The man who claimed to be my father sat in the front passenger seat. Everything about him was stiff and hard as stone. His suit hadn’t a single wrinkle or sweat stain, and despite the heat and humidity, he’d kept his suit jacket on. I was beginning to think that the suit was its own living, breathing entity. It was too damn perfect. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a small wrinkled alien living in the sleeves, controlling the senator/ suit being.
A phone vibrated in the front seat. “PRICE.” The senator barked into the receiver. After a few seconds of mumbling into the phone, he reached overhead and pressed a button, closing the blacked out partition, separating the front seat from the back.
I sat in the back on one side of the bench seat, a small child’s body length away from the boy who’d introduced himself as Tanner.
My boyfriend?
No HER boyfriend.
“You know…,” Tanner said to me in a whisper, a mischievous look in his chestnut eyes. “…he’s the very reason they stopped calling the thing you say when you answer the phone a ‘greeting.’” I forced a small smile and Tanner went back to staring out the window.
For most of the hour-long ride, when I knew he wasn’t looking, I stared at Tanner’s profile and willed my broken brain to scroll through its lost Rolodex, hoping to locate the card that listed Tanner and what my feelings were for him.
Tanner was good-looking in that fresh-faced toothpaste commercial kind of way. But all I kept thinking when I looked at him was that he seemed…nice. And even though he was my age, he was still just a boy.
Which was one word I could never use to describe…him.
I couldn’t bring myself to think about him just yet. I didn’t want to. It was all too much to process. King’s betrayal, his arrest. I couldn’t process it. But when I looked over at Tanner again, I couldn’t help but make a comparison. Where Tanner was clean skin and sunshine, tall and lean like his body was built by swimming laps in a pool, King was tanned and tattooed with a constant thunderstorm in his eyes. His muscular body looked as if it were built by wrestling with the devil himself.
When I wasn’t staring at Tanner, I knew he was looking at me because I felt his stare burning a hole in my cheek. But every time I turned my head his way he averted his eyes and pretended to be interested in something out the window.
And then there was the little boy.
The fact that I could be a mother was completely ridiculous.
Unbelievable at best.
But oddly enough, he was the only thing in that car I felt sure about.
My father, my boyfriend, my son. The Town Car was filled with my supposed family, and yet, with the exception of the little one, every fiber of my being was telling me my family was getting further and further away with every mile we drove.
KING.
Maybe it was all a lie. Every single bit of it. King had told me he loved me. Maybe that was a lie too. I didn’t know what I could believe anymore.
Don’t just be alive. Live. He’d told me.
So I lived.
And I loved.
The anger I’d been feeling toward King for lying to me had temporarily fallen away the second I saw the look of disappointment cross over his face when he realized Max wasn’t in that car.
And then when the detective put him in cuffs, all I felt was blinding rage.
I wanted to fight for him. I wanted to be the one to give him his daughter back. I wanted to give him everything in my power, but all I could do was watch the horrible scene that unfolded in front of me, paralyzed in the arms of the senator as they hauled King away. My insides felt like they were being squeezed to death as King was shoved into the detective’s car and carted back to a windowless cell somewhere.
I meant it when I’d told the senator that King had saved me. And I didn’t mean the times he’d saved me from Ed or even from Isaac.
I meant when he’d saved me from myself.
I never expected to fall in love with King. My captor, my tormentor, my lover, my friend, my world.
But I did.
The boy on my lap stirred, his little breaths warmed my skin through my shirt where his nose was pressed tightly against my stomach.
I had questions. So many questions that my head was ringing worse than when Nikki had shot me. I wanted to shout them out rapidly like rounds from a machine gun, but I didn’t want to scare the chubby cheeked boy whose eyelashes touched his cheeks while he slept. I ran my fingers through his soft curly hair and he sighed with sleepy contentment.
