A/N: This is a sequel to my story "A Matter of Perspective", so if you haven't read that, I HIGHLY recommend you read it first so this story will have better meaning. It was originally written and posted in 2015. Some Takedown Twenty stuff is put into this story, but not much. This begins two years after the epilogue of Perspective (and four years since the beginning of that story) and is from Ranger's POV.

"My most brilliant achievement was my ability to persuade my wife to marry me." ~Winston Churchill

Gatherings with my family always fell into the category of controlled chaos, and my sister Silvia's wedding rehearsal wasn't going to be an exception. In the little over two years since my own wedding, three more children had been born into the family, and with Silvia's marriage we would be adding another in-law plus his two young children. I wasn't sure how we were going to manage holidays at this point. We'd barely been able to fit into my parents' house at Christmas, and that was without Silvia, her fiancé Caleb, and his two kids, Miles and Josie, who had gone to Caleb's parents' house for the holiday.

The younger kids were running around the banquet room chasing each other like maniacs while my sisters all took turns to yell at their respective children to stop. My brother Emilio was trying to wrangle his three year-old twins into their jackets while his wife Lucy strapped their newborn daughter into her car seat. The rest of the adults were seated around a large, circular table in the center of the room. My sister Aurelia's daughter, Vivienne, was sitting in Stephanie's lap, sharing a piece of cake with her.

"How are you liking your new job, Stephanie?" my mother asked, finally able to sit down and relax after a day of errands and ordering people around.

"It's going well. Not exactly what I'd imagined doing with my life, but it's a good job," Stephanie replied, forking a piece of cake into Vivienne's mouth. "The fact that I'm married to the boss helps with the whole job security thing."

Vincent Plum Bail Bonds had received an overhaul six months earlier when Harry the Hammer, Vinnie's father-in-law and financial backer, died from a massive heart attack. Being divorced, he'd left everything to his only daughter, Lucille, who now owned her husband more than ever. Connie had quit a few weeks before Harry died in order to stay home with her daughter, leaving Lula to cover the desk while Vinnie had interviewed a slew of applicants that he'd found on the various corners along Stark Street. The interviews ended as soon as Harry's will was read, and Lula had been fired the same day so that Lucille herself could manage the office and keep an eye on her perverted, philandering husband. Desperate to get away from his wife, Vinnie had informed Stephanie that she was costing him too much money and that he was going to go back to bringing in his own skips so that he didn't have to pay her to do it. Stephanie had been upset, but had taken it as a sign that she needed to go in a different direction and had been surprisingly enthusiastic as she took to the internet to search for jobs.

The enthusiasm had quickly died when her two-point-one grade-point-average in sociology and nearly eight years' experience in chasing after morons who had skipped out on bail failed to impress potential employers. I'd offered her a position in my company, which she'd declined, but after four months without a job she caved, saying she'd take whatever I could give her. She needed to work again, not for money but for her sanity. Along with my own.

I'd opened a branch of Rangeman in Newark nearly a year ago and business had grown faster than any of the projections had predicted, so Tank and I had agreed that he should head up that office and make sure it continued to provide the quality of service I expected. As a result, he and Lula decided to leave Trenton and moved to Newark to live in the apartment that I would typically occupy in the Rangeman building. It hadn't been easy to make the decision to give the Newark reins over to Tank. Not that I didn't trust him to run the office as well as I did, but because it meant he wouldn't be there to watch my back every day. Not only did he literally watch my back, he also managed the more minor details of my office. He made up the schedules every month, read all shift reports and brought anything of issue to my attention, managed my calendar and helped keep me on schedule, all on top of taking the occasional monitoring shift. He was also a good judge of character whenever I was interviewing prospective employees and would give me his feedback during the deliberation process. And beyond all of that, he was my best friend after Stephanie. I'd known I needed someone like that in my office, and that Stephanie would be a good replacement.

The men in my building had known better than to make any sort of comment about my wife working for me, so the transition into the job had been relatively easy for her. In all the years I'd known her, I'd discovered that Stephanie was surprising efficient in more structured settings. She had picked up the technological aspect quickly and had even made a few suggested changes that I'd agreed with and implemented immediately. The only problem had been the men who had attempted to take advantage of their acquaintance with Stephanie in the past and request certain schedules. The day I'd found her stressing over schedules in her office was the last day anything like that had happened.

"My only complaint is that she's constantly accusing me of sexual harassment," I said, flashing her a smile when she rolled her eyes.

"That's because you constantly sexually harass me at the office."

"Well, you are my wife, and you already said sleeping with the boss helps with your job security."

My brother-in-law Andres chuckled. "I don't know how you manage to work together and stay married. Celia would kill me if we had to be around each other that much."

I put an arm across the back of Stephanie's chair. "We did the work thing first, so we're used to it."

"Seriously, Carlos, leave the poor woman alone," my mother said wearily. "You can harass her in the privacy of your own home."

"Oh I do," I said. "Every chance I get." My mother threw a cloth napkin across the table at me and shook her head.

"It gets better," Stephanie said. "After I've informed him that what he's doing is sexual harassment and that he needs to be a good example for his men, he starts calls me 'Mrs. Manoso' whenever we're working and informs me any time that we are alone in an office that I have the right to ask someone else to be present should I feel uncomfortable."

All of the men laughed and the women gave me looks of disapproval.

