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The doorbell dinged in the penthouse, sound shimmering against the glass walls and the seven people inside. Heads turned towards it and Renee got up to answer it after a glance in Andrew’s direction. They were all accounted for, so whoever this is had to be either Aaron or a stranger no one wanted to deal with.
Allison hurriedly put the gin down next to Kevin to get to Renee’s side. “Babe, I’ll get it. I can chase away salespeople, too.”
“It’s midnight, Ali,” Renee protested, though she sat back down with a hand on her heavy belly. “And that’s not very nice. They’re just doing their jobs.”
“Conmen are just doing their jobs, too.” Allison took long strides down the hall, told Kevin that’s the last of the gin, Day. You finish that then you have to go back to that vodka you swore off before she rounded the corner and took the three steps down to the entrance. She already had a snide comment about the time and place for whatever paparazzi had seen the former Foxes enter their building when she opened the door. But it fell from her head when there was no one there.
Then she looked down and saw a child standing opposite of her against the hallway. The girl looked at her head-on with stormy blue eyes conveying more emotion that words ever could. Children didn’t do that with strangers.
“Allison,” she said, simple like that, like a statement. Like she was checking off a box.
“And you are? I don’t have time for pranks, kid. Where are your parents?” She looked to be what? Seven? Six?
“I will answer one, which is it.”
Who says that, cryptic little fucker.
She debated which answer would get her on her merry way faster. “Where are your parents?”
The kid scratched an old scar by her elbow. Which highlighted how her little body was covered in small bruises and old trip-and-fall scars and some not so trip-and-fall scars. She kept her gaze on Allison’s face. “Dad said you could keep me safe while he went to deal with the Japanese mafia.” Then she had the nerve to shrug.
Allison didn’t even notice that she stepped aside to let her in as her brain stopped up short. She crouched in front of her and the kid tried visibly not to flinch away from her. Where the fuck have I seen this before. She toyed with the hem of her shirt before she caught herself and stood straighter. Allison softly closed the door from her crouch, not taking her eyes off the little girl’s strawberry curls. She couldn’t stay with her mom, or she didn’t have one, one or the other. Then Allison, temporarily claiming a sixth sense, reached out slowly towards her tiny head, making her intentions clear to not scare her - and ruffled her hair.
The look she got in return - squeezed blue eyes under bangs of red curls and hunched shoulders, fighting the flight instinct with every cell - made her freeze. She gasped the softest sound.
Neil. Neil .
“Neil,” she echoed, distant.
The girl nodded curtly and Allison retreated her hand. “He’s my dad. He said you called him that.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” she uttered without sarcasm for the first time in her life. She couldn’t stop staring at the little face, in awe. She felt her gut churn with icy sadness and regret. None of them got to say goodbye to him. Only Wymack got a call from the Moriyamas saying Neil was not their problem anymore and had relayed the message to all of them. Andrew had never emoted so extremely while sober. At least according to Renee, Allison hadn’t actually seen him. On this day exactly, eight years ago - that could not be a coincidence. Allison was tempted to call it a cruel paparazzi stunt if it weren’t for the fact that this girl is so clearly Neil Josten’s daughter that Allison would be surprised if she had another parent at all.
“What’s your name?” she tried again and offered to take her little hoodie off her hands.
“My current one?” the kid asked, and something inside Allison broke .
She soldiered on, jumping neatly over that patch of depression. She imagined. “No, honey, your name. What you call yourself. What Neil calls you.”
She wore faded jeans and a plain, mustard-yellow t-shirt. She had a backpack, apparently, looked to be filled with school-supplies but Allison knew. Neil’s recollection of his life was burned into her memory forever. The kid seemed to think it over. “Dad said the only people I could talk to besides him were the Foxes.” And Allison’s something broke even more. It had to be showing on her face because the kid stopped and asked if she was okay and Allison cried a little because I should be asking you that, you look like a mudslide, honey .
She blinked at that, like she wasn’t used to other people crying, which she probably wasn’t. Neil was tortured and never cried about it. The girl chose to ignore it. “When we’re alone, Dad calls me Morgan.”
