Page 67 of Sins of Leo

CHAPTER 20

What a fucking day.

Of all things Leo expected when he set out to find the artifact, discovering his dead wife—who wasn’t ever actually his wife—and his daughter—who was even cuter in person—never crossed his mind.

And yet, he’d returned with the latter, a sweet tyke who beamed, without issue, unlike Ruth.

They arrived in the portal room, intact and alive, albeit minus the orb. Aries and Sage were waiting for them, kind of.

They stood over the thirteenth dais staring at it. Probably because two-thirds of it was now filled.

Olivia whispered, “Only one piece left.”

Aries and Sage strode for them, with the former saying, “Sage says you had quite the adventure in the jungle.”

“No shit.”

“Congrats on finding your daughter and getting everyone out alive. Let me ease your burden.” Aries held out his hands.

Was it weird Leo didn’t want to let either Ruth or Olivia go?

His daughter made the choice and reached out—not to Aries, but to Sage. Olivia slipped from Leo’s grip to Sage’s and murmured, “Hello, Auntie Sage. I did it. I escaped.”

“Yes, you did, little muffin. I’m so proud of you. I knew you could do it.”

At their exchange, anger hit Leo quick and furious. “You knew she was alive.” He kept his voice low rather than yelling and scaring his daughter.

“Yes.” Sage didn’t even have the grace to look chagrinned.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he growled.

“I swear I only found out recently,” Sage stated, her lips turned down. “I only realized Olivia was alive when I got pregnant.” Her hand went to her belly. “I wanted to tell you, but every future showed that ending in tragedy.”

“But you saw how her death tortured me,” he exclaimed.

“She couldn’t tell, Daddy,” lisped Olivia. “If you knew, you would have looked for me.”

“Hell yeah, I would have scoured the ends of the Earth to find you.”

“And died,” Sage bluntly stated. “This was the only way.”

“I’m safe now, Daddy. Aren’t you happy?”

At Olivia’s tremulous query, his anger slipped away as quickly as it rushed in to be replaced with pain. “All this time, I thought my dreams were just wishful thinking.”

“Dreams you never told me about,” Sage chided. “Had I known from the start, perhaps things could have been different.”

How could he tell people he saw and spoke to his dead daughter? He shifted Ruth in his grip. “I take it you saw what happened in the jungle?”

“Parts of it.” Sage’s lips pursed. “I saw you surrounded by armed men led by Kylie, who works for Cetus, by the way.”

“You’re fucking kidding. When did that happen?”

“Before you even met. But don’t ask me the details. How and why that happened are unclear.”

“She claimed to have met me on purpose.”

“So I could be born,” Olivia murmured. “They wanted someone like Auntie Sage.”

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