The Family Cross

by Gabrielle Ash

  My father was dying. Soon to be six feet under. Dead.

  Why did I care so much? He treated me like dirt. A pawn. A piece on a chessboard. Go marry Richard, Matilda. He’s a good boy from a good family. He might try to murder you with bisque, but you’re such a doormat you’ll forgive him.

  I’d never analyzed my father’s behavior, or mine for that matter, with so much clarity before. Maybe I should start seeing a therapist.

  After towel drying my hair and stepping into my pajamas, I walked toward the kitchen in hopes of sinking my teeth into some pizza. The wine was good, but it vibrated through a system with no food in it. If I didn’t eat something soon, I would pay for it.

  “There you are, wino.” Samson stood by unopened pizza boxes with raised eyebrows. Hopefully he paid the pizza guy with actual money and not a bullet.

  “Don’t you mean girlfriend? Apparently, we’re dating.” The room moved even as I stood still. Oh no. I popped open a box and grabbed two slices of cheese pizza. The crust singed the ends of my fingers, and if I weren’t so sad, I might’ve felt it more. “I’m sad and scared. I’m allowed a moment of weakness.”

  Samson stacked five slices of supreme on his plate. How could the man eat so much? “You shouldn’t get drunk right now, Fancy Pants. Not a good idea.”

  “I’m not drunk, and I’m worthless in a fight anyway.” I grabbed a water bottle from the refrigerator and stared at my table. The chairs looked much more uncomfortable than they usually did. Surely, we could eat one meal on the couch without staining my cushions. “Couch?”

  Samson gave me a knowing look. “Now I know for a fact you’re drunk.”

  I ignored him and dropped onto the couch in front of the television. Samson sat down beside me, our legs almost touching. Perhaps Cliff was right. Maybe he did trust me…at least a little bit. The thought brought warmth to my cheeks that had nothing to do with the wine.

  Being close enough to hear him chew, however, brought his conversation with my father back to the forefront. Not only had he claimed we were dating, he had also dropped an interesting nugget of information.

  “Was anything you said to my father about your family true? You know, by the elevator?” I didn’t want to talk about my father’s cancer, or the fact that one of my brothers could be the one who bought my death. I just wanted to talk and eat.

  “It was all true.” Samson propped his feet on my coffee table. “My mom’s dead, and my dad…is an asshole.”

  “Your biological dad?” I rolled my head along the couch cushion to look at him. He smelled like cigarettes and shaving cream. Not blood and ash—stupid fae.

  “Uh…” Samson scrunched his nose. “Yeah.”

  “Didn’t you grow up in foster care?”

  “Yeah. But I still knew him.” He took a bite of pizza, almost eating half of it in one gulp. “Weird circumstances.”

  “Oh.” Samson’s whole life was weird, so that didn’t surprise me at all. Since Samson ate his pizza without scalding himself, I picked up mine and took a bite. “You said you and Vee grew up together. Siblings?”

  “Uh…sorta.”

  “Weird circumstances?” I asked, mouth full.

  “Weird circumstances.”

  “My father is an asshole too.” I’d never said the words out loud before, but a crushing weight on my sternum lessened considerably moments later. “But I’ve still…chased him. Followed his rules. Fulfilled his demands. Took every step he wanted. Dated an idiot for three months.”

  “He gave you a third of his shit though. He isn’t that big of an asshole.” Samson polished off his first slice and moved on to his second. A droplet of water ran down the side of his face. Why didn’t he dry his hair better? Would he get mad if I wiped it away? Probably.

  “No, no. It isn’t a gift.” I wagged my finger in his face, almost knocking my plate off my thighs with my elbow and onto my white rug in the process.

  “Sounds exactly like a gift.”

  “It isn’t. Sure, he’ll give me a third of his company if I agree to the strings inevitably attached to his shares.” The grief returned as the events of the afternoon came back. Meeting. Rolf. Gerard. “Which he assumes I’ll do.”

