"I'm gonna kill it. I'm gonna stab this colorful, plastic son of a b&tch until it deflates for real."
Riven Fernandez, Head Enforcer for the most powerful criminal empire on the East Coast, was on his knees, sweating through his shirt, and screaming at a deflated nylon castle.
He kicked the half-collapsed bouncy castle. It shivered like a dying jellyfish, one corner stubbornly limp while the air pump wheezed like a smoker.
"It's mocking me," he growled.
At the gift table, Elijah didn't look up from neatly arranging presents by size and—because he was Elijah—by threat level.
"It's inanimate. Read the instructions."
"They're just pictures of smiling kids! That's not a manual, that's a taunt!" Riven snapped.
The Fernandez mansion didn't look like a mob fortress today. It looked like a sugar-coated circus. Pastel balloons floated like cheerful spies.
A banner that read HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY! drooped slightly over the marble fireplace. The air smelled of frosting, rubber, and faint desperation.
On her highchair throne sat the empress herself—Juliet. Tiny crown, pink frills, frosting on her cheeks. Her hazel eyes surveyed the room like she owned it. Which she did.
Leo stood closest, muttering calculations to his tablet.
"The average one-year-old generates 4.5 pounds of force. With cake sugar levels, probability of a smash-to-face event is—"
Fatal mistake.
Juliet's sticky little hand darted out. Snatch. Glasses gone.
Leo froze, blinking into a watercolor blur. "My ocular input devices." He patted the air helplessly. "Juliet, those are not toys. They are precision tools."
Juliet giggled, waving the glasses like stolen treasure.
"Hey, little boss!" Riven called, grinning wide. "Be a good outlaw and give Leo his eyes back!"
"My proprioception is fine," Leo argued—just before walking straight into a chair leg. "Ow. Dammit."
Riven laughed so hard his voice cracked. "Fine? You're like a baby deer on ice!"
Even Elijah's mouth twitched in the ghost of a smile. He finally crossed to Juliet, steady and calm, prying the glasses from her chubby fist. She didn't protest—just cooed, "Ijah!"
Elijah handed them back, slime and all. "Maintain distance from the apex predator, Leo."
Leo shoved them on, adjusting fast. "Her grab-speed was underestimated. Updating the model."
Then—
The doorbell rang.
The shift was instant. The laughter died in Riven's throat. Elijah's relaxed posture snapped back into that of a Don. Even Leo's fingers flew across his tablet, pulling up the security feed.
"Who is it, Leo?" Elijah asked, his voice now all business.
"Unlisted guest. Female. Late twenties. No visible weapons. She's holding... a single, wrapped gift."
"Viktor?" Elijah prompted, his eyes never leaving the front door.
His head of security's voice came through his earpiece. "Clear visual. No backup visible. She's alone, boss."
Elijah gave a sharp nod. "Let her in."
The door opened. The woman, Sofia, stepped inside. She was beautiful, with a calm elegance that seemed out of place amidst the pastel chaos. Her eyes swept the room, lingering for a moment on each brother before landing on Juliet. A genuine, soft smile touched her lips.
"I'm sorry to intrude on a family day," she said, her accent melodic. "My name is Sofia. I was a friend of your mother's." Her gaze found Elijah's. "Isabella... she would have loved to see this."
The mention of their mother's name was a key turning a lock in each of their hearts. The tension eased, just a fraction.
She passed a small device to Leo. "A background check. I assumed you'd want to run one. It's all there. Clean."
Leo, impressed despite himself, scanned the data and gave Elijah a slight nod.
Sofia approached the highchair. Juliet, who had been watching the new giant with intense curiosity, broke into a gummy smile. She reached out a chubby, sticky hand.
"Well, hello there, your highness," Sofia cooed, her voice dropping into the universal tone used for babies. She didn't try to touch her, just smiled. "Happy birthday."
Juliet let out a happy squeal and babbled something that sounded like "Bah-bah!"
The brothers watched, stunned. Juliet was friendly, but she didn't go to strangers.
Sofia laughed softly and handed the elegantly wrapped box to Elijah. "This is for her. From me... and from her godmother."
The word hung in the air, cold and wrong.
Elijah didn't move. "Her what?"
"Her godmother," Sofia repeated, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Isabella arranged it."
Riven was the one who broke the silence with a harsh, disbelieving laugh. "Our mother didn't have a secret bestie. You're full of it."
Sofia's calm never wavered. She looked directly at Elijah, her gaze unwavering. "It wasn't your father's arrangement. It was your mother's. With her sister."
