The desk in his bedroom sits beneath a little window. It used to be under the much larger window that looks out over our front yard, but he moved it. From the little window, he can look right into the door of my mother's apartment that sits above our garage. The garage sits at an angle to our house and my mother's door really isn't that far away from Leon's window, perhaps twenty feet – ten feet of roof on our side, a gap of about two feet and then another eight feet or so of garage roof before it slopes into the landing by my mother's front door.

Today, my mother's door is open, even though it's October and the air has cooled considerably. Leon is sitting at his desk, some colored pencils spread around and paper in front of him. His window is open and the wind kicks up and his drawn blinds make a clicking noise against the window frame. Leon isn't looking at the drawing paper on his desk; he's gazing through his window and into my mother's screen door.

"What are you doing, Buddy?" I ask my son.

He startles slightly at my voice coming from his doorway, then turns his head with a wistful grin playing on his lips. "It smells like she's making a chocolate cake. Do you think it's chocolate frosting, too?"

Leon has quite a few weaknesses of basic pleasure.

He's a sucker for his grandfather and will drop whatever he's doing to talk with him. They sit on Chris's front porch, the two of them out there like Leon's a old man, too, his feet up on the porch railing and laughing and jabbering away with Chris.

His baby sister is wrapped around his little finger. Lahnon, she calls him in her sweet one-year-old voice. And any time she utters the word, Leon smiles.

He's got my mother, who is more often than not at our house during the weekdays. But on weekends, she's in her own space much of the time. She and Leon talk through his window, and Emily and I always know when she's baking and has offered up something good, because Leon will come barreling down the stairs and out the front door. "I'm going to Nana's," he'll call on his way through the house. On the days the windows are open, we can hear him running across the driveway and then his feet pounding up the stairs to her apartment.

And he's got chocolate, specifically anything chocolate that my mom bakes.

I laugh at the look of hopefulness on his face and catch the scent of chocolate in the air. "I'm sure it will be chocolate frosting."

He wrinkles his nose. "She made vanilla frosting for Rory's birthday cake."

I step forward and tousle his hair, suppressing another laugh. "Yes, but this is for your mama's birthday, and she likes chocolate almost as much as you do."

Leon looks back out the window and contemplates that. "I think it will be chocolate," he says sincerely.

I look over his shoulder at the paper on his desk. "What are you working on?"

"A poem for Mama, but I'm done."

The sound of the front door opening filters up the stairs and Henry's voice rings through the house. "Leon! I'm here."

Leon stands and smiles excitedly, grabbing a backpack from the floor of his room. The bag is stuffed with everything good about being nine years old and happy – action figures, treasure maps he and Henry have made over, sticks and rocks and binoculars and snacks. It's his tree house bag, and he and Henry and Jack will likely spend hours up in that little sanctuary I built him until we call them down for dinner.

He takes off out of his bedroom and I hear his feet on the stairs. I turn and glance through his window and see my mom moving around her kitchen. "You better hope you're making chocolate frosting, or Leon might never recover," I call out.

I see her figure moving towards the door and she opens her screen with a smile on her face. "I'm more frightened of what Emily might do to me if I presented her with anything but chocolate frosting at her birthday party."

I laugh. "JJ and Will just got here. You about ready to head over?"

"Twenty minutes," she calls out as she goes back into her space to finish up the cake.

My mother is a pretty big weakness for me, too. She's the woman I remember from before my father died, even though she's decades older now. She is relaxation and joy and love and I relish every moment I get to spend with her. I miss our hours in the afternoon together now that I'm working full-time again, but the job's good for me, too. And I still spend more hours with her in a week now than I ever did in a year when she lived in Chicago.

I slide the paper on Leon's desk towards me and lift the fold, looking at his neat script and the images he's drawn around the edge of the page.

Mama is… The title reads.

Mama is the first twinkling stars in the sky
When you're sad the day is over, but then you see them
And you know night can be good, too.

Mama is the flowers in our garden in the summer
Each day better and brighter and prettier.

