Remy Payne had made a promise.
That, by itself, was not unusual. Remy made promises every day, sometimes with his mouth, more often with his body. He promised the men under Viper protection that routes would stay clear. He promised his brother he would not do anything stupid unless absolutely necessary, which was a very flexible arrangement depending on who was defining necessary. He promised Charlotte, once, that he would keep certain lines clean. He promised enemies things too, though those tended to end badly for everyone except him.
But promises to his daughters were different.
Promises to Ariana and Esme were sacred little things, wrapped in school ribbons and sticky fingerprints, kept somewhere behind his ribs where all his softest organs hid from the rest of the world.
So when he had told them, weeks ago, that if they finished the school year strong he would take them into the city for the summer festival, ice cream, sweets, and “one reasonable treat each,” he had known immediately that he was doomed. The word reasonable had never survived five minutes in the same room as his girls. Especially not when they looked at him with matching eyes and wildly different strategies.
Esme staged emotional warfare.
Together, they could have brought down governments.
“Daddy,” Ariana said now, walking at his left side with her little hand tucked around two of his fingers, “you said one reasonable treat.”
“I did, yeah,” Remy answered carefully, because he could already hear the trap being assembled. Tiny legal scaffolding. Glitter on the gallows.
“And ice cream is not a treat,” she continued.
Remy glanced down at her, brow lifting. “It ain’t?”
“No,” Esme said from his right, solemn as a judge and covered in enough rainbow sprinkles to suggest she had personally fought the ice cream and won. “It’s food.”
“It’s food,” Ariana echoed, nodding with terrifying confidence.
Remy looked between them, then down at the dripping cone in Esme’s hand, then at the smear of strawberry ice cream already making a slow escape down Ariana’s wrist. “Right. So tha’ thing meltin’ all over your sleeve there, poppet, that’s nutrition, is it?”
“Yes,” Esme said instantly.
“Fruit,” Esme said, lifting her cone slightly. “Because strawberry.”
There was a moment, brief but profound, where he saw in his own child the exact same shamelessness he had once used to talk his way out of a police caution at fifteen with stolen biscuits stuffed beneath his jacket. Genetics, apparently, were less a family tree and more a curse with dimples.
“Bleedin’ hell,” he muttered, though there was no real heat in it. “I’m raisin’ solicitors.”
Esme beamed as if that were praise. Ariana only squeezed his fingers and dragged him forward before he could reconsider the whole outing, fatherhood, or his poor financial decisions in the face of small people with very convincing eyelashes.
The festival had swallowed the city whole.
It sprawled across several streets like someone had cracked open a music box and let summer spill out. There were strings of lights hanging between old buildings, bright paper flags snapping gently overhead, vendors calling over one another, children shrieking with theatrical delight, and the constant churn of footsteps over pavement. Somewhere nearby, a brass band was attempting a cheerful tune while a street performer painted silver pretended to be a statue until passing teenagers got close enough for him to lurch forward and send them scattering.
Ariana found that hilarious.
Remy decided the statue man was lucky his daughters were amused and not offended, because Esme had once attempted to duel a birthday party magician for “lying to the rabbit.”
For once, Remy let the noise be noise.
Not threat. Not cover. Not the first sign of something about to go wrong.
It should have been easy, but ease had never come naturally to him. Even now, part of his mind still moved beneath the surface, ticking through old habits with the dull persistence of a machine left running in another room. Alley to the left. Police presence near the fountain. Two security guards outside the bank entrance. Blue van parked too long at the curb. Man in grey coat watching the crowd, no, watching his phone. Mother with pram blocking the sweet stall. Teenagers too loud, harmless. Vendor with hands visible. Rooftops crowded with pigeons, nothing else.
He did not stop doing it.
That was the closest thing to peace a man like him could manage.
And yet, God help him, he was trying.
He had left the usual weight at home, or near enough to home that it did not press against him with every step. He had worn a soft black jumper beneath his coat because Esme had informed him that his “serious shirts” made him look like he was going to “go be mean at someone.” Ariana had chosen his socks. They had tiny green snakes on them. He had objected for dignity’s sake and lost within thirty seconds.
His daughters were happy.
That mattered more than dignity.
It mattered more than the glances he still caught now and then, the ones from men who recognized his face and looked away too quickly. It mattered more than the fact that being out in the open with his girls made every nerve in his body sit up straight like a dog hearing thunder. It mattered more than his instinctive urge to keep one hand free at all times, to walk on the outside of the pavement, to angle his body between them and anyone who got too close.
Last day of school. First breath of summer. A celebration.
