Love on the Rise: Book Two of The Against All Odds Series

by Gemini Jensen

  Two seconds later, Dominic holds up my grandmother’s antique watch with a show of victory like he’s just found the golden egg. If there was ever a material item that held more intrinsic and sentimental value for someone, I’ve never heard of it. That watch is her most valued treasure. Besides me.

  Suddenly, Dominic leans forward and presses his lips to hers with bruising force. At first shocked, she doesn’t move. Then she begins thrashing wildly against him, but it’s all in vain because his hands are entwined around her, holding her like a vice. Eventually, she stops fighting, her body going rigid and stiff.

  Flashbacks of all the kisses I happened to get a glimpse of as a child hit me as I watch everything unfolding. How he never realized she was repulsed by him, I’ll never quite get. Or perhaps he knew all along and the fact brought him pleasure, being the cause of such distress in another person. The latter seems more likely of the two.

  Mom’s eyes are open, but they aren’t brimming with her signature expressiveness like they always are. Instead, they’re dull and have a faraway look in them, like her mind has traveled somewhere else and left her body behind.

  Seemingly satisfied from shocking his wife—by law only as she so astutely put—Dominic leans away so that he can pull out his phone. Buttons ping as he taps away at them, then places the device at the shell of his ear. His smile widens even more, and I know in my heart nothing good can come of it. From where I’m sitting, I can hear a male speaking on the other end of the line from the timbre of their voice. I can’t, however, hear what they’re saying to Dominic.

  “Well, is that any way to talk to your big brother who you love and respect oh so much? What about your superior? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, my little Jamie. Father would pop you in the jaw for disrespecting me, you know.”

  This time I can hear what the voice on the other end says. “Father’s not with us anymore, but I hardly think he’d be proud,” Jameson replies, sweeping his brother’s jab under the rug.

  “I didn’t call to argue with you, Baby Brother. I called to video-chat with you,” he states with overt enthusiasm. He hits a button on his screen, then turns his back on Mom and me so that he can fit us all into the screen like some fucked up selfie; one man looking completely mental, staggered between two women in the background who have been bound, one of whom looks as rough as a dead prostitute in an alley.

  The first image I’ve seen of myself the entire time I’ve been here is startling. Sickening.

  Dick.

  “Say hello to your family. While you’re at it, I’d say goodbye too. It’s the last time you’ll be seeing them. Tomorrow at dawn, they’ll be executed. You might ask, why not at dusk if I’m going for symbolism. Twilight and endings are more befitting, right? Wrong. I’m executing them at dawn because it’s a new day for our family. It’s a new day for me. I can finally get rid of my cheating wife and the product of our failed marriage.” He points the camera at me.

  Good God. My appearance is gaunt and haggard. I look like a freaking meth addict who’s relapsed and went on a binge of doing nothing but my drug of choice. My drug of choice…if I had a drug of choice it would have to be Gray. And if I had to specifically choose a vice, it would be sex with Gray. And I highly doubt surrendering to my vices would make me look so awful. I’d be glowing instead.

  Maybe, right before I die, I’ll convince myself that I’ve finally succumbed to Gray-induced withdrawal symptoms. If I tell myself something kind of far out there, maybe I’ll be off in fantasyland when I bite the bullet and my mind won’t be filled with panic in my final moments.

  “Fuck you,” Jameson spits, and I finally look at his face and see, for once, that Mom is right. She always said I looked more like my father; she meant it in an ambiguous way that didn’t make sense at the time, but it clicks now. It just sucks we’ll never get to make up for lost years. I drown out the voices as I stare at the screen seemingly floating around in the air.

  Jameson alters his position, and I get a brief glimpse of Gray standing behind him. My entire torso constricts and I swear something inside my stomach flutters. I’d like to think it’s me feeling the baby move for the first time, but I don’t know if that’s plausible at the beginning of my second trimester.

