Claimed: The Dark Christmases Trilogy

by Z. L. Arkadie

  Jasper took my hand under the table. “I have to tell you about my father and the sort of man he was. You’re going to hear about it in the news, and I want you to hear it from me first.”

  Marie sat very still as tears rolled out of her eyes. She cried similarly to how Katie had cried earlier. At that moment, I realized how much sadness they felt about the loss of their daughter. But Doris’s parents didn’t say a word after hearing about how Randolph Christmas had preferred girls of a certain age and, because of his massive wealth, could afford to not only feed his sickness but also keep it secret. Jasper told them his mother was fifteen years old when she birthed him. He shared with them how their daughter stayed with his father in an effort to keep him, her only son, from falling into Randolph’s darkness.

  “My father was a master manipulator. I’m positive he convinced my mother that you let him have her.”

  Then Jasper let them know that his childhood had not been easy, and Doris was probably depressed every day of her life, but she’d been tough and had loved him a lot.

  Harold cleared his throat. “We never moved because we hoped one day she would return.”

  Marie shook her head emphatically. “I never believed she was dead. I knew someone had her. I would stare at men, wishing they would see something in my face to tip me off that they had my daughter. I waited for one of them to run scared—I would chase him and eventually find Doris.” She gazed off into space.

  “But you said she was tough?” Harold asked, his watery eyes begging to hear that his daughter figured out a way to fight back.

  “Very much so,” Jasper replied.

  Harold almost smiled, but his mouth couldn’t quite make the commitment.

  I helped Marie serve the coffee. They had invited us to stay with them for the night, and Jasper and I had accepted their invitation. Marie and Harold showed us tons of photos of Doris when she was a little girl and of their other children. They wanted us to meet them soon. Jasper was hesitant but eventually said he would like to do that. I wanted to explain to them that their grandson was not a sunny kind of guy and didn’t know what a normal family life looked like. Spencer, Asher, and Bryn were his norm, and they were all so damaged, and it was Jasper’s job to take care of them without question.

  Jasper was able to tell them that his mother was a pretty good photographer and liked taking pictures. He said he had her photos framed on his walls in all his homes. Marie excused herself and returned with a tiny camera that her daughter used to keep on her most of the time.

  “She’d always be out taking pictures. I have her photo album somewhere around here.”

  Unable to restrain myself, I yawned, and Harold asked his wife if we could save that part for the morning.

  They showed Jasper and me to a guest room, which had a queen-sized bed and antique furniture and smelled of potpourri. We stripped out of our clothes and cuddled under the clean sheets and thick quilt. Of course, Jasper had an erection the size of Jupiter, and he ground it against my ass.

  “Do you really think we should, with Ward and June down the hall?” I whispered.

  “Who the fuck are Ward and June?” he asked.

  I chuckled. “You know, the Cleavers—Leave It to Beaver.”

  “Is that a book?” His breath tickled the back of my neck.

  “No, it’s a television show.”

  He grunted thoughtfully. “I don’t know about those two Cleavers, but…” The tip of his penis poked the outside of my pussy. I opened my legs a little wider and let him thrust himself inside me.

  “Um,” I said.

  “Shit,” Jasper whispered, his mouth against my hair as he shifted his manhood in and out of me. I was thankful the bed didn’t creak. “You’re so fucking tight and wet, baby,” he muttered.

  “Jasper… um… they’re going to hear us.” Damn it. He feels so good inside me. I licked my lips.

  “How many kids have they had? They’ve done a lot of fucking in their day.” He grabbed my hips, sucking air.

  I twisted my body to see him, watching his dick go in and out of me.

  “Your ass is famous,” he said.

  I chuckled. Usually, by now, Jasper would be so turned-on that he would increase his pace, but he was being careful. He cared whether his grandparents heard him. He slammed his dick deep inside me and pressed his hand against my belly as he shivered while coming, being way more quiet than normal.