“I can’t believe it’s you, Ray. I thought I would never see you again and here you are sitting next to me. Do you remember me yet? Or him? Or anything?” Tanner asked tentatively. My eyes darted up to meet the only thing I remembered from my past life; the beautiful chestnut colored eyes from my dream.
I shook my head. “Just your eyes. I dreamt about them. Once,” I admitted.
“So you dreamt about me, huh?” Tanner wagged his eyebrows suggestively. He nudged my shoulder with his elbow and I shifted away from the unfamiliar contact. “Sorry,” he said when he saw me stiffen. “Habit.”
“It’s okay,” I offered, although I wasn’t sure if it really was okay. “I need to ask you about him though.”
Tanner looked lovingly down at the boy. “Ask away.”
“I mean, how old is he? You said I’m eighteen. When did all this happen? How?”
“How?” Tanner laughed nervously. “Well, Ray, when a man and woman love each other…” He paused when he saw I wasn’t smiling. “Sorry. I’m so used to joking around with you. You’re kind of the only one who gets my jokes, or at least you used to.” Tanner ran his hand through his curls and sighed. He pulled at the stitching on the leather seat.
The car pulled to a stop in front of a large three-story house, with bright pink stucco. Tall twisting columns lined the front porch which was full of pink plastic flamingos and garden gnomes in various sizes. The long driveway was cut into lines that mimicked fans and was also painted the same garish shade of pink. The lawn was littered with more plastic flamingos. Concrete fountains, at least thirty, all in different styles were scattered around the yard.
“This is me,” Tanner said, opening the door. He picked the little boy off my lap and my heart constricted.
“Wait, where are you going?” I asked, suddenly feeling panicked.
“He’s had a long day. He used to spend most nights at your place but he’s been staying with me since you’ve been gone,” Tanner said. And although I didn’t remember the little boy I couldn’t help but feel disappointed he wasn’t coming with me. Tanner must have sensed my disappointment, because he added, “But I promise, I will come by soon. Go and get settled in, then we’ll talk more.”
The senator emerged from the passenger seat.
“Wait!” I called out. Tanner turned back around. “What’s his name?” I pointed to the boy whose cheek was pressed up against Tanner’s shoulder, and although he had been jostled around quite a bit, he remained sound asleep.
Tanner smiled. “Samuel.”
My heart fell out of my chest.
Samuel.
Preppy’s name was Samuel.
“But we call him Sammy,” Tanner said.
“Tanner,” the senator said dismissively. He took the seat next to me in the back. Instantly the contempt that had been temporarily put on the back burner for the sake of Sammy was back with a vengeance, and as we pulled back out onto the road, I launched my questions. “Why did you have King arrested?” I asked, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice. “He took me in. Gave me a place to stay. Before him, I was living on the streets, struggling to find protection, or food. My only friend was a homeless hooker who thought I was the pitiful one!”
The senator didn’t flinch hearing my tale of woe, nor did he seem affected in any way, for that matter. Instead, he adjusted a cufflink and clicked away on his phone. “Brantley King is a felon, a con man, and a murderer,” he stated, without looking up. “Whate
ver relationship you seem to think the two of you had was a farce. A barely legal one at that. I really was hoping that when he indicated that the two of you had been…intimate, that he was just baiting me, but I see now that he was indeed speaking the truth. That man came to me with the sole purpose of using you as a pawn to get what he wanted. Nothing more. He took advantage of you, a teenager, and tried to con me. Now he’s going where he belongs, and getting what he deserves, and that is the last I want to hear about that, young lady.”
“He just wanted his daughter back,” I argued, crossing my arms over my chest. He might’ve thought he effectively ended the conversation but tough shit.
“We don’t always get what we want,” the senator said flatly. His words echoed in my brain as if I’d heard him say them before. “Besides, I don’t know what kind of power he seemed to think a senator has. The most I could’ve done for him would’ve been to write him a letter of recommendation to the family court. Maybe make a call to Judge Fletcher if he’s still on the bench over there.”
