'm so sorry, darling," she told him, squeezing him gently, needing him to feel her acceptance, needing him to understand that she didn't blame him, that she'd never, ever blame him.
He wasn't perfect, and he made mistakes, but more often than not, it wasn't his fault. It truly wasn't. The police didn't always listen. Some wanker detective didn't want some fancy criminologist stepping in on their territory.
It was easier in the big cities. Sean had made a reputation for himself, one that preceded him, and over the years, he'd made friends with a lot of people. With a lot of great detectives and policemen and women. But, when he had to work with new people, it never boded well.
Not for the victims, their families, or Sean himself.
With every victim that was lost, Sean took it to heart, and sometimes, she'd forget that. Because he kept it hidden deep inside. Why was it that she only just now saw how bad that was?
Not just for him, but for them? For their family?
What else was he keeping inside? And was this the first time he'd used alcohol to drown his sorrows? Or was it the first time she'd simply caught him in the act?
“You know you’re being irrational, right?”
He swallowed. “If you’d seen what I saw, you’d be irrational too.”
That had her wincing. He usually hid his white boards from her, turning them away so she wouldn’t see the details of any files. As far as she was aware, he didn’t do the same for the guys, so the special treatment was just where she was concerned. It was chivalry on his part. So even though she wanted to tell him she wasn’t fainthearted, the way he was trying to protect her was sweet enough for her never to have pushed it in the past.
Sawyer: Quintessence: The Sequel Page 4