  When we fell asleep, Jasper was still inside me. Sometime during the night, I woke up to pee. In the morning, I woke to the feeling of Jasper massaging my hip.

  I moaned. “Good morning, my love,” I whispered.

  He guided me onto my back and spread my legs as he positioned himself on top of me. “Good morning.”

  I gasped as he filled me with his morning wood.

  We had breakfast with his grandparents. Jasper agreed to show them the mansion Amelia had lived in and let them talk to all the people that knew her best, including Sally Preacher and even Nigel. Jasper had revealed that Amelia and Nigel had carried on an affair and were in love. That, of course, was news to me but certainly something like that would happen in that dark mansion of theirs. After looking through more of his mother’s photo albums and learning more about the sort of people his grandparents were, Jasper became less hesitant about meeting his mother’s siblings and his cousins sometime in the future.

  “We’d better get going,” he finally announced late in the day. Our plane was at the airport, waiting to fly us to the compound.

  “Well, watch your step out there,” Harold said. “I’m going to have to shovel that walk later. The guy who takes care of our yard has been sick for the last two weeks. The flu’s going around.”

  Jasper rose to his feet. “I’ll shovel it before we leave. And then I can find you someone more stable to do the work around the yard for you.”

  I knew it wouldn’t be long before Jasper started taking care of them too.

  His grandfather patted his grandson on the shoulder, though. “I know you’re a very rich man, son, but so am I. How about we shovel together?”

  “Um, sure,” Jasper said. I could tell he felt a little hurt.

  When Harold went to put on his coat and hat, I had a moment to translate what he had just said to Jasper. “Babe, that was his way of saying that he doesn’t want your money. He only wants his daughter’s son in his life.”

  Jasper still seemed a little confused. Learning a new language of familial love would take him longer than one visit to his grandparents’ house. While he and Harold shoveled the sidewalk, I had another cup of coffee with Marie.

  “So you’re a reporter?” she asked.

  I smiled graciously. “Yes, I am.”

  “Tell me, what periodical do you write for?”

  I told her all about my career—how I’d started, why I was now independent, and the two books that I’d written.

  “I must read them,” she said.

  I felt my entire face beaming as I sipped my coffee. I hadn’t realized how much of a sense of pride my career gave me. “And what about you? Do you work?”

  “Not anymore,” she said, grinning nostalgically. “But I used to dance in the American Ballet.”

  I jerked my head in surprise. “You’re a ballerina.”

  She raised a finger. “I used to be a ballerina. That was a long time ago. I had to stop dancing after doing irrevocable damage to my feet. I taught for a while but it just made me miss the stage even more.” She had a nostalgic look in her eyes as she gazed off.

  No wonder she came off so gracefully. I didn’t want to stop talking about her life on the stage, but my bladder felt full. I excused myself to go to the bathroom. That was when I found that I’d started my period. I was a little disappointed but, at the same time, very relieved.

  As soon as I was out of the bathroom, Jasper was ready to go. Before getting in the car, we turned back to wave at Harold and Marie, who were standing in the window, doing the same. The engine was already r
unning and the car was already heated when we got in.

  “Well,” I said, amused by how content he looked, “that was fun.”

  He smiled tightly, then his expression turned serious. “Holly?”

  I sat upright, realizing that he was purposely changing the mood. “Yes?”

  “All hell’s about to break loose. Our family’s secrets are going to cause a ruckus. I know you said that you don’t like writing, but I would like you to write our story.”

  My brain could hardly connect with what he’d just asked. “Our story? Yours and mine?”

  He flexed his eyebrows. “I’m sure that’ll be included—you are the woman I love. But I’m referring to my father, mother—everything.”

  I closed my mouth, swallowed, and eyed him suspiciously. “Is this you attempting to control the narrative?”

  “I want you to write about the Christmases as you wrote about the Howsleys. I want you to do your best. Dig into every fucking corner and pull out the cobwebs.”

