“No, I’m expecting a kayak from Amazon.” But the joke was lost on my mother. “Yes, I’m pregnant. I’m going to have a baby.”
I tried to lure Meatball out of the pool, but he didn’t want to come out anymore. I started to dog paddle around him to show him what he used to be able to do. But he only saw this as an invitation to try to pounce on me. He reminded me of a string-puppet, swaying from one side to the other, with just his front paws sticking out and daintily flapping in the water.
My mother sat up. “Anyone I would know?”
I couldn’t help but snort a laugh at the last hope casing my mother’s voice. Did the father come from a prominent family? Would I be the one to save the Sheppards, as she had once done by getting pregnant with me? “No one you know, Mother.”
Like that last bit of soda at the bottom of a cup, my response had sucked every last smidgeon of hope out of her. She got up, her face turning to stone.
“I need access to the money in my trust fund,” I told her before she could escape. I did need the money. Badly. But more so, I wanted her to admit that things were not what they seemed. It wasn’t that I wanted to thrive on her misery, as she would mine. I needed her to admit that she was human—that shit happened, even to her and the prominent Sheppards.
My mother stopped, took a sip, and looked over the rim of her glass but did not look at me. “You have no trust fund. There is no money. I have nothing for you.”
And there it was. My parents, who once had more money than anyone should ever be allowed to have to themselves, were broke.
My mother walked to the doors and stopped, keeping her back to me. “It would be best if you left the house and stayed away. Your father is under enough scrutiny as is. If the papers get news of this, it will cause irreparable damage to your father’s already precarious situation.”
The chill of her rejection trickled down from the top of my head, down my neck to the back of my knees. Meatball must have felt the chill because he stopped the game and balanced his way to the steps, where he waited, water dripping.
It wasn’t as though I had expected my mother to be pleased about becoming a grandmother. In her synthetic mind, she was still in her twenties, not her fifties. And I certainly hadn’t expected her to welcome the news of an heirless child with open arms. But this form of rebuff, disownment of her only child’s child, one who had done nothing wrong but be born to me, Emily of the Sheppard clan, was a new low for my mother.
I never wanted to hurt her more than I did at this very moment. “Why does Father call your family dirty?” I wondered with a hiss in my voice before she could fully disappear into the house.
She stood gracefully erect, ready to spit fire. “Your father forgets that all money is dirty. If your father were to look at the story of anyone who has made a fortune in history, he would find that none have clean hands. The promise of money makes humans do awful things to each other. My family may have made a quick fortune from the rise of cocaine and heroin in the seventies, but at least it wasn’t off the backs of slaves in America.”
She left the pool, deserting me.
I got out of the pool and towel-dried Meatball and me.
My mother was a thief of any joy that could possibly come to me. As a child, I prayed to a God that I didn’t know, hoping that she would change. Hoping that she would see me. I never understood why she hated me so much.
The screwed-up thing was that I loved my mother. I knew I loved her because her unbroken rejections took small pieces of me every time. Whoever said that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all didn’t know my mother.
****
When I got to my room, I went to my bed and started gathering up Bill’s treasures. The pain that was twisting inside me should have been enough to make me cry. But I didn’t let myself give in to tears that had already soaked my girlhood pillow.
Maria came in, carrying a breakfast tray. She smiled in a way that reaches over and strokes your cheek.
I cleared my throat and stretched a brave smile.
“Don’t be so hard on your mother,” she told me softly, putting the tray down at the foot of the bed. “She’s been going through a very difficult time.”
“You overheard us talking?” I had my back to her, putting my brother’s things back in the box.
“I guessed as much when I saw you yesterday. Pregnancy gives women a youthful glow that no wrinkle cream in the world will ever be able to match.”
Maria kneeled next to me and put her hands over mine, stopping my progress. “You’re about six months along, yes?”
I couldn’t look at her, so I nodded over the box.
There was no hesitation in Maria’s movement. She pulled my shoulders toward her body and wrapped her arms around me. I was taller and bigger than her (definitely rounder), but in that moment I felt tiny. I felt like the little girl who used to occupy this room and wished for the very same thing that was happening to me.
“Congratulations, sweetheart,” she whispered in my ear.
When I realized what she was doing, I jumped back. “Maria, you’ll get fired if my mother catches you.”
She flapped a hand in the air. “Bah.”
I watched her. And I knew. “She’s firing you too, isn’t she?”
She kept an unaffected smile and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m just here to help her through the holidays.”
“Why? She doesn’t deserve that. She doesn’t deserve you. You’ve been here for her, for us, all these years, and this is how she repays you.”
“She hasn’t always been like this, you know. When I first started working here, when your mother and father were just married, your mother was, well, a lot like you. But your father’s family, they’re not easy people. My mother used to say that a woman can only love an ogre so much for so long before it starts to change her.”
Was my father supposed to be the ogre?
“Your mother thought she was marrying for love, and she continued to love your father, despite him, despite who he really was.”
There was a moment of silence as we realized what Maria was really saying. That my mother loved my father more than she loved me. That she had been molding me—trying to mold me—into the perfect Sheppard, so that my father would love her back.