“Morgan,” Allison echoed, voice a little choked. She stood on stiff legs. Her heels hadn’t been doing her any favours while crouching. She offered her hand to Morgan. “Do you want to meet the other Foxes? They’re in the living room.”
“I know, I just thought it was more polite to knock on the door.”
“As opposed to what? The window?”
Morgan did not take her hand but followed her down the hallway. She also gave Allison a deadpan look as if the answer was obvious and she thought, Andrew . Or Andrew had rubbed off on Neil (ew), and Morgan had picked it up from Neil.
“We are seven floors up, what the fuck.”
Morgan shrugged. “The fire escape leads to the roof.”
“This is the roof. It’s a penthouse apartment.” She heard the conversations die down in living room when it became clear Allison were bringing the door knocker inside.
The dirt-covered kid gave her a short smile too razor sharp for a seven-year-old. “Maybe I snuck in here and out the front door before I knocked,” and with a chill, Allison was reminded that this was the granddaughter of a serial killer. She also knew Renee would have caught that. Maybe. She was pretty pregnant and less sharp than she used to be when her insides weren’t kicked. Andrew would have caught that, she settled on. Maybe. If he cared to watch the windows of a penthouse apartment.
“Uh, Allison?” Dan inquired. She slowly stood from where had been sitting with her toddler son on the sofa next to Matt. “Is that a child?”
All eyes were on them. Nicky looked like he had a thousand questions and although Allison cared for him and their phone calls on sunday mornings, she could not deal with that right now. Matt looked at Morgan for .2 seconds and inhaled sharply. Of course his best friend in the world would notice miles before the others. Even Andrew barely looked at her, but cocked an eyebrow at Matt’s reaction.
Morgan nearly didn’t pause on her way into the living room, bypassing all of them without touching til she stood in front of Andrew by the fireplace. “Andrew,” she stated, a little less as if checking off a box and little more hopeful.
“Wrong twin.”
“No,” she shrugged and pointed to the front pocket of his pants. “Cigarettes.”
Andrew leaned back slightly, which was the closest Allison had ever seen him to surprised.
“This fucking kid,” she whispered, almost devastated/still actually crying. Morgan started trudging back to her, less insistent this time. Everyone looked to Allison for an explanation, she had let this kid inside after all. But she just kept crying and it wouldn’t stop. She didn’t even wipe them away, she just stared at Morgan, so much like her father that it hurt. But she saw Renee got worried about her so she waved that she was fine. She cleared her voice.
“This is Morgan.” She shifted her gaze to the people of the room. “She’s Neil Josten’s daughter.”
And the room exploded.
**
She had never liked crowds even when her father had told her it was a good thing. They could blend easier, he said. But crowds had too many strangers in them, too many unknown elements, and even though that made them invisible it didn’t choke the fact that people right next to them could stab them at any time.
But she knew the faces of this crowd. She forgot they didn’t know hers. Dad had shown her pictures and given her stories since forever, but like an idiot she forgot they didn’t know she existed. Which is why, when the adults all rose to their feet at once and started shouting - at Allison, not her, she would understand later - she raced for the hallway they had come from as fast as she could run. She hated this, she knew she wasn’t as fast as her dad and it slowed them down, but she needed to get away from the danger.
Allison hissed, “ Shut the fuck up, you morons ,” before she shouted down the hallway, “Wait, Morgan!”
And only Dad had ever called her that. It was a secret shared with the only person she trusted and who trusted her back, the only person she loved, and that name had meaning . So she latched out to the wall to slow herself down because her legs wanted to run, run, run, run and never stop. But she did stop.
No one ran after her which calmed her a fraction. One voice called down to her, though. “Hi Morgan.”
“Nicky,” she said, because he had been the one to speak, but he saw them all had gathered by him.
“Yeah, that’s right!” He grinned wide and Morgan found it almost infectious. “Are you hungry? Do you want a treat?”
“She’s not a dog, Nicky,” Dan chided him.
“And if she really is Neil’s daughter then she’s probably never had a grain of sugar in her life,” Kevin huffed. “Do you want a carrot instead?”
“Shut up, Kevin,” Andrew declared. “She’s not a rabbit.”
