by JA Huss
“Thanks,” Bric says amicably as the agent raises the gate for us. He’s nice to him, but me? No. Apparently, I don’t deserve common courtesy.
“It’s a long drive, Nadia,” he finally says, once we’re on the road and heading… somewhere. “The ranch is a little over an hour west of here. But there’s a town nearby we can stay in.”
“Why can’t we just stay with your family?” I ask.
“Because I have eleven—” He stops. Swallows hard. Starts again. “I have ten brothers and sisters, Nadia. And every one of them has children. And all but two live on the ranch. So there’s no room, you see. I have no room there. There’s no space for guests. And I’m not fucking sharing a room with seven nephews today.”
Oh.
“You wanted to come,” he says, slipping me a sidelong glance. “You’re here. Congratulations. You got something out of me no one else has. Not even my best friends. But I’m gonna make you pay for this.”
“What?”
“Something dear. That’s what you said, right? When we asked you what you wanted as payment.”
I don’t actually know what to say to that.
“You want my privacy, Nadia? That’s why you drew your line in the sand?”
“Obviously.” I laugh, shaking my head a little. “You’ve been stewing about your decision to bring me along this whole time. And you’re sorry I’m here. So forget it. I’ll stay in that hotel and you do your little private thing, Bric. And then when I get back to Denver, I’m done with you. Done. With. You.”
“Fuck you,” he mutters under his breath. “I didn’t bring you all this way just to offer you an easy way out. I’m gonna give you exactly what you think you want. And then when we get home, I’m cutting all ties with you. Jordan can have you if he wants. I’m out.”
Chapter Twenty-Five - Bric
She’s a hell of a player, I’ll give her that. Because she had me going for a little while. She had me thinking this was real. But then the word Master came out of her mouth.
Rage filled me up when she said that word. Rage.
That she would dare to play me like this after that call came in. Luc is dead. Dead. And while I can still be rational about this, and I know it’s not my fault—that he had his problems and they had nothing to do with me—it’s still my fault. Because three brothers and one sister called me this week asking for my help and I blew them off.
“Why?” she says.
The truck is loud, the wheels crunching on the snow-packed road as I make my way west. The heater is blaring. So her voice is small and weak. And even though yesterday that would almost be enough for me… today everything is different.
I don’t answer her. She’s getting more from me today than she deserves. I refuse to expose myself further.
“Just tell me why you’re so mad, Elias.”
Elias. I laugh, it’s such a joke.
“I get it, you’re upset about your brother—”
“Fuck you,” I say. “Just fuck you.”
“What did I do?” she says, almost pleading. And I’m almost convinced. But she’s nothing but a very good player.
She gives up after that. She’s stuck here with me. But that’s what she wanted. She took herself out of her element and now she’s in mine. I have all the power up here in the north. She has nothing but me.
Almost an hour later, after sitting in relative silence the entire time—Nadia pressing her head against the frozen window, me gripping the steering wheel so tight my hands ache—I pull into the motel parking lot and put the truck in park.
“Wait here,” I say, getting out of the truck and slamming the door.
Inside the hot air from a heater blasts my face. I look around the tiny lobby, then find the girl behind the counter. “Hey, Elias,” she says, frowning.
My niece, Mandy. Abrem’s youngest daughter. “Hey,” I say. “Just got in and I’m really tired. Is the room ready?”
“Sure,” she says, craning her neck a little to get a look at Nadia through the window. “Are you coming tonight? You could give me a ride home so my dad doesn’t have to come pick me up.”
“Of course,” I say. “What time do you get off?”
“Six. We’re having dinner at eight.”
“Should be…” I’m about to say a good time. Pull out all my Uncle Elias charm. Be the uncaring one. The happy one. The distant one. But I can’t do it. “It’s gonna be OK,” I say instead.