  If I had one final wish, it would be to hold Gray in my arms once more, just for a minute. To look into his eyes, and tell him everything he is to me, what he stands for, how he’s been my lifeline in not giving up hope in such a desolate place, and all my hopes for us that I’ve always been too scared to admit.

  “Any last words we’d like to say, Valentina?” Dom prompts me.

  “Sure, why not?” I shrug my shoulders as I try to fight the tremor wracking my body from transferring into my voice. “Jameson, even through all this, I’m glad it was you and not him.” I stare directly into Dominic’s eyes as I say this, taking a few extra moments than necessary before finally clearing my throat and adding, “Gray, I’m so sorry. None of this was your fault. None of it. There’s not a thing you could have changed, so don’t feel guilty! God, please don’t be consumed with guilt. Don’t beat yourself up. You are the best man I’ve ever known and I want the same thing you’ve always wanted for me…love and a lifetime of happiness.”

  He appears so tiny on the screen, but I can still make out his expression. Anger and pain mix together on an agonizingly beautiful face. He’s almost too beautiful to look at, especially with all the ugliness I’ve seen in here. But I stare at him like it’s the only thing tethering me to my sanity, and I continue…

  “You know what you mean to me, I can’t say it here because you made me promise that night at the Charity Event I wouldn’t unless we could give each other the world. As of right now, I can’t, so I won’t spoil that now. I won’t taint those words with the dirtiness of this place. Just know… I would have waited for you until I was ninety years old on my deathbed.” I try not to choke on the tears I feel forming as I think of his words to me, him admitting he still wanted me but everything was too complicated at the moment, how he didn’t expect me to wait on him even though his voice was brimming with the hope that I would. Then finally, how he just wanted me to live happily. Well, there is no happy without him. I can barely school the pain from my tone, but I force myself to. For him. I thought that day in the car would be our final words, but I had been wrong. In all likelihood, I know I’m probably uttering my final goodbye when I say, “But since our time seems to be up, if there’s another life after this one, know I’ll be waiting for you there, instead.”

  There’s a loud commotion from Jameson and Gray’s end of the line, leading me to believe something was just shattered into a million pieces. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was just the sound of my heart bursting into fragments and raining into the pit of my soulless shell of a body. It’s a real possibility because right now all that’s left of me is an exoskeleton.

  “My oh my, maybe I should be taking notes to write the plot for a movie.” Dom chuckles, amused. Aiming the shot more toward Mom, he goads, “Althia, anything you’d like to add?”

  “Not really, No.” Jameson’s expression falls a little as she says these words. She throws in at the last second, “Only that I hope you’ll take extra special care of my mother’s watch. It’s an heirloom you know.” She stares straight into the screen this time.

  Her and that damn watch. She’s obsessed over it for years.

  That’s truly what she wants to say to the man she loves?

  Her final farewell?

  Take care of her damn watch?

  I know stress causes people’s minds to not work right, but damn…

  Puzzlement washes over Jameson’s expression as a deep line forms between his dark brows. He must be thinking the same thing I am about her mind being under too much pressure because he simply says, “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she answers back, “but what I really care about, is my watch.”

  I can’t help but shake my head in confusion. Dominic begins to
cackle so loudly, I can’t help but glance in his direction. Apparently, his crazy ass is just as perplexed at the rationality of the request.

  “You never were too bright. What a demand,” he clucks his tongue. “Do you not remember I just took it from you?” Dominic laughs at my mother’s final wishes and I wish he’d get a little closer so I could stretch out my feet, which aren’t bound at the moment, and kick him square in the ass. “Well, little Jamie, farewell. After tomorrow, maybe we can get back to being a true family again once I get rid of the proof of your betrayal to me. Thank me for erasing history later. I know it’ll take some time for you to get used to the idea. You’ll understand it one day though.”

  And with that, he ends the call.