"You are such a smartass," Celia informed me, taking a seat next to her husband. "Honestly, how Stephanie puts up with you. . . the woman is surely in line for sainthood."

"Not to sound like a snob, but it's weird to not be staying in the big apartment," Stephanie commented two hours later as we undressed in one of the staff apartments at the Newark office. "It was a big part of the reason I married you."

The alarm on Stephanie's phone dinged, which was her signal to take her birth control pill for the day. She swiped it off and continued to undress.

"And here I thought it was for the sex," I replied as I stretched out naked on the bed. "Are we headed for divorce?"

"You bet," she replied, straddling my lap wearing only her bra and underwear. "And since you were the sap who said we didn't need a pre-nupital agreement, I plan to take you to the cleaners."

I kissed her and pulled her down against me. "Love makes people stupid. I'll learn my lesson with my next wife."

I reached around to unhook her bra, but she grabbed my arm. "Can we talk for a minute?"

"You can't talk while you're naked?"

"You won't be paying attention if I'm naked."

"You're straddling me in your bra and underwear. That's a little more than distracting," I told her, holding her in place when she went to move. "But I can control myself. Talk."

She took a deep breath in and blew it out. "I think I'm ready to have a baby."

I was still for a moment, trying not to let the shock show. I'd always told Stephanie that I'd be open to having children with her, but that it would be her call. I could be just as happy without children, which I'd expected would be the case given Stephanie's panic anytime the subject had been brought up in the past.

"Are you really freaked out by the idea?" she asked me. "I know we've only been married for two years, but I think I feel ready. Scared as hell, but ready. And I know I don't have a lot of years left to have a baby, so I think it should be sooner rather than later."

"I've always left the decision up to you, Stephanie," I said when I found my voice. "If you want a baby, we'll have one."

"But do you want one?"

I didn't want to tell her that I wasn't entirely sure. "We'll never regret having a baby, but I think you would regret not having one." I knew that much was true.

Stephanie planted a kiss on my lips. "You're right. I know it can take a few months to get pregnant after going off the Pill, so do you think we should start trying now or do you want to wait a few more months?"

I slipped my hand around her back and unclasped her bra. "No time like the present."

I woke up around three in the morning, having had a restless night of sleep. Stephanie was sound asleep next to me, exhausted from two rounds of vigorous sex that we'd joked were the last of our practice rounds. I quietly dressed and went down to the gym to workout, opting for a run on the treadmill so that I could let my thoughts wander. I had to get myself together over the whole baby thing before Stephanie ended up pregnant. I didn't want her to tell me she was pregnant while I still felt so hesitant about the whole ordeal. I could have told her I wasn't sure I was ready, but it would have hurt her. She would have understood, but then I would have carried around the guilt of knowing my wife wanted to have a baby, but wasn't because I didn't want it.

When I'd joined the Army, my first priority in life had been to be a good soldier. I wanted to follow orders, work my way up the ranks, protect my brothers, and succeed in missions. After leaving the Army, my priority had been on being a businessman. A successful businessman. Then sole owner of my business. It was only after Stephanie and I began having an actual relationship that my priorities shifted. Now my first priority in life was to be a good husband. I wanted to have a wife who knew how much I loved her, who felt secure in both our relationship and physical safety. I wanted a wife who was happy with our marriage and didn't have to want for anything. Not being able to provide even one of those things to her made me feel like a failure as a husband, and feeling like a failure in that made everything else feel like shit as well. I could lose my business, all my money, the cars, the properties, but as long as I had Stephanie, and she was happy and safe, I could survive anything.

"Do you think we should tell our family that we are going to try to get pregnant, or just wait and surprise them?" Stephanie asked as we drove to the wedding venue the next afternoon.

"Wait. We get enough pressure as it is. Imagine if they knew we weren't trying to prevent it any longer."

I could practically hear Edna recommending positions for us to try to get pregnant, possibly telling us about her own history in attempting to conceive. I'd have to kill myself after that, then Stephanie wouldn't get the baby she wanted.

"Good point. I've always heard that you should wait until the first trimester is over to really tell anyone because a miscarriage is most likely to happen during the first three months, so that means it would be a while before we have to tell anyone," she replied, looking relieved. "That's good. I dread telling Lula."

I could understand why. Despite being told that the chances were very low, Tank and Lula had been trying to get pregnant since they got married with no success. They had given up hope of having their own child and had moved towards the adoption field several months ago. The problem was that no adoption agency wanted to take a chance on a man in a dangerous job and a woman who used to be a prostitute. Tank, not usually one to open up about his personal problems, had confided in me recently that the entire process was taking a toll on their relationship. He wasn't sure how much more he could take before telling Lula he was ready to give up, and he wasn't sure what the aftermath of such a statement would be. When Connie had announced her pregnancy to everyone shortly after Stephanie and I got married, Lula had been happy for her, though she'd initially lost her shit over the fact that Connie could get accidentally get pregnant so easily.

The wedding went off without any problems and the reception lasted well into the evening. Stephanie kept telling me I should practice holding Emilio's new daughter Mia, since she was only a month old and still a relative newborn. I reminded her that I'd not only been holding my nieces and nephews since the first one had been born nearly eighteen years before, but that I still remembered what it had been like to hold Julie when she was a baby. I ended up holding Mia twice during the reception, not letting myself think too much about what my own child with Stephanie might look like. I didn't want to think too much about having a baby at this point.

There will be plenty of time to get over this, I told myself.