The reunion gave way to celebration. Jennifer had thought of it ahead of time; a cake sat waiting in the kitchen to welcome Daria, and the building's chefs had been working since the jet left Palm Springs, laying out a spread that filled the length of the table.
Even Neil, who turned his nose up at half of what ever got put in front of him, went quiet over his plate. He lasted about three bites before he couldn't hold it in.
"Did you fly in Michelin chefs for this? Because this is so fucking delicio—"
Lucas's elbow caught him in the ribs. Neil's words died in his throat. He winced and looked over.
"There are kids here." Lucas was smiling, and it wasn't a smile.
Neil's mouth snapped shut. He glanced down the table and found both girls watching him eat, intent on his every reaction.
'Please tell me they didn't catch that.'
They had. Daria lifted a small piece of soft beef on her fork, took a slow bite, and let her face go appreciative. "Mm. It was fucking delicious." She looked up at Neil, head tipped just slightly. "That is the word, yes, mister?"
"Fucking...?" Daciana repeated it the way you repeat a word you've never held in your mouth before, tilting her head, eyebrows pulling together in confusion.
Lucas and Jennifer turned on Neil in the same instant, twin glares that could have stripped paint off a wall.
Neil dropped his fork and put both hands up. "Hey— hey, no, you don't say that one. That's a bad word. Bad word, okay? You don't use it."
"Bad?" Daria gave him a wide, innocent look. She'd learned that word the hard way long before tonight, in a place none of them said out loud; she knew exactly what it meant. She was only winding him up.
"Neil." Lucas set his fork down and laid a hand on his shoulder. Neil shuddered under it. "You and I are going to have a long talk."
"I didn't do anything! It slipped— please, forgive me—" Neil got the words out before Lucas had finished the sentence.
Jennifer leaned in to twist the knife, her voice mild. "Maybe it's time we found you a new manager, Lucas."
"I'm considering it," Lucas said.
"Wait— wait, it was an honest mistake!" Genuine panic crept into Neil's voice now; the thought of being replaced put a tremor under it. He pressed a hand flat to his chest. "Think about everything we've been through together!" His eyes had gone glassy.
Down the table, Jack and Simon were both fighting their faces, and Shawn had given up entirely, shoulders shaking around a swallowed laugh. It was a sight worth the price of admission: the high and mighty Neil, played like a fiddle by a twelve-year-old.
Even the girls' caretakers were smiling behind their hands.
Daria, for her part, looked delighted watching Neil apologize for the fifth time.
After a while they let him off the hook. He ate the rest of his meal with noticeably more care, weighing each word before it left his mouth. What he never caught was Lucas, across the table, dropping a slow wink at Daria, and Daria smiling back. Lucas had been in on it from the first word.
They walked Daciana through which words were off-limits as the meal went on; she was genuinely innocent about that kind of language, and somebody had to be the one to explain it.
The rest of it was the kind of thing worth holding onto. The two sisters in particular kept loading bites onto each other's plates, debating in low voices which dish was the best one, and turning brutally honest the second something missed.
It put a smile on everyone in the room.
Off to the side, Sera worked her way through a portion of bone marrow, Jennifer spooning it to her between her own bites.
Neil watched the baby eat with a small crease of confusion. "You're feeding marrow to a kid who's barely past one?"
"It's good for her," Lucas said. "Loaded with the stuff babies need. We ran it past the pediatrician before we ever put it in front of her."
Neil nodded slowly, turning that over, and then said something that made both Lucas and Jennifer stop with their forks halfway up. "Huh. I'll have to remember that. When my girlfriend has ours, I'll try her on marrow too."
The pause stretched a beat.
"Wait," Lucas said. "You've got a baby on the way?"
"Yeah." Neil chuckled and reached for his water. "Didn't think it was a big enough deal to bring up, but— yeah. Looks like I'm going to be a dad."
"Not a big deal?" Lucas reached over and gripped his shoulder, this time without the threat behind it. "You should've told me the day you found out. Congratulations, man."
"Thanks." Neil rubbed at the back of his neck, a little sheepish. "You've had a lot on your plate lately. I didn't want to pile one more thing on top of it."
Jennifer raised an eyebrow over the rim of her glass. "You two aren't married, though. After the divorce from your last—"
"Right, that's why I said girlfriend." Neil shrugged it off, easy. "No wedding yet. We'll see where it goes." Nobody pushed on it any further. Whether they ever made it official was their business and no one else's.
They drifted into the rest of it from there, trading bits of their lives across the table, none of it going anywhere too private.
The night wound down well. When it was time, Lucas and Jennifer said their goodnights to Daciana and Daria and left them alone in the room the foundation had set aside for them, giving the two sisters the one thing they'd been owed for over a year: time with each other and no one else.
