Go turns to address me now, “Nyla, Marco and I were raised by the same parents. He took duty more seriously than most. He would never have asked Sophia to marry him after getting another woman pregnant. I think the engagement ring was for you. I think he was going to ask you to marry him, but he did the honorable thing and told Sophia about the baby first.”
I gasp, my hands covering my mouth at just the thought of the alternative scenario.
But Sophia shakes her head at me, her beautiful face crumpling with innocent tears. “I’m a good person, Nyla. You know that—even after what happened between us when we were children, I was a good person to you.” She gives me a mournful look and says, “Believe me, I only came here because he invited me, and I only kissed him again because he kissed me first, and I thought he wanted me to. If I’d known you two were still together…”
“You would have done the exact same thing,” Go finishes, his voice steely with skepticism. He turns his gaze back to me. “And she’s playing you now, Nyla. Using sympathy trigger words like ‘children’ and bringing up your shared past so you’ll continue to believe she’s a good person. But a good person would never do something like this, no matter how angry and hurt they might feel. I think it’s pretty clear Sophia hates you.”
“No! I don’t hate anyone, and I wouldn’t do any of the things you’re accusing me of. Nyla, surely you don’t believe him!”
“Actually… I do,” I answer slowly, still trying to absorb and process all the new details being thrown my way. I look between my geeky husband and the gorgeous woman standing beside him. Then I turn to Go and say, “I believe you. It’s crazy, but I believe you.”
“What?!” Sophia says at the same time Go asks, “Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously,” I answer, with a decisive nod. “Go, if you were really looking to replace me with Sophia, you’d at least start the divorce proceedings first so it wouldn’t look bad in the press. I mean, your board’s mad enough at you already and you definitely don’t want to add fuel to that fire. Plus…a couch kiss?! Totally not your style! If you really wanted her, you would have set everything up in the bedroom and gone from there. Also, even if you were truly ready to move on just two days after flying out to Indiana and begging me to come back, you never would have left me on the house’s computer recognition system…”
I realize then at the same time I say it, “I know you, Go. I can read you. And this,” I gesture to Sophia in all her splendor, “just isn’t you. She’s totally not your type.”
His mouth quirks. “You’re correct on all counts, Nyla.”
“This is ridiculous!” Sophia huffs. “I’m everyone’s type!”
“Not his,” I respond at the same time he says, “Not mine.”
Sophia glares at us both, so hard, it’s almost comical.
That is until she turns to me, her face twisting into an ugly snarl. “You’re doing it again. You’re making false accusations! Like when you told everyone my father broke my arm.”
“He did break your arm, Sophia,” I say to her. “I saw you go into the garage with him, and then you came running out screaming, and he had that sledgehammer in his hand. I saw everything. It was him…”
“I broke my arm, you stupid bitch!” Sophia screams at me. “I used Daddy’s sledgehammer to break my own arm. He was just as surprised as you were when I came running out of that garage. But at that point, I was willing to do anything to get you out of our house before my parents adopted you.”
I stand there, too stunned to ask her why she’d do such a thing. But Go steps between her and me and turns to face Sophia. “Why would you do that, Sophia? That’s an incredibly negative response to discovering you’re going to have an adopted sister.”
“Because my father was mine!” Sophia answers with a face full of rage. “But that slut over there tried to take him away from me!”
She leans sideways to make eye contact with me around Go’s torso. “Don’t you think I saw the way you looked at him? Calling him Dad, like he didn’t already have a daughter who loved him?”
She shifts her glare back to Go. “Ask your wife about how she seduced my father. Playing innocent, like she didn’t know exactly what she was doing.”
“No, Sophia…” I start shaking my head, already suspecting where she’s headed with her version of the story, and not wanting it to be true. Really not wanting it to be true.
But she continues anyway, like an incoming tornado that can’t be stopped. “Yeah, I saw what you were doing,” she tells me, her eyes sparkling with mad fury. “And I knew what I had to do when he asked me to start preparing you to take part in our special time together.”
“Oh no, Sophia,” I say, my stomach filling up with sad disgust. “Please tell me he wasn’t—that he wasn’t doing that to you.”
“He was my daddy. Mine!” Sophia rages as if the terrible, mind-destroying things her father did to her were beside the point. “He belonged to me.”
“Oh, my God,” I whisper, covering my mouth with my hand. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. If I’d known, I would have tried to help you. I swear!”
“I didn’t need your help!” she screams back at me. “He was mine. And you tried to take him away from me! You’re always trying to take what’s mine!”
At this point, I don’t know whether she’s talking about her father or Marco, but either way, I say, “No, Sophia. I understand why you might think that. But your father shouldn’t have done that to you or any other girl. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry, you bitch! If you were really sorry, you never would have set your whore sights on him in the first place. You tried to steal him from me, just like you tried to steal Marco! Did you really think I’d let you get away with that? Marco’s lucky he died in that car accident before he asked you to marry him, because if he hadn’t, I would have killed him myself.”
She snarls this with such conviction, I have absolutely no problem believing every single bat shit crazy word coming out of her mouth.