She’s been crying, I can see. Her eyes are red and her face is pale. She just nods as she fills out the little paper form with my name. I hand her my credit card, she runs it, and then slides a key on a plastic keychain across the counter. “Room nine.” And then she points. “That side of the building.”
“I’ll be here at six, OK?” I say, placing my hand on hers.
She just nods again, so I give that hand a squeeze and then turn away.
“Everyone’s happy you’re home,” she says, just as I open the door and let the cold in.
I smile at her over my shoulder and lie. “I’m happy to be home too.”
Nadia says nothing as I pull the car in front of room nine. We get out, I grab the suitcase, and then we shuffle through the door and into the room. The heat is on, because it’s not an icebox in here. But I turn it up anyway.
The cold kills you up here.
“There’s two beds,” Nadia says.
“Yup,” I say back. “One for me and one for you.”
It’s an insult she’s not expecting because it makes her recoil.
I take out my wallet, throw two twenties down on the small table near the door, then place the truck key on top of them. “There’s fast food places in town. Knock yourself out if you’re hungry.”
And then I take off my coat, my suit coat, and flop down on the bed farthest from the door, face first. Praying that she takes me up on my offer and leaves me alone.
I have no idea what she does. I sleep. I sleep like a man who needs to forget. And when I wake, it’s my niece’s voice that draws me back to the living.
“Uncle Elias?” she says, shaking my shoulder.
“Hmmm?” I ask, taking a moment as the memory of where I’m at and why I’m here floods in.
“It’s after six. We have to go. Are you still driving me home?”
I look up and turn, taking in the room. “Where’s Nadia?” I ask.
“She’s in the truck. She said she’ll drive me home if you don’t want to.”
Fuck that. Like hell that bitch is gonna go sneak her way into my life. “No,” I say, sitting up. “I’m coming. Give me a few minutes to clean up, OK?” I smile at my niece because she looks worried. She looks… she looks like she doesn’t know me.
She doesn’t. None of them do.
“I’ll wait in the truck,” she says, then pulls the door open and closes it, leaving behind a rush of cold air.
Winter in Montana. Probably the thing I hate most about this place.
And yet… here I am.
I wash my face, doing my best not to look at myself in the mirror, then decide my rumpled pants and wrinkled shirt aren’t appropriate and change into my blue suit. The black is for tomorrow. For the funeral.
Fucking Luc.
The truck smells like food when I get in. My stomach rumbles in a painful way when Mandy offers me a burger wrapped in foil. “It’s still hot,” she says. “We just picked them up before I woke you.”
Nadia is in the back seat. So when I look over my shoulder to back the truck up, I ask her, “Did you have fun today with my niece?”
“Yes,” Nadia says, smiling at Mandy in the front seat next to me. “She sent me on eight errands.”
I raise my eyebrows at Mandy. She just shrugs. “I had a grocery list from Mother. And Lettie needed medicine.”
Yeah. This is gonna be a fucking blast.
“I hope it’s not too much trouble to feed me tonight,” Nadia says.
Mandy laughs. “We won’t even notice you, Nadia. Until you tell
everyone you’re a famous ballerina, that is.”
“I’m not famous,” Nadia says, her face lit up with a smile. She seems more at ease with my niece than she’s ever been with me. “But it is kinda cool.”
“My sister Becca wants to be a ballerina. She studies at a school in Seattle.”
And then the conversation takes off from there and requires no more input from me.
By the time I pull down the long driveway to the house—if you can call that monstrosity of logs a house—Nadia and Mandy are practically best friends.
Why not? They’re almost the same fucking age.
What the fuck am I doing here?
Luc is dead, Elias.
Right.
No one comes outside to greet us when I pull into the snow-covered field we use as a parking lot. Way too fucking cold for something like that.
I was just home last summer. I come home every summer for the Labor Day family reunion. But I haven’t been here in the winter in more than ten years. That’s when I stopped coming for Christmas.
