I turn around and leave for the day.
It’s time to see my father.
Hans Lionheart redefines the word enigma. Lionheart Enterprises is tucked in the downtown financial district amidst the almost nonexistent hustle and bustle of L.A. The offices take up the entire long, black tower that pierces into the sky with its phallic intent. My father mostly owns investment firms that specialize in Ponzi schemes and offshore accounts that would make any IRS investigator twitchy. Actually, that’s probably not true, but, then knowing the ways of this crooked world and my father’s seemingly never-ending wealth, I’d bet the only dollar I have it is.
I step into the sterile environment of white marble floors, black granite covers the walls, the counters, as smoky mirrors fill in the chilling void. It’s night and day comparing this place to Jinx, but then my father only hires licensed professionals committed to traditional business attire and leather briefcases, whereas Jinx opens its arms to college dropouts and tech geniuses that have been living above their parents garages for a good span of their twenties. Lionheart is cold and ruthless. It eats smaller, less testicularly endowed companies for breakfast. Jinx is forward thinking, embracing its millennial status as it rushes the masses to a new technological future. Nevertheless, despite his paternal shortcomings, I love my father. And ditto for Ford, despite his paternal shortcomings—due to the fact there is no actual offspring—I love Crawford Cannon. I love that he says I’m his—that I belong to him like I’m some figurine he picked up on an exotic vacation. In the end, that’s all I’ve ever wanted—to belong to someone other than myself. My heart has been one lonely place since the day I lost Claire. This life was meant for sharing, and I almost had that in its purest form with Ford until Evilyn and her imaginary bad seed infiltrated basecamp.
I ride the elevator up and step out onto the penthouse floor where I have to pass three levels of security to see my father. His secretary is young and strikingly beautiful. I wonder how good old Daphne copes with the fact my father is greeted each morning with this budding rose and yet has to go home each night to her wilted glory. I wouldn’t mind Daphne so much if she weren’t the very reason Claire and I were disposed of to begin with—not that the children of an extra-marital affair should be venerated, they simply shouldn’t be treated like felons and written out of the will as a stipulation for an already broken marriage to resume.
“I’m here to see my father.” I tell the girl as I admire her purple-pink lipstick and secretly wonder if I could get away with that color.
Her eyes widen as if studying me for traces of Kinsley. I couldn’t look like Kins if I bleached my hair and wore blue contacts.
“His other daughter,” I clarify. “Stevie Eaton.” Lionheart, but I leave that part out. I’m guessing she would find it harder to believe I share his name than I do his DNA.
She makes a call and whispers something before hanging up and buzzing me in.
This is it. Dorothy finally gets to speak to the Wizard. I have that same thought every time I get to this point, but then I’ve only seen him at his office a handful of times. I tried to get an interview last semester as a part of a group project, but he denied me. It was pretty embarrassing to tell seven of my classmates that my father couldn’t see us. But the truth was that he wouldn’t—that was the clincher.
I step into the oversized double doors as my father rises behind his heavily shellacked Burl wood desk. It was a gift from a Sultan of an oil rich country. My father told me so the last time I visited because it was delivered just the day before. The handles are intricately carved and inlaid with gold. The corners come complete with beveled edges to keep impoverished financial spirits away. I had to bite my tongue not to laugh when he told me that one.
My father stands all of six foot three. His elegant navy suit disguises his Nordic frame, giving him the illusion of a well-built linebacker. His hair is stiffly sprayed in a hard left part to camouflage his expanding bald spot.
“Daddy.” I go over and offer a firm embrace. He feels solid, thicker than Ford, less stable though, like if I keep trying to hold on, I might fall right through.
“Please, love, take a seat.” He holds up a bottle of water, and I refuse.
“How are you?” I wanted to ask, do you own Satellite Net?
“I’m well.” He folds his hands over his desk and dons a forced grin. “I hear good things are happening over at Jinx Enterprises.” His smile expands like the cat who swallowed the canary. More like the Lionheart who swallowed the cat.
