The weather is stifling, the sun high in the air and not a cloud to be seen. Around me, people are happy which is often seen with weather like this; the human body fills with the hormones endorphin and dopamine the moment the sun shines. I wonder if I'm immune. I must be immune.

Because in contrast to all the people around me, I feel empty. I'm thirty-eight years old, in the middle of a relationship crisis with the one woman I've ever loved, and I've just laid my father to rest. I've no friends, never had them to be honest, and I lost my job last March, which makes me unemployed. If it wasn't for some savings and my father's ample heritage, I probably wouldn't even be able to fly back home to London in January.

My life is a mess, and while I walk around sunny Perth, with happy families and couples filling the streets, I realize it's always been a mess.

Until I met her. Carla. She's twenty-nine, the daughter of a teacher and an accountant. Properly raised, beautiful, and in the prime of her life. And out of all people, she fell for me.

It started two years ago when she started working as my assistant at Johnson's Software Development. She knocked me off my feet straight away; I'd never been in love before, even questioned if I was able to feel an emotion like that, but she drew me in effortlessly.

She left the company after six months, but she didn't leave me. Thinking back, that was the happiest time of our relationship; the first nine months. After those nine months, she moved in with me, and that's when things headed south drastically.

Three months into living together, she tells me she wants to try for a baby. With me, the loser that hardly ever comes outside and can't cook for shit. But she saw more in me than just that loser, and so, I agreed. I had never seen myself with children but for her, I'd have them. I'd do anything for her.

But life can be cruel, and just when everything finally looked up for me, life had to fuck with me again. Long story short, we discovered my swimmers are dead, meaning I can't give her the one thing she wants desperately. A baby.

And she wants to be a mother so desperately, she's willing to do everything to become one. Including having a baby with another man. Including leaving me if that's not what I want. She's ready to jump ship.

I begged her to think about it, and since my father was terminally ill, I proposed a break. To give her time to think, properly and without me, and to grant me the opportunity to help my father before taking a big decision like that. I could only handle losing one of them.

And thank to everything that's holy, she agreed. I've put the flat in her name, showing her how I would truly do everything for her, and I left. We've been having contact, although minimal, but the conversations we are having give me hope. I think she misses me, which was what I'd hoped when I left for six months. She has to see that she doesn't want to be without me. She has to miss me to know she wants to keep me.

And I had time to think too. She wants a child at all costs, and I want her at all costs. So if that means I have to make concessions, I will. If she wants a child, I won't stand in her way, but I want to be there every step along the way. When I come back home, I'll tell her, and I hope it's what she wants to hear and it'll convince her to stay.

I have two months left, and it gives me time to sell my father's house and make sure everything is dealt with his livelihood. Once that's all taken care of, I can go back and hopefully, start our future. Of Carla and me.

I'm about to take a left turn, passing an older building as I do, before I hear yelling to my right. Instinctively, I turn my head towards the noise, and I'm just in time to see a tiny girl run into me, her blonde hair all over the place as she grabs my leg and holds onto it for dear life.

Annoyed and surprised, I look at the woman that ran after her. She has red cheeks and starts to apologize even before I've said anything.

"So sorry, Sir. She escaped me. Come on, Josephine, come with me." She sounds slightly out of breath which suggests she's been chasing this girl a while.

"No," the girl that holds onto me whimpers. I can't see her face, but I do feel how her grip on me tightens. "No, me not want to."

She sounds upset, and to find some answers, I look around. The woman that ran after her seems lost on what to do, and when I look where they came from, I see that the old building is an orphanage.

Just my luck, a fucking upset orphan around my leg.

I wiggle my leg, trying to make her let go, but the little thing is persistent. "Do you mind?" I growl irritated, pointing to the girl while looking at the woman that supposed to take care of her.

She sighs and then grabs the girl's shoulders. "Josephine, enough now. Let go."

And then, completely out of nowhere, she starts to scream bloody murder. Her tone is so high, that my ears buzz. What the fuck is this?