  Why is my heart pounding so hard? I couldn’t speak. All I could do was nod. Then I scrambled for my purse.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Emailing my publisher.” I grinned from ear to ear. “I’m telling him I have another winning story.”

  Jasper looked slightly worried for a moment, but that expression soon gave way to a smile of approval. Then he pulled the car away from the curb, and we were on our way.

  Chapter Eighteen

  December 22nd

  The auditorium was packed. The publishers had rushed my new book, The Dark Christmases, to print. It was touted as my best work yet—so well written, so thorough, and showing my maturity since the publication of The Howsley Project.

  Jasper and I were now living together in his three-story penthouse apartment in New York with Katie and Zach, who were married on Valentines Day. There was more than enough room for all four of us. She was studying biology at NYU. Jasper had pulled some strings to get Katie accepted into such a prestigious university. So far, she was passing with flying colors, and rightfully so since she was always studying. Zach was still the second-hardest-working man I knew, slaving away as a resident at the hospital. But Jasper took the prize for working the most. The fallout from my book exposing all the sins of his family was astronomical. I was his girlfriend, and Jasper wasn’t shying away from the controversy—he’d disclosed all his father’s dirty secrets, from the kidnapping of Doris to having children with fifteen-year-old girls to the extreme sexual misconduct that had taken place for years in the Lower Manhattan office. He also discovered all the aliases his father used to do his dirty deeds. I wasn’t able to publish them all, but since Benjamin Dow was out there, I included the big payoff Randolph had made to a foreign criminal element to make sure he had first pick of human cargo coming from across the Bering Sea.

  How people received Jasper’s truth was mixed. Some people wanted to fillet all the Christmases, especially when it was leaked that Asher and Spencer were provided prostitutes by the same madam who’d supplied their father with underage girls. Needless to say, the name Christmas had put a bitter taste in a lot of people’s mouths. There was no rising out of the ashes of their destruction. At least, that was how I saw it. I wasn’t sure if Jasper was convinced of the same. He ran the family’s businesses without missing a beat, increasing their bottom line.

  Spencer and Asher were still trying to discover their own business instincts. Unlike Randolph, Jasper didn’t float them copious amounts of cash to waste however they saw fit. Even Bryn had to figure out what she wanted to do to make her way in the world, which was why she moved to California to be with her new boyfriend—a guy who called himself Domino—and closer to her mother. Beth remained in a premium sober-living house on the coast. The damage done to her psyche was extensive, but the longer she stayed in rehab, the closer to happy she believed she was getting. As for Domino, Jasper disliked him more than he had Dale. And even though Bryn wasn’t with Dale romantically, because she could never forgive him for that day in Nashville when he’d walked out on her, they were coproducing a film about her version of the Christmas family story, focusing on her life. She and Dale argued a lot, which led to the frequent shutdown of production.

  But the success of my book was a miracle. I wrote it during the days Jasper and I spent on his compound in Connecticut. We even remained there long after Arthur Valentine, like a cat with nine lives, had figured out a way to land on his feet. His daughter Julia was engaged to one of her third cousins, a billionaire who owned a successful sports team. Already, the unwitting relative had given Arthur enough cold hard cash to fund at least one of his old businesses. But Arthur had lost interest in Jasper and Bryn since, as far as politics were concerned, the Christmases’ reputation was even more irreparable than his own. The last I heard, he was trying to push his future son-in-law toward the highest seat in the land.

  Jasper was to appear on stage with me at the auditorium. He was the new owner of BCN, and they were going to cover our interview with Stan Rochester for the night’s Rochester Report. The station predicted that ratings would be high. America and the world were too curious about how one man could get away with such dastardly deeds and die before paying for them.

  Careful not to mess up my makeup, I sat in the green room, eating finger sandwiches. Jasper was still late. There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” I said excitedly.