Mama is warm like a fireplace
When I'm cold, I just want to sit closer to her
She warms me inside and out

Mama is laughter and smiles and kisses on my cheek
She makes every day good, as soon as I see her face in the morning.

Happy Birthday, Mama.

Love,
Leon

I smile and swallow past a lump in my throat. That pretty much sums it up, and it's also going to be the gift that makes the necklace I bought Emily pale in comparison. I think I'll wait to give her her gift from me when I take her out to dinner in a few nights on her actual birthday.

I run my fingers over Leon's writing and hear Rory babbling in her room, waking up from her nap. "Mamamamama," she calls out.

I leave Leon's room and walk down the hall to her bedroom door. When I open it, she's standing in her crib. She grins when she sees me, her curly hair wild and beautiful on her head, and her eight pearly white teeth practically glowing in her mouth. "Dada," she exclaims, raising her arms.

I lift her and she immediately rests her head on my shoulder, still slightly sleepy. I love the weight of her little body against my chest. "It's time for Mama's birthday party," I whisper in her ear, inhaling the honey smell of the shampoo we use on her hair.

She lifts her head and looks at me. "Mama?"

"Yep. Your Mama. The most beautiful woman in the world. Let's get you changed and then we'll head downstairs."

I lay her on her changing table and unsnap the legs of her pants. "Zachary's here," I tell her as her eyes that you could get lost in stare at my face. "And JJ and Will and Henry."

Soon, Hotch and Jack and Rossi and Spencer and Penelope will be here, too. I've lost count of the number of times we've all been together in this house for celebrations large and small, and often just because, in the past year. There've been some changes, with JJ now working as a Guardian Ad Litem for the DC court system. Penelope's had a few interviews, but ultimately hasn't taken any job she's been offered, like she's not quite ready to give up the BAU. Spencer was gone for about six months, taking an offer to work at a government think tank, but then he went back to the BAU. I think that one surprised us all.

But as a whole we're still the same strong unit we were before, just slightly altered and a little softer around the edges now, spending a lot of our collective free time together with so many kids running around.

I get Rory's new diaper on and snap up her pants, tossing the old diaper in the pail.

"Ready, Princess?"

She smiles at me and gives me an answer of babbled vowels and consonants and reaches her arms up. I lift her again and we head downstairs. Emily's at the bottom of the stairs waiting for me, a small smile playing on her lips and a baby monitor in her hand. She seems to be in some sort of age-regression continuum; a few days away from forty-seven years old and she looks just as young as the first time I met her in the briefing room.

"Most beautiful woman in the world, huh?" she whispers to me.

I wrap my free arm around her shoulders and kiss her briefly. "Definitely."

I first met Marietta in the summer of 1999. My family was in full swing by then, with buyers and plans and we were all to deliver a child to our Master. It wasn't a plan I relished, but it was a plan I was trapped in, and I felt compelled to please my family, even if I didn't like the ultimate end. I had no particular interest in children, and, truth be told, if it wasn't for the cocaine I ingested on certain occasions, I could have never stomached it.

Marietta, at the age of ten, was a spirited little thing, with fiery red, curly hair and green eyes. She had grimy hands and dirty fingernails and wore ratty clothing that was about a size too small. I'd watched her in the park for weeks as she stole from the purses and diaper bags of unsuspecting people at the park. I sat and watched with my hands shoved in my pockets, sitting on park benches and selling the meth I'd cooked to poor schleps who would do anything for a fix. It was my side business. I was a chemist by degree and nature, cooking meth was a hobby, and my lab was impeccable. But it was just a side business that added to my personal bank account, rather than the family's.

My real job was finding little boys and girls like Marietta; my second was to sell and distribute the cocaine to the family and our clients. I was the padder of the bank accounts when we were first starting out and we didn't have that many buyers.

I took Marietta on a Tuesday afternoon. When I had her in my car, she didn't struggle. I pulled out the syringe to plunge it in her leg, and her green eyes pierced mine. Her voice was a whisper, "Go ahead. Won't be no worse than what my daddy do to me every night."