  He ends my last sight of Gray, and despite all I really saw was a flash of gold in the way of his eyes, I feel like I’m a little more at peace with finally typing ‘The End’ on the story of my life.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Gray

  CRYSTAL SHATTERS ON the hardwood floor, splintering into tiny shards of sand. The exploding vase is a metaphor for my life. I used to say a man wasn’t much of a man if he went around breaking things out of frustration. In the past week, I’ve broken more things than I care to take credit for.

  She basically just told me she loved me. And by failing to actually utter those three words, she also told me she was giving up. I know I told her once that I wanted the first time she ever said them to be when we could give each other the world, a time we could make a thousand promises to one another with a hundred percent sureness we would be keeping them. But damn if it wouldn’t have been nice to hear those words. It could have been my last chance…

  NO. I WILL NOT THINK LIKE THAT.

  I hear Jameson talking to Althia, or rather, her speaking her final piece to him. “I love you,” he replies, confusion and hurt settling into his voice.

  “I love you too, but what I really care about, is my watch,” Althia urges with crazed emphasis.

  A few more moments pass of me being lost in thought. I glance over just in time to see the screen go black. In those final milliseconds before the call ends, I get one last shot of the girl with the silver eyes. An image that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  Seeing Valley as she spoke on the phone…it was so much worse than the picture. The picture could have been bad lighting, bad angle, a filter to make the bruising on her face more pronounced. The video proved otherwise. Her thinned out curves, slender face, and hollowed eyes were all on display; everything taunting me, provoking me to blow up like a ticking time-bomb; provoking me to self-destruct and obliterate everything in the way of me getting to her at the same time.

  “Did she say something about a watch?” I ask, attempting to cut the wires of said bomb.

  “Yeah. For a second I’d thought she was going delusional. But then Dom said he had her watch…Fuck. I’ve got it.” He leaps up and runs into the back office.

  “What?” I chase after him.

  “The watch!” he yells in excitement.

  Has he lost his fucking mind as well?

  What the fucking fuck is going on here?

  “What about it? It’s an item. An item that’s hardly worth the time wasted speaking about it. There are lives on the line here. We have a definite deadline, Jameson. Tomorrow morning,” I remind him urgently.

  “No, the watch,” he repeats again. “I remember now. She once told me she would put a tracker in it. Back when she first left, cell phones were a fairly new concept and we were afraid they’d be too easy to trace if Dom suspected I’d helped her. She said, in case of emergencies, she’d have a tracking device placed in her mother’s watch. It was a good plan, particularly if something happened and she had to escape without telling me where they were headed beforehand. She wears that thing every day, no fail. I’ve just never had to use it and completely forgot.”

  Yanking open the top drawer of his filing cabinet, he begins flipping furiously through the files until he lands on a file labeled Expenditures 2002. He pulls the stack of papers out, and folded up right in the middle, is a small, sealed envelope. Fitness Track is scrawled across the front. He rips it open and reads whatever instructions are contained within the cursive writing.

  Pulling out his laptop, he fires it up and begins pecking at the keys wildly. As I watch him type, I’m hit with a sense of déjà vu, which plucks a similar memory right out of my head.

  ~XoXo~

  Three Years Ago…

  A loud staccato reaches my ears just before I push open the door, not even bothering to knock. It’s doubtful my soft and respectful rapping would carry over the loud pounding that’s already stemming from within the room. The door swings open, only to come to an abrupt stop. Poking my head through, I find about ten boxes stacked and sitting against the door, apparently full of files and important documents. Giving an extra shove, the door gives just enough to create a space I can barely squeeze my big body through.

  I step into Jameson’s office to find him hammering away furiously at the keys of his laptop. What type of computer can withstand such abuse? I’m slightly amazed keys aren’t breaking off and flying in all directions, prompting me to make a mental note to learn the make and model so I can procure one for myself.

  A computer with keys of steel and it’s seemingly immune to male owners with a lot of pent-up frustration? Sounds right up my alley.