“Good things?” The baby runs through my mind, first Evelyn’s, then mine. “They lost a new app to some mysterious upstart this morning. Chaos is a better way to describe what’s happening there.”
“I know all about it.” He lifts his chin. “Is that why you’ve come? Are you eager to flog me over something you fear I’ve done?”
“More like applaud you.” If he’s going to lie, then so will I. “You’ve done this. I can see it in your eyes.”
His smile comes and goes, quick as a seizure.
“Satellite Net was a company I incurred two months ago. I’ve kept a low profile for just this reason.”
Oh, my, God. He’s not even trying to deny it. But then why should he? Aren’t I his family, his blood? He doesn’t know I’ve fallen into the thorny pit of love, and that my uterus is still swollen with fragments of Cannon DNA.
“First the club, now Jeneration Jinx—what’s next?” It comes out far more exuberant as if I were eagerly noshing on popcorn while watching the show.
“All of it.” He drills those powder blue eyes into mine like a warning. “It’s up to you, Stevie, to help me do what’s next. Can you do that?”
Shit.
My insides quiver, my lips bloat because a part of me wants to sob like a three-year-old.
“Two questions.” I swallow hard. My father sits unchanged with his determined gaze. “What do I get out of this, and why are you going after Jinx so hard?”
“Fair enough.” His leathered face furrows into a series of lines over his forehead and along his mouth. He squints at me as if he were pissed that I asked, not fair enough at all. “To answer your first question, I’ll bring you into the fold. I’ll have my legal department draw up a new will and testament that leaves you a quarter of my estate upon my passing. A portion for you and one for your sister.”
Holy shit.
“Aspen?” God, she’s going to be ecstatic. Aspen won’t admit it, but she’s just as hurt to be written out as I was.
“Claire.” Her name flies around the room like a bird that’s just escaped its cage. “I’m gifting it to you in memory of your sister. I’ll deal with Aspen another day.”
Claire. Victory at last. My father hadn’t so much as breathed my dead sister’s name before, and, now, he’s reverberated it off his opulent green walls the color of his favorite currency.
“To answer your next question”—he thumps his folded hands over the desktop—“there was a woman by the name of Lana Rule.” His eyes close as he leans into his seat. For the first time ever my father looks broken and beaten. I’m half afraid I’m witnessing a break down. “Your mother has the answer to this one.” He riffles through a stack of papers on his desk. “I’m through with this meeting, Stevie. If you’re a willing partner and care to go through with this, let my secretary know on the way out.” He picks up his phone and spins in his large leather chair to face the wall, effectively shutting me out.
I make my way back into the hall and pause at the desk of the pretty young thing reapplying her lipstick, this time a garish red—dragon’s blood red.
My father wants me to gut Ford for sport. He doesn’t need Jinx. He doesn’t need a dollar he’ll earn from here to eternity. This is bigger than money, than Jinx, this is a ghost looming from the past begging for revenge, and her name is Lana Rule.
What will become of Ford and me if I refuse to help my father? Will he really sweep me off my feet and be my forever? Or will Evelyn keep squirm
ing her way into his life until she finally has every last inch of him, including his heart?
Lincoln’s words come back to me, rising up over the hillside of my mind like a grassfire. Jinx is surrounded. The dogs are out. They’re baring their teeth. It’s just a matter of who pounces first.
“Tell my father I said, yes,” I say, stepping into the open mouth of the elevator. “I’ll do it.”
I told Ford that first night we met I would be his worst nightmare.
He should have listened.
Love has failed me too many times before.
But, then, the exact reason I’m doing this is in honor of that four-letter word.
And, ironically enough, this is my way of loving him.
