They had gotten to the Vilpa House early in the morning, and started to tidy it up. It hadn’t been used in some time, so a light dusting was in order. Rather than use the house help, Simone and Lewis took it upon themselves to do the work instead, thinking it might help with Lewis’ nerves. It was impossible to tell from the outside, but Simone knew that he was panicking about the eventual meeting with Roma they had later that day.

What do I even say or do? he asked. The assassin sighed as they finished up the main rooms, and sat down at the couch. It was close to the meeting time, but they still had a few other things to take care of. Lewis still hadn’t decided if he was comfortable with any of the kids being there, but at worse they needed to have Lila and Janus, as the two were rather needy lately and practically always starving.

“Besides…Lucas and Rex can hold their own in a fight if it comes to that,” Lewis said aloud. It wasn’t that he expected a fight, but that was something to consider if the worst came to pass. “Maybe having them all here is a good thing? But no, that’s putting them in harm's way….not a good plan.” He took a deep breath.

“Simone…what do you think?”

Simone was helping her husband tidy up the house. She had been dusting and clearing cobwebs from the ceilings. After all, it was easy when you could fly. “Honey,” she said it sweetly as he fussed on the couch. She fell down by him. “Sweetie. Love of my life.” Lewis gave her that look when he knew she was buttering him up.

“You are worrying far too much about this. We'll be fine. I can protect the kids. Ezili can protect the kids. Hell Fiori would just stab their eyeballs out, which is really worrying by the way.” She put her finger up under his chin. “You are too filled with being nervous. I can fix that…”

She pushed him over and took her sweet time de-stressing him. Straddling his naked body on the couch she looked down at him. “Do you feel better now? Or do you need more?”

Lewis was grateful that Simone was helping him destress, and it definitely helped clear his mind. He sighed, though, at her question if he wanted more. The answer was always yes. He could never get enough of her, but the reality was that they were running out of time till the meeting. “Sadly, we need the remaining time to get ready…” He sighed, looking up at her. Instinctively he reached up for her, but frowned and let his hands drop.

“I’ll be glad when the twins are done…”

It took them little time to pop back over to the island and get ready. Lewis chose a more casual garb, a shirt and light color vest, with darker pants. His hair was a mess, but Simone made a quick adjustment to at least make it presentable. The kids were, well…as is. There wasn’t really a good way to get them ready, and Rex seemed to be missing.

As they filed into the Vilpa House, minus a Rex, there was a knock at the door. Lewis gave Simone a dead stare, but there was definitely worry that she could feel oozing off of him. Still, he answered the door, and invited Roma in. With him was a rather tall orc. He had a pleasant enough smile, but didn’t seem entirely too sure of the place.

“Hired muscle,” Roma stated as he took off his jacket. “Can’t be too careful these days. Henry, could you hang this?” The orc nodded and took the older man’s coat. Lewis led him to the sitting room, and sat across from where Roma would be seated.

“So..” Lewis said.

Simone smiled down at him and rubbed his face lovingly. “I’m sure. I miss you playing with me too,” she chuckled a bit as she bent down and kissed him. “Soon though but not too soon… I don’t know if I’m ready for that.” There was that mother’s worry.

Getting ready was relatively easy as she pinned her long dark locks up with green gem pins. Her dress was pleasant having long skirts of dark green with a sweetheart bodice of a pale pink. It was off shoulder with short lacy sleeves. Her precious lock was around her neck and visible.

Simone kissed his cheek after he opened the door to help his worry, “Welcome to our home.” She bowed a bit but left them early. The sounds of young children playing came from upstairs, “Hey, come down here.” Simone went to the stairs. “Everett, Alshaya, Fiori… Come on. We have someone we want you to meet. Lucas, Ezili, Mira… You guys too.”