So he smiled when Esme shoved her ice cream toward his mouth without warning.
Remy recoiled slightly. “Poppet, I watched you sneeze near tha’ thing not five minutes ago.”
“You turned toward your shoe.”
Ariana peered around him, scandalized. “Daddy, you promised no grumpy face today.”
“I do not have a grumpy face.”
“You do,” Esme said, and then, with the air of someone presenting evidence to a jury, added, “Uncle Tristan has one too, but his is fancier.”
That dragged a laugh out of him before he could stop it.
Not a small one either. A proper laugh, rough and warm, breaking through his chest like something had slipped its leash. A few people nearby glanced over. Remy felt it automatically, the attention flickering at the edge of his awareness, and for one breath his body considered folding the laugh away, tucking it back behind his teeth where safer things belonged.
Then Ariana laughed because he had laughed.
Esme joined in because Ariana did.
And Remy, foolish man that he was, let himself stay there.
“Fancier,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Yeah, alright. Don’t tell him tha’. His ego’s already got a mortgage.”
“What’s a mortgage?” Ariana asked.
“A terrible grown-up monster,” Remy said.
“You can, love, but it sends paperwork.”
Both girls made identical faces of disgust.
“That’s worse than claws,” Esme decided.
“Much worse,” Remy agreed gravely. “Claws are honest.”
They walked past a stall selling paper crowns and handmade bracelets. Then one full of candles. Then another with tiny carved animals, which required a stop because Ariana needed to explain to him, at length, why the wooden fox looked lonely and should come home with them. Remy reminded her that she already had two foxes, a rabbit, a suspicious number of plush cats, and something called a moon-dragon currently living on her bed.
“This one is different,” Ariana said.
Esme nodded beside her sister with devastating seriousness. “Look at his eyes.”
Remy looked at the carved fox.
The fox, admittedly, did look like it had seen things.
“Right,” he said after a moment, because there were battles worth fighting and then there was arguing literary suffering with a seven-year-old. “One traumatized fox.”
Just like that, all the old iron inside him turned useless.
He paid the vendor and pretended not to notice the amused look he received while Ariana cradled the fox in both hands like a rescued prince.
The festival pressed around them, bright and busy and alive. Balloons bobbed overhead. A woman laughed too loudly near the lemonade stand. Somewhere, oil hissed as chips dropped into a fryer. Sugar hung in the air, thick as perfume, threading through the sharper scents of pavement, summer heat, and too many bodies packed too close together.
The thought passed through him like a shadow, but it did not stay.
Esme tugged on his sleeve.
“You have ice cream on you.”
There was, indeed, a smear of vanilla on his sleeve. Pale and damning.
Remy looked at it. Then at Esme.
Ariana shook her head, clutching her fox. “No.”
Remy narrowed his eyes. “So we’re blamin’ ghosts, are we?”
Esme nodded solemnly. “Ice cream ghost.”
“Very common,” Ariana added.
“Course. Should’ve known.”
He tried to wipe the mess with a napkin and only succeeded in making it worse. Esme giggled so hard she nearly dropped her cone, and Remy caught her wrist on instinct, steadying it before strawberry disaster could strike the pavement.
“There we are,” he murmured, softer without meaning to be. “Careful, poppet.”
Esme looked up at him with sticky cheeks and absolute trust.
There were a thousand ways the world had failed Remy Payne. A thousand places where hunger had been waiting for him. A thousand rooms where men had shown him that tenderness was just another thing people could weaponize if they got their hands on it.
But his daughters looked at him like he was safety itself.
It wrecked him every time.
He reached into his pocket for another napkin and found, instead, the familiar crinkle of wrapped butterscotch. His thumb brushed over it. Habit. Comfort. Stupid little thing, really. A sweet tooth he had never bothered to outgrow, because some childish wants survived even when childhood itself did not.
His fingers paused around it.
And, like a fool, he thought of her.
A red mouth. A wicked smile. Fingers in his tie. The taste of Jäger and sugar and trouble. The audacity of her stealing the candy from his mouth and looking pleased about it after, as though the laws of the world had briefly reorganized themselves around her wanting something.
He could still hear the way she said pretty boy.
Remy blinked, pulled sharply from the memory. Ariana was staring at him with the particular intensity of a child who had noticed an adult drifting somewhere private.
“You’re doing the funny face.”
Esme snorted. “No you don’t.”
Remy placed a wounded hand over his chest. “Betrayal. In public. After I bought you dairy-fruit.”
Ariana giggled, appeased for the moment, and pointed down the street with sudden urgency. “Candy shop!”