Alone with Lucas at last, Jennifer let the happiness sit openly on her face. "I feel full. Like a boulder I didn't even know I was still carrying just rolled off my chest." She tucked herself against his side. "They're both safe. Both of them, under one roof. I keep thinking about how it could have gone— if Geoffrey or one of his people had gotten to her first."
Lucas nodded, his arm coming around her. "We've got less to worry about now. But it isn't finished. Not until he's behind bars. Every day that man spends walking around free is another day somebody else is in danger because of his shit."
"I know." Jennifer was quiet for a beat. "It's strange— I keep feeling like it's nearly over, and then I remember it's barely even started. The lawyers don't think the trial opens until next year." She turned her glass slowly in her hand. "I don't want him talking his way out of this one. No deal, no check, none of it. I want him locked up. Both of them. I know it'll crawl; they'll get a year, maybe two, out in the open before anything lands on them. But the whole world's looking at them now. They can't twitch without somebody catching it. That keeps them off everyone else for a while, at least. Right now I'll take it."
"Yeah." Lucas pulled her in against him. "It's enough. It's just not over, and I'm not about to act like it is." He let that sit a second. "So the security doesn't change. Yours, the girls', any of it. He's got too much money and too much to lose to just sit there and take this quietly. We stay careful until he's locked up. Then we stop watching the door."
---
The next morning, Lucas, Jennifer, and the team had a quick breakfast with the sisters before the caretakers came to fold Daria in with the other kids at the Foundation, the way they'd already settled Daciana.
An idea had been sitting with Lucas since the night before, and over coffee it took shape: he'd fund a trip for the Foundation kids. Not a walk around the block, but somewhere worth the airfare.
Disneyland, out in LA. He could already picture twelve-year-old Daria and the rest of them out there with nothing to do but act their age for a few days. Daciana most of all, because the girl had never once had a stretch of life that was just plain good.
A loop around New York didn't come close. The longer he chewed on it, the duller the city looked to him, block after block of glass and business and people with somewhere to be, none of it the kind of thing that made a kid's eyes go wide.
Even Times Square had turned into a billboard with a sidewalk under it. A kid wouldn't carry a single memory out of it.
There was a second reason, too. Daciana's birthday was coming up, and he wanted to put her somewhere that earned the day.
The problem was the paperwork, or the lack of it. Daciana had almost nothing to her name; officially she barely existed, and that kept her stuck.
There was no clean way to take her across state lines, never mind the whole country. So Lucas had been sitting on the adoption process for months, waiting on it, because the moment it cleared, that wall came down with it.
As it turned out, luck was on their side. Later that afternoon his attorney called.
It was good news, and then it was better news. The final clearance had come through; the hearing was already on the calendar. In two weeks, in front of a judge, Daciana could become a Knight.
Lucas and Jennifer told her together. The girl who'd turn seven before long lit up the second she understood, then, almost in the same breath, her face crumpled with worry; what she wanted to know first was whether this meant being pulled away from her sister.
Lucas crouched to her level and made it plain. No one was separating them. Not now, not over this.
That was what pushed him to sit down with Daria alone.
She was twelve, and she carried herself older than that, far steadier than her little sister.
Daria spoke before he could. "Mr. Lucas, I never had the chance to say this." Her English came out careful, each word set in place. "I am thankful. For everything you have done, for me and for Daciana. And I know you want to make her part of your family. I am her sister, so I am the one who should say it. This is good for her. I am okay with it."
There was something hard set into her face when she said it, almost like the words cost her, but she'd arrived at the decision on her own. Old enough to know what was best for the only family she had left in the world, and steady enough to give it away if it meant keeping her sister safe.
Lucas studied her. "You're so young to think the way you do. Daciana's lucky to have you for a sister."
"I am the lucky one." A smile came up, the best she could manage in the moment. "Our parents were not responsible people. But we always had each other. Daciana becoming your family does not change that. It is still true."
"It is." Lucas nodded, let a beat pass, then leaned in like he was sharing a plan rather than offering one. "So how about we run your paperwork too? Make you a Knight while we're at it."
Daria's mouth was already open to keep talking. When the rest of the sentence caught up to her, the words fell out of it. Her eyes went wide. "Th-this..."
"You don't want to?"
"I am willing!" Not a second of hesitation. To stay with her sister she would have agreed to anything, and this was so much more than anything; she wasn't about to let it slip through her fingers.
"Good." Lucas smiled. "Yours will run a little behind hers, that's all. But Daciana's going to be over the moon when she hears it, and it means the two of you stay together. No separating. I promised her that, and I'm promising you."
"Thank you. Truly." She meant every word of it.
Lucas reached over and ruffled her hair. "Don't worry about any of it." Then, lighter: "Just do one thing for me down the line. You and your sister look after Seraphina, all right?"
Daria knew the baby already. The smile that came this time was the real one. "I'll play with her so much!"
