by Jess Bentley
I want to tell them all to go fuck themselves. They’re all more than capable of pitching in to split the bill; they just consider it a waste of money. I know that. I know them. Chris breathes a sigh of relief and then checks his phone quickly. “Well, it’s late,” he says. “I better get going. Long day at work tomorrow.”
Three, two, one…
“Me too,” Derek says. “I’ll swing by tomorrow for a little bit.”
They both leave, and I’m alone with George. He turns to me, his mouth open to give his own excuse.
“I’ll stay with her,” I say, not even bothering to hide my disgust at this point. When it’s just me and George, I feel like we should just be honest with one another. In a way, it’s what family does, right? Even fucked-up families like this one.
“Are you sure?” George asks, feigning concern convincingly well. “I can stay if you need to go.”
Bullshit he can. The minute I’m out of sight, he’d run off and leave her here. “No,” I say. “Go home, George.”
If he meant it, if he really loved Mama, he’d argue with me, or offer to stay with me. We could nap in shifts or something.
But no. Once he’s gotten permission to fuck off, he does so without much of a fight. Naturally.
Once he’s gone, I ask one of the orderlies for an extra blanket and a pillow, if it isn’t too much trouble. She acts like she’s about to suggest I just go home, but whatever I was able to hide from the family I no longer have the will to keep hidden. She leaves to get me the goods, and I go into Mama’s room to wait for her.
Mama’s still asleep. She’s sedated. I’ve got a few hours to rest before she’s up. And shit, I’ve got a day of planning and tasting and setting up to do tomorrow. That starts about six hours from now. But at least someone will be here when Mama wakes up.
At least she’ll know there’s someone in her life who still gives a shit.
Chapter 13
Jake
The hammer falls the next day. I was expecting it, so I’m not surprised when one of my father’s goons meets me in the garage, where I was hoping to avoid my father entirely by leaving the house for a few days.
“Mr. Ferry is looking for you,” Barry tells me, smug. He’s a heavyset guy, ostensibly one of the security personnel on the grounds, though he doesn’t do much securing. He runs “errands” for Reginald.
“I haven’t got a text from him,” I say. “That’s the usual mode of contact. Is his phone dead?”
Barry shrugs. “All I know is he wants to see you.”
“Where at?”
Barry snorts, and points up, as if to heaven itself. “Where do you think?”
The Office, then. Every bit as serious as I expected.
My father doesn’t care for an office setting. His meetings are usually informal, in an environment where he can schmooze and charm and everyone is off guard. But he does have an office. He reserves it for announcing hostile takeovers, firing longtime employees, and tearing new assholes. Just the stuff where he doesn’t feel a need to play nice.
“Fine,” I tell Barry the lackey. “I’m going.”
Barry grins at me with his chipped front tooth. Asshole.
I take the stairs up to the third floor, which has exactly one function—to serve as a massive office with windows on all sides. The floors are made from a single giant redwood Reginald bribed the governor of California to get his paws on. Oiled, polished, and waxed, it makes the floor look stained with blood—which is the point, of course.
My father is waiting behind his desk, looking out over his domain. The estate stretches in all directions around us. Not that anyone’s ever attempted to assassinate my father, but the glass is five inches thick and bulletproof. Never can be too careful.
He doesn’t say a word until I take a seat in one of the uncomfortable, not-quite-big-enough chairs on the victim side of the desk.
“I didn’t tell you to sit,” he says calmly, as he swivels around to look at me, resting his elbows on his massive ebony desk. Not cheap knock-off African blackwood, oh no. Probably whole swaths of Gabon ebony trees—squat little things that never produce a slat of wood longer than a few feet—had to be mowed down to build it. Like everything else in the Office, it is custom-made and handcrafted into something painfully exquisite.
I sigh, and put my two-thousand-dollar Italian leather-clad feet up on it. “If I waited for you to tell me to sit, my feet would be sore by the time this was over. It’ll have the same effect if I sit down.”