The last ten winters have been great ones. No yelling, no crying, no sick kids, no fighting parents. There’s no talk of who will wash the million dishes piled in the three kitchen sinks. There’s no mound of wrapping paper being carefully refolded to use again next year.
But there’s been no sleigh rides either. Or chestnuts. Or cookie-baking.
Don’t do it, Elias, I tell myself. Don’t let the good memories outweigh the bad. Because it’s a trick.
Just like this thing I have with Nadia. It’s a trick.
Nadia and Mandy are already out of the truck by the time I gather myself and get out. My dress shoes sink into the snow several inches, soaking my socks. I look at my watch. Dinner in an hour, then maybe some small talk. I can be out of here and back on the road by ten. At the motel at eleven. Sleeping…
I want to go home. This place is not my home.
I get a sick feeling in my stomach when Mandy opens the door and Nadia files into the house behind her. I almost turn back.
But fuck it. I’m here. She’s here. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. I’m so fucking tired of keeping this secret.
I go inside and close the door.
Five faces stare at me. Smiling, if you can believe it.
Sylvia. Charity. Megan. Donna.
“Nadia,” I say, looking down at her confused face as she takes in my family, “these are my mothers. And this,” I say, nodding my head to the man between them, “is my father, David Bricman.”
She’s silent for a count of five. Five long seconds as it all sinks in. She looks up at me. I shrug. “We’re a plural family,” I say. “And now you know more about me than anyone in the whole fucking world. Because now you know both sides to me. Elias from Great Falls, Montana. And Bric from Denver, Colorado. Did you get what you came for? Hmm?” I ask. “Did you ever think winning would be so… so fucking sweet?”
I don’t even hear my moms as they reprimand me for language. I’m thirty-six years old. I can say fuck any time I want. I do not even care that there’s fifteen little kids hanging on my legs at the moment. I just don’t care.
I walk towards the liquor cabinet—some of them sitting on my feet, gripping my knees for dear life, letting me take them for a ride—and pour myself a drink.
“Cheers,” I say to no one in particular. “It’s time to get drunk.”
I do get drunk. I say nothing else the entire night. My moms all look at me like I’m sad. My brothers all send me disapproving looks, even Felix and Isaac, who have no room to talk because they left home at eighteen and never came back at all until this very day. Not for Christmas. Not for the reunion. Never.
But tonight, the only black sheep in this house is me. Disappointing Elias. Drunk Elias. Dark Elias.
I like it.
And then I smile, that’s how much I like it, and raise a glass to my fucked-up family. “Thank you,” I whisper to the dim, empty room I’m sitting in. “Thank you for reminding me what I am.”
Nadia drives us back to the hotel. I fell in the snow, twice, as we walked to the truck so she had no choice but to fight me for the keys. I’m surprised she knew how to get back to town, to be honest. But I’m too drunk to give a fuck.
She disappears into the bathroom as soon as we get back in the room and I collapse on the messed-up bed I was sleeping in earlier.
I don’t hear her come back out. I don’t help much when she undresses me. I don’t protest when she climbs into bed next to me. But here she is. Her hand on my waist. Her soft breath on my now bare back. Her voice low when she whispers, “Thank you,” into the darkness.
“You don’t want to thank me yet, Nadia,” I say, slurring my words. “Because I’m gonna make you pay for this.”
She’s silent. No response. Until I’m just about passed out. And her words barely drift in as the darkness takes over.
“You earned it, Elias.”
I did earn it. I earned every bit of what she has coming. And she’s gonna be sorry when I get her home.
Because I’m going to break Nadia Wolfe. I’m going to snap her in half. I’m going to drag her secrets out of her and use them to make her think about things she never wanted to face again.
I’m going to make her feel something.
It’s time for a new game and I’m going to win this one no matter what.
And when I’m done… I’m gonna make sure she’s begging for more. I’m gonna fuck her head up. Fuck her life up. And I won’t even feel bad about it.
I won’t feel anything, ever again.
So no… thank you, Nadia. For letting the man I’ve kept prisoner all these years out to play again.