"That's exactly what I want to hear." Lucas chuckled.
---
Two weeks went by in a blur, and then it was the twenty-fifth of September.
The hearing took place in New York County Court, the matter on the docket simple enough on its face: Daciana, to become a Knight. Lucas was there, Jennifer beside him, the security detail spread out and quiet. William Cavendish had come as well; as it happened, he and the presiding judge went back a long way.
It moved smoothly from start to finish. By the time it was done, Daciana was a Knight in the eyes of the law. There were no dry eyes worth mentioning, and more than a few wet ones.
The trouble was waiting on the steps.
Word had gotten out somehow. Adoption files were supposed to stay sealed, but a Lucas Knight sighting drew flashbulbs the way blood drew sharks, and the press had been loitering near anything court-shaped since the Geoffrey business began.
A freelance photographer working the block had clocked the family going in that morning; from there it was a phone call to an editor, an editor to a tip line, and a tip line to a courthouse clerk willing to murmur the word "adoption" off the record for the price of a coffee.
By noon there were a dozen of them packed at the foot of the stairs.
The family came out into a wall of shutters. Daciana was tucked between Jennifer and Jack, a soft cap pulled low and a small mask over her face, so that not one frame anybody fired would ever show whose child she was.
The questions came in a barrage, climbing over each other.
"Lucas! Is it true you just adopted? Who's the kid?"
"Mr. Knight, is this connected to the Foundation? Is she one of the rescued—"
"Lucas, give us a name! Boy or girl?"
He didn't bite at any of it. One arm stayed at Daciana's back, steering her down the last steps and straight to the curb where Shawn had the car already idling, door open.
Jack and Simon walled off the cameras with their shoulders. The family folded into the back seat one after another, the door swung shut, and the lenses kept hammering against the glass.
Then the rear window came down a few inches. Lucas leaned toward the gap, and the shouting dropped half a notch on instinct.
"Sorry, folks. Not today." He said it plainly, no heat in it, the way you'd beg off a neighbor. "Give the kids some room, yeah? Appreciate you." The window rolled back up before anyone could land a follow-up, and the car pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic, leaving the pack on the steps to chase it with their telephotos until it turned the corner.
---
By evening it had a headline of its own.
LUCAS KNIGHT ADOPTS? Hollywood's Biggest Star Spotted Leaving NY Court With Mystery Child
KNIGHT FAMILY GROWS: Sources Say Adoption Finalized as Lucas Shields Young Girl From Cameras
A New Knight in the Family? Lucas and Jennifer Seen at County Court — Foundation Connection Suspected
The comment sections did what comment sections do.
"Did anyone else clock how he covered that kid's face the whole way to the car? Whatever else you think of the guy, that's a dad move. Respect."
"So the man's in the middle of taking down a trafficking ring AND adopting a kid from his own rescue foundation?? this can't be real life lol"
"Imagine your new dad being Lucas Knight. that child won for life"
"calling it now, this is a PR play timed to the Geoffrey case. nobody adopts on a random Thursday and "accidentally" gets photographed leaving court"
"^ or, hear me out, the adoption was sealed and HE'S the one who didn't want cameras, which is why the kid's in a mask. read the room"
"the way he rolled the window down just to apologize to the paps instead of flipping them off. who is this man"
"good on them for hiding her face. that little girl's been through enough without ending up a tabloid thumbnail"
"Jennifer Knight is going to be such a good mom you can just tell"
"not the press trying to get a SEVEN year old's name out of a man for a headline. predators, all of you"
"people forget Angelina basically built her whole family this way, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Vietnam. nobody blinks at it now. give it ten years and this'll be the same"
"Madonna caught hell for adopting from Malawi back in the day and those kids turned out fine. the noise always dies down, the family stays"
"^ because it's LUCAS. the man can't buy a coffee without it being a news cycle. of course his adoption is a headline"
"the difference is most of those stars adopted privately and announced on their own terms. this one got ripped open by paps on the courthouse steps. feel bad for the little girl honestly"
The takes came in by the thousands and split every direction at once.
Some held him up next to the long line of Hollywood names who'd built families the same way and called it overdue; others read a calculation into the timing, a man swatting at a trafficking case with a child in his arms for cover.
Editorials weighed the optics. Talking heads debated whether a star of his size could ever adopt quietly enough for it to count as private. The masked girl on the courthouse steps became, for a day, a screen everyone projected their own opinion of Lucas Knight onto.
But none of it reached the room where it mattered. Two floors down, away from all the noise, Daciana sat picking at her dinner while Daria leaned over to swap a piece of her own onto the plate, the two of them going back and forth in low voices about which dish was better, same as the night before.
One of them was a Knight now. There was a name on a sealed file that no comment section was ever going to get its hands on.
People could say what they wanted. The girl had a family, and that was the part that was already settled.