The People They Fight For

Chapter Five

*Present*

Avery's POV

"You know princess with one flight I could be right there. With you."

I shake my head at the guy even though he can't see it over the phone. I continue to type, the work never stops piling up here. "You're needed there, I'm fine."

He hums and a knock on the door has me hanging up with an eye roll. I open the door to see the smiling 21 year old holding a three-year-old monster. "Caspian."

"Avery, I'm done with babysitting duty and Leon needs me." He basically throws the child at me and walks off.

I hold the kid in front of me, the doctors say he is small for his age but I pay that no mind, "Sup monster."

The kid giggles and I roll my eyes at him, I set him down ushering him into the toys and kids area made specifically for him. I had a mesh fence added when the monster decided messing with my things was more fun than playing with his toys. I go back to work as Benji turns on his gaming tablets. The door bangs open and I roll my eyes, only one person comes into my office without knocking, "I don't know why you took the kid in if you were going to let the internet raise him."

"Remington, so nice to see you." The girl in question snorts in annoyance at her full name and I glance up at her. Today her makeup and outfit were marvel-themed. She even had her nails done to match. I smiled, I wasn't one to worry about my appearance but I always admire how my friend dresses.

"Call me that again and I will fuc- freaking stab you." I hum knowing she was kidding, up not that getting stabbed was something I feared anymore. I glare at her close slip, the last thing I need is for the kid to start swearing. She picks up Benji and cradles him carefully just as she learned to online. She sets him on my lap and I give her a look, "You took him in Ve stop pushing him away."

An orphan herself, she was someone who connected with the three-year-old, or they felt each other's psychoticness. I killed Benji's mom, only two people know why, and took the then-infant in. He was blood and I wasn't someone to ignore that but he was better off being raised by someone else. One of my twins would be ideal but that wasn't possible and to keep him safe his existence had to be kept quiet.

The child in question bangs his fist down on the computer and laughs as it shuts off and I sigh giving Remi a scolding look. She laughs and moves to look over my shoulder, turning the computer back on and going to work restoring the files I was working on with ease. As she works I stand and take Benji, setting him back into the playpen. I buy the kid all the toys he could ever ask for and yet the demon child causes chaos anyways. I don't know how parents do it. He begins to try and climb over the fence and I sigh knowing this is only the beginning of the trouble this kid will cause in the future. Thankfully a knock at the door comes before the kid can do anything else and he is distracted from his escape attempt.

He walks in after a second and easily picks the kid up and I shake my head. Leon gives Remi a look and she takes her leave knowing he wanted privacy. He sits with Beji playing with a toy car, keeping his attention as he looks at me, "How's the legal side going?"

I shrug, "The business is still hurting from the new changes we've had to implement to make it legal but it's getting there. Your father burned a lot of bridges."

He shrugs switching from the toy car to a toy plane, his father was a sore spot for the both of us and we rarely brought him up. "I'm facing the same problem with people on my side of things, the infrastructure leftover from his reign helps but gaining the necessary trust from people is a problem."

I hum, "We'll make it work, we have to."

He murmurs in agreement knowing the dangers if we didn't meet our goals. Few people know the thing I fear as intimately as he did. Everything had to go perfectly and we had to make our part work.

Benji slides off Leon's lap and before either of us can grab him he is spilling pens and papers everywhere. I sigh at the laughing menace as my office is turned into a disaster zone yet again. I didn't regret taking the monster in but it would be nice to have an office safe from certain destruction.

I snatch the monster up before he can cause any more damage and as I struggle wrangling the toddler I glare at Leon who spent his time during the chaos recording instead of helping. Some mafia leader he is. All my friends prefer to film my struggles with the three-year-old than helping.

I throw a knife at him making the monster in my arms laugh as Leon dodges the blade and it lodges itself into the wall next to the various other dagger-made holes in the wall. The kid launches himself from where I was balancing him on my hip onto the floor and runs towards the door where he can hear people talking outside. Leon lifts him up and places him on his back spinning and bouncing the kid around to keep him occupied. I shake my head and gesture him out of the office, "Come on let's go, it's time for dinner."

Leon smiles and runs out of the room with Benji laughing along for the ride. I follow the two slower and meet them in the kitchen where Remi was watching and taking notes on María's way of cooking. María is Leon's mother and she takes care of Benji with help of our guards when she is able but the psychotic monster is often too much for her to handle for more than a few hours. The kid needs constant supervision and even then he often has new injuries from his 'adventures'.

María serves us gazpacho, a tomato soup, to us for dinner, "Gracias, María."

"De nada, mi hija." (You're welcome, my daughter)

Unlike her husband, María is kind and took me in as her own after everything happened. Her marriage wasn't a happy one from the things I have heard and she claimed cooking and taking care of her ninos was what kept her going. She doesn't just cook for us every meal she makes enough for our guards, we often send maids to help her but leave her be to do what she loves knowing that in the past she was restricted.

It took us a long time to get to where we were, eating dinners together, sharing stories, and keeping an eye on the three-year-old monster but we did it. Caspian is the last to join and the usually stoic man kisses María's cheek in hello before sitting to eat with us. He and Leon share a glance and I raise a brow at the two of them but they signal me saying we would talk later.

---------

Thanks for reading, voting, and commenting

Lots of new characters on Avery's side of things. I hope things with Benji make more sense or maybe it just raises more questions but everything will be answered eventually.

I wasn't planning on writing this as quickly as I did but here it is, I don't like how I end both Ve's and Quinn's chapters with them eating but that was what my mind decided to do and I don't have the brainpower to think of other ways to introduce all the characters.

-Lovefire