Written by: BindingTies

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA

August 10, AROUND 9:30 AM

Three days ago, my ex—no longer the lanky-legged blonde I hooked up with for a few months thirteen years ago, but a brunette in a baseball cap, yammering on about government conspiracies—dropped off our daughter at the boss's door. Smudged overalls, hair in a curly, wild mess, Azalea leaned forward until she was on her toes. Luckily, I was there to let her in. My daughter, not the crazed cultist who birthed her. After saying she was my problem now, my ex took off, jumping into a military-grade jeep with a group of men carrying enough firepower to make Republican Jesus weep.

Jerome took one look at her and muttered, "You've got three hours to get rid of her. The boss needs us to make a pick-up."

Azalea, in the narrow hallway of the Chicago townhouse, heard him and dropped her backpack and long duffle bag on the shining parquet. She had my mother's eyes, a strange mix of brown and light green in the middle. She locked those eyes, just a touch too wide, on mine. "We've got two and a half weeks until the end of the world. Do you think you can handle me?"

She could have been one of the crusty, sixty-year-old docks workers, asking a fresh-faced summer hand if he could handle a little bit of real work for a few days. It would be a challenge. I didn't have any room to screw it up, and I had twelve years on me of pretending she didn't exist except for late birthday cards, a few phone calls, and showing up at one dance recital. One. When she was eight. But the way she ignored Jerome, a greasy-haired, murdering prick who chews his own fingernails? She was my girl through and through.

"I can handle you," I had said at the time. It took me two hours to get rid of Jerome permanently and pin it on a rival family, easy peasy. The boss lost his mind and trashed his office. Not that there was much left to trash since that floating monstrosity appeared in the sky and the Twilight Zone took over the city. You'd think the aliens had popped over just to mess up all of Lorenzo "the Angel's" plans, like they had some personal vendetta against him. I wish. He shoved a pistol in his belt and rushed off with the other boys into the city—also trashed—telling me to watch the place.

That was three days ago. We've had the house to ourselves since then. Easy peasy.

Me and Azalea have been living off cold, canned raviolis, green beans, and tuna since then, except for the Captain Crunch I found on the floor of the nearby bodega, under a tipped shelf. I don't care for Captain Crunch. Raviolis, however, are a perfectly rounded meal. Plus some vegetables and extra protein? I'm finally a father.

Except we have a problem.

"I'm not waiting any longer," she says. It's morning, but from the haze outside, it could be a winter's late afternoon. I rub my hand over my bald scalp, trying to wake up. A tomato-sauce-encrusted bowl falls off my lap, and the sofa I fell asleep on has put a crick in my neck fit to make my nonna summon a priest for an exorcism.

"We're not talking about this again. The house is safe—it's the boss's safe house," I grumble. She must get this from her mother. "Going outside is bad. No, it's worse. It's too dangerous for little girls, so we are going to stay here until the world ends. Finito."

"I'm doing it, Marco," she says, teeth clenched. "I'll do it without you. I'm not afraid." Her trembling lower lip tells a different story.

"No."

"Yes."

"I said no. So it's no."

"No, it's not. I said yes."

"Go to your room." I point, vaguely.

"I don't have a room and besides, all the rooms in this safe house stink like old men and cigars! I'm going."

I hop up from the sofa, choking back the string of curse words I'm not supposed to say in front of a little girl. Between the actual pain in my neck and the one she's giving me, I groan louder than Enzo when we put his hand in a grinder. But I don't curse. I might be a useless father, but I know a few of the rules: no cussing, and I'm in charge because I'm the father.

"Your mother left you here for me to take care of you. I'm taking care of you, right? You have movies, raviolis, there's toilet paper in the bathrooms, and I taught you how to play poker. Hey—" She marches out of the room and I hurry to catch her arm. "I haven't taught you how to hustle when you play poker, yet. That's a good time."

"Who would I hustle?" she asks, yanking free. "The world is going to end. I have one dream. I told my mom to bring me to you because I knew she wouldn't help me, but you might. You've never been there for me before, and if you won't help me, you're no use to me now."

She stomps off.

Ouch.

How the hell did a twelve-year-old kid know how to be so mean? I massage my neck, trying to work the kinks out, but failing. Nothing cures a cricked neck but that extra-strong sports cream in the boss's bathroom. I shuffle down the hallway but stop at the door... There's a weird scuffling noise coming from his room.

