It's late evening as my footsteps crunch through the snow as I make my way to the back of Charlotte's house and it's hard to miss the loud yelling coming from the kids. I'm met with the sight of Jade, Wren, and Oli playing together in the deep snow while Charlotte and Victoria are keeping the twins entertained near the porch.

"Somehow I knew even though driving here would take shit ton of time, you'd be here," I say aloud startling Camryn from whatever she was doing on her phone.

"Not that I don't mind having time to myself, I just didn't have anything to do at home. Plus I like the snow so you won't see me complaining," she replies before laughing at the face I make when she says that.

"Well I'd take being home instead of being out here any day," I reply as I wave to Jade when she notices me.

"You guys heading home now?" she asks and I shake my head.

"Not yet, I need to talk to you all about something, Julia included," I reply to her. "I told Haruto to let her borrow his phone so we could video chat her."

"So this has to do with Jade then?" she asks and I nod my head.

"What has to do with Jade?" Victoria questions as she walks up to us with Charlotte right behind her, her hands clasped onto each twin.

"I'll explain when we're inside," I tell her. "They had enough fun in the snow?" I ask her as Justin walks up to me and takes my hand. 

"Yes, the rest of them can stay out for a bit longer but these two have had their fun," Charlotte answers as we go inside. Victoria and Camryn leave us to go to the kitchen, Victoria voicing that she'd make us something warm to drink while I help Charlotte get the twins out of their winter gear. "Out of all his aunts your Justin's favourite while Victoria is Jayden's," she tells me and I laugh before smiling down at Justin.

"I'm your favourite aunt right kiddo?" I ask as Justin smiles back at me before holding out his arms for me to pick him up. 

"I'm not around children that much but I'm happy he's not scared of me or anything like that," I tell her as she picks up Jayden and we go to the kitchen.

"Are you planning to have kids of your own someday?" she asks me and I nod my head.

"When I marry Mr. Right someday, then that's when I plan to have children," I reply to her. When I do have kids in the future, I want to be a better mom to my children than my mom was to me. At least I have positive influences around me of Charlotte and Victoria and now even Julia. 

"Does that mean Mr. Right could be Nash? He understands you best right?" she asks me and Camryn perks up when she hears that.

"You're thinking of marrying Nash?" Camryn says in a high-pitched voice and Victoria's head whips around to look at us.

"Well, well, if things keep going well it could happen so not right now at least," I say mumbling the last part but the girls don't miss it as they exclaim in excitement. Marriage? To Nash? We've only recently become official even though we were together but unlabeled for a while. Yeah, I'll file this away to the back of my brain until a later date. "Maybe ask me again in a year or so."

"I'm definitely telling Julia later, got to keep our other girl in the loop," Camryn says with a mischievous smile but I roll my eyes at her good-natured ribbing. "Speaking of which, you want to call Julia now?" 

"Yeah, just give me a second," I tell as I sit down next to her. I pull out my phone, dial Haruto's number and after a couple of seconds, Julia's face fills the screen.

"Natalia," she greets with a small smile.

"Hey girl," Camryn says as she leans in next to me so her face fits the frame. 

"Camryn, hey. Where are you guys right now?" Julia questions and I flip the camera so she can see the other two. 

"We're at Charlotte's house, I left Jade here last night since the weather was pretty bad and I wouldn't have been able to pick her up," I tell her and she nods her head.

"I know, I got a good look at the outside so I know how bad it is," she answers before her expression shifts to a serious one. "What did you need to talk about?" she asks me as the other girls look at me with interest to what I have to say.

"Do you remember how I mentioned to you Jason and Nash were worried I'd be targeted again?" I ask her and she's silent for a moment before nodding her head, remembering the talk we had at the hospital. "Well now I'm formally asking with Julia's permission of course, if something happens to me would you be able to take care of Jade for me?"

"Why would you talk like that?" Camryn questions immediately as the other girls look at me in agreement. 