Nicky wondered,“What would Neil feed this kid? Beans?”
Kevin nodded approvingly. “They’re nutritional.”
“Says the alcoholic.”
Matt stepped in front of them, his backliner-mass shieling most of them from her view. “Jesus fucking christ, stop treating Morgan as if she’s not here and a person with ears.”
“She might not speak the language, Boyd,” Nicky pointed out, and the others rolled their eyes because she’s Neil Josten’s daughter , of course she does.
Morgan unclenched and started her slow return back to them. “También puedo hablar tu idioma,” she told Nicky.
He gaped at her. “I guess Neil knows Spanish now, too.” And because the Foxes are too good at compartmentalizing, that comment brought them back to the dark and shitty reality in which Neil’s kid was here but he was not and that raised many questions and no answers.
She actually said yes to Nicky’s slice of cake and couldn’t remember the last time she ate something so good. It earned her a few curious looks. They sat her down on a couch and she insisted on sitting on the one closest to the front door. They had arranged the living room so the couches faced each other with one chair at each side. Andrew occupied one of them, to the far left of Morgan, and surprisingly, he broke the tense silence with the first question.
“How old are you?” It was a logical question, and a loaded one. The Moriyamas had Neil for two months before claiming to have him and allegedly killed him, and Morgan’s age could be overlapping with that time and Andrew did not like the torture options the Moriyamas could come up with. Morgan could be a product of that.
She took a sip of her soda through the straw Renee had provided her. “Cathrine was seven,” she admitted. “Julie was also seven, but Helena was six. Tonja was seven again. Victor was six and Nikolaj was eight.”
Nicky was the first to recover from that. “But how old are you , right now?”
“Nicky,” Andrew warned, when Morgan didn’t reply. “She saying she doesn’t know her age.”
Matt asked her, “So you’ve been both boys and girls. What do you want to be to us?”
She shrugged. “I’m Morgan. I am can be many things.” Then she got an idea. “I can be a chameleon. So cool.” She smiled a true joyful smile and it rocked many of them to see that on a face so much like Neil’s. “Dad usually let me choose, when he could. Not always. Stalingrad were strict.”
Renee leaned forward to catch her eye. They had Allison between them. It seemed right for her to ask the question, maybe because she was pregnant, or maybe because she was the only safe person for Andrew to get angry with. “Do you have a mother, Morgan?”
The room stilled. The air froze.
The kid sipped some more soda. “I did, I think.” More vague answers. Her father’s daughter . Morgan looked too think about it, while the tension rose drastically around her. “I asked my dad about her a few times, but he just said she was dead so while he was sleeping I stole my birth certificate.” She sipped some more.
Dan spoke up. “He kept that? Wasn’t that dangerous?” The toddler on her knee keened his head to stare at her.
Morgan nodded. “He kept it because he wanted me to be able to get back home with him.”
“So you had your birth certificate and you didn’t read your birthday,” Kevin commented.
“I was busy ,” Morgan hissed at him, flustered. She was certainly getting more comfortable around them. “My mother was Jane. And she’s dead.” Allison asked if she was sure she’s dead and Morgan was losing the slim patience she had, being a child. “ ‘Birth father: Neil Abram Josten, Maryland’,” she recited. “ ‘Birth mother: Jane Doe, Unknown’. I know she’s dead.”
Dan was a whole other level of horrified. What kind of fucked up situation makes it so the birth mother is the unknown parent? Neil was obviously there for the birth, why didn’t he vouch for her? Why didn’t he want to vouch for her? Kevin shouldn’t be surprised at this turn of events, Neil was a magnet for shitty situations, and yet here he was speechless.
Andrew remained unmoved. “Morgan.” He waited until she looked at him, red curls jumping at the sudden movement, and he saw what they all saw - Neil’s fire. “Where is your father? I have questions for him.”
Morgan nodded in understanding. “He said you would say that. Maybe that’s why he wanted me to stay at the safe house.”
This kid was great at creating tense silences, she should be a politician.
“He doesn’t know you’re here,” Andrew said, not a question.