“So, you’re having a baby,” Maria exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “Let me guess. The father’s tall, dark, and handsome?”
“Am I that predictable?”
“For years we saw that boy coming around, driving around the property, checking on you. Lansing caught him sneaking into the house on your sixteenth birthday. Darlene always said he would be the young man who would come to take your heart.”
Maria had no idea the bomb she had set off inside of me. On the outside, I kept blank-faced, but inside, it was a nuclear holocaust.
“Where’s the father now?”
I bent my head.
I knew that Cameron had been watching over me for many years, because Bill had asked him to. But Cameron, near my house, under my parents’ roof, on my birthday … I hated my birthdays without Bill. But my sixteenth birthday was the worst of all. My mother had put together a huge bash of people I didn’t know. I had been introduced—over and over again—to the families of potential suitors. Placed on a pedestal, ready to be auctioned off to the highest bidding family. My father off to the side, talking business, not even noticing when I had blown out the sixteen candles on my cake. My mother constantly rearranging me between meetings. The best part of the night was being able to scarf down some cake with Maria and Darlene in the kitchen.
Maria had been watching me a little while as I pushed items around Bill’s box so that I could fit more in.
“Do you remember when you were a little girl and Darlene told you not to touch the stove because it was hot?” she reminisced. “You touched it anyway and got a nasty, nasty burn? You didn’t even cry. You walked to the sink and doused your hand under cold water. It was as though you knew
it was going to happen but tried it anyway to make sure, ready to deal with the consequences after.”
I did remember doing that. My hand hurt like hell for days.
Maria tittered. “You were the most stubborn, challenging little person I had ever met. I never knew what trouble you were going to get yourself into next, but I always knew that, no matter what, you were going to find a way.”
Tired of waiting for someone to offer him some of my breakfast, Meatball had helped himself to a piece of bacon. Then he waited to see if he were going to get into trouble. When nothing happened, he cleaned the plate.
“Where are you going to go?” Maria asked me while I struggled to slide the flaps of the overflowing box closed.
“I don’t know. But I have to get out of here.” Because my mother had thrown me out, because I couldn’t breathe when she was too close. It was amazing how claustrophobic one could feel in so much space.
“But it’s Christmas Eve. You shouldn’t be alone on Christmas.”
Maria put her hand on my shoulder. “Stay. Your mother and father are leaving for the city today. They’ll be gone for a few days. We can spend the holidays together.”
I hadn’t realized it was Christmas Eve. I really didn’t want to be alone on Christmas. But that didn’t mean that I was ready to ruin Maria’s Christmas either. No one wants to spend Christmas with their deadbeat boss’s kid. No matter how much Maria loved me, I would always be Isabelle Sheppard’s spawn.
Maria chimed in before I could find a good enough excuse. “I’ve already told Darlene that you’re here. She’ll be here as soon as your parents leave. We’ll get drunk and plug in the karaoke machine in the party room. Well, Darlene and I can get drunk. You can watch.”
She was genuinely excited.
I leaped over my box and into her arms.
I couldn’t wait for my parents to get out. In the meantime, Meatball and I spent most of the day walking the property. He dug into every flowerbed he could find, and when I ordered him to stop digging, he dug more fervently. So I let him destroy the yard.
When my parents finally left, Darlene drove in right away, as though she had been waiting by the gates.
There were lots of hugs and rubbings of my belly. Darlene sent the young kitchen staff packing and took over the kitchen—her kitchen. Darlene and Maria kept their promise. They got good and drunk, digging out the best booze. I got the virgin versions.
It was as though nothing had changed. Even though everything had changed. Or maybe I had just never really paid attention before.
I had always assumed that Darlene and Maria were best friends. There was friendship there. But there was also love. I watched them as they watched each other. Giggled at things I did not get. By the end of the night, they were dancing together, and I was smiling so hard my face was going to split in two. I was happy that I had gotten the chance to see this before they disappeared from my life.
I excused myself, citing fatigue, which was true. Really, I just wanted them to get to spend Christmas together without having to babysit me for once in their lives.
****
In the middle of the night, there was a knock at my door. Maria opened it before I had time to say anything.
“Look who I found lurking by the gates.”
Out of the shadows, he walked into my bedroom. Maria gave me a knowing, slightly drunken smile before closing the door behind her.
“I just keep fucking up, don’t I?” Griff told me.
Yes, he did.
I sat up in bed and turned on my bedside lamp. “How did you know I was here?”
“You left your cell phone on your bed. When I found the house empty and all your stuff left behind, I was going to try calling the number that said ‘home.’ And if that didn’t work, I was going to call the cops. Some lady picked up when I called. She confessed that you were here. She sounded like the same lady who just brought me in here.”
“Her name is Maria.”
“It cost me a fortune to cab it all the way here from Callister.”
“You were gone awhile. Where did you go?”
“I got drunk and flew home to England.”
I sighed. “Your mom and brothers must have been happy to see you.”