Tia Rosa. The name hung in the air, unspoken but deafening.
Slowly, Elijah reached out and took the gift. It was light. He didn't open it. He just held it, his knuckles white.
"The party is lovely," Sofia said, her social mission apparently complete. "I won't intrude further. It was an honor to finally meet you all."
She gave one last, lingering look at Juliet, then turned and walked out, Viktor closing the door behind her with a definitive thud.
The spell was broken.
"What the hell was that?" Julian demanded.
"A godmother?" Riven scoffed. "Since when?"
"It is a largely ceremonial Catholic tradition," Leo supplied, still staring at his tablet. "Though it often carries informal weight in custody disputes..."
Elijah wasn't listening. His attention was on the box. With deliberate, controlled movements, he tore the silver paper away. Inside, nestled in tissue paper, was a beautiful, hand-knit cashmere blanket. And beneath that, a stark, legal-sized manila envelope.
His heart was a cold, hard stone in his chest. He pulled out the document. The heading made the world shrink to a single, searing point.
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF ISABELLA JOANNE FERNANDEZ
It was a copy. Dated six months before Juliet was born.
His eyes scanned the legalese, the formal language. And then he found it. The clause that shattered his world.
Article IV, Guardianship: In the event that my husband, Ricardo Fernandez, predeceases me or is otherwise unable to serve, I hereby appoint my sister, Rosa Joanne Flores, as the sole legal guardian of my minor child, Juliet Isabella Fernandez...
The paper crumpled in his fist. He couldn't breathe. All their power, all their guns, all their fear... it was useless. They were no longer fighting gangsters in warehouses. They were fighting a flamboyant, broom-wielding aunt in family court.
"Elijah?" Riven's voice was sharp with concern. "What is it?"
Elijah didn't answer. He was already striding to the door, yanking it open. Sofia was just getting into her car down the long driveway.
"Sofia!" he roared, his voice echoing off the manicured lawns.
She paused, her car door open.
He marched toward her, the will held out like a weapon. "What is this? What is this game?"
Sofia turned, her expression not of fear, but of pity. It made him want to break things.
"It's not a game, Elijah. It's your mother's will."
"My mother is dead. This changes nothing."
"It changes everything," she said softly. "A judge will see it differently. Tia Rosa is family. Stable. Unconnected to... all this." She gestured vaguely at the mansion, at him, at the life he'd built.
The monster inside him snarled, begging to be let loose. But he was chained by the law, by the ghost of his mother's signature.
"Why are you doing this?" The question was a raw, guttural thing.
Sofia took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for what came next. "I told you. I'm here for Juliet. The godmother isn't Tia Rosa, Elijah."
Her eyes met his, and in their depths, he saw the truth a second before she spoke it.
"It's me."
The ground fell away. "What?"
"My mother was your mother's best friend. Her only real friend outside this... world. Isabella was terrified. She made my mother promise. If anything happened to her, we were to get Juliet out. We were to give her a normal life. A safe life." Her gaze was unwavering, filled with a righteous fire. "I am here to honor that promise."
Elijah stood frozen, a statue of rage and disbelief. She was the embodiment of his mother's deepest fear—him. His father. This life. And she held a piece of paper that could make that fear a reality.
But Sofia wasn't finished. She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper meant only for him.
"And you should know why the Mendozas really killed her, Elijah. It wasn't just to hurt your father."
She let the silence hang, letting the new, terrifying truth take root.
"Isabella was going to leave him. She was gathering evidence—ledgers, recordings—enough to bury Ricardo's empire and the Mendozas along with it. She wasn't just a victim. She was a threat. They poisoned her to silence her."
The final bomb detonated. It re-framed his entire history. His mother, a hero. His father... had he known? Had he let it happen?
The happy sounds from the mansion—Julian's guitar, the boys' laughter—felt like they were coming from a million miles away.
Sofia got into her car and drove away, leaving Elijah standing alone in the driveway, holding the ruins of his family.
He walked back into the house, the door closing with a soft, final click. The party was still going. Juliet was now happily smearing a fistful of cake into Riven's hair, and Riven was laughing, a real, genuine laugh.
Elijah's brothers looked at him, their smiles fading as they saw his face.
He looked from their confused faces, to the legal document in his hand, to his baby sister—the living legacy of the woman who had tried to destroy this world to save them from it.
The war for Juliet was no longer about bullets.
It was about wills, and words, and against Tia Rosa. Their dramatic, perfume-soaked, broom-wielding aunt, now on paper, the legal guardian of the most protected child in the city.