Morgan shook her head slowly as if she had done a naughty thing. “He calls me every night, but it gets more dangerous the longer he’s gone. He’s never been gone this long before.” Allison patted her back and Morgan leaned into it. “I can’t call him, so I have to wait to tell him I’m here. I left a note.”
No one really had anything else to ask after that, not urgently anyway, so the group dispersed a little. Nicky got Morgan another slice of cake which she greedily accepted. Andrew went to smoke by the window. Allison made some vodka martinis for the people who needed it after this past hour. Matt tried to introduce Morgan to their son Emíl and she looked at him like he was some alien species. They talked about the countries Morgan has lived in and the many languages she spoke - more than her father, since her young brain was a sponge for knowledge.
Allison told the others that Neil was doing something with the Moriyamas since his daughter had nicely sidestepped the question like a skilled liar. It calmed exactly no one and they were scared to lose Neil to them again when they almost had him back.
The young girl came up to Renee after a while. “Are you having a baby?”
Renee smiled at her, but it seemed to unease her, much like it had with Neil in the beginning. She patted her belly. “I am growing a baby, yes, but Dan and Matt are her parents.”
Morgan raised an eyebrow at that. She hovered her hand over Renee’s stomach and when she got an affirmative, touched it. “Cool.”
Dan was telling her about the team she was coaching when a shrill trune rang through the air. Morgan jumped and raced for her backpack, people gathering in the living room again. But when she found it, she froze by the caller ID.
Kevin leaned in. “That’s a UK number.”
“It’s not Dad,” she said clutching the flip phone. “Fuck,” she added before she put it on speaker and accepted the call.
“ Annie, I swear to all seven hells, where the royal fuck is your bastard father? ” said a quite frustrated Brit.
“Uh-,” she started, not expecting uncle Stuart. “He’s in the shower.”
“ You two can’t just drop off the map like this, I have half of Romania out looking for you. ”
“Maybe that’s why we left?” she snided back.
“ Where are you.”
Morgan started pacing, still on speaker phone. The former foxes knew more than uncle Stuart did anyway. “Singapore. Bolivia. Versaille. Stockholm. You choose.”
There was a pause on the other end. “ You idiots went to New York. ”
Morgan doesn’t remember reacting, but her phone was suddenly shattered pieces by the far wall and her arm hurt a little from the unexpected, hard toss. “Oh no,” she whispered, “Good thing I left the note.”
Renee nodded in understanding. “So your dad won’t be calling any time soon, and it’s been an exhausting day. Do you want to sleep?”
Morgan still stared at the plastic pieces by the wall. “I slept on the plane, I’m fine.”
A burst of chuckles came from Matt, and when he didn’t stop, Dan and Allison started, too.
“You’re ‘fine’, you say?” Nicky giggled. Kevin chugged vodka straight.
Neil’s daughter was visibly confused and Renee asked her when that flight had been. Thursday , she said as if that wasn’t three days ago. Allison helped her get ready for bed. Someone brushing her hair felt nice but somewhat off, since her dad hadn’t done that in years. She told Allison how Neil got so frustrated with her knots once that he asked if he could just cut it all off, and that was how she became Theo. Then she got to use the guest room and the queen sized bed was a lot bigger and softer than she was used to. They came in to say good night and she pretended to sleep because it was the safe and polite thing to do, but she didn’t sleep. Her father’s larger frame was missing from her back, she couldn’t feel grounded and secure without it. Morgan listened to the voices outside instead. They left the door cracked for her, which did anything but make her feel safe enough to sleep, and she could hear the voices die down and scatter, probably to go to bed themselves. She gave sleep an honest try, but hours passed and she was exhausted and lonely, but her mind refused to let her sleep. Insomnia , Dad explained once.
Climbing out of bed, she thought she could get some water that wouldn’t help. But seeing Andrew still by the window drove her to him instead. She silently walked up beside him and peered out the window. He was a man of few words and bored stares with an unlit cigarette between his fingers. They watched the city outside for a while - Manhattan was in the far distance, but inner city noise reached them eventually, a constant white noise to lull them to sleep, normally.
“When did he leave?”