"It's not that I'm wishing it to happen but there's is a high possibility that it'll happen again," I say to them. Especially with what I found today. "I don't want her getting caught up in something like that again."

"I'll take her in if that happens," Victoria says as she turns to look at Julia and then me.

"Or me or Camryn, we'll be there to help of course," Charlotte answers for her and Camryn nods her head in agreement.

"Have you talked to Nash about this?" Julia asks me and I shake my head.

"Not yet but I plan to when we're home later tonight," I answer and she looks at me contemplatively for a moment while I look at her in confusion. 

"Your voice and body language says that there's nothing to be worried about but I'm getting the feeling something more serious is going on," she comments while Camryn nods her head in agreement. 

"Well you'll just have to trust me when I say that everything will be okay," I say as I calm them down. 

"Fine, we'll trust you but whatever you're investigating you better make sure you come back to us with minimal injuries and I say that only because of what happened last time," Victoria says while I laugh aloud.

"In my defence, she wanted to kill me so a cut to my face is practically nothing in my books," I tell them as they either sigh in exaspiration or laugh along with me. 

"Julia, now that we finished talking about that, let me tell you what our dear Natalia here was just saying about her boyfriend," Camryn says with a teasing grin as she takes my phone to retell our conversation from earlier. 

"Can you bring Justin upstairs for me while I take Jayden?" Charlotte asks me and I'm just noticing now Justin fell asleep while we were talking. How cute.

"I swear it was just yesterday when I first saw them when we were working on Victoria's case, they grew so much since then," I comment as we go upstairs to the twin's rooms. 

"It's not even them, Wren to has grown so much from when I first met him. In the meanwhile I feel like I'm getting older by the day," she says jokingly as she places Jayden in his crib while I do the same for Justin.

"Stop, you're still so young," I say waving my hand in disagreement as I laugh. "By the way is it okay to let them sleep now? There's still time until dinner." 

"If I try to force them to stay awake they'll be cranky and cry, I'd rather avoid that. Besides, I'm just going to let them take a quick nap while I get dinner ready and Jax should be home soon to help so it's all good," she answers as we go back downstairs. 

"I'm going to head home with Jade now, it's back to school tomorrow and I want her sleeping early tonight," I tell her as we walk back into the kitchen and find the other three kids already there, Jade is beside Camryn talking to her mom. "Jade, we're going home now. Go grab your things and later we can call your mom again."

"Alright Natalia," she answers as she gets off the stool and hands me my phone before going upstairs. 

"I'll call you later before she goes to sleep," I say to Julia as she looks at me with understanding.

"That's fine, I have some physical therapy soon so I'll have to hang up anyways plus Haruto's shift we'll be done in a bit so I'll have to hand his phone back to him," she says as Jade's footsteps come back down, her bag hanging over her arm.

"Talk later," I say to her before hanging up. "Ready to go? You didn't forget anything right?" I ask Jade.

"I'm ready and I didn't," she responds as she goes to the back door to put on her boots.

"Thanks again for watching over her for me," I thank Charlotte who just waves it off.

"You don't have to thank me for that, drive safely," she says to me as she walks me to the door. I put back on my own boots and take Jades bag from her as we walk out of the house waving bye to the other girls and the kids. 

"You had a good day?" I ask Jade as we walk back around to the front of the house and her mittened hands latch onto mine as she swings them back and forth. 

"I did, we did a lot of things. We had snowball fights, built snowmen, did snow angels, had hot chocolate," she rambles and I start laughing as she goes on about her activities. 

"I'm glad you had a good day," I tell her as I unlock the car while I go around to put her bag in the trunk. I go back around the driver's side and start up the car while putting the heat up for the two of us since the inside has gotten pretty cold inside. I back out of the driveway and start the slow drive home, even though they moved the snow to the side, there's still a lot on the ground. 