I push open the door and my daughter whirls to face me, tears streaming down her cheeks and eyes puffy red.

All right. So I'm a sucker for tears. There are worse things to be.

"Tell me about your dream, Azalea," I say and sit on a leather armchair, just like when Lorenzo wanted to talk about the day first thing, him still in his silk pyjamas, cigar lit, whiskey poured. All I know is that she has some dream, something she wants to do or have before she dies.

"Why?" She crosses her arms. "You said you wouldn't take me."

"Maybe I changed my mind. Maybe. Tell me your plan. What's the job?"

She squinches up her face, studying me like I'm a twelve-year-old rookie. "You know the museum, the Art Institute?"

"Where they got paintings and statues of naked people and stuff?"

"Yeah. That one. There's something I want there."

***

"No guns," she says.

I roll my eyes.

"Hey," she says. "We don't roll eyes in this family. I said no guns; we're going to the museum, not to hold up a bank."

"I wish we were holding up a bank," I mutter.

"What did you say, Marco Guiseppe De Luca?" she asks.

I show her the gun with it pointed carefully at the floor. "Remember that car full of men and automatic rifles that your mother rode away in? We have to cross half of Chicago overflowing with those friends and neighbors, and a lot of them are business acquaintances, so to say, who didn't exactly follow police orders to evacuate. Or any police orders. If you want me to take you, I take the gun."

"I said no guns." She crosses her arms. It's as if my mother has been reincarnated and has come back to make me pay for all my crimes...

"Fine. No guns." I put it on the table, then hide it in my back holster the second she turns around.

Her dream, apparently, can't wait. We've been prepping since this morning, but it will be a total hack. I'm not proud. While Lorenzo might have run off the second he got his tighty-whities in a tizzy, I prefer to plan every step of the way. This kid, though...

"You say it's a safe house, but the government might nuke that thing in the sky any day now. Is the house safe enough to survive nuclear fallout?"

"Did your mother teach you that kind of language?"

"And have you been to the museum since that thing arrived?" she asks, packing tools in her backpack—hammer, wire-cutters, flash-light, super-glue. Super-glue?

"I didn't go to the museum before that thing arrived," I say.

"Exactly. How long do you think it's going to last? This is my dream. My one dream before I die. If we don't do it tonight—" She shakes her head, lips in a frown, and I swear by all that's holy, I can see my mother's disapproval shining through her.

"Fine. Tonight." It is an easy thing to say at ten a.m. Twelve hours later, with the sky like pitch and the streets about to boil over with lunatics, it is another thing altogether.

I fasten her bullet-proof vest—it bulges at the sides and hangs from her scrawny shoulders—knowing there are a thousand and one ways this thing could go south.

"Tell me the plan," I say, gathering my gear to avoid thinking of her needing that vest.

"We find an unlighted path to the museum. We check the doors and windows before we go in. We go in the safest way, and only if the place isn't overrun, we go straight to the Modern Wing on the second floor. I get what I'm going for, and we get out."

"Good. What do you do if something happens to me?"

"I run until I'm safe. Then I come straight back here, not anywhere else like the Modern Wing of the Art museum, and I have enough raviolis to eat until the world ends. I don't trust anyone. I shoot first and don't bother to ask questions."

"That's my girl."

"But no guns to the museum. I'll only use one if you die," she states.

"I'm blaming your heartlessness about my possible death on your mother," I mutter.

"Well, maybe if you'd come to a few more dance recitals, Marco, we'd get along better."

Worse than a knife to the belly, and I know what I'm talking about too well. "All right. You have everything?"

"Wait!" She disappears to the boss's room and when she returns, a tall, cardboard poster tube sticks out of the top of her backpack. "Ready."

***

I have to admit it, Azalea is a real trooper. I don't know how long her mother was with that group of gun-loving psycho-survivalists, but Azalea has genuine skills. Light on her feet, not a peep of surprise or complaining. Just the occasional, strange crunching noise from her backpack, but it's faint enough to not be a problem. I have no idea what she's got in there, or what painting we're grabbing, and I don't care.

We make it to the museum undetected and in one piece. "So far, so good."