My hand with the syringe paused and guilt washed through me, but just for a second. I had a job to do, and I was trained to do it. I plunged the needle into her leg and held her body while she went limp. I delivered as I said I would, at the precise time and location I was told. I delivered her to Adrian, who months ago had said quietly to me while swirling scotch in a glass, "It's your year for a girl. Find me a redhead with curly hair if you can."

I saw Marietta briefly at the auction that year, and then again at every auction for the next four years. A few months before what would have been her sixth auction, when she was fifteen years old, I got the call from the people who purchased her that they were done with her.

It was my least favorite job, disposing of the street kids we kidnapped when people were done with them, and I'd only had to do it once before. Perhaps Adrian would spare her and re-sell her, but at the age of fifteen, I doubted it.

He surprised me. I'd ingested enough cocaine to be amped up for the task at hand, but he yelled at me to stop right before I brought the knife to Marietta's neck. Adrian stepped forward and pulled the cover off her face. He patted her cheek gently, and I sighed in relief, thinking we might both be given a reprieve that day.

Then Adrian said something I wasn't expecting; something entirely out of character. He seemed to be in a trance as he stared at Marietta's face, her green eyes glaring at him defiantly. "I'll take her. She can be mine."

I blinked and covered my shock. "Yes, Master," I said.

That snapped him out of his trance. He glared at me and then ordered me from the house.

Three months later, Marietta wasn't at the auction. Peter Daniels was there with his brother Robert, and their boy. Embry. Robert was walking around like he was part of the family already, and I knew. I just knew.

I thought they were planning to kill me, but they didn't. Two days after the auction, I was scared out of my mind and trying to figure out a way to disappear when the police came and arrested me. The charges were air tight. My secondary home under an assumed name, a home only Adrian supposedly knew about, was raided. So much cocaine. My meth lab.

I went down hard.

I never sold the family out, even after I was sentenced. My loyalties ran deep and I knew who had screwed me over, and there was no way to take Adrian and Peter down without taking them all down, and in my own perverse way, I loved the rest of them, and I was still beholden to my Master. So I sucked it up. I rose again in prison, making the best of it, and feeling almost free. Free from Adrian, and free from having to deal with children and murder.

Then, two years ago, I fell again. I fell harder than before, but thankfully prison officials intervened before my cellmates found out. Two guards whisked me out of my cell one day, not giving me a chance to grab a thing, and carted me off to a locked down area of the prison. A cell with cameras. I was officially on suicide watch.

Perplexed, I turned to the guard. He shoved a paper through the bars and spit on my face.

There on the front page was pictures of everyone in the family. "SEX-TRAFFICKING RING BROUGHT DOWN."

The whole sordid story was there, and my name was mentioned. Several times. There was also a picture of the head of London Interpol at a press conference. Emily Prentiss. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her in my memory.

I'm not sure I was scared when I read the article, just numb and shocked. The court system dragged its sweet feet getting to me. The first time I went to face my new charges of rape and sex trafficking and murder, nearly a year after the family was brought down, my court-appointed barrister fell asleep, right there next to me, and I was sent back to prison without any trial at all, even though anything less that pleading guilty would have gotten me nowhere.

I went back to lock down, and was starting to wonder if they'd ever get to me again. Then I got my court date and a new court-appointed barrister. October 10.

I'd been in lock down for over two years at that point, only getting out in the yard with the other rapists and pedophiles for an hour a day. Court or no court, my situation wasn't going to improve for the rest of my life. This was it for me and if I could have killed myself, I would have.

I arrived at court on October tenth in shackles and was lead through the back door. I caught a glimpse of her almost right away. She looked older, but I'd know that red, curly hair and those green eyes anywhere. She glanced beyond me, like she didn't know me at all, but she bent over and clutched her stomach, slightly grimacing, then gave a barely perceptible nod towards the bathroom.

I've never been a stupid man. I'm quick witted and sharp, and even two years with hardly a soul to talk to hadn't turned my brain to mush.

I groaned. I clutched my stomach. "Bathroom," I moaned.