  “Will you?” he asked, bringing out my bottle of wine from where he’d set it beside his feet. I hadn’t seen him carry that to the couch.

  “I’m not sure. I suppose I’ll have to hear what the strings are on Monday.” My vision swam, like I’d somehow fallen into a pool and floundered beneath the surface. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be drunk right now.”

  “We’re not.” He pressed the wine bottle to his lips and took a giant swig. “Do you even want ’em at all? The shares?”

  “I’m not sure about that either.” I narrowed my eyes. “I have wineglasses, you barbarian.”

  He set the bottle on the table and completely ignored me.

  “I had a similar setup. With the strings. And Frank.” Samson’s words pulled me from the water in my head. I leaned in and tried to ignore how my heart leapt into my throat the second my thigh brushed against his. What was happening to me? “I know you heard Vee talk about Adam.”

  Adam. Vee had said she didn’t want to bury Samson like she’d had to bury Adam. I nodded slowly. Maybe now I’d get some sort of explanation.

  “Adam grew up with us. Me and Vee.” Samson glanced over at me and took a measured breath. Pain lingered there, although only for a moment. “When we started going on jobs for Frank, he told us we weren’t allowed to tell anyone about…well, us…or we’d pay for it.”

  I leaned over, set my pizza plate on the coffee table, and propped my elbows on my knees. My chin was nestled into the palms of my hands, holding my face still when everything else moved.

  “About two years ago, Adam met a girl. You know how that goes.” When I raised an eyebrow at him, Samson sighed. “They dated for like a year. Probably would’ve gotten married if we weren’t a bunch of psychos. Anyway, she got pregnant, and Adam didn’t like hiding things from her, especially since the kid would be…like him…so he told her.”

  “Told her what?” I asked.

  “Everything.”

  Everything. While I didn’t know the extent of everything, it didn’t take an Ivy League degree to figure out that if Adam’s life was anything remotely like Samson’s, then everything was more than that poor girl had bargained for.

  “And?” I prompted with wide eyes. “What happened?”

  “She left him.”

  My mouth fell open.

  “Adam tried to find her and, I don’t know, fix it or whatever. But he didn’t. She had the baby and tried to move on.” Samson sighed and rubbed his neck. “But it didn’t matter. Frank found out. Then he killed Adam and his girl.”

  My heart fell into my stomach. “And the baby?”

  “He probably stole her.” Samson kept his eyes forward and locked onto the lights of the New York City skyline shining through my window. “She’ll have Adam’s powers. Frank wouldn’t let that go to waste.”

  I wasn’t sure why that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, but the second he stopped talking, my lips puckered and chin quivered. The backs of my eyes burned, and before I knew it, tears were draining out of my eyes like a faucet.

  Samson sat up, palms out as he recoiled. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sitting here whining because my dad is mean, and your sort of brother was murdered because he fell in love.” I rubbed under my eyes and tried to stop crying, but I couldn’t. Everything was so wrong. Dead Adam. Dead Dad. Probably dead Tilly. “I’m so spoiled.”

  “Well, yeah, a little bit.”

  “I’m a spoiled doormat.”

  “Kinda.” He paused. “But you’re drunk right now. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  “I know.” Tears kept trickling from my eyes. What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I stop crying? “That was a really sad story, and I need a happy story right now, Sam!”

  The air moved in
the room. Maybe not literally, but things changed. The strings connecting us together threaded closer the second I slipped from Samson to Sam. I dropped my gaze to my hands, both twisted together and damp from my tears. We’d finally started, I don’t know, being friends or whatever, and I ruined it.

  “Hm. I don’t have any happy stories.” Samson turned his head along the cushions to look at me. If he was bothered by the slip, I’d never know, although I knew he’d heard.

  “Well…” Asking a hit man for happy stories wasn’t my best idea. I sniffed and wiped my face with my hands again. “You’ve had to have been happy at least once.”

  He stared at me, deep blue set against bloodred, and took a long, slow breath.