“Never made it out of Heathrow. I realized as soon as the plane took off that I was making an idiot’s mistake. As soon as the plane landed in London, I went searching for a flight back. It took me a while. Everything was booked up for the holidays.”
Meatball dragged himself out of a deep sleep to let his heavy head fall on Griff’s lap.
“Can you forgive me? Again?” Griff wondered.
As much as his leaving had hurt me badly, I knew I wasn’t innocent in the spreading of pain. “Only if you can forgive me for lying, for keeping the pregnancy from you. For not telling you about Cameron and me.”
Griff watched me. I could swear there was pity in his eyes.
“Have you changed your mind?” he asked me.
“About?”
“About going to the barn and talking to the drug guy?”
I stared back at Griff. My resolve had only fortified. Pops was my last hope, and I now had a plan. I knew how he could help me.
“That’s what I thought.” He took my hand and placed a piece of paper in it. “Happy Christmas.”
CHAPTER 12: CAMERON
THE END IS JUST THE BEGINNING
“Aye,” Slobber announced.
“Nay,” Kostya answered.
The time had come for the Coalition to take a stand, one way or another. We were joining forces with Julièn, or we were letting the cartel slowly take over our drug trade. Every captain had his or her reasons for voting one way or another. What they didn’t realize was that with each vote, their Coalition was breaking. The underworld was about to detonate. The question was: how much of this would seep into the real world, where Emmy lived?
“Nay,” Johnny said.
“Nay,” Dorio said.
The Italian and Asian Mafia. Double-crossing bastards. How much were they snitching to Shield about what was going on in the Coalition? I had been waiting to see which way they were going to vote, because it would give me a glimpse into Shield’s demented brain.
Nay. It seemed Shield didn’t want us to move in with the Mexican president, even though it would be the death of me. He wanted to pick the captains off, one at a time, from the shadows, like the underhanded little twerp he was. He wanted to take the Coalition from me, see me lose everything, then kill me. I would die, but not at his will and not before I chopped his hands off and watched him bleed to death.
“Aye,” Manny said.
I hadn’t told the captains that Manny had been the one to screw up the meeting with the cartel, permanently severing relations. Telling them would have signed her death warrant—they would have fed her to the cartel, like beef stew, with the tiniest of hopes that this would be enough to get the cartel back to the table. The cartel had remained mum about the incident because they had no proof that one of our captains, Manny, had orchestrated the assault—any witnesses to our presence at the Thai restaurant were dead, and it was hard to imagine that anyone could have ever survived the blast. The fact that Manny and I had survived would have been suspicious. But even if they had found out that we had been there all along, even if one of their men had survived and told them we were there, having an escape plan “just in case” was not abnormal. And Manny did have a brand-new bullet hole in her thigh—proof that we hadn’t been immune. As far as they knew, the Vasquez group—the only family that remained untouched in this debacle—was behind the whole thing. For now, the Munoz and Castillos stood down, watched, and waited.
I had never hidden anything from the captains, except perhaps the real story behind Emmy’s snatching. Because of Shield, the Coalition was on the verge of collapse no matter what I did. For the good of the underworld and the other world, I needed to fortify whatever was left of the Coalition before Shield could have control over all of i
t. Neither of the worlds would survive that.
“Aye,” said Viper, eying Manny. He was the last to vote, and with that, we had a tie. The Coalition was split right down the middle.
All heads turned to me as the deciding vote.
“Aye,” I said.
I had sealed my fate.
****
Carly slapped a piece of paper in front of me and started pacing back and forth. She had insisted on meeting with me after the Coalition vote and stormed into the meeting room as soon as everyone had vanished.
“You meant for me to find this,” she accused.
I should have known Carly would go snooping before it was time. I knew she had found it a while ago and wanted to talk to me about it when I was on my way to visit Pops. But she didn’t really know what to make of it. She had finally put two and two together. This argument had been meant for her to have with my corpse.
“Now I understand what you’ve been doing with all of your money. This must have cost you a fortune. What else have you been hiding from Spider and me? How long did it take you to cover your tracks so that it couldn’t be traced back to you?”
“A while,” I admitted, avoiding her first question and glancing over the aerial pictures of the property—a small island in the South Pacific. I had purchased it, sold it, purchased it again through various corporations and charitable organizations, some fake, some legit. It had cost me a whole lot more than it was worth. And yet it was priceless.
“The vote today,” Carly said, her tone still biting. “You’re going to be doing exactly what you said you were never going to do. Work with Julièn when you know what he’s going to do. What he’s going to get you to do. Assassinate the cartel so that you can take over the Mexican trade with him at your side. He knows only you can get it started for him. And then you’ll die when all of Mexico’s drug world goes after your top job.”
“Is that what you think?”
“‘You kill the heads of the cartel families, and a hundred more are born.’ That’s what you told me once.”
Damn Carly’s impeccable memory.
“It is a beautiful place,” I told her, pointing at a picture of the sandy beach. “Completely uninhabited, and you can watch humpback whales go by from your backyard. Though you’ll need to take good notes. You’re supposed to be there to study their migration. That’s your cover.”