Morgan looked up at the sound of Andrew’s voice. He kept his dull stare on the city, but his fingers looked ready to crush the cigarette. She scratched her elbow scar; it was a bad habit. “Thursday. He drove from South Carolina to New York and only stopped to check the safe house and leave me there.” She knew she sounded scared, but it was so normal to her now that she barely knew how to not. “He’s only been gone for one day at a time before, not like this. But he said this time would be different.”
Andrew hummed. “You should sleep.”
She nodded solemnly. “I can’t. Not without my dad.”
He turned to look her in the eye then and Morgan could see that Andrew understood her perfectly. “I couldn’t either. For a while.”
She turned to him and tried not to fidget with her shirt. “Can you stay with me, please?”
“I don’t like that word,” he told her, almost stern.
She kept nodding. “Sorry. But can you?”
Andrew kept looking at her, searching her face for trauma foreign to her. “Are you armed?” he said, and she was taken aback for a second, but she replied yes and Andrew nodded once, curtly. “Good. Yes, I can stay with you.”
He got a blinding smile in return, exhausted but vibrant. “Come,” she ushered and nearly ran into the guest room, Andrew trailing behind her. He left the door wide open as he wouldn’t sleep and the others would wake up long after he got up anyway. He settled on the bed opposite of her, on his side so he could see the door and the little child body facing him. They didn’t touch, but Morgan could feel the warmth radiate from him and that was more than enough. She wouldn’t blame Andrew for leaving when she dozed off. “Dad misses you,” she confided in him, because it was true and she so rarely got to tell the truth.
“You miss him,” Andrew whispered back.
They shared a look. “You’re waiting for him. You miss him, too.” Not a question. He didn’t grace her with a reply so she closed her eyes and sleep came easier this time, with Andrew close by and watching.
Her breathing eased out, but the wheels in Andrew’s head kept turning. A constant chatter in the back of his head and he was flooded with memories he tried to keep at bay. He hated them. Hated them for making him feel. Hated Neil Josten for the same reason. He never wanted things and the things he had been wanting the past decade had all to do with Neil, like how he wanted Neil to explain this, if only to stop the screaming in his head that the Moriyamas did this to him. That the raped him.
He watched as Morgan smeared her face into her pillow, her curls bunching up in a red mess. Her freckles were a fresh breath of air - her father didn’t have any. And her nose was different. Whatever had or hadn’t happened to Neil were not this child’s fault and Andrew knew Neil wouldn’t have raised her if he thought so. Her small hand clenched and unclenched in her sleep as she dreamed. It had to be a vivid one as her shoulders set and she murmured Russian. Then Morgan whispered, choked, “
Dad
,” and Andrew grasped her hand in his own. It calmed her instantly, her nightmare making way for a better dream, her breath evening out under her heap of curls. The storm in Andrew’s head settled a little and he was able to focus on Morgan’s clammy hand. He might have planned to leave, but this girl kept him out of his head so he stayed.
**
Tweed is not for climbing in and Neil was realizing that quickly as he went up the fire escape. He was wearing what Allison had once called “business casual” for his flight back to New York after the job for the Moriyamas. It hadn’t gone exactly according to plan, but they wouldn’t be chasing them anymore, so he got what he wanted in the end. And now he missed his daughter - who’s calls went straight to voicemail and were not present in their safe house where he’d left her. She’d left him and note, though, and Neil should have predicted this, he knew she was too restless to sit still and wait for him for three days. He’d raised a runner, like his mom had raised him.
Cursing that train of thought, he checked his notes and picked the lock to the penthouse window (he’ll apologize to Allison in the morning, but he really didn’t want to wake anyone up). The four-AM chill bit through his tweed jacket and jeans as he silently climbed in the window and closed it behind him. The apartment was eerie quiet with a slight buzz from the AC, and there was an overhanging odor of old alcohol. His gut twisted uncomfortably.
He quietly searched the living room for her before coming across a wide open bedroom door. Peering inside, he couldn’t in his wildest dreams have prepared for the image. His daughter - her hair a fucking mess (again) - were sleeping soundly like a spread starfish, her hand grasped by the love of this fucking life who’s been pushed to the edge of the bed, dozing off.
A restlessness stilled in Neil’s chest.