She nods, solemn as a nun on Christmas.

We circle the museum twice, checking all the entrances and windows for break-ins. I can't quite believe it, but it seems intact. In a world that has lost its mind, no one busted any windows here for the fun of it. I tap my crowbar against one palm, going over the possible scenarios for what is going on in there, not liking any that I come up with.

"What are you doing with that?" Azalea asks, trying to take my crowbar.

"I'm going to break open a door with it. How else are we getting in?"

"Well, we could go and just—" She waves like she has an invisible magic wand at the huge building. "I mean, don't you have some rappel wires, and we could climb up to the roof and pick a lock or—"

I stop her there. "I don't know which Mission Impossible you've been watching, but I'm not a spy, I'm a hit—" And I stop myself there. I can't tell my baby girl I'm a hitman. She might suspect, hell she might know, but I won't say it.

I heft the crowbar. "In real life, this is how you break into buildings. You stay behind me. If I say run, you run and don't look back. Don't go anywhere but home, capisce?"

She clamps her lips together, but when I turn to go, she latches onto the strap of my bag. A hack job. I'm risking her life for a tween-age dream by doing a hack job. We make our way to a side entrance. I brace the crowbar in the crack to pry the doors open.

"Wait," she breathes. "What if the alarms are on?"

I exhale, fingers pinching the bridge of my nose. A string of curse words lights up in my head like colored bulbs in a Bier Garten. The alarms. What if one of the other families is squatting the place and has it wired? Lorenzo the Angel never would—too many windows and not enough guns in the basement, but it's possible. I'm ready to give up. She can see it.

"Marco," her little voice says. Crushed isn't the word for what's going on with her face. Heartbroken? And for what?

"Which painting is it?" I ask.

"Which?"

"Which one? Which painting could possibly be so amazingly valuable to a twelve-year-old girl—"

Her hand strays to that tube poking out of her backpack and I realize I'm an ass.

"All right. We're getting in. But carefully." I'd been a hitman for the Angelo family since I was fifteen—I picked up a few tricks besides making grown men cry before the end. Ignoring her protests, I wedge the crowbar between the two doors and bust it wide open.

Right on cue, an alarm blares. Either no one comes and we go in, or someone from inside comes. The police aren't coming. I grab Azalea and get us both behind the shell of a burned-out truck nearby. We wait.

A figure moves in the dark of the museum—I get an outline only from the faint glow of windows behind him. The city is in a partial blackout, saving electricity, but there are some streetlights in the distance. It's a male, nearly six feet, wide shoulders, slight pooch, fitted, button-up shirt, slacks. And a heavy belt, baton in hand.

Security guard? Those guys are still showing up to work? But only one. No communications with anyone else, inside or out. He must know his line of work and have balls of Damascus steel to be on his own. If he's here, running the place, then no one is squatting in the museum. Hopefully. I motion for Azalea to stay where she is.

The alarm stops, and the door starts to close. I jump forward, and in the same movement, shove the door open and point my gun at his head.

"Not a sound. Not one false move. We aren't here to hurt anyone, so you can turn around and go back to your office for the next hour. Got it?"

That's when I see what's pointing at my stomach.

Not a baton—not a fucking baton. A sawed-off shotgun. I'm fucked.

"Marco!" Azalea shouts. And against every rule we talked about, my little girl comes running in, and jumps right between us, in the line of fire. She wavers, suddenly noticing first my pistol and then his shotgun.

"Hey," the guard says, hitching his chin at my daughter, "you all right? Do you need help?"

She ducks behind me. Finally. Better late than never, am I right? His shells would shred me like tissue paper, but I feel better knowing she's back there instead of in front of me.

"I'm fine," she calls. "This is my father, Marco Guiseppe de Luca, and he promised to bring me to the museum before the world ends."

"Father, huh?" I can see his mouth working, like he's looking for the words to say, making a decision. But I already know he'll make the right one.

He lowers the shotgun. He's a good guy—not the kind who would risk shooting little girls.

"Yeah, her father. And we're just here for a little visit, nothing else."

Holstering the shotgun, he starts to walk backwards, slowly, hands in the air like he actually paid attention to his training.

"Excuse me, sir?" Azalea's sweet voice floats through the air. "Before you go, could you please direct me to the Modern Wing on the second floor?"