Ford
“More wine?” Evelyn laughs as I refill my glass to the brim. It’s my fourth. And now, that she’s followed me home, with just a few things in her overnight bag, I’m afraid I’ll need four bottles just to process what’s happening. Just how in the hell did I go from having Stevie in my bed to trading her in for Evelyn—Evelyn who I thought I had ripped out of my life like a bandage, and now she’s here taking root like a weed I can’t get rid of?
“You ever think of the past?” I hold up my glass as if toasting this disaster before knocking it back.
Evelyn’s face melts like a nuke just went off in the vicinity.
If I had this afternoon to do all over again, I’d start from the beginning and tell Stevie all about my thorny relationship with Evelyn. But how do you tell the woman you love—the woman you’re determined to spend the rest of your life with—about a love story that concerns another woman? Love story. More like a tragedy that ended with a body count. Evelyn has been a bad apple from the start, and my own wandering dick didn’t add much to the situation.
“The past?” She pulls my glass from me and takes a sip. “All the time. You tell Little Miss Priss?”
She’s referred to Stevie that way twice now. There’s no point in telling her to knock it off because she won’t.
“Not yet.”
“Please don’t.” There’s a genuine sense of pleading on her part, and there are so few genuine things about Evelyn, it pains me to see it.
Once I fell hard for her——hard, then there was a baby coming.
“Evelyn.” I roll my head toward her and examine her like this, pregnant again with my child, her face bloated, slight bags underneath her eyes. I feel responsible in every way for what’s become of Evelyn both inside and out. “What do you think is going to become of us?” It’s a loaded question, but I need to draw a line in the sand before I find myself in a church in front of four hundred of our “closest” friends once again, making vows I could never really keep—not with Evelyn. The first time we were young, and I was stupid enough to believe that love would come, that the hollowness I felt in my chest for her was anything even close to love. But we lost the baby, and that was what I was doing at that altar to begin with, trying to commit to a baby I had created, trying to man-up as my stepfather so eloquently put it. After we lost the baby, Evelyn went off on an extended European vacation with her mother, and I assumed we were over, so I slept with someone else. In truth, I was trying to fill the void of losing my child, and Evelyn refused to speak of it, to comfort either her or me in any way. Then another baby came, and we lost that one, too.
“We argued. I’m not sure we ever got along.” It streams from my lips catatonic as I stare out at the stable. Evelyn and I argued so damn much it felt as if we shouted our way through our so-called honeymoon. The first three months were a living hell, and then she lost the baby. She was five months along and had to go into the hospital to deliver. It was a bitter hell we were both thrust into. Then there was the funeral. The tiny white casket we buried our son in. It still hurts to think about it. The second baby was simply lost. I found her on the couch one day. She had already been to the doctor without me.
I clench my jaw just thinking about how stupid I’ve been this past year—what a nightmare I’ve walked into because I couldn’t control my inherent need to fuck the nearest thing that moved, and on more than one night that body belonged to Evelyn. I used her like a standby, and she didn’t seem to mind. It was a bad situation all around. I can see that now. For years I clung onto the body of my dead child—children, as a crutch to show myself exactly why I didn’t deserve another relationship, another wife. Evelyn and I could have gotten along better if I tried a little a harder. When she started in, I didn’t have to fire right back. But I didn’t want it. As cruel as it sounds, I resented Evelyn for the marriage because deep down I never really wanted her. If I had it to do over again, I’d hold out for Stevie.
Evelyn comes and sits in my lap. She’s bonier than Stevie. Her hair doesn’t hold the same hypnotic notes of raspberries and vanilla.
“The past is gone,” she hums, running her finger along my jaw. “We buried it. Yes, we were miserable, but we’ve always cared for each other, Crawford. We always came back to one another.”
Most bad habits are hard to break.
“Here.” She takes my hand and places it over her stomach. “This, right here is the future.” She leans in and kisses my temple. “We can be the family that we were always meant to be. You’re still my husband in God’s eyes. I’m still your wife. We just needed this miracle to find our way back to each other.”