I look down at the blonde mop of hair, noticing immediately how it could need a decent comb. It's tangled to the roots, and an attempted braid is hanging on the side. She's crying, bawling really, asking for her mummy and daddy while she has a death grip on my leg. And just when I want to tell the woman to get this kid off of me, she looks up.

Crystal-blue, teared eyes look at me, and instantly, they remind me of one person. Carla. She has the same crystal-blue, almost icy eye color. It's horrifying how much they are alike.

"Please, no," the girl whimpers again, this time directly to me. And it's insane, but somehow I can't help but wonder if this is a sign. If this is some kind of sign from someone above -maybe even my father. What if he -or whoever the fuck might be up there- has sent this child, so Carla and I can have our future?

"Josephine," the woman is stern now, pulling her arm and successfully pealing the child away from me. The little girl isn't having any of it. She's kicking and screaming, fighting to get away from the woman's grip and to me, fuck knows why. Children never liked me, yet this one seems to have a pull towards me.

And it's those crystal-icy-blue tearful eyes, along with her crying, but mostly with the woman I love consuming my mind, I utter one word before I even think it through.

"Wait."

After a horrifying twenty-nine-hour journey, I'm finally putting the key into my apartment building. The excitement rushes through my veins upon seeing Carla, even more so now because I have a surprise she won't see coming from miles away.

Next to me, Josephine is looking at the building with big eyes. She's dressed in a pink jacket, underneath a pale-beige shirt with a unicorn on the front. Blue joggings and white sneakers on her lower half complete it. And on her back, she's wearing a pink backpack.

The people at the orphanage explained she doesn't own much. Her family was killed in a fire, and all her belongings burned as well. The only thing they transferred to me was a bank account that once belonged to Josephine's parents. The money on there is for her, for when she's older. The clothes that they gave me were ones from the facility. They are all a bit too small and dirty, but I reckon Carla can buy her new ones soon.

Adopting Josephine was relatively easy; the royal heritage my father left me made them quite happy. It took just six weeks for me to get everything done and when I came to pick her up, they handed me her passport -which was saved from the fireproof safe that was found in the burned house- and I was good to go. For now, I'm her guardian, but we can make everything legal here in England relatively fast. Carla will become her adoptive mother, and Josephine will receive a British passport once we register her as a citizen of London.

I truly do not understand why people are making such a fuzz of not being able to conceive when you can just adopt a kid in Australia.

"Are you ready to meet your new mum?" I ask Josephine while pulling her behind me up the stairs. She's been quiet the whole journey to London, and I have to say I didn't mind. Traveling for twenty-nine hours is horrendous, I can't imagine what it would be like with a nagging toddler around me.

Josephine is pale, and she shakes her head. "I want my old mommy." Her blue eyes tear up, and I can't help but roll my eyes. Just what I need; a crying kid.

"Well, she's dead," I mumble, arriving at my floor. "But you'll like your new one. She's pretty and sweet."

Josephine sobs and looks down, not reacting anymore which is fine by me. My head is already with Carla anyway and in just seconds, I'll get to hold her again. I haven't told her anything about Josephine as I want it to be a surprise. It's the ultimate promise to her; giving her the child she desperately wants. The fact that the girl looks like her is just a bonus.

Eager and with shaking hands, I open the door, pulling Josephine behind me as I walk in. Almost immediately after I've walked in, I notice low grunts and noises from the guestroom, and I'm on high alert instantly, sensing that something is wrong.

Forgetting about the child completely, I pull my hand from her tight grip and march to the guestroom. I hardly register how the grunts become harder, and only when I open the door, do I realize the grunts were moans.

There she is, my Carla, on the bed in the guestroom. Her hands are bound above her head while she lays on her belly, facing me. One man is fucking her from behind, another one is standing next to her while he wanks. And while I search for all the signs that tell me she's been raided, I find none.

