The Fall of the Red Queen (Self Made Men...Southern Style Book 3)
Page 20
She opened the envelope and kept it in her lap so he couldn’t see what she was doing. She glanced down, scanning over the document, the rules of her world changing with each word. It was a copy of a restraining order, and it was dated over a year ago. Something cold and dreadful slithered down her back, then started to spread.
“I was supposed to pick Robbie up this morning.”
He set the coffee cup down. It rattled against the saucer.
“You said I could have him for the rest of the week” She spoke carefully.
“Why would I let you have him for the rest of the week?” he asked, so civilized and calm that she would never have guessed anything was wrong if she hadn’t opened that envelope. “I’m not letting you take that boy away from me!”
“I’m not trying to take him away from you,” she said, trying to keep her voice soothing. “I told you that I bought a house a few blocks from here, and you agreed he could live with me if I helped the Warrens with your case. You agreed to give me custody when you were exonerated.” It wasn’t what they had agreed, but she could tell by his expression he didn’t remember agreeing to anything. “The papers are in your safe. I’ll go and get them.”
She stood slowly, watching him struggle with what she had just said to him. She backed away and headed to his office before he could recover himself. She needed those documents, and she needed them before anyone accused him of diminished capacity. They might not be valid.
She was halfway down the hall when she heard his fists crash into the breakfast table and the china rattle before he followed her. She rushed the rest of the way. She knew his combinations. She’d been memorizing them since she was a teenager. He had four, and he rotated them. She could figure it out. She’d watched him lock it. She could pick the right one.
She’d gotten the second combination keyed when he stormed in.
“Get away from that safe, girl.”
“I did what you asked. I want what you promised me.” She continued to press the buttons.
“You’re spying for Milton Marshall,” he thundered, suddenly himself again. ”Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
“If I were spying for Milton Marshall…” She turned on him. “…I wouldn’t have told you about the job offer.”
His expression flared, and she saw it, the confused glint in his eyes.
“Don’t you remember telling me that I could have custody? Did you forget I was picking him up this morning?”
“You watch yourself, girl.”
She keyed in the correct combination and grabbed the papers out. “You don’t remember, do you? You had Suzanne come get him because you forgot you’d told me I could have him.”
She spread the papers out on the desk and pointed to his signature.
“You forged my signature,” he accused, but he didn’t sound so sure.
He didn’t remember signing them. A strange calm swept through her, and she chose her next words very carefully. “You raised me better than that. After everything you’ve done, do you think I would dare forge your signature? You do remember what you did, don’t you?”
He went even paler and refused to look at her.
“To my son’s father? Have you forgotten that, too?”
He looked up, his black eyes hard, but she could see the agitation trembling through him.
“Jail was harder than you expected, wasn’t it?” She rounded the desk carefully. “Not the picnic you said it would be when they arrested you.”
“I’m not going back,” he said quickly. “You’d better make sure I don’t go back to jail, girl, or you’ll never see your son again.”
“I have another suggestion,” she said, a hint of steel she’d never before let him hear in her voice. He faced her again, his black eyes sharp and shrewd again as he came back to himself. But it was too late. She wasn’t scared of him anymore. All these years she thought she’d gotten over her actual fear of him, but until that moment, when the last of the chains fell away, she realized she had drowned in fear so long ago she didn’t even realize it.
And now, without warning, she was free. He could not hurt her or anyone she loved anymore.
“You let me leave with these papers. I will file them in court tomorrow, and I’ll take Robbie home with me permanently. Then I will fire the Warren brothers and send them back where they came from. Because they think the only way to save you from prison is proving diminished capacity.”
“Shut your mouth!” he snapped.
“They’ll insist on a psychological evaluation, of course.”
“I am fine, girl. My brain has never been sharper. You’ve been telling my legal team a pack of lies about me. I’ll have you disbarred. You are never going to see Robbie again.”
He kept moving towards her, leaning heavily on that cane. She stood her ground, crossing her arms as if bored. “If I wanted you to go to prison, old man, I wouldn’t have to lie. I’ll tell them all about West JDC. Grant Marshall has already interviewed the Kincaid family.”
He went from pale to gray.
She smiled slowly. “So you do remember some things?”
“I remember everything,” he sneered, but he wasn’t quite as confident as he had been.
“Remember this, then. If you take Robbie away from me again, I will give Grant Marshall everything he needs to prove you defrauded FEMA out of millions of dollars. The DOJ still loves to prosecute for FEMA fraud. They’ll be down here in droves, and that’s federal…you don’t have enough markers to call to stay out of federal prison.”
He stopped short, his pallor giving way to blood-red fury. “No one will believe your lies.”
“Robbie will,” she said calmly. She forced herself to hold her ground when he raised his hand to her. She didn’t flinch away from the blow like she had as a child. Instead, she stared straight into his eyes. “I’m his mother. He’ll believe me when I tell him you murdered his father.”