“Did you really think I’d just let you marry his brother and become a billionaire’s wife after everything you did to me?” she asks. “I couldn’t let you get away with ruining my life again, Nyla. In fact, I won’t let you get away with it again.”
I start to respond, start trying to explain to her that she needs some serious help. But then I hear the cock of a gun. And suddenly Sophia’s crazed eyes aren’t the only thing glittering in the room. She’s got a small pistol in her hands.
“I’m going to make you pay for everything you’ve done, Nyla,” she informs me with demented tears shining in her eyes.
“Run, Nyla!” Go yells, moving to the side to block Sophia and the gun.
Then she squeezes the trigger.
17
It’s like something straight out of every pregnant woman’s worst nightmare. Running, running, but slower than you need to because you’re carrying not one life, but two. Two lives will be lost if she gets to me. Not just one.
Two more lives…
The image of Go’s body flying backwards with the force of Sophia’s bullet flashes through my mind, cracking my heart open.
But there’s no time to grieve. I have to run. All the while, the house announces my every damn move.
“Nyla Weathers-Gutierrez is running up the stairs. Nyla Weathers-Gutierrez has entered the master bedroom.”
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
I close myself in the bathroom and look for something, anything, to defend myself with. There is absolutely nothing. Not so much as a razor even, thanks to the fact that the house is owned by the world’s beardiest billionaire.
“Guest Sophia Perez has entered the master bedroom,” the house tells me.
Cursing some more, I enclose myself in the super huge closet off the bathroom. The motion sensors bathe everything in light, but thankfully the house doesn’t announce my entrance into the closet.
And I’m just in time. A moment later, there are
another couple gunshots followed by the sound of shattering glass. Then the house says, “Guest Sophia Perez has entered the master bath.”
The house, I think to myself before desperately calling out, “House! House! Can you help me? Please help me!”
A pause. Then: “Emergency mode on. How may I help you, Nyla?”
“We have an intruder with a gun. She shot Go! Call the police!”
“Engaging emergency services…”
Thank the Lord! That means help is on the way.
I get exactly one second to feel relieved before a shot shatters the closet’s frosted glass door.
I have a few suggestions for future versions of Go’s smart house. For starters, maybe get rid of the bitch-ass computer announcing every move the residents make. And while you’re at it, here’s a crazy thought: if you’re going to build all your doors using frosted glass, do yourself a favor and make sure they’re bullet-proof.
I rush to hide between the display cases holding Go’s sneakers, waiting, waiting…
“I know you’re back there,” Sophia says coming around a display case, gun first. “Your husband’s dead. Now it’s time for you to die, too. Come out, come out—”
That's exactly what I do, tackling her in the middle of her sing-song command. It’s a desperate move to say the least. And one I wouldn’t have made if I’d taken even a moment to carefully ponder my decision.
Sophia screams when we go down, both of us landing in the door’s shattered glass. The pain. There’s nothing to describe it. Shocking and sharp. Glass bites through my sweater, into my skin, and I can only pray it hasn’t hurt the baby.
It shows just how insane Sophia truly is that despite wearing even thinner clothes than me, she recovers almost immediately and goes for her gun.
Only adrenaline and the need to protect this baby at any cost allow me to grab her by her bloody ankle. I try to pull her back, but the blood makes her skin slippery and I can barely maintain my grip. She wriggles free and grabs the gun, pulling the trigger without so much as a moment of consideration, spraying more glass down on us when the bullet misses me and hits one of the nearby display cases.
I reach desperately for her gun hand and manage to grasp her wrist with both my hands. But she’s also using her hands, not to mention her surprising strength, to try to lower her arm the few inches she needs to end me with a bullet. We struggle like this for a few seconds—tense and panting—both of us on our knees in the bed of broken glass.
“Please, Sophia!” I say, because I don’t want to be here with her.
A part of me understands now that her adolescent lies saved me from years of therapy and shame. I’m also keenly aware that had it not been for my Halloween one-night stand with Marco, Sophia might have managed to overcome the terrible things her father did to her…settling into a relatively normal life with Marco, and maybe even gone on to get counseling.
For a moment, I’m overwhelmed with the wish that none of this ever happened. That Sophia’s father hadn’t acted upon his sick urges with his only child. That her boyfriend hadn’t gotten me pregnant. That she’d never found out about the baby or that Marco is the father.
But then I have to face reality. Sophia shot Go, and now she’s trying to kill me. She incapable of hearing my pleas and is too far out of her damaged mind to see reason.
I’m pregnant and getting weaker by the bleeding second as I try to fend her off. Meanwhile, she has the strength of a madwoman with nothing more to lose fueling her. We’re so mismatched, there’s only one way this fight will end. I can already see certain triumph glittering in her mad eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sophia,” I whisper mournfully.
But she doesn’t care about that, she just wants me dead. And it’s clear she won’t stop fighting until that happens. She won’t let me or anyone else stop her from killing the woman she believes ruined her life. She’s going to get her gun arm down and she’s going to blow my face off. This is her moment, the moment she’s been secretly waiting for over half her life.