I close my eyes and try to feel something to see if she’s right. My hand glides over her jeans, and I beg my black soul to feel something for Evelyn, but all I feel, all I see, all I want is Stevie.
“You’ll get over her,” she purrs in my ear like a necrotic sweet nothing. “She’s already over you. I saw the way she was looking at Carter. A girl with a wandering eye is never the right one. But me, I’ve only had eyes for you.” She sweeps my hair to the side as if I were a little boy.
I look up at her with her dark hair pulled back tight, her thin lips cut with a line of crimson.
“Do you remember the day we met?” She coos as if she were reading me a bedtime story. And why the hell are my internal alarms going off? I can’t help but feel manipulated by her—most likely because she’s a master at it.
“You were putting up a poster, and I offered to help.” I should have run. I should have never thought about how she might fall and break her neck. It’s funny because I wasn’t attracted to her at first. I was literally trying to keep her from snapping her spine. After that, she stalked me proficiently, threatened my then girlfriend into retreating, and before I knew it, Evelyn was a nightly visitor in my bedroom. I liked sex too much to kick her out, and after that, we sort of morphed into Crawford-and-Evelyn. Not once has she called me Ford, she said it cheapened who I really was. Every time she said my name, I hated it a little more—nothing but nails on a chalkboard.
“I fell in love with you right then.” She leans hard into my chest. “I saw nothing else after that—just you, Crawford. And now all I see are your beautiful eyes, those full lips. You’re all mine. You asked me what I expected from this. I’ll tell you.” She presses her lips to my ear. “All of you.”
I pull my hand from her belly and gently return her to the seat beside me.
I forgo my wine glass and drink from the bottle.
All of me.
That’s exactly what she isn’t going to get, but if I want this baby to survive I’m afraid that’s what I’ll have to give.
I can’t keep adding to the body count. It’s time to man up, then run like hell once this baby is born, alive and healthy. I just hope Stevie is still in the vicinity when it’s all said and done.
She said she would be.
I lift the bottle toward the blood-red sky.
Now there’s a wish I’m hoping will come true.
Weeks drift by. Stevie and I grow more distant, and no matter how hard I try to pull us together, Evelyn plucks us right back apart. The company is hosting an employee mixer down at Kinx tonight, and the beehive is buzzing. My brothers and I revamped every detail at the club
because the last thing we wanted was to look like a cheap Gravity knock-off. In the end, I think we’ve actually managed to produce something better than originally planned. Carter had a stroke of genius and thought the club should convert to a coffee bar during the day to provide a twenty-four hour facility that the millionaire-rich community can enjoy. We installed a full-blown gym off the back, creating our own social hub. Lionheart can have its measly nightclub with its sparse hours of operation, and its even sparser social offerings. Hans Lionheart’s attempt to knock Jinx down has only made it better. Now to figure out a way to rectify that fucking app he swiped. I’ve got a few ideas, good ones too, so I head over to Carter’s office. The door is ajar, and I spot a pair of long legs standing in front of the desk, his arms wrapped around a girl. For a second I think it’s Stevie’s sister with the same long, dark hair, but she turns just slightly, and my stomach drops. It’s Stevie herself. Carter pulls her in even tighter and touches his cheek to hers.
“I’ll be here for you,” he says in that I’m-such-a-hero tone I’m starting to hate.
“What the fuck?” I burst in without giving it a second thought.
They don’t part ways. They don’t move. Stevie sags as if she were too worn out to care anymore. I had done this, intrinsically I know it, but Stevie is mine, and I’m not in the mood to negotiate.
“Take your hands off her.” I’ll rip him to pieces if he hesitates—and he does.
Carter takes a step back, and I slam him to the wall.
“Ford, stop!” Stevie screams loud and piercing as a fire alarm.
I knee my brother hard in the balls and crash my fist into his face in the event he’s not getting the message.
The door slams, and I glance back to see that Stevie is long gone, nothing but a stream of silence in her wake.