There was a bit of fussing from a cradle not to far from the table, “Now, don’t you two start… You were just fed… Or…” She lifted Lila and Janus up. “Do you want Daddy?” Once they were handed up to Lewis they quieted down. “There’s a first for everything.” She was mildly impressed. “These two are Janus and Lila. The three terrors approaching…”

There were joyous screams as Fiori ran in with Everett and Alshaya chasing her as they played. “The white-haired girl is Fiori, the boy is Everett, and this cutie,” she snatched Alshaya who was a ball of laughter as her mother kissed her. “Is Alshaya. Can you three go wash your hands for dinner?”

“Okay!” They each ran off to find the washroom. “Fiori, make sure they wash well.” She introduced the older kids who sat down at the table. “Unfortunately… We’re missing one. Rex was nowhere to be found.”

“He said… and I quote: I’m off for a grand adventure,” Ezili clasped her hands as Lucas sat down next to her on a couch. Mira was in a chair looking at her diamond ball curious about the family get together with the stranger.

“Uh-huh,” Simone looked unimpressed. “I’ll leave you for introductions if that is alright,” Simone gave Roma a smile as she sat down next to Lewis on a couch.

“Dinner when,” Alshaya ran in.

“An hour or so. I just wanted you to wash up.”

“She says she tricked up,” Alshaya yelled to the others who were booing.

“I didn’t trick you~” Simone laughed a bit as Shaya ran in and Everett came barreling in tackling his sister. “Careful… We don’t want to call your Uncle Xeik for scratches.” Shaya made a face and it was clear the little girl was still upset at him. “Shayaaaa.”

“No, he’s a cheater. He broke my heart.” She crossed her arms and threw herself on the floor.

“Okay, fine but can you pout while playing with your brother?” At those words, Alshaya and Everett went to raise all holy hell upstairs again.

Roma was surprised at the influx of children, and even more surprised at all of the interactions between the family. There was a longing smile across his face. He had wished for the chance to have his family like this, all loving and carefree, but instead his children had become monsters our for his own life.

Lewis held the twins, quieting them with his own genuine smile. “There, there…calm down. There’s a lot going on, I know…” He kissed Lila’s forehead, and nuzzled Janus. He looked at Roma afterwards, and his smile faded back to his normal dead stare. “So…”

“My name is Lucas,” the leviathan said with a smile. “This is my girlfriend, and…well, their adopted daughter, Ezili.” He shrugged. “It’s complicated. Sort of…” He blushed. “But yeah…” He smiled. “So you’re Lewis’ dad, huh? I can see a bit of the resemblance. You have a similar look about you….though, Lewis tends not to smile like that often. It’s usually only around the younger kids, though he does a little around me and Ezili…”

“When I’m not making sure you two are behaving,” Lewis replied.

“We’re behaving!” Lucas said as he sat up straight. “N-nothing crazy is happening.”

“Better not be,” the assassin replied.

Roma chuckled at the interaction. “My, you all seem lively.”

“We can be…” Lewis said. He took a breath as things started to calm down, if a little. “What was….Leto like? My mother?”

At that, Roma’s face darkened a little. He looked down, saddened. “Your mother…” He took a deep breath, and looked back up with a forced smile. “Leto looked a lot like you. Of course, she had much longer hair. Her eyes were the same color though, but they glowed with vitality whenever she came by. Her laugh was contagious, but I rarely got to hear it. For the most part, she was quiet and kept to herself.”

“How did you meet?”

“Well…you see, I had lost a book. It was…ah, what was it…a collection of poems, was it? Well, as it turned out, Leto had it. She was reading it out loud, practicing in order to become a writer. I stumbled upon her reading, and fell in love with her voice.” Roma smiled. “A poem by Janus Webb, I believe…something about a woman. I can’t even recall what it was about now.”

Simone smiled a bit at the compliments, “Oh believe me… They are a handful. Five children under ten are no joke. I’m surprised I haven’t gotten wrinkles.”