“Then why did you make the deal!? Take me back,” I demanded. “I don’t even know you. Take me back!” I yelled reaching for the door, not caring that the car was back in motion and barreling down the road. I pushed on the handle and opened the door enough to see the blurring gravel road. The senator reached over and closed the door abruptly, clicking the lock shut.
“Ramie, don’t be ridiculous. There is nothing for you to go back to. And besides, do you really want to leave your son?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Fuck.
“Tanner said you told people I was in Paris so you wouldn’t be embarrassed by the fact that you had a runaway for a daughter. Don’t you think that instead of inventing lies, your time would have been better spent looking for me?” I asked with my hand still on the door. “If you were me, would you want to stay knowing that?”
The senator sighed. “We did look for you, Ramie. But we didn’t know about this memory business. We just thought when we hadn’t found you that you didn’t want to be found. And stop making this all about you. It isn’t just you who this debacle affected, so think about that before you go around hurling your accusations at people.”
“King didn’t abduct me. I want you to drop the charges. I don’t want him back in prison,” I stated, crossing my arms over my chest.
The senator narrowed his eyes at me. “I tell you what, visit with the specialist I’ve contacted. Make a real effort to assimilate back into your old life. Try to remember some things before you go and throw everything away to be the first lady of…Logan’s Beach.” He said Logan’s Beach like the entire place left a bad taste in his mouth. I opened my mouth to argue but he continued.
“Give it a month. A month of real effort toward your recovery. If after that time you still want to go back, I’ll drop the charges against him and have my driver drop you back off at his house with a letter of recommendation to the family court judge, which he can use for custody of his daughter. That’s the deal.” He straightened his tie. “And the only one I’m offering.”
“I don’t exactly trust your deals. Look what you did to King,” I spat.
“Ramie, he’s a felon! He’s got no voting rights for Christ’s sake. He’s a non-citizen as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t make deals with criminals. You’re my daughter.” He finally looked up from his phone. “I would never make you a promise I didn’t intend to keep.”
I didn’t trust him. Not one bit. He was a fucking politician after all. But what other choice did I have? He was right; there really was nothing to go back to. Then there was the nagging curiosity, which had never died down, reminding me that I really did want to find out who I really was. What my life was like before. “Okay,” I agreed. “But I have more questions. About me, about my—” The senator’s phone rang and once again he barked his greeting into the receiver, effectively putting an end to our conversation.
I’m not sure exactly what kind of relationship I’d had with my father, but I was beginning to feel that he wasn’t the cheering on the T-ball team, helping with my math homework type.
Within a few minutes after we’d dropped off Tanner and Sammy, the senator announced, “Here we are.” He placed his phone inside his jacket. Royal palm trees, which were at least twenty feet tall, lined both sides of the driveway. We came to a stop in the center of the U-shaped drive, right in front of a big southern style open porch with white railings.
I craned my neck up at the house. “You live here?”
“No, we live here,” the senator corrected. “You, your mother, myself, Sammy, and the housekeeper, Nadine. And when I’m not here, I’m up in Tallahassee or D.C.”
The senator leaned over me and opened the door. He motioned for me to get out of the car. I had to shield my eyes from the rays of the sun burning through the separated palm fronds.
The house wasn’t as big or palatial as I would imagine a politician’s home would be. It was on the small side, with immaculate white siding, accented with blue shutters. The rocking chair on the porch screamed old southern charm. An American flag waved beside the front door. Wind chimes hung from the trees, tinging and tanging hypnotically with every hint of breeze. “Home sweet home,” the senator said dryly.
No. It might have been somewhere I’d lived, but it felt like anything but home.
It didn’t even have stilts.
“Nadine will show you to your room,” the senator said, nodding to the middle-aged woman with olive skin and dark brown hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, as she emerged from the house. She wore black slacks and a white short-sleeved Polo shirt. “Nadine here has been filled in on your situation. She can answer any questions you might have.” The senator looked satisfied with his introductions, as if he’d just introduced a new man on the job to his boss. “Do you remember Nadine at all, Ramie?”