Remy followed her line of sight and immediately regretted every promise he had ever made.
The shop sat at the corner where the festival route narrowed, tucked beneath a striped awning glowing warm beneath strings of gold lights. Its windows were full of glass jars stacked in gleaming rows, ribbons of color, chocolate mice, sherbet lemons, pear drops, jelly snakes, sugar crystals, and old-fashioned sweets wrapped in paper that winked beneath the lights like tiny jewels. A bell hung above the door. Children pressed their faces to the display. Parents hovered nearby in various stages of defeat.
Both girls turned to him at the same time.
Four eyes. One shared purpose. No mercy.
He lasted twelve seconds.
“Fine,” he muttered. “But we are not buyin’ the whole bloody shop.”
Ariana hugged her fox tighter and whispered something to it that sounded suspiciously like, “We won.”
Remy chose not to hear that.
The candy shop was worse inside.
Warmer. Smaller. Packed with the sort of cheerful chaos that made children glow and fathers question the architecture of their own choices. Shelves lined every wall from floor to ceiling, jars glinting under soft yellow light. Paper bags rustled. Scoops clinked against glass. The air was thick with sugar, chocolate, boiled fruit, and something buttery that slid straight beneath Remy’s ribs before he could defend himself.
Because apparently the universe had decided subtlety was for cowards.
The girls scattered only as far as his voice allowed, which meant not far at all. Ariana moved toward the sour sweets with careful seriousness. Esme found the jelly snakes and gasped as if she had discovered treasure. Remy positioned himself where he could see both of them, the front door, the narrow aisle, the counter, and the mirror behind the till.
He exhaled slowly through his nose and tried to loosen his shoulders.
“Daddy, can I get these?” Esme held up a scoop full of neon worms.
Remy eyed them. “Those look poisonous.”
Ariana lifted a bag. “Can I mix?”
“What does reason weigh?”
“Less than whatever you’re about t’try.”
The shopkeeper laughed from behind the counter. Remy gave a faint smile back, polite and automatic, then turned toward the shelves nearest him.
Butterscotch sweets in a tall glass jar, wrapped in gold twists of paper, catching the light like little coins. He stared at them for a second too long.
He was a grown man. A dangerous man, depending on who was telling the story. He had done things in dark rooms that made other men lose sleep. He had survived hunger and violence and every ugly lesson London had carved into him before he was old enough to understand the shape of the scars.
And yet one jar of sweets had him standing there like a boy with tuppence in his fist.
He reached out and took one.
The wrapper crinkled between his fingers.
A memory moved through him, warm and sharp enough to be dangerous. Asteria’s lips. The small victorious gleam in her eyes. No trade. Just take. The way she had looked at him after, like she knew she had stolen more than candy and wanted him to know it too.
His mouth twitched despite himself.
The bell over the door rang.
And the world, which had been golden and sugared and loud with childhood a heartbeat before, narrowed to a single point.
Asteria stood in the doorway.
For half a second, he did not move.
The wrapped butterscotch sat between his fingers, suddenly too loud, the crinkle of paper roaring in his ears louder than the festival outside, louder than the shop bell settling back into silence. She was framed by the glow of the doorway, city lights and festival color behind her, her hair catching the warmth from the window displays, her gaze already fixed on him like she had found him by instinct alone.
Not spoken. Not even fully thought.
Just a hard, animal pulse through his body.
His eyes widened before he could stop them.
Only a fraction. Barely anything. Anyone else might have missed it.
He knew that immediately, and the knowledge made something cold spread beneath his skin.
Not the version leaning over a casino bar with Jäger on his tongue and a grin sharp enough to invite bad decisions. Not the Viper with blood in his past and charm in his mouth. Not the man who knew how to make threats sound like flirtation and flirtation sound like a loaded gun.
Ice cream on his sleeve. School certificates folded carefully in his inside pocket. Two little girls choosing sweets with the kind of careless joy he would kill to preserve. A ridiculous wooden fox sticking out of Ariana’s bag. A candy in his hand because he was sentimental enough to think of a woman he had no business thinking of while buying sweets for his daughters.
His body reacted before thought caught up.
Ariana, left side, six feet away. Esme, right side, near jelly snakes. Door behind Asteria, partially blocked by a pram outside. Three customers between Remy and the counter. Two teenagers near the window. Shopkeeper behind till, hands visible. Front exit compromised. Back exit likely staff-only behind curtain past counter, inaccessible without drawing attention. Festival crowd dense. Too many civilians. Too many children. Too many variables.
Fast turns curiosity into panic.