Shaya came barreling in from the other room, “NO WRINKLES!” She jumped up into Simone’s lap and pulled on her face. “You gotta look young FOREVER!” Simone kissed her head.

“Don’t you worry about that. Your daddy has that all covered.”

“HE BETTER.” Alshaya got kissed on the head before she bolted again.

“Crazy kids…”

Simone could do nothing but laugh towards Ezili and Lucas. “We adopted Lucas and then Lucas found Ezili in the river. They have been attached ever since they found each other. We adopted them both but I feel like they belonged together before then.” She smirked a bit.

Simone practically glowed when she heard, “Lewis If that doesn’t sound familiar.” She leaned over and kissed Lila’s head. “It’s Lila by Janus Webb. The twins are named after it. I’m a writer as well, I took it up as a hobby so I could help once Lewis told me I couldn’t go on jobs anymore… Well I can go on some but I got caught up in a lot of bad things.”

“She gets kidnapped a lot,” Ezili spoke up.

“I used. USED. To get kidnapped a lot. We’ve had a quiet five years. Thank you Ezili.”

“No problem Mama!” The water naiad looked proud of herself.

“It’s funny… My voice comforts Lewis and he likes to hear me read poetry. All of our kids aside from Rex and Lucas are named after poetry of some sort. I guess you’ve inherited a lot without realizing it,” Simone smiled towards Lewis. It really did seem like Simone was made for Lewis at this point. “Sort of funny,” she snaked her hand up to Lewis and held his while he held the twins, “being made for each other so far apart.” They were practicing saying things out loud these days.

The love was contagious as Ezili held Lucas’s hand.

Once Simone realized she was staring at Lewis she blushed a bit. “Lewis and I have been married for… Seven or eight years now?” She looked at Lewis for confirmation but the past few years had been a hurricane for them with so many kids.

“I’m not sure how long it’s been,” Lewis replied. The truth was, he didn’t really care. The time he spent with Simone was too precious to count, and it didn’t matter to him how long they had been together, so long as they were together till the end. It was a strange sentiment, but one that he stood by with his heart.

Roma listened to Simone, and was surprised at how alike father and son truly were. “It seems to me that…I owe you a great deal for taking care of my son, Simone. I’m happy that he has found someone near and dear to his heart.” When he smiled, it was a real one this time, almost like Lewis, and it showed. “And…now we should probably talk about some difficult matters.”

Lewis nodded. “All right kids…you can go back upstairs to play. Just try not to make too much of a mess before dinner, all right?” Alshaya and Everett nodded, and practically dragged Fiori and Mira upstairs to join them. Lucas and Ezili looked to each other, and with a nod, turned their attention to Lewis.

“If it’s okay with you, we’d like to stay and help if we can,” Lucas said with a determined look.

Lewis thought for a moment, and finally nodded. “Okay…you’re old enough to make your own decisions on that…” He looked to his father. “So what have you found out?”

Roma snapped his fingers, and Henry produced documents, which were passed to Lewis. As the assassin scanned them, Roma started to speak. “I’m still not sure how they discovered you initially, but…there are financial records from my brother here. Coin was withdrawn from the Hoja bank here, and there’s nowhere it could have gone but to an assassin’s pocket. I’m positive that he had Leto killed. The question is-”

“How did I survive,” Lewis responded. “There’s a great deal of assassin’s who won’t go through with killing kids. It’s possible he was blindsided with it.” He sighed. “It’s all still speculation, but…why were my mother and I targeted?”

“Well,” Roma said, looking a little ashamed. “You were an illegitimate child. So…we had you and Leto removed from the premise. Now…I was going to take care of you, but-”

“But you were too late. Before you could provide any help, your brother moved in. So basically, I was a threat to the whole family.”

“My children…they’ve become monsters in their own right. They don’t deserve a penny of my fortune,” Roma stated with a glare. “I wrote them out of the will.”

