Better Off Dead : A Lucy Hart, Deathdealer Novel (Book One)

  ~*~

  Gabriel was on edge. Delia didn’t understand what was taking so long finding a suitable fake fiancée. Uncle Dante was being aloof about Cousin Francis’s progress on said subject. And his mother was sniffing around him like a freaking bloodhound. He was staying later at the office to steer clear of her.

  All this was making him start to feel like a caged animal. Or at the very least, like one being hunted, hunted slowly by a predator that knew it didn’t need to hurry, that its prey would be all the more appetizing after a long chase.

  And what was worse, Dante wasn’t answering his calls, which was a first. Dante was punctual, never absent, and always at his beck and call. So why was he suddenly not returning his phone calls? It had only been a few hours, yet his imagination had started running hard and fast. He imagined his mother chaining Dante to the wall of her kitchen, and torturing him with a red hot poker.

  The thought alone made him want to claw his eyes out, yet there it was. Only a few hours out of touch and he was already contemplating the worst. He breathed in harshly, and then tried to push all thoughts out of his head. He needed to center himself. Being undone by his fear would help nothing. He needed to stay calm and together. There would be a perfectly simple, banal explanation for his uncle’s absence.

  When Dante pushed through Gabriel’s office door, looking not only tired but rumpled, Gabriel jumped to his feet and went to the older man. “What’s happened?”

  “Your mother,” Dante said, pulling out a linen handkerchief and blotting the beads of sweat on his brow. Gabriel had never seen his uncle sweat before, not even on the few occasions where he joined the family for the hunt.

  “Shit! What did she do to you? Does she know?”

  Dante gracefully lowered himself into the chair in front of Gabriel’s desk, but the sudden jerk of his head to face Gabriel was the only thing that seemed startled about Dante.

  “What are you talking about? She knows absolutely nothing of our dealings.” His tone was cold, and Gabriel got the distinct impression that he was affronted by the mere idea he’d been rolled by anyone, let alone Gabriel’s mother. “She had me held captive in her kitchen—” Gabriel shook his head, trying not to picture his uncle chained to the wall again. “She’s really lost it when it comes to your father’s retirement.”

  “Retirement?” Gabriel felt his body relax as the tension melted from his muscles.

  “Yes, Vivian thinks your father is still spending far too much time at the company, and she wants to know why.”

  “Why?”

  “With a Masters in finance from Columbia and another in business, I’d hoped you’d have better questions to ask me.” Dante sounded pissy.

  “Oh, I just…”

  “She wants to know, is the time he’s spending here warranted, or just superfluous? If he’s needed, then what are we—as in you and I—doing wrong? And if he’s not needed, then is it simply habit or over protective behavior, or is he hiding something more covert and lecherous, or…” The look on Dante’s face was lugubrious.

  “There’s a possibility worse than Father having an affair?”

  Dante nodded. “She’s afraid he’s tired of her.”

  “What?” Gabriel jumped back out of the chair he’d finally just sat in. “She thinks he’s tired of her?”

  “She thinks he’s using the company as a way to avoid her. She’s as human as the rest of us. She has her own inner demons.”

  Gabriel had never considered his mother to be insecure in the least. She’d always been as strong as… well, she was a force onto herself. It never seemed to faze her that her husband spent laborious hours at work. And she was never weeping, or even moping around the house, waiting for him to come home. She was always busy with the country club, or arranging her family’s futures. She didn’t even seem ruffled when either of her sons had gone off to college for four years or more.

  And now she was being anxious about her marriage?

  “What gives?”

  Dante raised his eyebrows. “What gives is that she obviously had plans for when your father retired, and those plans have fallen far short of what she’d expected.” Which made sense. Vivian Enoch had planned everything out for the family so well, that she even planned on giving his brother Micah a few years to sow his wild oats before he fell in line.

  “How bad is it?”

  Dante finally looked flustered. “My phone rang too many times while I was with her. She fed it down the trash compactor.”

  That alone made him wince. His mother was stern and unflappable. To do something so out of character meant she was at the end of her rope. And the thought of that made Gabriel cringe.

  “We have to get your father to spend more time with her,” Dante said. “Before she has a meltdown.”

  “You really think Mom would lose it?”

  Dante’s expression was stone cold serious. “I think we don’t want to find out.”

  Gabriel gulped, but then a smile spread across his face. “At least, with her paranoid about Dad’s free time, she won’t be scrutinizing me and my love life so much.”

  “No.” Dante shook his head. “She’s still brow beating me about this secret paramour of yours.”

  Gabriel flopped down into the chair behind his desk again, deflated. “Call Francis and light a fire under him.”