  Jameson is currently hunkered over the gadget, eyes squinted and lips quirked downward. Growling, he thrusts his hand through his hair, pushing the longer russet strands from his eyes. From the stiff set of his jaw coupled with the animalistic sounds that keep escaping his lips, it’s easy to determine his mood. Basically, he’s not going to be shitting out rainbows and belting out the tune to a Broadway musical today.

  Not too eager to trade places with his poor keyboard and become his punching bag, I’m instantly on edge. I’m not outright afraid of him, but we’ve squabbled before, and he’s one hell of a contender. I carefully lay out the packages I’ve just acquired at his request, reaching under my other arm to also slide his mail onto the desk. Sometimes I act as errand boy, which has me doing anything from benign tasks like checking the mail, to picking up illegal shit which I courier from Point A to Point B. Like today.

  He never looks up. Never says thank you. Just keeps doing whatever it is he’s doing, and I know better than to get too inquisitive about things that aren’t my business. Particularly where he’s concerned.

  “Do you know how to use a gun?” Jameson asks out of the blue, voice low and testy. Notice there was no “Thanks, Gray for running my errands” or “I appreciate you taking the risk by picking up that shipment for me.” Luckily, I at least know I’m not smuggling narcotics because that would be a hard limit. Stolen goods such as jewels that have been disassembled and can’t be traced, weapons and ammo, falsified documentation, all those things don’t set my moral compass spinning out of control the way drugs or even worse, being involved in the skin trade would. I’m thankful Dominic has never pushed his organization toward that level of fucked-up-ness, even though Jameson assures me it has been suggested before.

  And while I know they do dabble in drugs, Jameson always steers the both of us away from being involved in those dealings. The drugs are handled by Dominic. Jameson refuses to stoop that low and it works on his behalf that his brother doesn’t want anyone else in control of that portion of his empire. Apparently, it’s his cash-cow.

  A year ago, I would have laughed in someone’s face if they told me I’d be standing in these shoes today; it’s crazy how far a person will go in order to better the lives of their loved ones.

  The permanent scowl that always sits on Jameson’s face deepens when he sits up straight in his chair, looking at me expectantly.

  “Do I know how to use a gun?” I repeat the question back to him and shrug. “Was I born and raised in North Carolina? If you can answer that question, then you have the answer to the one you just asked m
e.”

  Anyone with a lick of sense would know if you’re from the south, you basically learn to use a gun before you’re even in elementary school. Hunting is a big thing back home, and even girls are taught how to use the things.

  Jameson’s brows droop lower as his eyes transform into two angry dashes. His nostrils flare in annoyance, yet he surprises me by ignoring my cocky remark altogether. Standing, he snatches his keys from the decorative ceramic tray sitting at the corner of his desk, one that appears to have been made by an eight-year-old—but who am I to judge? For all I know, it could be made by the Pablo Picasso of the pottery world and worth thousands.

  While he powers down the computer and straightens his desk, I flip the piece of art over, attempting to read the bottom. VEM Grade 2, is engraved in the bottom and I slide my fingers over the letters.

  Jameson clears his throat and I glance up at him. His eyes are a little softer now as he catches sight of what I’m holding.

  “She made that for me about a month before they left.”

  I nod, running my fingers over the initials she sloppily formed at a young age, desperate to be close to her by touching something she once held in her hands. I sit the ceramic carefully back in its place, resigning myself back to business as usual.

  “You might know how to use a gun, but do you know how to handle one?” His tone has settled to the voice of an instructor. One who knows what he’s talking about, and assumes his pupil has much more yet to learn. Before I can answer, he tosses me his keys. Brushing past me, he stacks the storage boxes up neatly, effectively increasing the swing-span of the door.

  “Let’s go for a drive.”

  ------

  Following the route laid out by the GPS system, I head for the highway, watching as the brick-and-mortar jungle of the city where I now reside peels away to reveal a stretch of rural-ish road. After about thirty minutes, the robotic voice flows choppily from the speaker to alert us our exit is coming up.