  “I have been. I’ll tell you about it some other time.” Samson sat up and grabbed the remote off the coffee table. “Let’s watch some TV.”

  In perhaps my most distinguished lapse in judgment, I reached over and put a hand on his knee. The denim might keep him out of my head, but thanks to the wine, my filter had long since disappeared. “Samson?”

  He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

  “I’m so sorry about Adam.” Samson’s gaze flickered over to mine, but he otherwise remained still. “And…and I’m sorry you had to live that way too. It sounds lonely and unfair…and I’m glad you left Frank.”

  Before he could break off my hand for daring to comfort him, I pulled away and picked up my plate again. I was incredibly tired, undeniably drunk, and unbearably sad. My nerves, frayed at the ends and exposed to the world, needed calm and rest. So I finished my pizza without saying another word, and I took comfort in the fact that while everything was going up in smoke, at least I wasn’t alone to suffocate in it.

  Twenty-Five

  When everything went to Hell in the movies, someone with virtually no power at all found the strength to carry on and fight the evildoers seeking to destroy the world or otherwise ruin everything. While my situation could always, inevitably, be worse, it didn’t feel like it when we rolled up to work on Monday, and I hoped I could pull it together long enough to get through the meeting with my father.

  All I wanted to do was go home and sit there. Forever.

  The fortieth floor bustled like always. People shuffled from cubicle to cubicle, talked to their desk neighbors, and typed on their keyboards. Accountants were everywhere: on phones, in break rooms, and within conference rooms. If nothing else, the scene was a reminder that even when your life fell apart, the world continued to spin and most people around you would remain completely oblivious to your pain.

  “After this meeting, I’m leaving,” I told Eliza as I passed her desk, heading to my father’s office. Samson slunk off to keep himself busy. While there wasn’t much investigating to do, my father would ask questions if he saw him again. Questions of the fake dating variety. “I won’t be back until next week.”

  Eliza pursed her lips and took the Bluetooth device out of her ear. “Are you okay?”

  “Not really.” There were so many things I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t. Not without putting her in danger…or having her think I was insane.

  “What’s wrong?” She stood up from her desk, a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. “Is it Richard?”

  “What? No. I wish I could say, but I can’t.” Eliza’s face fell. “This Friday there’s a party at the Horseshoe Club. Get a dress.”

  “Is it for work?” Eliza asked, voice inflected with suspicion.

  For her? It was a work party. For me? It was a possibly life-ending, definitely life-altering party.

  “Yes.” It felt like I was saying good-bye for some reason, and I absolutely hated it. “It’ll be…something.”

  Eliza’s gaze bored into the back of my head until I rounded the corner and stepped in front of the elevator. I normally didn’t take my phone with me around the building simply because my skirts didn’t have pockets, but I did this time. Samson wanted me to tell him when I moved.

  Heading to the top. I sent the text as the elevator opened. I was one of two numbers in his phone now, right after Cliff, under the name Fancy Pants.

  “Matilda!”

  My foot hovered over the ledge into the elevator—Richard. I swallowed and continued my stride. I couldn’t deal with Richard today. Not without losing it.

  “Matilda, wait.” He didn’t stop walking toward me. If I wouldn’t have felt horrible for it later, I would’ve pressed the Close Doors button.

  The doors started to shut, but he grabbed the edge of the right side. The doors bounced back open, and my heart sank.

  “Matilda,” Richard said and pressed the button I had longed to push: Close Doors. “We need to talk.”

  “Not today.” The doors started to shut again. So. Slow.

  “I—I want another shot.” Richard swiped all the buttons for the floors between us and the forty-sixth. No. “The restaurant, the proposal, the soup—it was all wrong.”

  “Richard—”

  “I’ll take you to another place. I’ll let you order your own dinner since you never told me about your allergies.”

  My jaw throbbed I clenched it so tight. I had told him.

  Forty-first floor. The doors opened to no one and shut again. My heart rate climbed with every passing second, and I ached to run my fist right through his face.