Her cheeks have that blush, her eyes that glimmer still even though they are now looking at me shocked and worse; caught. Her body is red, God knows what the marks inflicted, but overall, she doesn't look reluctant. Not one bit. She wants this.

"Leo, what-" she stutters as she tries to get up from the bed. The man behind her has moved from the bed already, but because her wrists are bound, she has nowhere to go.

I have no idea what I'm feeling. Rage, hurt, there is so much going on, I wouldn't be able to explain if I wanted to. But the feeling that overrules everything, is aggression.

While I was burying my father, she was fucking around, in my house -the one that I've put on her name- like I meant nothing to her. I mean nothing to her.

"Get. The. Fuck. Out."

It's all that I can say, but apparently, my expression and tone tell them enough. One guy immediately starts picking his clothes from the floor, the other is gentleman enough to untie Carla before doing the same in record speed. In the meantime, my eyes are solely on Carla. I watch her every move, searching for any type of regret. It infuriates me that I find none.

And when the two men sprint past me with tails between their legs, I'm reminded of the one thing that just became the problem as her cold hand slips into mine.

What the fuck am I going to do with this child?

"But you never registered Miss Langford as a citizen of London, did you, Mr. Blitsford?" Gigi's stern and professional voice sound through the speakers of the courtroom, but Leonard doesn't seem impressed in the slightest. His dull eyes just look at the same point the entire time as he tells about me and how he got me, without any emotion.

"Correct," he answers. The disinterest is dripping from his tone and it makes me shiver.

"You didn't register because you knew your intentions from the moment you took her to London, isn't that so, Mr. Blitsford?" Gigi continues, confident and secure.

"That's incorrect. I adopted Josephine because I intended to raise her, which I did." He seems pleased with his answer, and it makes me want to vomit.

"Your intention to raise her vanished when Miss Carla Raven left you, can we agree on that?"

I watch how Leonard shakes his head, looking surprisingly sad, and I try with all my might to think about this woman. Carla. I don remember her at all. I have no idea who she is, or what she looks like. But I can't help but wonder; what if she'd stayed? What if she did raise me?

Unfortunately, Carla Raven died six years ago, suffering from breast cancer. The investigation team on my case found her name on the lease contract of the apartment that was owned by Leonard. They wanted to hear her as a witness, but sadly, she'd passed away. And thereby she took everything she knew about me and him with her into her grave.

I wonder if she ever thought of me?

Pulling myself back to the present, I hear Gigi trying a different approach. "Mr. Blitsford, the first time you assaulted Miss Langford was on her sixteenth birthday, is that correct?"

"It's not," he calmly replies, his eyes on me. I feel them although I'm not looking at him. "I've never had sexual intercourse with her."

"Sexual intercourse is not the only thing that defines assault, Mr. Blisfotsford, but let me elaborate. On Miss Langford's sixteenth birthday, you shared a bed with her, touched her, and attempted to penetrate her against her will. Is this correct?" Gigi presses and the salty taste in my jaw rises at her description. It'll never get easy.

"I wasn't aware that it was against her will. She didn't tell me no."

"Son of a bitch," I hear Hero whisper behind me. He's in the courtroom with Titan and his father George, and I know he's seconds away from losing it.

"She fought you, Mr. Blitsford is that correct?" Gigi asks, not giving up.

"It's not," Leonard answers. "Not that time, she didn't."

I gasp as I realize what he just did. After weeks of denying and giving hardly any information, he finally makes a mistake. Not that time, he says. And Gigi effortlessly catches on to that too.

"But you confess it did happen, another time?"

Leonard chuckles at her question. "Josie likes it rough. But I've never raped her. I can prove it. The child she had isn't mine."

My eyes widen and snap up to look at him. I don't know what I find most shocking at this point; the fact that he still has the confidence to call me Josie, here in court or the fact that he's involving Daisy in his testimony.

Either way, it makes me furious. The need to protect Daisy has never been as strong as it is now, and if I could, I would've walked up to him and punched him in the face, just like Hero taught me during our training sessions.

