Yes, Daddy (Love, Daddy 6)

I told her to message me when she woke up, and it’s now almost 11 a.m. She could still be asleep, but I’m anxious as fuck that something could be wrong.

“What the fuck is your problem today?” Malcolm Fideri sounds more curious than irritated. He’s a work associate and my friend. He’ll be working with me more now that I’ve broken away from Salvatore, and today we had meetings with a few contractors about doing work on our new offices.

I want to lean toward looking, and being, more legit. Meeting Esme last night has only fueled my fire to live a life I can be proud of.

A life we can both be proud of.

Because that’s how I’m thinking now. I can’t help it—she's in every thought I have. How what I do in every way could affect her and our life.

Our. Life.

“Nothing, I’ve just got things on my mind.”

“I’ve seen you with things on your mind before. You’re never like this.”

“New things. Personal things.”

He chuckles. “You have personal things? Since when do you have personal things?”

“Since last night,” I bark back.

He holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Does this something have a name? Does this something have anything to do with you sending the workers to your house and all that other shit you’ve been doing all morning on the computer?”

“Maybe,” I answer, at the same time replying to a text message from the owner of the security company that services my home.

I have them doing a complete upgrade on my system to include more interior and exterior cameras, infrared sensors, anything and everything that I need to be sure she will be safe when she’s home. Things I should have done years ago but never got around to while it was just me.

“You got any pictures of this something?”

Before I can shut him down, Malcolm grabs the phone out of my hand, dodging my attempts to snatch it back long enough to bring up a photo I took last night of Esme while she slept. Luckily, all it shows is her face. I don’t know what I’d do if he got even a glimpse of what’s mine.

“Give the fucking phone back, Malcolm, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

He laughs, but he hands it over. “Jesus, you’re serious?”

“Deadly.”

“And her name?”

“What are you? Like sixteen and female all of a sudden? What do you care?”

He shakes his head. “No, but I’m fascinated by this turn of events.”

Malcolm and I haven’t known each other all our lives the way that Salvatore and I have, but what our friendship lacks in history, it makes up for in trust. Malcolm has had my back on more than one occasion, and he’s never had much love for Sal.

“Fine,” I mutter. “Esme.”

“Esme have a last name?”

I cough, then mutter under my breath, “I don’t know. Yet.”

Malcolm laughs. “Wow, this just gets better and better.” I glare at him, and he takes the hint to veer in another direction. “So, where're things with Salvatore? I get that you clearly had other things on your mind last night, but you cancel on him again, that might fuck things up.”

“We’ve come to a semi-agreement. I talked to him last night when I couldn’t make the meeting at his place, and we agreed to meet at Paesano’s tomorrow.” I shrug. “Not much more to do but argue about who has the biggest dick, find a compromise we can both live with and seal the deal. This shit he’s getting into pisses me off, but for now, I’m just trying to ignore it. We could both destroy each other; the trick is to be the first to launch the attack. I don’t think it’s going to come to that...at least I fucking hope not. I just want to move on.”

Malcolm nods. “We’ll get there. You still have people that are loyal to you.”

I think about that for a long moment before responding, “Yeah, but I’m trying to find my exit plan.” He stares at me, crossing his arms. “I need to go straight, man. I’ve thought about it a long time, but now it’s what I need.”

He shakes his head. “You know that’s going to make people nervous. Especially Sal.”

“Fuck everybody. Especially fuck Sal. It will be okay. If you need to keep your distance, I’ll understand.”

“I’m not keeping any fucking distance,” he barks. “Loyalty is exactly this. You want to clean up a bit, I’ll help you. Can’t say I’m looking to do the same, but I’ll try not to muddy your waters, and I’ll go in on deals as best I can to support you. But...” He sniffs and finishes. “What’s really going on? Yesterday you were talking about dropping by your old office, getting your books so you could set up a delivery of AK’s. Today you want to go white picket fence and a day job?”