by Amy Daws
I pulled him back down on my futon with me. “She loved Drew. I knew she did and I’d publicly outted them. I destroyed their marriage. He filed for a divorce shortly after the trial ended. I thought that Zoey would have a better life because of what I did…but she…remember when you asked me if I’d ever slept on a park bench?”
“Yes,” Leo scrutinized every inch of my face, searching for evidence of Drew’s fist.
“I hadn’t…but my sister has. Her career was ruined from the broken bones. She was depressed and turned to drugs sometime after she started going to shelter homes. I’m not saying they aren’t good, but she started running with bad people she met there. I searched for her every second I got, I met some really wonderful people…and some people that scared me. I think it terrified my parents that they were going to lose another daughter, so when Joffrey’s showed interest in me, my parents pushed me hard to come here. They sacrificed everything because they wanted at least one daughter to live their dreams. And I think they wanted me as far away as possible from my life in Chicago. They wanted to give me a fresh start, no matter what the cost.”
“You shouldn’t feel guilty for coming here and dancing, Adeline.”
“I’m living my dreams and my sister is rotting away in some street. It’s not fair. And I am reminded of it every time I look in the mirror because she looks exactly like me.”
He cupped my face and kissed me. “You had no way of knowing what your sister would do, but getting her out of that relationship was the right thing to do.”
I held my hand against his. “Deep down, I know I wouldn’t have done anything different, but I wish that it would have ended better for Zoey. She deserves better.”
“She is lucky to have a sister like you, Adeline. I wished you’d see that truth when you looked into the mirror.”
Before we could discuss my past any further, Aerosmith’s song blasted from the phone. Ivan’s name lit up on the screen as a text message.
Leo tried suppressing a grin. “I figured you’d need his number too since he’s your dance partner and all.”
Ivan—If I come in now, am I going to see a naked Leo again?
I laughed and then shouted, “We’re decent!”
Ivan cracked the door, carrying his gym bag in tow. Was it that time already? I swore all I did was put on and take off stage makeup anymore.
“Leo,” Ivan said and did the guys version of a wave by nodding his head. He turned to me. “Ready to go?”
“Let me grab my gym bag.” I kissed Leo before crawling off of the futon.
In five minutes, I was ready to go but stopped when I realized the two most important men in my life were talking to each other at my door. Relishing in the moment, I realized that everything was finally falling into place.
I grabbed my keys to lock up when Leo’s phone vibrated. “Shit, it’s my dad’s office.” He answered the call. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but it was clearly a frantic woman. “Marge, just slow down. Who is auditing? Tell my mom to stop yelling at everyone, I can hear her through the phone.” He paused and waited. “Charged with tax fraud!”
A moment later, Leo was running out the door and down the stairs like his life depended on it. I wouldn’t let him out of my sight until he told me what was going on. He’d gotten as far as his motorcycle before I caught up to him.
“The IRS is combing my dad’s office. An anonymous tip was called in that our books are dirty. I know for a fact that they aren’t.”
I asked. “Who’d report otherwise?”
My phone rang—a standard ringtone. I pulled it from my back pocket. The number wasn’t programmed in but I knew immediately who it was. I’d dialed it enough times.
Blake—You broke your promise so now he’ll have to pay for it.
At least I finally knew one thing with absolute certainty now. I still couldn’t be trusted around Blake, but it was only because I knew what I’d do to him now.
I swore, “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
CHAPTER 40 ~ Leo
The night I first laid eyes on Adeline as she went flying onto that stage in her fishnets—it wasn’t love I felt. Hell, I didn’t think it was even lust.
It was jealousy.
I was jealous of the reckless abandon she possessed in every single one of her moves. The intense fire she possessed on and off the stage. Even in her emotional expressions, she was someone who laid it all on the line. Her raw and guttural performance was the ultimate wakeup call that I was living a fucking lie. Yeah I felt it back when I slept on that park bench for a class assignment, but Adeline magnified those feelings.