He wanted to preserve their moment now that he’d found Morgan, so he sighed inaudibly and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. After all these years Andrew still slept unmoving. Neil knew Morgan did not so she’d probably woken him up a lot, but why he stayed there was the real question.
He didn’t know Allison and Renee would have guests tonight. He knew some of them stayed in touch, but through articles Andrew’s only comment on the foxes was that he feigned ignorance to their existence. But since Andrew was here, Neil knew he had to talk to him before anyone else. He was the one who needed an explanation the most, if he after all this time still cared about Neil’s brutal disappearance act. He reached over to the door and knocked softly on the mahogany.
Hazel eyes whipped to his face and Neil couldn’t breathe. ‘Time heals all wounds’ is the queef from a poet because it’s been nine years and he was sure someone were constricting his chest. “Hi,” he said, voice sounding like gravel. Andrew flicked a look to Morgan beside him. Neil shook his head. “She’s out like a light. Only the smell of food can wake her up.”
Andrew looked back to him, probably taking in his exhausted state and how he favoured his left side. “I am not talking to you if you will leave just to get killed off.”
He felt his face stretch into a slow grin. “We’re safe. For good, this time.”
In lieu of reply, Andrew got up carefully to not jostle Morgan. Neil followed him into the living room and sat down on the couch. Andrew detoured to the kitchen for a drink, silently offering one to Neil. He nodded an affirmative - might as well join the belated party.
Andrew put the whiskey glass down on the glass table and sat down next to him. “You look horrible and I hate your clothes.” And yet he reached out to hold his hand by Neil’s face. A question.
“What else is new.” He nodded and Andrew tilted his face into the light. There was a mangled storm in the way he glared at Neil’s cheek.
“They took your scars,” he bit out, and Neil felt that deep in his spine because suddenly he was back in that hotel bed with Abby saying, scars are proof you’re alive, and it was ludicrous back then, but now ‘they’ had taken that constant reminder of his tooth-and-nail survival away from him and there was no getting it back. Whatever expression Neil had made Andrew drop his chin and sip his whiskey.
“Not the Moriyamas. And not all of them,” Neil said, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket and dress shirt to reveal the crooked chessboard of Lola’s creation on his forearms. “My uncle knew I would have a worse time flying under the radar in Russia with a marred face, a recognizable face at that, so he convinced me to actually get that plastic surgery. For Morgan.”
Andrew’s gaze were locked on the familiar, now old, scars. “You went to England after running from the Moriyamas?”
Neil sighed and picked up his drink. I’m getting too old for this , he thought as he leaned back against the couch. He told Andrew, “Yeah. When I found out about Morgan I had to get her out of the continent since this is Moriyama territory. Their ties are weaker in Europe.”
“You either have a good reason why you didn’t tell me you were alive or you thought that information would have me killed.”
“I did tell you,” Neil protested. “Kind of. It was a hard task when I couldn’t write anything, so I sent you a plain postcard from Brighton.”
“I never got that.”
Neil rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hands. “Must have gotten thrown in the university’s spam mail. And broadcasted my location, too, so I didn’t try again.”
He counted beats until Andrew said, “Ask me.”
“This isn’t our game, Andrew, this is free.” Andrew vaguely scoffed and Neil rolled his eyes. “Owed, then.” He turned full-body to face him. “You can know what happened, if you want to.”
“I want nothing,” they say said in unison, Neil more sarcastically so before he caught himself. “Sorry - fatherhood has been… strange. I didn’t exactly have a handbook or good role models.”
Andrew placed his drink on the table and sat back against the couch, too. It was a loaded gesture. “How did you get your daughter?”