“And…because of the loophole in the will…everything comes to me,” Lewis finished. “I don’t want it.”

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” Roma replied.

“No, if anything he’s taken care of me. Our story is long and full of tragedy if you can believe it. We’ve gotten here though and that’s all that matters. I guess we’ve taken care of each other.” She leaned into Lewis for support and she watched as things got more serious.

She kissed each of the kids as they ran up the stairs. Simone leaned back and she thought about it all. “He’s right Lewis. Even if you don’t want it… Janus and Lila exist. He has to have the loophole in there for legal reasons. We dealt with this a lot back when Auclair was still a kingdom. I was there when my father drafted his own will. Something about ‘It’s what a king has to do’. I was listed at the very top but he had actually thrown out my uncle and cousin from it. Bad blood as we found out. Being a noble means that you have enemies even in your family and they won’t stop at anything for it. So it’s best to be prepared.” Her eyes went to Henry and she sighed a bit. “It’s why I got a personal guard but we all saw how that one turned out.” She tapped her foot as she thought about it.

“Lewis, it’s quite possible that they found out about you from rumors alone. You are quite famous in Vilpamolan now… It’s the entire reason why we bought the house here. It’s also possible on top of that the assassin who was originally hired talked at some point. God knows the assassins who came after me talked all the time…” Normally when they were strapped to a chair getting their fingernails ripped out.

Simone tapped her foot a few more times as she thought about it, “You know this is going to end badly for us Roma.” She was frank with him even using his name. “It’s nothing we haven’t dealt with but we’re going to have to be extremely careful. In the illusion, Lewis was told to bring the paperwork to his brothers. Do your sons have anything to do with my husband’s kidnapping?”

There was a protective spark in her as she looked down at the twins, “If they come after us again I won’t hesitate to use all the force I have… I’ve lost plenty of children in my very, very long lifetime. I refuse to lose these nine precious ones I have now.”

She calmed her emotions down as she took a breath and closed her eyes. The flames in the room were breathing as she tried to settle herself. “I’m sorry, I get worked up when I think my kids are in danger. We do everything we can to protect them. We weren’t sure if introducing all of them to you was a safe idea but in the end, it wouldn’t matter, I suppose.” Her eyes looked over at Lucas. “You have been reading a lot into things like this recently… What do you think we should do Lucas?”

Ezili made a face, “Can’t we… just give them good offerings? Isn’t that a thing?”

Simone smirked a bit, “You are far too innocent but no. Good offerings and tidings don’t work in situations like this.” She pet Janus’s black hair and sighed a bit. “At the end of the day… We know very little about all these enemies.” She looked at Lewis. “It’s not anything we haven’t dealt with. We fought a fucking dragon for god's sake. We’ll handle it and if it gets bad… Llywellyn can take the kids for a safe haven just to make sure.” She wanted to be supportive of Lewis. “If. IF.” She reassured her husband.

She pushed herself up and took Lila from Lewis. There was a gentle look in her eyes, “Honestly, there’s no point in fighting this. Even if we decline it’s already written to go to Janus and Lila. We need to handle it our own way when the time comes.” She brought Lila over to Roma and offered her. “They are gluttons… Xeik says once they start to walk they should lose some of their baby rolls but they are quite chubby.”

She took a breath, “To be honest with you, the twins are a miracle. I’m barren, my womb doesn’t exist. They were born out of our magic, what keeps Lewis and me alive. Angela says that our love cultivated them. I’m telling you this because I want to offer an olive branch and a little bit of trust. These twins are the only children Lewis and I will ever produce. They are the only piece of us. So they need all the love in the world."

Roma was silent when Simone asked if his children were a part of the group that took Lewis. He listened to her very credible threat, and took a deep breath, closing his eyes. It didn’t need to be said aloud; the look on his face confirmed that it was indeed a very real possibility that his children were the cause of this whole mess.