He swung, but his hand never made contact. He lost his balance with the cane and went crashing to the intricate Aubusson rug. At first she’d just thought he’d fallen, but when she reached him, the murderous rage twisting his features only affected one side of his face as the stroke ravaged his brain.
Instinct had her calling an ambulance, then calling for the housekeeper to bring aspirin. She dropped to her knees beside him, still not quite believing it was happening. Lying in the middle of his study, gasping, shriveled up and pathetic, he looked harmless, and in those long moments, she forgot all the things he had done.
Until his eyes opened and he recognized her. Even paralyzed on one side and unable to speak, his eyes told her he was all there. There was no regret staring back at her, no apology, but there was fear and it shocked her to the core.
He knew he was dying, and he was terrified.
Maybe it should’ve given her a grim satisfaction to know he was afraid in his last hours. She should’ve smiled down at him the way he’d taught her, said “Godspeed” and walked out of the room.
But she’d never enjoyed the kill the way he had. She’d just been trying to survive all these years. She’d done what she’d done because it kept him from hurting people she loved. In the end, she would always be his greatest failure. She couldn’t walk away. Instead, she curved her fingers around his wrist. He jerked away, trying to speak as the horror increased in his eyes when he realized he couldn’t.
“It’s okay. Robbie won’t ever know what you did. I’ll make sure of it.”
He struggled to inhale, and Madlyn could have sworn she saw regret. Then, just when she thought he couldn’t possibly hurt her anymore, one tear slipped out of the corner of his eye, reminding her that despite all his faults, he somehow managed to care for her son.
He exhaled as she watched, his eyelids sinking down over his eyes. She waited, holding her breath as he failed to take another one.
Panic seized her by the throat as she waited, still not quite believing it was possible that he’d stopped breathing. There was a sudde
n commotion behind her as EMTs filled the room. Within seconds, they had a tube down his throat, and they were forcing air into his lungs.
“Do you know if he has advance directives?” one EMT asked as the other two strapped him to a gurney, while the fourth manually pumped air into his lungs. “Does he have a DNR?”
“I’m not sure.” She returned to the safe and took out the rest of the papers he’d stashed. “I don’t see one,” she said, skimming through the paperwork. Her heart stopped when she found a copy of his will and the paperwork she’d signed after Robbie was born. There was no time to go through it all. She shoved it all back into the safe and changed the electronic combination before shutting it. She’d have to come back for it, but she wanted to make sure no one else could access it.
“We’ll do everything we can,” he said as they wheeled him outside where a crowd had already gathered. “We’ll keep trying until we reach the ER, but you should call someone to meet you at the hospital.”
Were they suggesting that her grandfather was dying? That couldn’t be right.
She didn’t make a call. She sent a text message. She did it without consciously realizing what she was doing. She just typed and pressed send. She’d switched into autopilot again, unable to process that her grandfather was dying. It was incomprehensible.
It had to be a trick. The Hanging Judge could not die.
She’d been so afraid of him for so long she wasn’t sure what to feel now that the fear holding her together was gone. He’d been terrifying, and occasionally violent, when she was growing up. Not that she ever told a soul about those few instances.
Robert had been the only bright spark in her life, and that spark had shown how truly dysfunctional her childhood had been. When her father was killed in the Gulf War, her mother had been grief-stricken and too weak to stand up to her father-in-law. She had no means of employment, and the funds she received monthly had not been enough to raise two girls. She’d been forced to take the only help available and had moved back to New Orleans, where they lived with Winston Robicheaux.
She had no right to judge her mother for letting a monster raise her, because she’d done the exact same thing. She’d told herself that she’d had no choice, but that wasn’t strictly true. Her father was killed in combat. His death wasn’t her mother’s fault. But Robert’s death was all on her.
She wasn’t surprised when the old man started breathing again. She knew he’d fight to the bitter end. There was no DNR, so they admitted him through the ER straight to ICU, but after examining the Judge, the neurologist told her it was only a matter of time. They let her stay in the ICU unit past the visiting-time slot, which told her they meant hours not days.
But she soon discovered that time had no meaning in the ICU. She didn’t know how long she sat in the small sterile room, counting the breaths her grandfather had left. She thought it must be early afternoon when their family priest arrived. She stepped outside the unit while he prayed. The double doors leading into the unit opened and another gurney was wheeled in. Before the doors closed, she thought she saw Jared. The nurse stopped her from taking that first step to him and led her back to the unit.
Back in the small room, she stood next to the railing the nurse had pulled up. She hardly recognized the person wasting away in that bed. There was no resemblance between the pitiful creature struggling behind an oxygen mask and Judge Winston Robicheaux, the Hanging Judge.
Days or minutes passed, she wasn’t sure which, but she stayed until he took one ragged breath then exhaled with a shudder.
Finally, he didn’t inhale.
Neither did she.
A medical crew standing by moved in, forcing her to take a step back as they made one last effort. She watched them work, wishing he’d signed a DNR, wishing she had enough courage to tell them to stop. Then a nurse switched the alarms off.
“He’s gone,” the nurse whispered. “But if you want us to put him on the respirator…?”