And Neil told him. Which wrapped into how he was taken in the first place and his life on the run, second edition. He told Andrew how Morgan was not his biological daughter, but his half sister, as the product of his father’s last bachelor/widow night before he planned on killing Neil. He’d found out about her through the Moriyamas which kept tabs on the pregnant hooker for months after the Wesninski execution. When Neil had found a way out seven months after being kidnapped, he wouldn’t have cared about Nathan’s child if the woman hadn’t found him before he left the country. Then she died in childbirth and the hospital took a DNA test, ruled Neil as the father and gave him a birth certificate. That gave the Moriyamas a fresh trail to follow and would have intercepted him in the UK if the Hatfords hadn’t blocked their entrance nationally and they were forced to land in Amsterdam. Neil had known he couldn’t stay with them and he didn’t even debate leaving Morgan with them and go off on his own because he had already chosen her - already started to love her. And he refused to leave her to the broken foster system. That’s when Stuart had proposed the plastic surgery and that was the only time he’d left Morgan alone with them.
It was a lot harder to pass through the crowds as a single father with a baby than it had been as a mother with her adolescent son. So they went to Stockholm first and Neil’s German had helped them in the beginning, but Sweden was very liberal with information and granted easy access to everything - which meant it was hard to hide, even in the masses. They moved around in Sweden and once Morgan was steady on her legs they migrated from North-Sweden to Russia. They cut her hair off and made her pass as a toddler boy and Neil as a widow. Throughout the years they had checked in with Stuart, but it was always tense and he always nearly threatened them to come back to London. Morgan deserved a life free of any mafia and although Neil wanted to believe the Hatfords’ intentions were good, he refused to take the risk of them thinking of Morgan as an asset. Marrying off the Butcher’s daughter like cattle for slaughter just like his mother and cousin had been for connections and alliances. Over Neil Josten’s bleeding, dead body.
They had gone to Spain for a while, driven through France and Germany and he told Andrew how he’d wanted to visit Nicky, if only to appear as not-dead, but it was dangerous and the Moriyamas caught up with them there and while they managed to escape, they couldn’t risk the Nicky and Erik’s lives, too.
“He will be a pain to deal with when you tell him that,” Andrew commented.
Neil shrugged. “I can wait a few years before I let him know.”
“No. You hate living a lie.” A statement. A fact.
Neil felt himself smile back at Andrew. It was an echo of the best time of his life and he hoped he could have that again. That they would let him back in. He was here to stay, him holding on to Morgan’s birth certificate through all these years was proof of that, was the tiny hope he had clutched so tightly to his chest it fused with his heart.
“Yes or no?” Andrew wanted to know.
“Yes,” because it had always been yes with Andrew and that wouldn’t change. Neil met him halfway and Andrew grabbed onto his tweed collar. The kiss was bruising in its desperation. Time didn’t touch them. Neil didn’t know if the rules had changed so his mouth conveyed what his hands didn’t. Andrew’s other hand was in his hair - a grounding point - while he again kissed him like the world stopped and started with Neil’s mouth. Andrew allowed him access to his shoulders and Neil latched on with his life on the line. The heat coiling in his gut was no longer dormant and he hadn’t had time or care to think he’d missed it but he realized he had. He’d missed these hands on him; tugging his hair, on his arms, his knee, chest, waist--
“You’re armed,” Andrew said against his mouth as his hand brushed against the blade strapped to his side.
“Three knives, one gun,” Neil breathed and Andrew kissed him again, pushing him against the armrest. Andrew could have straddled him for days and Neil would remain unaware because too soon but hours later, they heard from the hallway,
“Guys, no humping on the couch, I go down on Renee there. Christ.”
Andrew reluctantly glared at Allison and Neil sat up stiffly. “Hey Alli--”
But she had already made her way over to him and crushed him in a fierce hug, blonde hair in his mouth. He gave her a one-armed hug back, his other hand busy holding onto Andrew’s sleeve. She smelled of laundry detergent and morning breath, and Neil had missed her.
She pushed him away to grasp his shoulders and looked him over. “You’re never leaving my sight again, Josten, I swear to God.” Her eyes narrowed harshly at his face. “What happened to you face.”
Neil sighed and Andrew reached for his armbands, but Neil tugged his sleeve. “Long story short, turns out plastic surgery can save lives.”
Allison smacked his shoulder. “Bitch, it already saved Dan’s so shut the fuck up.”
“Oh sorry, I forgot about her transitioning,” Neil admitted and Allison stepped back into the kitchen.
“I don’t cook so do you guys want any cereal? Or baby carrots?” she asked, effectively starting the morning.
