Page 126 of Ruin

My heart. My virtue. Yep. He definitely took some things of mine and never gave them back.

“Not so much took something. We just disagreed on a subject.”

Zeus comes up behind me, touching his large hand to my shoulder, and cups Gigi’s tiny face in his other hand. “Mommy and Daddy got a little angry with each other, and we yelled. And we’re sorry.”

“Has you said sorrys to each other? ’Cause Miss Maple says we has to says sorry when we yells at each other.”

Zeus’s hand on my shoulder slides up to the side of my head, and he presses his lips to my hair. “I’m sorry, Dove. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

I turn my eyes to his. “I’m sorry, too.”

“Yous can be best fwiends now,” Gigi says like she’s officiating, making me smile.

“But you’re my best friend,” I tell her, pretending to frown.

“Don’ts be silly. You’s my mommy. You can’t be my best friend.” She giggles, and my heart is full again.

“Hey, Gigi girl.” Aunt Elle comes over and takes her from my arms, carrying her. “You wanna help me make breakfast? I was thinking…waffles and bacon.”

“And maple syrup?”

“And maple syrup,” Aunt Elle agrees.

“You’s da best, Granny Elle. We can make waffles and bacon for Mommy and Daddy, too.”

“For sure, Gigi girl.”

I watch them go inside. Leaving the front door open for us.

Zeus turns me to face him. I stare up into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m an asshole.”

“Yeah, you are,” I agree. “But so am I.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re just hurt and scared, and I handled it badly. I fucked up again.”

Tears fill my eyes. He cradles my face in his hands.

“But I’ll fix this, Dove. Whatever it takes. Whoever I have to take down. I’ll do whatever is necessary to make this go away.”

But it doesn’t go away.

Not that Zeus didn’t try. Because he did. Pharos took the story down the next day after Zeus threatened to sue. But it’s no use because the story is on every other gossip site known to man.

He had his publicist put out a statement on his social media, stating the facts—but leaving out Marcel’s involvement. I hate that the asshole is getting off easy, but Zeus assured me that he wouldn’t. He also can’t publically put the blame on Marcel for keeping Zeus from us, not without a mess of a fight on his hands. And, with the fact that he’s contracted to Marcel for the Dimitrov fight, it makes everything so much more difficult. So, the statement went out, saying that mitigating factors had played a part in Zeus not knowing about his daughter up until recently but that I was in no way to blame. And that I’m not a stripper. But the press wasn’t interested. A few small media sports outlets posted his statement, but it’s not juicy in terms of what the media wanted, so it didn’t make the big headlines, and it just fell into the rest of the slush pile.

Me being a stripper and terrible mother are way juicier.

Zeus thinks it’s all his fault. He thinks, by not protecting me from this or being able to fix it, it somehow makes him a failure.

I’ve told him that he can’t protect me from everything.

People might think he’s a god. But he’s not. He’s human. He bleeds like the rest of us.

He isn’t used to losing a fight though. So, this has been hard on him. And me, too.

I started to wonder if this was some kind of omen. We’d just gotten back together, and then this happened.