I had a guard and my court appointed barrister, who was about as dumb as the first one I had. The guard grunted, but my lawyer turned towards the bathroom.

I groaned again. "I'm seriously going to be sick."

"Nervous?" the guard grinned.

"Let him in," my lawyer said.

It was the bathroom appointed for prisoners who were in court. I'd been in it before. A utilitarian toilet, a small sink, no windows, no locking door.

The guard pushed opened the door and looked around at the small, empty space. He undid my handcuffs, but left my ankles shackled. He pushed me through the door and I nearly tripped before righting myself. The door swung shut and I glanced around quickly. What did Marietta want me to find?

I glanced in the toilet and there it was, a glimpse of metal in the bottom of the bowl. I reached my hands in and pulled out a key, with a small laminated paper attached. "Look up."

I made gagging noises in the toilet, doing a convincing acting job, as I unlocked my shackles. Limbs free, I climbed up on the sink, making more retching noises. "Just a moment," I called out through the door.

The ceiling panels were screwed in, but the one above the sink had the screws removed, and it lifted easily. I was able to hoist myself quickly.

I lifted myself up into the ventilation system and right into a dead body. Shocked, I looked at his blond and gray hair that was so much like mine. Then I looked at the bomb attached to him. I leaned my head out of opening in the ceiling and made retching noises again, but they weren't so fake that time.

I flipped the bomb on and nearly fainted when ten seconds started ticking away. I pushed my feet against the body until it dropped through the opening of the ceiling and to the floor, knowing the noise would cause the guard to open the bathroom door, but there wouldn't be time to do much else.

I crawled for my life down the vent in the only direction to go, counting down in my head and then turned a corner where there was a pile of clothing. The bomb went off, rattling my bones, but not harming my body.

I pulled the clothes on over my prison garb and looked around frantically. There was a single light coming from down the shaft and I crawled towards it. It was a flashlight. I slid the ceiling panel slightly and saw pandemonium below. Pandemonium that I dropped into casually. I took the first exit door I saw and there beyond the sidewalk and screaming people was Marietta, standing by a car on the curb. I made my way towards her and got in the front seat.

"Holy shit! It worked." a male voice exclaimed incredulously from behind me, making me jump.

I turned and there was Embry. I was shocked. I was confused. I was scared. I was free, and that body blown to bits would buy me some time to disappear, but I didn't understand how Marietta was here or why she helped me.

She got into the driver's seat and looked at me, smiling slightly. She started the car and we drove away from the chaos, passing police cars and ambulances coming from the other direction.

When we were a few miles away from the courthouse, I managed one word. "Why?"

"Adrian," she said wistfully. "I told him I needed more help than Embry, and he suggested you."

"Help for what?" I asked, trying to absorb it all.

"Revenge," she said simply.

I shivered involuntarily. Her voice sounded just like Adrian's. Cold and demanding and sure with few words at all.

I licked my lips that felt very dry and cleared my throat.

"Where are we going?"

"Back to the United States," Embry said excitedly. "To get what we need to start over."

I glanced at Embry and then at Marietta and very much just wanted out of that car. Marietta snarled at Embry, "Calm yourself!"

Then she glanced at me and patted my knee. She slid her hands up higher on my thigh and grinned appreciatively. "Revenge and the money to start over," she said softly.

I didn't buy her softness, not in the slightest. And I knew I wasn't busted out of prison to be the one in charge in this little starting-over plan. That honor rested on the shoulders of Marietta, who was every bit as frightening as the man who had kept her since she was fifteen years old.

His gentle fingers on the back of my neck cause me to shiver, and I smile as I feel the chain clasp around me and the subtle weight of the pendant rest against my chest. It's an orange diamond that matches my engagement ring. Derek shouldn't have, but he did, and I love it.

I feel his lips brush across my cheek before he stands and takes his seat opposite me at our little corner table in the restaurant. This seafood bar in Old Town Alexandria is our favorite, but we try to reserve our visits to special occasions, like my birthday.