“You do not need to apologize, Simone,” he said finally. “Unlike my family, it seems that you have a kind and caring one. I cannot blame you or Lewis for wanting to protect them.” He opened his eyes and smiled. With Ezili giving her idea, the older gentleman couldn’t help but smile at her innocent sounding plan. The fact that she could be so willfully innocent was a massive tell on the way that she had been raised, and how safe and sheltered she must be.

Lucas sighed and shook his head in agreement with Simone at her idea. Offerings and good tidings were indeed not enough to quell the issue at hand, but he squeezed her hand in approval that she was at least attempting to find a solution to the whole thing. Simone gave her own backup plan, to which Lewis made some kind of reaction to, but Roma couldn’t quite understand what or why it happened.

Lewis sneered, but nodded. “At least Lywellyn has an army ready. Not the worst plan. But let’s not jump the gun yet.” He sighed, and laid back in the couch as Simone took Lila over to Roma. He was almost screaming inside of Simone’s head in absolute panic over what might happen, but he appeared calm on the outside.

Janus watched as his sister was given to Roma. He gave him a deadly stare, as if to say, “Who is this man who has my sister?” Roma held the baby girl, looking into her azure eyes. “She’s so precious,” he said wistfully. “I wish I could have held Lewis like this…”

The assassin looked to the side, “Shut up with that kind of talk.” Janus made a babbling sound, and followed Lewis’ look. The two looked so similar. Lucas couldn’t help himself and smiled at the two.

“It’s because Lewis and I have theoretically lost everything and we didn’t want our kids to. The world is unyielding and cruel but our children don’t need to be part of it to know about it.” They were being raised with the knowledge but not having to live it.

Ezili looked happy that Lucas was proud of her and squeezed his hand. She didn’t know much about the world but what Simone had told her and what she had lived. She still remembered how scary it was when she woke up in the river.

Simone sighed a bit and kissed her husband’s cheek, “I like to plan in advance you know that.” She knew that there were issues with the fact that she trusted Llywellyn. He never violated her, never took advantage of her, and overall he cared about her. If anything he was that annoying older brother that Simone never had.

The wife came back after giving Lila and took Lewis’s hand. “It will be alright can you please stop panicking? When have we ever failed each other?” Her eyes were sincere as she took Janus from his father. “The answer is never. We have always come out on top because we work together. We will continue to work together. Together we can do anything. Whether it comes to assassinations, our family, the orphanage, or even this. I believe in you, the Great Lewis… So just believe in me too.” She wasn’t dumb she knew he did.

She brought Janus over to Roma and put him down next to his sister. Immediately the twins seemed more pleased and were babbling up to Roma. “I bet you two have so many questions,” she chuckled a bit as their eyes snapped to their mother real quick. Simone got down just enough to their level. “This is your grandfather. I know you didn’t have one before but it’s sort of like Lady Angela calling herself your grandma.” She booped their noises and they giggled at her. “I know you both are so smart and understand what I’m saying… Don’t you?” One cue the twins looked up at Roma and lightly hugged themselves to him. “You are such odd little creatures but I’m so glad you are ours.” She pat their heads and returned to Lewis.

She held Lewis’s hand and smiled at him. “I hope you don’t mind. Our servants are working on dinner as we speak at our other house and bringing it. Once it’s safe… Maybe we can show you.” Simone was whispering and sometimes the words didn’t even leave her lips but it was enough for Roma to get the point. “We made sure we protected them. Multiple houses mean that we can rest safely at night.”

Roma was holding the twins to him and finally, he looked up at Simone, “You speak and act like a noble. You aren’t faking it.”

Simone was taken back a bit and rubbed the back of her neck. “That’s because I’m a blue-blood. Many centuries ago I was cursed by a fey lord and given the worst immortality alive. Lewis saved me from it but… before that I was a princess to a small kingdom and I was going to be queen. It was a long time ago though and I doubt I have any hold whatsoever to that title anymore.”