At this show of defiance, my father’s eyes narrow, but he makes no other move, says nothing right away. This is what he does; I’ve seen him do it during negotiations, and I’ve been on the receiving end of a number of these dressings-down. I wait for it, imagining a roiling storm cloud gathering in the room above us, thunder rumbling warnings of what’s to come.
“Do you know what you’re worth, Jacob?” he asks me.
I shrug. Honestly, I’m not certain. A hell of a lot. “I don’t, sir,” I tell him. “But I’d guess it’s about—”
“It’s nothing,” Reginald says softly, dangerously. “You are worth precisely zero dollars.”
“I’ve got five hundred and thirteen dollars in cash in my pocket,” I tell him. I don’t know why. To put up some kind of a fight? Already, I can see where this is going.
Reginald doesn’t laugh at my joke, which I realize moments after it’s out of my mouth is not very funny. “How far in life do you think that will get you?”
“A night at a cheap strip club,” I say. In for a penny…
“All of your stock in my company,” Reginald growls, “your trust funds, your life insurance premiums, even your credit, is connected to my interests and it has been since you were born.”
That’s… actually news to me. I probably should have been more aware of how that was all set up.
“So when I tell you, Jacob,” he goes on, “that I can and will cut you off—I don’t mean that I will stop paying your credit card down. I mean that I will divest you of every single penny to your name. Including the cash in your wallet. It can happen with a single phone call to my CFO, who, by the way, doesn’t like you.”
Nervously, I scratch the back of my neck. “I fucked his daughter a few years back…” I mutter.
“I don’t care who you fucked, Jacob. What I care about is that you seem, for reasons that are beyond my comprehension, to be hell-bent on forcing my hand in these matters. Do you want me to disown you? Do you want to be penniless? Are you tired of this life of luxury that I have painstakingly built for you and then laid, like a golden fleece, at your unworthy feet?” He’s getting louder by degrees, and it’s all I can do to keep still, keep my face blank, and not react. Can’t show him any fear.
“I’ve got a Masters in—” I start, ludicrously, intent on somehow arguing that I could manage on my own.
But my father shakes his head. “You think I can’t have another son?” he asks. “You think that if I’m going to cast you out into the cold, I’m going to leave loose strings swaying in the wind? Believe me, Jacob—if I find that I have a need to fuck you, I will do so with such a vengeance that you will never find employment in this country so long as I live.”
“What do you want from me?” It’s the only part of the conversation left to have, really. Reginald didn’t bother with the carrot, which means he’s waving the stick for a reason.
“You are to make good with Janie Hall,” he says. “I don’t care how. You’re to charm her panties off like I have seen you do so often—like I taught you—and you are to sweep her off her feet until she’s literally eating out of the palm of your hand like a good little bitch in heat. Make her pliable. Am I clear?”
I nod once, instead of telling him how utterly impossible a task that is.
“I couldn’t quite hear that,” Reginald says.
“You’ve made your wishes entirely clear, Father,” I say, like a good, properly chastised son. It doesn’t take much.
�
��And?”
“And, I’ll do it.” I feel sick saying the words. A little whiskey will numb that right over. Which is convenient, since I’ll need several drinks to confront Janie directly.
“Good,” Reginald says. “Do you have a plan?”
“Just now?” I ask.
“I expected you to have a plan when you first approached her,” he says. “Did you not?”
“Of course I did,” I say. “That plan didn’t work. She wasn’t interested.”
“Ah. I see.” My father leans back in his chair and stares at me, his eyes cold and hard, weighing and measuring. Until I bring him Janie Hall’s heart on a platter, I know that he is now, and will until that time, find me wanting.
“I’ll make it happen,” I tell him, and the words are bitter in my mouth. Not only because I don’t want to do this—but because I hate knowing my father has me by the balls.
I know he’ll put them in a jar on the shelf at the slightest provocation, and being his heir apparent is absolutely no defense.