The sound of the radio fills the car along with Jade's voice as she sings a trendy pop song one I'm not that familiar with but I can't help but tap my fingers on the steering wheel in time with the beat. The sun is already starting to set by the time we reach Nash's apartment, it feels good being able to leave work early not to mention going home while there's still some light. The one thing I dislike about winter is leaving for work when it's dark and leaving work when it's dark. That would especially be the case if I was doing desk work instead of fieldwork. 

I park the car in the guest lot leaving the guest card sitting in the front of my window shield so my car doesn't accidentally get towed.  It's happened before when I left my car in a building's parking lot when I was helping with an arrest and by the time we finished and were going back to the precinct I found my car being towed away. The only people who found that amusing were Nash and Felix since they were there and later on Jason who heard about it. 

"Is Nash home?" Jade asks as we go inside.

"I don't think so, he should still be at work," I answer as I press the elevator button. I chuckle lightly when I see the small pout on her face as the elevator door opens and we get inside. "If you don't see him tonight I'll ask him to drive you to school tomorrow."

"Deal," she replies happily and I can't help but chuckle again. The elevator door opens when we reach the floor and we get out walking down the hall, another elevator door opens and I turn around to see Nash stepping out, his eye are glued to his phone. I stop walking, Jade copying me as she turns to see what has my attention and the minute she sees Nash she's running over to him and jumping onto him. Nash in turn hears Jade's footsteps rapidly getting closer to him, and quickly pockets his phone before catching her.

"Nash! Natalia said you might be working!" she exclaims as he swings her around before placing her back on the ground. 

"I decided to leave early," he tells her as he walks over to me and kisses my cheek. 

"I thought you were still finishing things at the precinct," I comment as go to the door.

"We finished with the interrogation with the lawyers there but he still wasn't budging on anything so Jason said to leave it for now. I tried to not show it but Felix didn't hide how tired he was about him not talking," he replies as I unlock the door for the three of us. "Jason said he'll be probably talking soon to try and talk down for a lighter sentence."

"He will definitely get his lawyer to bring it down and Felix is just like me, we don't like when things drag out for so long," I say as we walk inside as he locks the door behind us. "Jade go take a warm shower and then we'll get started with dinner, do you want to help us today?" 

"I do," she voices as she runs to her room to change. 

"I was talking with Julia and the girls earlier about one of them looking over Jade in case anything happens during this investigation, I don't want another repeat of what happened last time with Jade around," I tell Nash as we walk to his room. 

"Do you feel like something is going to happen?" he asks as he grabs onto my arm looking at me with worry.

"I'd say no but with our line of work you never know," I tell him as I gently pry his fingers from my arm to hold onto them. "But I'll try my best to make sure nothing happens to me." He leans down to kiss my lips tenderly before moving back from me as we continue to his room.

"Jason said you found out something earlier but you're not sharing until the time is right," he says as we go into his room. 

"It's too much of a risk if people know what we know therefore we'll only say anything when the time is right," I answer as I take off my jacket and strip out of my clothes.

"I trust that you two know what you're doing," he says as he comes over to me and slips his arms around my upper body, his chin resting on my shoulder. "Off topic, I love how my marks are still on you, maybe I'll give you some more later tonight," he says in a low voice and I can just picture his face with a wide smirk. 

"No way, I need these to fade away first before you even think of adding more," I say rejecting him as I turn around with a teasing grin on my face.

"You saying that is a green light for me beautiful," he says as his lips move closer to mine. 

"Take it as you want," I say to him as I duck out of his arm before he can kiss me, laughter trailing out of me as I grab clothes to change into after I shower and go to the bathroom.

"I'll get back at you for that," is all I hear him say as I get the water running in the shower. Like I'd expect anything less from him, I'd honestly be shocked if he didn't. 

✘✘

A/N Hi everyone!! It's been so long since I updated but I haven't forgotten the story! I've been working on editing some things in The Ex-Convict and The Officer while simultaneously slowly writing out this chapter. I know a lot of you want to know what Natalia has found but don't worry, you'll all know soon, you know I just love building drama in the stories.

Anyways, be sure to leave your thoughts of the chapter in the comments!!