Here was a girl from nowhere with no social standing…no family name. A girl who just ripped opened her soul and spread it out for all to ridicule.
She ripped opened her soul, and I fell in fucking love.
I wanted to do that. For her and for myself. When Adeline showed me that text from Blake, I knew my sexy ballerina love bubble had been popped and I had shit to deal with.
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” she growled as I read the text from her phone.
“Not if I get to him first, baby.” I kissed her softly on the lips.
In a New York minute I was jogging out of the elevator onto the 51st floor of the Marine Midland building and into my dad’s office. I stopped dead in my tracks. The sheer number of IRS agents hustling around and carrying office boxes of paperwork was overwhelming.
Marge stood at her desk, chewing out someone who was scrolling through files on her computer. Her posture practically vibrated with anger beneath her neon purple blazer.
“You go ahead and read all my emails. All you’re going to find is marriage proposals from Russian businessmen and perverts! Believe me. They aren’t worth the follow up… I’ve tried!” She turned, crossing her arms over her chest and jumped at the sight of me.
“Marge, hey…what’s going on?” I asked, approaching her.
“Oh, Leonardo. Thank goodness you’re here. Someone needs to get your mother out of here before she gets arrested. Your father is taking all of this very well, but your mother is just a wreck.”
“Why is all of this happening?” I asked, glancing behind me as three men in suits spoke in hushed tons by the elevator.
“Who knows? But Lord have Mercy! The IRS must be having a pretty slow week for them to send this much man power here.” She said it loudly in the direction of the man sitting at her desk.
I pulled her into a hug and whispered over top of her head. “Everything is going to be okay.” She was going to work herself into a heart attack if she didn’t calm down.
I glanced down the wide hallway to the cubical area that occupied the majority of the floor. A lot of my father’s employees stood awkwardly outside their cubicles while their works’ contents were flipped upside down for inspection.
Suddenly my mother’s voice pealed out of the double doors that were propped open to my dad’s office. “This is absurd! I want to know who called us in. And you just show up with your pack of wolves and scrounge through everything? Douglas…do something! Who’s going to clean all this up?”
Marge shot me another Lord have mercy look and I half smiled at her.
“I’ll take care of her, Marge.” I leaned in and dropped a small kiss to her temple. She instantly relaxed her defensive stance.
I walked into my father’s office. Seven men and one woman in cheap, bland business suits were taking over the place. Three of them were digging inside the wall of filing cabinets; one had a hard drive spread across the boardroom table, looking inside the cavity of the tower. The others were clustered around my father’s desk, scrolling through his computer files.
My mother stood beside the people rifling through my father’s desk. “That is mahogany from Italy! Be careful!” she shrieked. They didn’t even look up, apparently used to her tone of voice by now. She was dressed in her white tennis gear, obviously pissed that she was going to miss her coveted tennis lesson.
I glanced over to the couch and found my father in another trademark grey suit. He was hunched over and rubbing his temples while listening to an older man dressed in a sharp business suit. I recognized the man as R&B’s lawyer, Simon Rudolph. They all looked up as I approached.
“Mom, Dad…you guys okay?” I asked, taking in my father’s haggard appearance.
My dad offered a weak smile and gestured for me to sit next to him while my mom gaped at me like I had two heads.
“Of course we’re not okay, Leonardo!” my mother hissed. “R&B is being audited! This is going to be a huge scandal in the papers!” She touched her pearls and looked out the window. “And these people have no regard for nice things!” She looked down her nose at the woman wearing a pantsuit, obviously unimpressed.
“Good to see you again, Leo,” Simon said and offered me a polite smile. “I’m going to go see what he needs.” Simon walked over to the agent standing ominously in the doorway.
I sat down next to my father and he put his arm around the back of the couch beside me. He rolled his eyes toward my mom, trying to minimize the gravity of the situation.
“Dad, is this going to be okay?” I asked, nervous and unsure of what the IRS may uncover.