“No,” Madlyn said quickly, still staring blankly at the very still body she no longer recognized.
She closed her eyes, faintly surprised that she felt dizzy. She forced her eyes open and looked again. The nurse had removed the mask. It was her grandfather lying there flat on his back as the crew stopped their efforts to revive him.
She watched and waited. It had to be trick. This couldn’t be real. How could he just be gone?
“Breathe,” a warm voice said close to her ear. For a moment she thought he was saying it to her grandfather. The pressure in her chest turned painful.
“Breathe, Maddie.”
No. She couldn’t. The next time she inhaled, she would lose control of the wave building up inside her. She didn’t know how to feel. She wanted to be relieved. She wanted to be happy. But she wasn’t. She was…
For one heartbreaking second she thought she was dreaming. Which meant she would have to wake up. And she didn’t want to wake up from this dream. She wanted this to be real. She wanted him to be dead. She really was a monster. Only a monster would wish someone dead. Maybe she should’ve said yes to the respirator.
Panic clawed up her throat, and her lungs burned. Then fingers curved around her waist, catching her as the world started to slip away. Air filled her lungs, and she turned in to the familiar arms of the man she’d tried and tried to get rid of, but he still came and waited hours after one text message.
“He’s dead,” she whispered as he pulled her against him. She went into his arms, drinking in the strength and warmth of his body. “I think he’s really dead.”
“He can’t hurt you anymore,” Jared whispered against her hair, his hand covering her head as he held her tightly against his chest.
She closed her eyes, relaxed against him, and just floated in all his quiet strength.
Chapter Sixteen
“Do you want to stay here and wait for the funeral home, or can we go?” Jared asked, his voice low and soothing. “There’s nothing else you can do here. I think we should go,” he added.
She nodded. He was right. They should go.
She hardly registered the walk to the elevator or the ride down. Everything felt so alien. She didn’t recognize the world.
She stopped short when he opened the car door.
“What is it?” he asked quickly.
“Robbie,” she whispered, swallowing the painful lump in her throat. It was over. She could have her son back. “We need to get Robbie but…” She looked up at Jared, not believing what she was about to ask. “Can you call Stefan and ask him to go get Robbie for me? He’s with Gary and Suzanne.”
“Sure.”
She nodded, sliding into the car. He shut her door, and she smiled to herself. For all his cocky attitude, his ink, and scruffiness, he was still such a gentleman sometimes.
He called Stefan before they left the parking garage. “He’s on the way,” Jared said as he started the car.
“Thanks for being here.”
“You asked me to come,” he reminded her.
Did I? Her eyes flew open in surprise. The sunlight spilling into the car hurt her eyes. Time had passed so she must have dozed off. But for how long? They were already on the road. “Was that okay?”
He shot her a curious look. “Was what?”
“Calling you.” She’d dozed longer than she’d realized. Disoriented, her guard was completely down. “Asking you to come.”
He caught her hand, pulling it to rest on his legs while he laced his fingers with hers. “Yeah, it was what you should’ve done.”
“Strange,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering shut again. “I never seem to do that.”
“Your grandfather made no pre-arrangements,” the funeral director explained when they were seated in a small room decorated in soft muted colors, a beautiful painting of Oak Alley Plantation dominating one wall. It was a pleasant, comfortable room, meant to offer a reassuring environment for families to make difficult decisions.
It made her want to scream.
Panic gripped her, and everything blanked out for a moment. She hadn’t been listening. It was hard to concentrate on what the man was saying. But an obituary? The idea of having to write up all her grandfather’s accomplishments was too much. All she could think of was murder, corruption, and blackmail. That wasn’t appropriate, and she had Robbie to consider.
“I talked to Grant earlier,” Jared spoke softly. “He’s working on a rough draft and will send a copy for you to read.”
“I don’t want to read it,” she whispered painfully. Grant would do a good job. He was diplomatic and had known her grandfather a long time. He was the only clerk her grandfather had never fired.
Choosing her grandfather’s casket was next. Walking through the showroom was one of the most surreal things she’d ever done. The only thing keeping her grounded was Jared’s fingers laced gently with hers. He had beautiful hands, long fingers, strong wrists, and a sexy network of veins. She turned her hand, palm up. Her vision blurred as his fingers tightened around hers.
She wasn’t alone this time.
Maybe she wasn’t alone anymore.
After the salesman expounded on the benefits of wood versus bronze, he expected her to choose. A hysterical laugh burned her throat.
“This one?” Jared nodded at the mahogany model.
She nodded, pressing her forehead to his shoulder as the salesman complimented them on their excellent choice, then left to get paperwork.
“Why can’t we just cremate him?” she pleaded, knowing it was impossible. “We could wait until Mardi Gras next year, mix his ashes with glitter, and dump him in the Mississippi after St. Anne. He would hate that.”
Jared bit back a hoarse laugh. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Their last stop was the parish office of their family priest. Father Tommy was ready for them when they arrived. He’d been making preliminary plans since leaving the hospital.