"You said you knew exactly where it was," I mutter.

"I've never been in this hallway," she says through clenched teeth. "And I told you, no guns."

The security guard, hands still in the air, hesitates, then points over our heads. "Down this hall until you reach the stairs, go up, and follow the signs to your left. The Modern Wing is clearly marked."

"Thank you!"

"No problem, miss," he says. Then adds, "Enjoy your visit."

He disappears in another hallway, and I escort Azalea to the stairs as fast as I can in the near darkness. Now that he knows we're here and where we're going, I might as well use the flashlight. I flick it on and we go up to the second floor. The signs point the way and we rush down wide, clean halls lined with paintings in heavy frames and random, naked-people statues. I have to keep prodding her to make her go faster. Where did she get that from? This stopping to look at art? What kind of twelve-year-old likes old art stuff?

The night crawlers are going to be out and thick if we don't get out of here soon.

We reach the Modern Wing, clearly marked just as Mr. Security Guard said.

Now, she knows exactly where we are. Head down, she marches forward, leading the way through several rooms, and on to the end, to the last room. There are two entrances, no windows, one wooden bench in the middle, and some statues on rectangular stands.

I swing my flashlight, checking for danger. "Clear. Do what you came to do."

She nods silently, neither the crusty dock worker nor the polite museum visitor, but a new creature entirely. Only twelve and so many sides to her. I shake my head in wonder. Who would she be—what could she become if the world doesn't end in twenty days?

Moving faster than Lorenzo's accountant when he found out the feds were coming, she flings her backpack to the floor near the wall, between two large paintings of funny-shaped people, and unloads her tools, lining them up, nice and neat on the floor. She gets that from me.

In one, two, and three, she pulls out a rolled picture from the tube, uses four tiny nails to fix it to the wall, lines the wall around it with super-glue, and then sticks four individual sides of a wooden frame to it so it looks as if it is hanging. Then, she pulls out a rustling plastic bag of yellow and pink cereal from her backpack and clutches it to her chest.

"Done," she whispers. "Easy peasy."

I haul the bench from its spot in the middle of the room closer to the wall, wincing at the screech it makes. Finally, I prop up the flashlight on it so I can come closer and see what she's fixed to the wall.

I can't breathe, not even a little. It's a painting, obviously done by a kid, but also brutally honest and pure. It's divided down the middle by the dark edge of a wall. On one side, a bunch of little girls in frilly skirts are dancing on a bright stage, and on the other side, one little girl in a frilly skirt is crouched in darkness, her hands over her face. Probably crying.

Tears sting in the backs of my eyes and I clench my jaw, refusing to let them flow. I'm stronger than this. I popped off four guys in one night for the boss over some stolen diamonds and got knifed in the belly before crawling home on my own. This picture won't make me cry.

"What's it called?"

"Self-portrait at nine," Azalea says. "This was the moment I realized I didn't want to be a dancer, I wanted to be an artist." I swear that butcher knife is jabbed right through my heart, but she's not done. "And I wanted my art in a museum before I died."

I hold out my arms, and she rushes into them. And dammit, I'm crying.

We sit on the bench, admiring her work, not saying much for a long time. She lifts up the plastic bag that crunches. "Want a bite?"

I reach in and get a handful of Captain Crunch to snack on, like we're at the movies.

"Can we come back tomorrow?" she asks. "Or better yet, just stay here?"

"I don't know, Azalea."

"Azzie," she says. "Everyone calls me Azzie."

"Well, everyone calls me Marco, but if you want, you can call me Dad."

"I don't know if I'm ready for that, Marco. You've still got twenty days to mess this up."

"All right." I toss a cereal square in my mouth. I've got twenty days to show her I'm not going to mess this up. Twenty days to be a real dad.

<<<<< END >>>>>

Find more stories by BindingTies on Wattpad.

 Published romance writer with City Owl Press, Leigh can be found on Wattpad as @LeighWStuart and @BindingTies, where she is in the Paid Program and is a former Star and Ambassador. Favorite tropes include mistaken identities, strong heroines, "oh no there's only one bed", and nerdy, virgin heroes. You can find Leigh currently stuck in a love triangle with reading and munching salty snacks on the sofa.