“We’re fine, Leo. I’m not the least bit concerned,” my father said, which evoked a snide bark of a laugh from my mom. “You didn’t have to come.”
“I think I did,” I gestured toward mom and tweaked my eyebrows.
We both shared a knowing grin and I added, “I’ll take her home.”
My dad nodded, obviously conceding that was for the best. “How are you otherwise?” he asked, giving me a pointed look.
“I’m good, Dad.” I glanced up uncomfortably as four of the IRS agents exited his office leaving behind the computer agent and a couple at the filing cabinet on the far wall.
“I’ve heard,” he said smiling. “I’m glad.” He leaned in close and whispered, “And your mother is getting there. I’ll wear her down.”
I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes. I appreciated my dad trying with my mom, but the fact that my mom was still so shallow about who I dated just pissed me off.
“So do you know who did this?” I asked, my expression getting serious.
My dad let out a heavy sigh, and stared at the IRS men packing up his office in to boxes. “I have an idea.”
“We can’t let them get away with this, Dad.”
“I know, Son, I know.” He looked lost in thought for a moment.
Unable to hold back my thoughts any longer, I said, “Well, I had an idea that I’ve been thinking about for a while. But I need your help. You’re the only one that can do it I think. I know now isn’t a good time to talk, but…”
“Sure, we can talk. I can’t even get to my desk to work anyways. Let’s go to the conference room.” He jumped up without hesitation. He glanced back at my mom who was yelling at someone on her cellphone and then ushered me down the hallway.
Twenty minutes later, my dad had a light in his eyes I hadn’t seen in years and was chomping at the bit to put my plan to action. “I have work to do,” he said quickly. “I’ll see if Simon can handle things here so I can go home and get started.”
Just then, Simon knocked on the conference room glass with an obvious look of discomfort. He pursed his lips when he entered. “Look, I’m really sorry to do this. But the IRS is going to have your mother escorted from the property if we don’t get her out of here right away.”
My dad’s wide eyes matched my own and I swear I saw a flicker of amusement cast over his features.
“Can you take her home, Leo? I really need to get going on these calls and you need to get back to Gamma Phi and do what you can from there anyways.”
I nodded. He was right. We both had work to do.
He had important calls to make. Calls that I hoped could change the face of the Gold for good. And for the better.
***
“Leonardo! I am not riding that thing. I actually lie to myself everyday and say that you use one of our safe service drivers! Not ride around on this death trap!”
“It’s this or the subway, mother,” I said in an annoyed, clipped tone as we stood in front of the Marine Midland building. After all of her snide remarks about Adeline, I had zero patience for her drama right now.
“We can call the car service!” she cried.
“My bike is a hundred times faster. You hop on now and you have a chance at making your tennis lesson.”
She chewed her injection-plumped lips, clearly warring with herself. My mother had a monthly tennis training session with Pete Sampras, a former number one world tennis player. It took my father a shit load of phone calls to pull those kinds of strings. So missing a session for a pesky IRS invasion wasn’t how my mother planned on spending her day.
She hesitantly walked toward my outstretched hand and grabbed the helmet from me, cringing as she pushed it down on top of her head.
“You look good, Mom!” I bellowed with a chortle.
Her eyes squinted hard through the opening on the helmet. Or they would have been squinting if they weren’t so full of botox.
She climbed on board and gripped my leather jacket covered arms, squeezing harshly. “Don’t go fast,” she said, her voice wavering.
“Mother, it’s Pete Sampras,” I said, with a salacious grin.
Like a shot we were off. My mother’s pinched screams made my shoulders vibrate with silent laughter. Zooming through the streets of Manhattan on my Ducati, I just hoped and prayed that the paparazzi wouldn’t spot me right now and take a picture. I flinched as a set of bony fingers squeezed so tightly onto my arms that I was sure I’d have bruises tomorrow morning.