I've been in a slight funk for the past couple of days, ever since Marcus Klaus called me on Monday and told me Patrick Joyce had been blown up in the bathroom at a courthouse. Patrick Joyce, the man who I'd met a sex club back in 2004, the first time I tried to go in and figure out the inner workings of Adrian Stancu's "family."

I was pulled off the case and sent in after Doyle instead, and a few months after that Patrick had been arrested on drug-trafficking charges. He never faced trial for the more heinous crimes he committed; someone had blown him to bits right before he could. They don't have any clues as to who could have done it, but an angry family member of one of the victims or one of the victims himself is what's swirling around the rumor mill according to Marcus. I can't say I'd blame any family member or victim if that's the case. And I'm not sorry Patrick's dead, not in the slightest. May he burn in hell.

But my past, which is only a little over two years old, seems so far away, like another lifetime. And I don't like being reminded of it at all.

I got myself together this morning, on my birthday, when Derek arrived in the bedroom with Leon by his side holding Rory while Derek balanced a breakfast tray in his hands. I shook off the memories and my funk and vowed to have a good day and to stop thinking about it.

Between my birthday party at home with our friends and family this past Saturday, breakfast in bed this morning and dinner out tonight with Derek, along with the necklace, I'm feeling sufficiently spoiled and loved.

Derek and I have laughed a lot tonight as we ate our way through lobster and crab drenched decadently in butter and drank our way through an expensive glass of wine each. Our plates have been cleared now and we're waiting for coffee and a dessert to share. And Derek just gave me my necklace and placed it lovingly around my neck.

As he sits down in his chair he says, "I decided not to give that to you on Saturday. It couldn't compete with Leon's poem."

I smile softly and blink rapidly. How I love that little boy. How I love the man sitting in front of me and our life together. "It's pretty even," I whisper.

I reach for his hand over our cell phones that sit face down in the middle of the table. It's a habit we've gotten into, turning our phones on vibrate on the rare occasions we go out. We're no longer strapped down by our phones for our job, but we can't just tuck them away because we have children now.

"It'll be after nine by the time we're done with dessert and out of here," Derek says as he rubs his thumb on the back of my hand. "My mom will probably be passed out on the couch, and your dad will be asleep in his cabin. Think we can sneak onto the boat for a bit?"

I grin wider and nod. "Absolutely."

The waiter returns to our table with the coffee and chocolate cake we ordered. I haven't had quite enough chocolate yet on this birthday.

We share the cake silently, smiling slyly at each other, not wanting to rush things, but both of us with the boat on our minds, and the comfortable bed in there that's become our little, secret haven over the past year. Last spring we purchased better cushions for the bench seating that converts into the bed, and now, with nice sheets, it's almost as comfortable as our own bed. Just about three feet narrower, which isn't a problem for either of us.

Just as Derek grins and spears the last piece of cake on his fork, bringing it towards his mouth before changing directions and bringing his fork towards me, both of our cell phones vibrate at the exact same moment, making us both jump slightly.

I take the bite of cake in my mouth and blow a kiss in the air at Derek before I start to chew. We grab our phones casually, thinking it's just Fran letting us know that both kids are asleep, which she often does when she's watching them.

But what I see right there on my screen is not a text from Fran, and I know Derek sees it at the same moment I do. He stands instantly and forcefully, his chair falling backwards onto the ground. I don't think I'm breathing as I stare at the message. My heart is beating frantically and I can't make sense of it. This isn't our life anymore, this fear and dread. We don't live this.

I feel Derek's hand in mine a second later and he's pulling me to standing. Then we are both jogging for the door, forgetting about the bill, my phone still in front of my face like the letters on the screen are going to magically transform into a different message than what's there. Because what I'm seeing doesn't make sense.

Leon, Fran and my father all know the code, the code that's reserved for severe emergencies. If Fran or my father was hurt or sick, whomever wasn't hurt would call us. And if both of them somehow were hurt, Leon would call us or a neighbor.

I'm still staring at the message as we get in the car and Derek pulls harshly away from the curb, tires squealing.

Central Security Group reported a distress alarm at Morgan Home at 8:55pm. Police have been dispatched.