His right hand lowered slowly, almost casually, but his fingers tightened around the butterscotch until the wrapper crushed in his fist. His left hand drifted toward Ariana without fully reaching. A gesture disguised as nothing. A father adjusting his stance. A man placing himself between what mattered and what might.
Asteria took one step inside.
Remy’s pulse kicked hard.
He did not know whether the word was meant for her, himself, or the whole bloody universe.
Ariana looked up first, because Ariana noticed everything when he least needed her to.
His head turned toward her at once, too quickly. He softened his face by force, dragging every jagged thing inside him behind a smile that felt like it had been nailed there.
Her eyes dropped to his hand.
“You’re squishing the sweet.”
The butterscotch was crushed tight in his fist, gold paper crumpled around the shape of it.
He loosened his grip with effort, smoothing his thumb over the wrapper as if that could undo the evidence of his own body betraying him.
Esme turned at that, suspicious immediately. “You don’t get excited quiet.”
“I do loads of things quiet.”
“No,” Ariana said, very gently, which somehow made it worse. “You get scary quiet.”
The thing he had been trying not to do.
His daughters did not know the details of his life, not really, not in the shapes adults used. But children learned weather before language. They knew the pressure changes. They knew when his voice dropped too soft, when his shoulders set, when his eyes stopped belonging entirely to the room they were in. They knew the edge of him, even if they did not know what had sharpened it.
“Oi,” he murmured, gentler now, crouching slightly so he could look at them both without turning his back fully on Asteria. Never fully. Not yet. “No scary quiet today, yeah? Promised, didn’t I?”
Ariana searched his face.
Tiny judges. Merciless and beloved.
Then Esme held up her bag of jelly snakes.
The question nearly made him laugh from sheer relief.
“Yeah, poppet,” he said, voice softer than he meant it to be. “You can still get the poisonous worms.”
Behind him, he felt Asteria draw nearer.
Not sweeping in with all the boldness he remembered from the casino. No finger in his tie. No purr of pretty boy sharp enough to gut him in front of his children. No playful theft. No careless claim.
That, somehow, unsettled him more.
Because it meant she understood.
Remy straightened, every inch of him controlled now, but control had never felt so thin. He looked at Asteria properly for the first time since the bell rang, and God, there she was. Not a memory. Not a reckless night replaying itself in the private corners of his mind. Real. Close. Watching him with eyes that took in too much.
Her gaze flicked once to the girls.
Something in his chest tightened so hard it felt like anger at first, because anger was easier. Anger he could use. Anger had handles. Anger gave him somewhere to put his hands.
This was terror wearing his face.
Because she had walked into the one part of his life he did not know how to make untouchable by force alone.
His daughters were not territory. Not leverage. Not legacy. Not a weakness, no matter what men in his world would call them.
They were the only proof he had ever made something good.
And now Asteria Diamandis, trouble in silk and sunlight, had seen them.
The shop seemed to shrink around him.
Ariana stepped closer to his side, not frightened, only curious. Her small fingers brushed his coat.
“Daddy,” she whispered, loudly enough for the entire world to betray him, “that lady’s looking at you.”
Remy closed his eyes for one brief, suffering second.
She has been since the second she walked in and I have not had one normal thought since.
When he opened them again, Asteria was almost close enough to speak.
Don’t give away too much.
Good luck with that, mate.
His voice came out low, careful, threaded with warning so fine only she would hear the blade inside it.
Her full name, because the girls were there and because he needed distance with both hands.
The moment her name left his mouth, Ariana’s eyes widened.
Esme slowly lowered her scoop of jelly snakes like this had become far more interesting than candy.
And Remy realized, with a cold bloom of dread, that the next battlefield would not be the shop.
It would be his daughters’ questions.
Asteria’s expression shifted.
She noticed the distance in his voice. Noted it. Accepted it. Did not punish him for it. Did not step closer.
Instead, she looked at him for half a breath longer, something warm and unreadable passing behind her eyes.
Then she turned her attention carefully, gently, toward the girls.
Like approaching frightened animals, except his girls were not frightened at all.
Remy was the frightened one.
And wasn’t that just fucking humiliating?
Ariana peered up at Asteria from beside his coat.
Esme stared openly, face sticky with sugar, bag of jelly snakes clutched to her chest.
Two little faces lit with immediate, catastrophic interest.
Remy felt the exact moment his control slipped another inch.
Please, for the love of all things holy, do not like her.
Remy stared at the crushed butterscotch in his hand and thought, with grave certainty, that he had survived ambushes more merciful than this.