Despite the pain, I couldn’t stop myself from grinning picturing my mother’s horrified expression. I would love to see the image of my mother in her white tennis outfit and sneakers clinging to me for dear life. Where’s the paparazzi when you need them?
She squealed loudly as I edged tightly between a huge traffic jam, pausing to walk myself through an extremely small space.
“Leonardo! You can’t possibly fit.”
“I got this, Mom!”
Driving a bike in Manhattan was like having free reign of whatever concrete you could find. Often times, I would have to put my hands out and walk myself between two tightly wedged cab drivers. It got me the finger a lot, but I was never late.
Finally back on the open road, I gunned it and shot us both back on the seat a bit. My mother’s clenched hands on my arms suddenly flung wide and gripped me around my entire abdomen, bear hugging me so tightly, my breath felt short, both from laughter and from her ultimate death squeeze. God this was fucking fun!
When we finally came to a halt in front of my parents’ New York City penthouse, I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. I waited for my mother to let go, but she continued gripping me, her head buried into my back.
“Mom.” I laughed, looking over my shoulder at her and trying to shake her back to the land of the living. “Mom!” I said again when she didn’t move.
Finally she snapped out of it and lifted her head, like she had no idea where she was or how she got here. I chuckled at her completely stunned expression. She hesitantly climbed off the back of my bike and pulled the helmet off, smoothing her brown ponytail back into place. Her hunched over posture straightened as she reacquainted herself with her own two feet.
“I’m glad you’re having a good time,” she said, “because I’ve just seen my life flash before my eyes.”
I roared with laughter and doubled over on top of my bike as she crossed her arms over her chest and eyed me meanly. Now she was back to her old self.
“Love you, Mom,” I said, starting the Ducati back up, taking the helmet from her hands, and popping it onto my head. I saw a flicker of affection soften her glower and gave her a quick wave as I zoomed back in the direction of Columbia.
CHAPTER 41 ~ Adeline
Memories of Leo’s light kisses o
n my neck, rolling down my shoulders, fluttering over my chest, and pooling onto my stomach flickered in my mind’s eye as I pressed my pointe down, finalizing the end of the military dance.
I held my arm over my eyes as the music came to a close. The audience erupted in praise. I still embraced the pains of heartache to portray the sorrowful parts of the dance, but the other parts…the happy parts…I couldn’t shield my smile even if I wanted.
I should have been focusing on the ninety-nine percent of the people who fell in love with the arrangement, but all I could focus on was one couple: In his front row seat, Blake stood up leisurely clapping while his gaze locked onto mine. Felicia was with him, probably sent to spy on me by Sasha. My mouth went dry. I tried not to show the shock on my face as we took our final bows. He’d come here and would be damned if he didn’t make his presence known.
Yes, I’d broken our agreement, but Blake’s possessiveness had reached a new high when he brought the Richards & Brown business under IRS scrutiny. I hated that he had involved Leo’s family. This was between me and him. He’d gotten the ring back, but I assumed that my promise to stay away from Leo meant more to him. I just needed to find the price-point. Asking for cash advances in my contract, liquidating my possessions, picking up another job all came to mind to pay Rossi back the money he’d given me. It was an epic moment of weakness that I even accepted his favor. Heartbreak does that to a person. I was just so lost, tired, hungry, depressed, and living in absolute fear.
And I thought I lost everything.
Nevertheless, I knew that I could give all this up. I raised my hands in the air, waving to the crowd. I would give it all up for Leo. Not because he’d ever ask it, but because I knew that I couldn’t live with myself knowing that R&B went under because of my relationship with my ex.
I couldn’t walk away without leaving Ivan in disarray, which meant I’d gotten myself into the mother-load-of-shit-storms and couldn’t figure out how to right my wrongs. But I’d be damned if I couldn’t make it right.
Blake leaned over and planted a kiss on his wife’s lips. Afterwards, Felicia wiggled her arm under his and smiled a fake smile at me. She leaned over to the side and whispered something into Sasha’s ear.