“No, I don’t remember anyone,” I clipped.
The senator rolled his eyes. “I see your attitude hasn’t suffered along with your memory. Nadine is…well, Nadine does it all. She’s been with us since you were born. We will talk more soon.” With a curt nod the senator popped back in the car. He rolled down the window. “Despite what you may be thinking, it is good to have you home, Ramie.”
“You’re leaving?” I asked. “Just like that?”
“I should be back in a few days. I have meetings. Your mother isn’t around. She’s at the spa…again. We’ll talk soon.” The car drove off.
“Mr. Fucking Personality,” I mumbled. Nadine laughed out loud then clasped her hand over her mouth. She cleared her throat. “Well, he’s right about one thing,” she said with a slight southern accent, “that attitude of yours hasn’t gone anywhere.”
Nadine led us up the steps and opened the front door, stepping aside so I could enter. “So you know me well, I take it?”
“Girl, I’ve known you since you were in diapers. I know you the best,” she said with a smile that made me believe her. “Now come on, let’s get you something to eat and then I’ll let you get settled in your room.” I followed Nadine like a lost baby duck and I hated it. I hadn’t felt so helpless since I’d lived on the streets and I’d promised myself I never would again. But there I was, following a stranger around an unfamiliar house because I had no other options.
No, I’d been left with no other options, I reminded myself. Sure, I could have called a cab and hightailed it out of there, but there was only one other place I could go.
And it was empty.
Even if King weren’t on his way back to prison, would he even still want me there after being fully prepared to give me away?
Would I even want to be there after all that?
I wasn’t prepared to think about that just yet.
Inside the house, the floors were all dark wood. The walls a light dove gray. It was tasteful but not overbearing. Comfortable yet modern.
I fucking hated it.
“Kind of simple for the house of a politician, no?” I questioned
.
Nadine shut the door behind me while I stood in a small foyer, which doubled as a hallway, and took in my surroundings. “He’s a rising politician,” she explained. “He doesn’t come from old money like a lot of the good ol’ boys in this state. He was a computer programmer. He’s made it to where he is on his campaign promises, not his bank account,” Nadine informed me. “And that’s rare these days.”
“You sound like you like him” I asked in surprise.
She shook her head. “It’s not a matter of liking him or not liking him. He has his downfalls. We all do. But the man deserves credit where credit is due.” She stepped out in front of me and again led the way. “Certainly his fathering techniques leave a lot to be desired, but when it comes to politics, no one can argue that the man hasn’t achieved some remarkable things.”
We came to a stop in the center of the house. The kitchen, dining room, and living area all shared one open space, with the kitchen at an angle in the far corner. The cabinets were tall and off-white. The countertops a shiny black. “Sit.” Nadine nodded toward one of the high-backed barstools tucked under the raised counter. But I just stood there; the realization of what was really happening finally started to resonate. I’d wondered what the house I grew up in looked like, and I was finally there. However, I didn’t feel any of the elation I’d imagined I would.
I was still in shock. Angry. Bitter. Confused as all hell.
But elated?
Nope.
Nadine pulled out ingredients from different cabinets and turned on the gas burner. “Sit, girl. I’ll fix you something. You can ask me anything you want. I know how you are with questions.” She grinned and wiped her hands on the apron she’d tied around her waist.
“Well, I guess that hasn’t changed,” I said, finally taking a seat. “I’ve been told I ask too many questions a lot over the last few months.”
Nadine cracked an egg into a bowl. “But you have changed. I can see it.”
“And I guess that’s a bad thing?” I sighed.
“No.” She came over to me and rested her elbows on the other side of the counter. “Actually…I think I kind of like it.”
Tyrant (KING Book 2) Page 2