  My heart stopped as Kylie Roberson stepped inside and closed the door behind her. I finished swallowing the sandwich in my mouth then rose to my feet, determined to not be dwarfed by Kylie. “What are you doing here?”

  She scoffed bitterly. “Is that really the first fucking thing you have to say to me?”

  I shrugged indifferently. “Is there something else you want to hear?”

  Kylie snarled. “You ruined my reputation.”

  “You ruined your own reputation,” I snapped. “I never told you to run with that half-baked story of mine. You actually tried to steal it from me.” I folded my arms defiantly. There was no way I was going to reveal that Jasper had told me about her underhanded deeds. “Are you here to apologize for that?”

  A girl wearing a headset poked her head into the room. “It’s time to move to the stage.” Her eyes shifted between Kylie and me.

  I glared at Kylie with my eyes narrowed to slits. “I’m ready. And get her out of here.”

  Kylie sniffed. “I’m leaving. But know that you’re on my shit list.”

  I crossed my arms tighter. “Bring it.”

  The girl wearing the headset seemed confused by what was going on between Kylie and me, but she barely focused on Kylie as she passed her. The girl craned her neck, looking down as if listening to someone in her ear. Then she looked up at me again. “Now, now. We have to move.”

  Shit. I was still a little rattled by how Kylie had popped up out of nowhere, but more than that, I was anxious about Jasper not being there.

  “But where’s Jasper?” I asked.

  “We have to go. Let’s move.”

  I sighed forcefully. She was the one in charge of the moment, so I went with her. We walked fast down the hallway, our feet beating against the concrete.

  “Jasper’s supposed to be on stage with me,” I said, trying to figure out how to quickly inform him of Kylie’s little visit. The only way he’d allowed Rachel to keep her show on BCN was if she fired Kylie. Rachel had done it without a hint of hesitation.

  “I know. Don’t worry. He’s on the way,” the girl replied and continued talking to that person in her headset.

  I took her word for fact and was able to lower my anxiety a few levels, figuring Jasper would show up before the taping began. He was a stickler for being on time.

  When I made it to the stage, the audience roared with applause. I was shocked to see Marie and Harold along with Jasper’s mother’s half sisters—Debbie and Langley—and her half brothers Jerrod and Kevin in the first row. All of their children were wit
h them too. I recalled the first time we met the other side of his family. It was during an Easter picnic. Jasper had not been able to relax to save his life. But his aunts and uncles were patient with him, and I was there to make the meeting more congenial and tolerable for him. I was happy to see his family on his mother’s side, but even more, I was shocked to see Spencer and Asher there. They’d never supported Jasper in anything. Instead, it had always been the other way around: they felt Jasper had to tote and fetch for them.

  Suddenly, Stan Rochester took his position. I was about to jump out of my seat and tell him we were going to have to delay recording for another fifteen minutes when Jasper walked down the center of the aisle, carrying a big bouquet of beautiful red roses.

  My buttocks felt glued to the chair even though I wanted to get up and run to him. He looked so handsome with his nicely tailored black suit and sexy physique. We hadn’t stopped fucking like rabbits yet, and I was thinking the day would never come when we would stop. If only I could have had him right there and then. I cracked an impish smile, and only then did I notice that the crowd was on its feet, clapping again.

  Before Jasper reached the stage, the girl who’d walked me to the auditorium handed him a microphone. As soon as the thing was in his hand, he dropped to one knee.

  “Babe,” he said, and the crowd started applauding even louder.

  Jasper chuckled.

  “Yes,” I answered, flirting with him as soon as they quieted. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was happening.

  There were chuckles, but then the auditorium quickly went silent.

  “From the moment I laid eyes on you and treated you like the dick that I was—or am, depending on who’s watching…”

  The crowd laughed, and so did I.

  “The dick that you were, but that’s only if I’m watching,” I joked.

  Jasper turned to the crowd. “See? I’m proposing to her, and she still wants to make this a two-person act.”