Which is probably why Sophia looks so surprised and falls forward a little when I unclasp one of my hands from her wrist. She doesn’t understand my sudden move until it’s too late. Not until I’m desperately slashing the thick shard of broken glass I managed to grab with my right hand across her exposed throat.
The gun clatters to the floor, and that’s it. I know I can release Sophia now because she’s gone from being my killer to my victim.
Hands desperately clasping her throat, she tries to scream. But she can’t, because her vocal chords are damaged beyond repair and filling with blood. She gurgles, thick bursts of her blood oozing between the fingers she’s wrapped protectively around her neck.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I whisper over and over again, as I carefully lower her to the floor, right before she begins to sickeningly convulse in all the glass. I have never in my life witnessed anything so horrific. And it’s almost a relief when her body gives out, her eyes partially shutting as the curtain closes on her tragic life.
I stay kneeling over her body for an exhausted and dazed moment, before I remember, “Go!”
Terror and desperate hope propel me out of the bathroom and back downstairs.
“No!” I scream, when I find him on the floor of the foyer in a pool of his own blood, body convulsing with the effort to stay alive.
I drop down beside him, my cut up knees slipping in all the blood. “No, Go! Please,” I cry, grabbing his hands as tightly as I can. “Don’t die! Don’t die! Don’t leave me!”
Still shuddering, he slowly turns to face me. The look in his eyes is so tender, but the light behind them is fading rapidly. “You’re…alive.”
“Yes, Go, I’m still here,” I whisper, knowing how this is about to end, but desperate to keep him with me anyway. I squeeze his hand even tighter. Just the way I know he likes. “So you have to stay with me. Don’t go, Go!”
He lets out a choking laugh, blood dribbling from his mouth. “That’s terrible word play, Nyla. Not appropriate for this moment at all.”
But then his face softens. “I love you. I should have said it sooner. I wish I’d said it sooner.”
“It’s okay,” I assure him. “It’s okay. Just don’t die, okay? Help is on the way.”
I can hear the sirens in the distance.
More coughing. More blood. And then he gives me the most apologetic of looks. “I didn’t plan for this,” he says.
And his eyes sink close.
“Oh God…Go!” I shake him gently, trying to get him to open his eyes. But it’s as if he only held on that long so he could see me one last time.
“Go!” I scream. “Go! Go!” Over and over again.
But it doesn’t change a thing.
Epilogue
Two Years Later
I wake from another nightmare about Go’s death to the sound of Marcella crying.
A few moments later, I’m stumbling down the hall from my room to hers. I turn on her nursery light the old-fashioned way, by flipping the switch beside the door. Though this house was bought with Go’s billions, it has very little tech it in. The truth is, I couldn’t bear to live in another smart house after what happened in the last one.
I find her standing up in her crib, her face red with the strain of her fury.
“What’s wrong, honey?” I ask, picking her up and enfolding her in a hug.
She sputters inconsolably. “Muh-muh! Muh-muh!”
I sway back and forth with her, trying not to worry about the fact that she’s still not talking much. I’ve been speaking with Maria, Go’s mother, a lot on the phone lately. All the tragedy has drawn us closer together rather than further apart, as one might expect considering everything that happened. In the aftermath of the Sophia incident, Maria has drawn me closer. Not just because of Marcella, I think, but because she needs someone to talk to, someone who will understand.
“I loved them both,” she told me a few months ago on the anniversary of
Marco’s death. “Not the same. Nyla, you can’t ever love your children the same, because each one is different. But you love them the same amount, yes?”
I understood. I understand everything Maria’s going through. All the love, all the guilt, all the regrets… Sophia, both young and older, haunts my dreams on the regular.
Maria told me she worried about Go in the same way I’m worrying about Marcella. “Only grunting and pointing until he was three,” she said. “I had to take time off work to bring him to a doctor. They sent me to a special place. Then more time off work to hear what I already know—he’s not talking so good. But he starts talking more when he went to a new daycare class. I think maybe he just didn’t like the teacher. Give it some time. It’s too soon to say.”
Maybe. Or…a dozen alternative explanations went through my head when she told me that story about Go. But she’s right about one thing: it’s too soon to have Marcella assessed. I should stop worrying and concentrate on loving her the best I can.
I sway with her in my arms and wish, not for the first time during this extremely difficult anniversary month, that Go was still here.
But then she stops crying, so quickly I wonder if it wasn’t just a nightmare. Like the ones I’ve been having in my empty bed.
Sophia shooting Go. Go telling me he loves me as he chokes on his blood. Go dying.
I shake the image out of my head as I lay Marcella back down in her crib and turn off the light. I head back to my room.
Tomorrow I have a post-sprint presentation on The Restraining Order bracelet, and the grand opening of the very last of Go’s promised Ruth House’s to attend. I’ve found out the hard way that the life of a billionaire philanthropist isn’t as easy as you might think. My life now is all about rushing from meeting to meeting to ensure Go’s visions come to pass, since he’s no longer here to handle that stuff himself.
His Pretend Baby Page 12