But because I know it won't benefit my case, I swallow my anger, for now.

"But you know who is, don't you, Mr. Blitsford?"

For the first time since he's answering questions, he isn't answering right away. He seems hesitant; his eyes flickering from me to his lawyer, and then, he blows out a breath. "I gave names. I don't know what more you want from me."

He's being questioned for over an hour now, and he goes from left to right. It's exhausting, but I hope he'll eventually stop this game. And I will play along until I win.

"Mr. Blitsford, there is no need to play dumb here, the evidence is strong. You took Miss Langford at the age of four years old to lock her up and you assaulted and abused her. You lend her to other men, who assaulted her too, and you did nothing to stop it. You encouraged it. When you choose to take that four-year-old girl, you knew what her fate was."

The tears sting in my eyes and for the first time, I feel sorry for that four-year-old, little girl I once was. I had no idea. No idea what was waiting for me, but he did, and he didn't care.

And to proof just how heartless he actually is, he looks at me with his sinister eyes, and there is no way to escape his intense gaze as he utters his defense without shame.

"That's where you are wrong. That four-year-old girl chose me. She ran up to me. She refused to let me go. She begged me to take her. She chose me."

She chose me.

His voice and words keep repeating in my head, making me panic every time as every memory crashes back in again. My eyes burn and my throat hurts, the realization of how true his words are cutting through my very being.

I did choose him, he is right.

I was mourning, missing my mommy and daddy. I was crying myself to sleep every night, hating how the other people and children in the orphanage didn't seem to care how much I missed my old life. I was scared; so scared of being alone my whole life, even though the meaning of forever was lost on me entirely.

And I remember the day I saw him. I remember how he reminded me of my dad. He had the same ash-brown hair, and his expression seemed friendly. And he was the only thing that seemed to look familiar to me if only a little. And I ran to him, desperate to hold onto that little bit of familiarity.

It all came back when he stated I'd chosen him. I ran to him and threw myself around him, not knowing that my decision would mark me for life. Not knowing I ran into the arms of a monster.

"Love, you didn't know," Hero pleads, his voice heavy. His hand is rubbing up and down my back, but I hardly feel it. I feel numb. Completely numb.

"I chose him. If I hadn't run up to him, he wouldn't-"

"Baby, I really need you to stop saying that," Hero interrupts me, his tone suggesting it wasn't the first time I said that phrase out loud even though it feels as if I said it for the first time. "You couldn't have known. You were four. You were traumatized. You were alone and hurt. You can't blame yourself."

"I don't," I answer way too soon, and I immediately realize I'm lying. Although I know I can hardly hold my four-year-old self responsible, I can't help but feel blamed. "Why didn't I remember?" I ask myself out loud.

"I'm not sure," Hero answers, pulling me against him even more. "But maybe you blocked the memory? Maybe everything that you went through after he took you was too much, and maybe you blocked out that memory to protect yourself?"

He is trying so hard to understand me, it's admirable, and I suddenly feel so guilty for thinking he'd run for the hills a few months ago. He's here, even after everything he came to know about me during the trial, and he won't leave me. If anything, he's holding on to me even tighter, and he's keeping his promise; he's not losing me in the chaos.

"Tell me what's going on inside that head of yours," Hero softly requests, lifting my head by pulling up my chin. His green eyes are serious, but the hint of love that I've come to adore is there too. Martha's told me how he's only ever looked at me like that, and ever since she said that I can't seem to look away when his eyes shine on me.

"I feel numb," I tell him honestly. "And lost. Every time we're in that courtroom, he says or does something that gets to me, and fighting him seems impossible. I don't know how to do it. I just... I don't know."

Tears sting in my eyes, and although I try my hardest not to let them spill, I eventually lose that fight too. As thick tears fall onto my cheeks, I curse myself for sheading yet another tear over him and what he's done to me. When does it ever stop?