I’m hungover at the funeral the next day. I wear a pair of sunglasses I bought at the drug store even though we’re inside the funeral home for the service. We bury our dead on the ranch and there’s no burying anything this time of year. After the service Luc’s body will go to the morgue to wait until spring.
I want to be sick. I’m not sure if it’s the thought of Luc being kept in that frozen crypt for the next few months or the fact that I drained two bottles of cheap whiskey last night. But I want to be sick.
My phone buzzes in the middle of the ceremony and what feels like a hundred faces turn in their chairs to look at me.
Disappointing Elias.
I grin and shrug, like the fuck-up I am, and glance at my screen. Margaret. She’s the last fucking person I need to talk to right now.
I refuse to make Margaret—dear, sweet, perfect mother-figure Margaret—a part of the life I left behind up here.
So I ignore it. I ignore all seven of her calls that come after. I ignore her as Nadia and I board the plane. I ignore her as we get off back in Denver. I ignore her all the way over to Nadia’s apartment.
“What are we doing here?” Nadia asks, when I pull up to the curb.
I slide my cheap shades down the bridge of my nose. “I’m dropping you off, Nadia. The game is over and you won. Congratulations. I’ve already transferred money into your bank account and Margaret made sure everything you had at the house was returned to your apartment. Have a nice life,” I say, finishing the speech I’ve been practicing in my head since she called me Master yesterday morning. “And don’t ever call me again.”
She stares at me, mouth open. But she shuts up, gets out of my car, and walks away.
“That’s right, bitch,” I jeer, saluting her back as she disappears inside. “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”
I drive back to the Club, drop my car at the valet, and go inside—so fucking relieved to be home.
“Bric?” Margaret says, coming up to me as I make my way into the Black Room for a drink. “I’ve been trying to call you.”
“Sorry, Margaret,” I say, so fucking happy to see her face and not the ones I left behind up north. “I got caught up in shit. But I’m back now.”
“You have a visitor,” she says. “He’s been calling since yesterday. He came in a few ho
urs ago and I let him wait in the White Room.”
“What?” I say, taking off my shades. “Who?”
She spreads her hands wide as she shrugs. “He says his name is Logan. He’s a friend of Nadia’s. He says he needs to talk to you and it’s urgent.”
Chapter Twenty-Six - Nadia
“Nadia!” The yell stops me mid-step and makes me stumble. Mostly because the music is so loud, so Chris is yelling over it, and she scared the shit out of me.
I skip over to the stereo, press stop, and the small rehearsal room is silent except for my own heavy breathing. “What?” I say, leaning over, hands on knees, trying to catch my breath.
“You have a visitor,” Chris says. “It’s Jordan.”
My body stiffens as I straighten and look at her. “Tell him I’m busy.” I reach for the music, press play, and get back into my routine.
I’m spinning across the room in a long sequence of piqué turns, spotting at the door, when Jordan appears. My head spins, my eyes find him, I spin again, find him, spin—but now he’s crossed the room, directly in my path, blocking my way.
“What?” I yell over the music, panting and out of breath. “Can’t you see I’m practicing? Why do you bother me at work?”
He just stares at me, frowning, walks over to the stereo and shuts off the music.
“Well?” I ask again, quieter this time. “What do you need, Jordan? I’m busy.”
“What happened?” he asks. His voice is low, but not stern. And his frown, I now realize, is… sympathetic.
“With what?” I ask.
“You know with what, Nadia. Bric. The house. Everything. I went there last night and it was dark and empty. What the hell happened?”
I walk over to my water bottle, tip it over my mouth, and gulp. I look at him, all dressed up in that suit, and wonder what his angle is in all this. “It’s Wednesday,” I say. It’s an accusation and he knows it.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I was busy with—”
“I know,” I snap at him. “Your case. So busy with your case it took you three days to realize that the game was over. Just what the fuck, Jordan?”