Chapter 14
Janie
The news at Red Hall is not good. Gloria’s bullshit little stunt is, somehow, so much worse than I could have imagined it would be. “Tim,” I say into my phone, desperate to not sound as desperate as I am, “come on. We’ve known each other for six years. You know I want to do this for you, and you know I can make it amazing.”
Tim sighs, and I can already tell I’ve lost. “You know I wish I could, Janie,” he says finally, “but it’s not just my day, you know? And as much as I hate this part of it… well…”
“You don’t want the bad press after the incident with Martin,” I finish for him. “I’m going to strangle that little—”
“I won’t tell the press that’s how you feel,” Tim laughs. It’s short- lived. “Look, I’ll make it up to you some other way. Once all this wedding buzz is over and we can get back to living a normal life, Jenna and I will come by for a visit. I’ll even have Penny leak our plans to the paparazzi.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I say. Tim hates the paparazzi, and while I don’t know Jenna very well, I suspect she also does. Most celebrities do. “I mean, you do have to come by, but you don’t have to alert the vultures.”
“It’s fine,” Tim sighs. “They’ll probably find us anyway. They can get some pics of us being friendly. Look… I’m really sorry about changing the venue.”
“I’ll be fine, Tim.” I am not sure of that, but it pays to be optimistic. Most of the time. “Go get married; you two have fun. Just promise me you won’t have your reception at Ferry Lights. I couldn’t handle it.”
“You have my solemn oath,” Time swears. “I’m not setting foot in that shit hole. Love you, girl.”
“Love you, too. Jerk.”
Tim pauses, and I can hear him holding his breath.
“I’m kidding,” I assure him. “Good bye.”
We hang up, and I’m alone in the office long enough to have a mini break down. Just five seconds of abject panic, just to get it out of my system.
Gloria.
I want to string that woman up over the doors as a warning to anyone else who thinks they know better how to manage my PR profile better than I do.
Five seconds are up. Pity party over. Blow out the candles, put away the hats. Back to business, girl.
Mama should be up about now, and I’m certain that if anyone is there with her, they’re probably tired of it. The dinner service has started out slow but steady, and given the sharp decline in business recently I don’t expect I’ll be needed. So I find Chester, who barely has any work to do with his second bartender taking most of the drink orders.
“I need to go check up on my mom,” I tell him as he gives me that sympathetic smile of his. He knows how stressed I am. Chester’s good like that. It’s too bad he’s gay, because that’s a man I would snap up in a second. “Will you just generally keep an eye on things? And especially Gloria? Just like… tranq her if she looks like she’s about to talk to someone.”
He chuckles, and rolls his eyes at me. “Will do, boss lady.” We’ve had the conversation before—unprofessional, I know, but Chester is great for venting—about possibly firing Gloria. He knows all the reasons I can’t. Gloria doesn’t know that if Mama were to die, she’d be out of a job. I try not to think like that, but I just need any little excuse.
“Thanks,” I tell Chester, and we exchange Parisian-style faux cheek kisses before I hightail it out of there and to my car.
After repeatedly texting my stepfather and my brothers to no avail, I arrive at the hospital to find that, in fact, Mama is there alone. She has been since I left her with George this morning.
“It’s okay,” she tells me. “George has work, you know and… I know the boys are busy. You didn’t have to come.”
I sit down in the chair near her bed, and hold her hands tightly in both of mine. She returns the squeeze; she doesn’t mean it when she says I didn’t have to come, and she doesn’t mean it when she pretends not to be hurt that she’s here alone.
We’re quiet for a moment, and Mama gets a certain look in her eyes—a kind of feigned casualness that always precedes the same question. “Have you… have you heard from him?” she asks.
Of course, by “him” she means my father, her ex-husband. All these years later and she’s still in love with him. She’d never admit that, of course. It seems so strange to me that she would, like she never drew the connection between his leaving and her neuroses getting markedly exaggerated almost overnight. Before he left, they were manageable. Stressful on Dad, I know, and a big reason why he left but… if he’d known how bad it would get, then who knows? Maybe he wouldn’t have.
