"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do." -Henry Ford

I was in a very dreamless sleep only to be awoken by a sound I wished I would never have to hear. The sound of my one and only daughter, my world, my principessa, screaming bloody murder. I shot out of my bed and grabbed my gun out of my nightstand. I ran out of my door, gun in hand, only to see all of my sons doing the same. We all ran to Isabella's room to see Ilias already standing over his sister's bed shaking and crying.

I look down at her bed only to see Isabella thrashing around in her sleep. Crying an uncontrollable amount while gasping for air. What in the hell kind of nightmare could do this? Me and all my sons (except Ilias) were standing there in shock at the sight before us. "What are you all doing? Help her!" Ilias screams with tears beginning to run down his cheeks. Alessandro and Theodore quickly rush towards Isabella and start making attempts to wake her up. I want to move but my limbs feel like they're glued to the spot I'm standing in. I glance between my distraught baby boy and my screaming baby girl. My heart feels like it's breaking.

A crying Mateo and an unusually quiet Ricardo fast walk over to a still distraught Ilias to try and comfort him. While Mateo pulls him into a hug, Ricardo has the job of holding Ilias's hand and whispering sweet words to him. As Ilias's cries start quieting down, I feel as if I can breathe again with at least one of my twins no longer crying uncontrollably. I find the strength to move and walk over to Isabella who is still thrashing and crying in her sleep. I gently tapped Theodore on his shoulder, he knew instantly to get out of my way.

I slowly sat down on the bed. Once I was settled on the bed, I picked up the screaming Isabella in my arms with all her brothers watching my every move. I do my best to soothe her. I whisper all the reasons as to why I love her in her ear. I rock her like I did when she was nothing but a little baby, who was new to the world with nothing but innocence in her and Ilias's precious minds.

Eventually her cries turned into barely audible whimpers. Soon enough I felt her cuddle into me further, at that Ricardo left the now silent Ilias in Mateo's arms and decided to hover over me to get a better look at his sorellina. I see her precious blue eyes, that are exactly like Abbi's, slowly open. When they first opened the look, I saw in her eyes scared the shit out of me. I never wanted to see it in any of my children's eyes, especially not my bimbas. Fear. It was all that swam in her eyes. Until she looked up and her beautiful blue eyes locked with my dark brown ones. (Bimba-baby girl)

The fear immediately left her eyes as her body visibly relaxed. Silence soon fell over the room. It was deafening. After 5 straight minutes of nothing but silence Theodore spoke in a harsh tone, "What the fuck was that." His jaw was clenched to the point it looked like it was going to crack under the pressure. His fists were clenched so hard that his knuckles were turning white. But that was all nothing compared to the amount of rage that was evident in his eyes. I, along with anyone else in the room, knew that he was itching to kill someone.

I turned my attention back to Isabella only to see her yawning and still shaking. I glanced over at the clock in her room only to see it was 1:47am. "W-what are you do-doing?" she whispers so that only I can hear. "Shh, just go back to sleep, neonata." I try to soothe her back to sleep. (Neonata-baby)

After 30 minutes She finally goes back to sleep. "What the fuck dad we need answers. Unless there's something you know that we don't" Theodore whisper-yells. "Look son let's leave it for now and no I have no damn idea what caused that to happen." I sternly whisper so that all of my sons can hear. They nod their heads in understanding.

I nod my head towards the door to give the signal to my sons that we will finish this conversation in another room. I walk towards the door with all of my sons following behind me.

I lead the way to my office on the third floor of our house/mansion. Once we stepped into the room, Theodore was still seething. "What the hell compelled you to let her go back to sleep without questioning her!"

"Enough, Theodore! Dad always has his reasons." Alessandro yelled as he glared at Theodore.

"Don't get me wrong dad I would never doubt you, but why didn't you question her?" Mateo asked, causing all my son's gazes to fall on me. Waiting for my response. "I don't know about you all, but I would prefer for her to tell us on her own time. However, if this is to happen again, I won't hesitate to ask questions. And have one of our men dig up some information to give us an idea of what her life was like when she was away from us." I respond, all of my sons questioning gazes quickly turn away.

"Also, we have some guests coming over in 2 weeks for dinner to make a business deal. I expect you all to be on your best behavior." We all turn our heads toward Theo who does an annoyed scoff. "But dad shouldn't w-" I cut off Ilias before he could finish his statement.

"Before any of you ask, unfortunately we can't cancel this dinner even though we just got your sister back. Although small, compared to our mafia the people coming over are the leaders to the current number 1 gang. That being said, they are trying to sell us a couple shipments of drugs." I sigh, bothered with the idea of having people affiliated with the mafia come into my house with Isabella in it.

A smirk forms on Ilias's face from what I can only assume is because I answered his question before he even finished asking it. "How do you do that? Can you read minds or something?" Ilias asks, excitement entering his croaky voice.

"Obviously he can't or else he would know what's wrong with Bella," Theodore says with an aggravated tone. His words bring everyone's thoughts back to what just happened with Isabella. Which puts on quite a mood dampener, even to me. "Alright everyone, it's way past the time that we should be asleep. Let's get a move on and head to dreamland, shall we." Mateo says before motioning for everyone to head to bed. However, Ricardo still sat there in a daze not paying attention to anything or anyone around him. Mateo was walking over to him to make him head back to bed but before he could I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him.

I need to talk to Ricardo.

He has seemed off since earlier, then again who wouldn't be. Mateo looked at me with a questioning look before shaking his head and walking out the door heading down the long hallway to the staircase.

Ricardo seems to snap back into reality at my movement in the chair next to him. "You, ok?" I question him. He looks at me with a blank face before all the barriers he's put-up break. I see tears gathering in his eyes as he puts his head in his hands. Slowly he starts shaking his head no.

My heart begins to hurt more at the sight of the third child tonight to break down into tears. The third one of my children to break down tonight to correct myself. I sigh before gently rubbing his back as I did with Isabella. "She's going to be ok, that I can promise to you." I say lovingly.

"Did you see that look in her eyes when she first woke up?" Ricardo cries out, as he looks up to me with his tear-filled eyes. I hesitate before slowly nodding my head to give him the answer to his question. "I feel like I failed dad. I failed as her big brother. It was my job to protect her and somehow, I screwed up so badly that she has been through something so bad that she has nightmares like that. In all my years of torturing people or killing people, I have never seen that much fear in someone's eyes. Out of all the people for that fear to belong to, it had to be my-no our little sister, your daughter."

Ricardo starts crying harder.

I close my eyes and sigh. Still rubbing Ricardo's back soothingly. At this point it's the only thing I can do. Hell, I have no idea what to do in this situation. I'm not equipped for this, this is Abbi and Mateo territory, I'm not good at soothing people. But Abbi isn't here anymore, and I don't want Mateo to have to hear his older brother cry along with talking about Isabella. The only thing I want in life is for them all to be happy, yet I seem to be failing because all they seem to be doing is crying. Who knew parenting could be this hard?

I eventually got Ricardo to calm down after this we went our separate ways to our bedrooms. Once I close my bedroom door, I let out a big sigh and run my hand through my hair. I sit down on my bed and check the time on my phone. 3:10 am. It could be worse, I guess. I lay down on my bed, I closed my eyes trying to go back to bed. The thing is I couldn't. My thoughts kept me awake, which was awful. I was thinking about anything and everything I just couldn't turn my mind off. I can already guess that I'm going to be completely exhausted tomorrow.