Chương 2
Stallone stood still.
His own breathing had changed.
The anger was there.
But so was regret.
He looked at his hand for a moment.
Then back at her.
“I should have walked away.”
The stepmother touched her cheek.
“You hit me.”
The words came out quietly.
Almost like she needed to hear herself say them.
“Yes,” he answered.
He did not excuse it.
He did not pretend it was nothing.
“But you will never throw my daughter out of this house again.”
Grace watched them both.
She did not understand every word.
She understood enough.
Stallone turned away from the argument.
He knelt in front of her.
The man who had looked so powerful a moment earlier suddenly seemed much smaller.
Because he was no longer facing an enemy.
He was facing a little girl who had been standing alone.
“Come here.”
Grace stepped forward.
He picked up her shoes.
“Let’s clean these.”
She watched him wipe away the mud with a towel from the kitchen.
“You’re not mad at me?” she asked.
His face softened.
“No.”
“I yelled.”
“I heard you.”
“I was scared.”
That was the sentence that stayed with him.
Not the accusation.
Not the argument.
That one sentence.
“I know,” he said.
Grace reached for him.
He lifted her into his arms.
Outside, the rain began again, tapping against the windows.
The two bodyguards waited by the door.
They had seen powerful people lose control before.
They had seen arguments, threats, and public disasters.
But this was different.
This was a man realizing he had arrived too late.
Stallone carried Grace toward the driveway.
Behind them, the stepmother remained in the hallway, silent.
The house that had looked perfect from the outside suddenly felt like a place where everyone had been pretending.
Before leaving, Stallone stopped.
He looked back.
“You and I are going to have a very serious conversation.”
The stepmother said nothing.
For once, she had no defense ready.
Grace rested her head against his shoulder.
Her small arms held onto his suit jacket.
The black SUV waited outside.
The muddy shoes were clean again.
But nobody in the house believed the problem was fixed.
The house that had looked perfect from the outside suddenly felt like a place where everyone had been pretending.
Stallone did not drive away immediately.
He sat in the back seat with Grace resting against him while the rain blurred the windows and the neighborhood slowly returned to its normal morning rhythm.
A man across the street carried a trash bin toward the curb and glanced over before quickly looking away.
A delivery driver stopped at the next house, checked his phone, and continued walking.
The world had not changed because one little girl had cried in a doorway.
That was the part that bothered Stallone most.
Life kept moving even when someone inside a house was falling apart.
Grace held one of her clean shoes in her lap.
She kept touching the laces.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Are we leaving forever?”
The question caught him before he could prepare an answer.
He looked down at her.
Her hair was messy from tears, and there was still a small spot of mud on the edge of her sock.
“No,” he said carefully.
“Then where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe for a little while.”
Grace considered that.
Children had a way of accepting complicated things without needing every detail.
“Like a hotel?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t like hotel pillows.”
A small smile appeared on his face.
“You don’t?”
“They’re too big.”
He almost laughed.
Almost.
Instead, he looked out the window.
The tiny complaint about pillows felt strangely normal, and he needed something normal.
For the last several minutes, everything had been too heavy.
One of the bodyguards in the front seat glanced back.
“You want us to head to the house?”
Stallone hesitated.
His own house was quiet.
Too quiet sometimes.
Grace knew it, but she also knew the people there.
The staff.
The rooms.
The routines.
A place where nobody would ask questions.
“Not yet,” he said.
The bodyguard nodded.
He did not ask why.
That was one reason Stallone trusted him.
People around powerful men often became too comfortable giving opinions.
The ones worth keeping knew when silence mattered.
The SUV moved through the city streets while Grace slowly became heavier against his chest.
Eventually, she fell asleep.
Stallone stayed completely still.
Years earlier, he had learned that children did not understand careful movements the way adults did.
To them, a sleeping person was not just resting.
They were trusting you not to move.
When they arrived at a private guest house, he carried her inside himself.
The woman who managed the property opened the door and froze for a moment.
She had seen him many times.
She had never seen him carrying a sleeping child with such careful attention.
“Is everything okay?” she whispered.
“Not really.”
That answer surprised her because he usually gave people something smoother.
Something easier.
Today he was too tired to make things easier.
The guest room was prepared quickly.
Grace woke halfway through being placed on the bed.
“Daddy?”
“I’m here.”
“Did I do something bad?”
He stopped.
The question hurt more than the crying had.
“No.”
“But she was mad.”
“Adults get mad.”
“Because of me?”
“No.”
He sat beside her.
“Listen to me.”
Grace watched him.
“You are allowed to be little.”
Her eyes moved across his face.
“You’re allowed to make mistakes.”
He paused.
“And you’re allowed to tell me when something hurts.”
She nodded slowly.
“Okay.”
It was not a complete understanding.
It was just a three-year-old trying to carry a sentence that was bigger than she was.
That afternoon, while Grace watched cartoons in the next room, Stallone sat at a desk with his phone in his hand.
He had received twelve messages.
Most were from people asking if everything was alright.
The neighbor had apparently seen the SUV.
May you like
Someone from the house staff had mentioned an argument.
A simple family problem had already started becoming a public one.