“He… hasn’t called, Mama. But I could call him, if you want.”
There’s an instinct to lie to her, tell her he asked about her. But the fact is, my relationship with my father is really just beginning, and we haven’t yet broached the subject. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to, and there’s a part of me that’s worried that if I bring it up, he might withdraw. Run off, again.
Abandonment issues; I have them. I’m aware, and I have the reports of several therapists to back me up. But I don’t have the time or the energy to spare to steamroll my way into Dad’s life and get the answers that might resolve some of that. I will, one day. Maybe.
Mama nods slowly, and swallows back something that might have been an impending crying fit. Funny how weak she can be when her own brain turns against her. When it comes to Dad, she can put on a strong face like no one’s business. Maybe we only have so much... maybe that’s where she spends all of her strength and resolve.
“I ran him off, you know,” Mama sighs, waving at her prone form under the hospital blanket and at the room around us. “With all this. With my… nervousness. I’m sorry he wasn’t around for you, Janie. Sorry that I made him leave.”
“Don’t say that, Mama,” I chide her. “I never felt that way. We’re all responsible for our own decisions.”
Mama isn’t buying it, I can tell. She’d much rather heap the responsibility on herself than admit it had nothing to do with her. Even if her attacks had anything to do with it, it wasn’t her fault and I really believe that. I want to be connected to Dad, but I’m not naive about him—he left because it was too much for him, and it was too much because he wasn’t the man he should have been. Parents are human too, weak and fallible like the rest of us.
“Get some rest, Mama,” I tell her as her eyes droop closed anyway. “It’s his loss. It always has been.”
She probably doesn’t hear that part. Her eyes close, and she’s sleeping peacefully from the sedatives in her system.
I lean back in the hospital room chair and watch her sleep, wishing I could make it all better.
Chapter 15
Jake
It takes an effort to stop grinding my teeth as I step through the doors of Red Hall for the second time. This time, it will go better than before. I know that. It’s all pla
nned out. Still, I’m unreasonably nervous going into the place. Why is it so slow in here? There can’t be more than forty or fifty people scattered around the lounge, and the last time I saw the place it had to have been in the hundreds.
That makes it so much worse, but I approach the bar anyway. What choice do I have? I never really needed to set aside anything like a nest egg. I’m Reginald’s only heir, and I’ve seen his will. Well, the original version anyway. No telling what it says now. The only business idea I ever had was—
No time to waste thinking about that right now. Not when I see Janie across the room and feel my stomach tighten. Or first meeting comes rushing back to me: the smell of her, the closeness of her body when we danced. The need that started to kindle at the base of my dick. I feel awful thinking about that now, but can’t help the fact that I’m looking forward to sweeping her off her feet, giving her something, even for a little while, to take her mind off of all of this.
I can do this.
She hasn’t seen me yet, and that’s fine. She’ll see me soon enough. So I go to the bar and lean casually on it, waving fingers at the bartender… is it Chester? I’m pretty sure it is.
Chester sees me, and pulls a face. Aha. So, I’m on some kind of watch list now. He quickly scans the crowd, probably looking for Janie.
His eyes stop searching, though, and he pales as he stares at one of the patrons at the bar, a guy in a cheap suit and large sunglasses, and a bag that he’s laying quietly on the bar. Chester isn’t staring at the man’s face, or his suit, or even the bag, though—he’s staring at the handgun. The man’s lips move, he’s telling Chester not to make a scene, to fill the bag up with whatever cash is behind the bar. Even with a crowd this small, it’s likely thousands of dollars.
Careful not to draw too much attention, I approach the man. I don’t move too quickly, and I keep my hands in sight. He glances at me, freezes, and angles himself so he can train his gun on either Chester or me without moving too far. A professional, it looks like.