Neil was clutching the coffee Andrew handed him like a lifeline when Matt and Dan came wobbling in with their toddler in tow. Matt froze at the sight of him and Neil’s gut churned until Matt started making his way to him, already crying, and swallowed him in the warmest hug of a lifetime. Dan put their son on her hip and grabbed a handful of Neil’s jacket.
“You slippery eel, you stay right here, you hear me,” Matt sobbed into Neil’s hair.
Neil briefly closed his eyes against Matt’s chest and let himself have this. “I’d like that.” Dan engulfed him next, child squashed between them. Neil smiled a little at her. “Hey Captain. I’ve been wanting to meet this kid.”
Because he crouched down on the floor with two-year-old Emíl and Dan, he was hidden behind the kitchen island and Morgan didn’t see him from her doorway. “Andrew?” she called, and Neil stirred at her voice. He got up immediately and Morgan locked eyes with him. She sprinted. “ Dad, ” urgency and need so raw in a single syllable. And he ran for her, too, instinct driving him, and as he kneeled for her to throw herself at him, he could breathe again. Which was ironic when she latched onto his neck with all her strength, crushing his windpipe.
“I’m sorry I was gone for so long,” he wheezed, “but you’re strangling me.”
She let up slightly but no where near let go of him. “I missed you,” she whispered into his neck.
He grabbed onto her legs and hoisted her up with him. “I missed you, too.” He carried her to the kitchen to join the rest of them. “Why is your phone off?”
Morgan, fused to his neck causing a few smiles, replied, “Uncle Stuart called, said he knew we were in New York, and I didn’t want to get tracked.”
Neil paused. “You broke it?” His daughter nodded. “God damn it,” he sighed and Morgan giggled. It was infectious and soon all except Andrew were chuckling, but he were nodded slightly as if he approved of her actions. Morgan unlatched and Neil smiled proudly at his found family. “This is my daughter, Morgan Andy Josten. She turns eight in December, and,” he looked to his daughter, “will start third grade next year.”
Morgan avoided his face in favor of the kitchen table. “I’m old.”
Allison slided up next to Andrew on his phone. “So. When are you adopting?” He didn’t grace her with a reply. “Minyard, I can see you googling court house opening hours.”
“I will actually break your arm this time,” he said, and Allison backed off in turn to put her arms around newly emerged Renee and kiss her good morning. Neil shared a look of mutual greetings with Renee and congratulated her.
“Oh no, congratulate Dan and Matt. I’m just the surrogate baking oven,” she stressed.
“Good morning, lovelies,” Nicky greeted to the kitchen, eyes barely open as he rummages the fridge. “Hey Morgan, you want more cake?”
“ Yessss ,” she said, and hopped down from Neil’s arms.
“No,” he protested. “Not as breakfast, you’ll get a sugar high.”
Morgan proceeded with holding his hand and deeply frowning up at her father. “Dad.”
“No means no. You can have cereal.”
“Honey puffs.”
Neil sighed. “Fine.”
Nicky unearthed himself from the fridge to look at the all commotion. “Am I seeing things or is that Neil Josten in the marred flesh?” he said as he rounded the island. Morgan went to where Renee poured her cereal. Nicky touched his arm as if to see if he was solid.
“It’s good to see you, Nicky,” he said and Nicky’s face twisted into a mix of joy and grief simultaneously in a way that was so uniquely Nicky Hemmick, and Neil was swallowed into another hug. He’d gotten more used to these touches over the years with his daughter.
**
Later, when Kevin would eventually emerge and claim Neil had to sign with his pro-exy team so Neil could finally be Court like he was supposed to be, Neil would tell them how the Moriyamas shattered his right knee when they first took him, in order to prevent him for playing ever again. He would tell them how they had him do jobs as the Butcher of Baltimore and that had also been what he’d done to settle the score with them the past few days. He already had blood on his hands from keeping Morgan safe, so this didn’t bother him more than that.
“You killed for them?” Matt said, uneasy.
“Yeah. And I was good at it. It is the family trade I was taught, after all.” Neil felt Andrew’s grounding hand on the his back, out of view. “But it’s over now.
I’m home.”