  “Who was that guy with you on Saturday?” Forty-second floor. The doors opened again to an empty void. “Is that why you said no? Were you cheating on me?”

  “No!” I took a deep breath. You hit a fae with a fryer basket! You can handle Richard Jones.

  “Then why would you turn me down?”

  Forty-third floor.

  The silence sitting in the elevator box shook me to the core. My life had been completely turned upside down and inside out. I was being hunted, had stumbled into a world that shouldn’t exist, and found out my father was dying. The last thing I needed to deal with was Richard and his inability to comprehend the meaning of the word no.

  “Because I don’t want to marry you,” I said, hands shaking at my sides. I said it. Finally. “Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

  “Because it’s ridiculous.” Richard scoffed. Forty-fourth floor. “We’ve known each other for years.”

  “We’ve known of each other for years. Richard, I don’t remember you ever asking me anything. Ever wondering what I like. What I do. You’ve not once asked me about my dreams…about what I want.”

  “You’re an Ashby. An heiress to a fortune.” Richard shook his head as he stared. Forty-fifth floor. “What more could you possibly want?”

  The question hit me in the chest and sank into my flesh, rendering me immobile as I stared at him.

  “I’m going to ask you again Friday night. At the party. In front of both our families.” Richard shook his head again, a grimace lingering on his face. “I know you’re going through a lot with your father and all, but you’ve got to think of your future.”

  Forty-sixth floor.

  With a high-pitched ping, the doors slid open, ushering in a gush of cool air and the faint scent of cigarettes. Samson was somewhere close, and the angry, bitter part of me hoped that Richard would catch a glimpse of him.

  “And why do you think my future has to include you?”

  “Our families built this company together. What makes you think that you have a future without me in it?” Richard’s voice grew softer. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove.”

  “You would if you stopped talking and just listened to me!”

  “I am listening, Matilda. I’ve listened to you for years.” Richard reached forward and grabbed one of my hands with his silky fingers. “Now listen to me: your family legacy is counting on you to make the right decision. Your father is dying. Don’t you think he’ll feel better if he knows you’re well taken care of? That the business is taken care of? Our families built this business. We can help it grow. Together.”

  A sharp breath shattered any illusion of control
I thought I had. I jerked my hand from his fingers and followed my tunnel vision to my father’s office. Too much. Too soon.

  I strode away as quickly as I could. Past the decorative plants. Past Blair’s empty desk. Past the chairs lining the wall. There was only so much walking I could do, though. Only so much space I could put between Richard and me. The hallway leading to my father’s office, suddenly much too short, couldn’t get me far enough away.

  Our families built this company together. What makes you think that you have a future without me in it?

  Twenty-Six

  My father had to have known something was wrong when I walked into his office, but I couldn’t tell by his scowl, and like always, he didn’t say a word to me about it. I could’ve walked in missing my head and he would’ve dismissed it. If it didn’t have to do with business, it wasn’t worth the time. He’d said it for years, and it wouldn’t stop because he was breaths away from being buried.

  The air smelled of my father’s aftershave: citrus and cedar wood. Not rot. Not Rolf.

  “Miss Ashby?” William stood in front of my father’s desk, watching me. “Are you all right?”

  I took a deep breath and tried to settle my heart rate. “I’m fine.”

  The chair pulled out for me beside William was the same chair Gerard had sat in on Saturday. Had Milton smelled Rolf the other day? Surely he had. Everyone had probably chosen to keep their thoughts to themselves until in private company. You could tear apart reputations better that way—part of being a stuck up.

  The sickness splintering from my stomach and into my limbs didn’t help the shake in my hands. Gerard. Blair. One of them had been Rolf in disguise. One of them had either been eaten or hired him.

  “Today we are starting the process of transferring your father’s shares into your name,” William said as he opened the leather folder. My father hadn’t even said hello to me yet. He just fiddled with a letter opener. “This will take some time to finalize, so we are starting it now to ensure it is done on time.”