by Claire, Ava
"We made progress," I assured her. “I just had a moment of-" I stopped. I didn't want to spit out more excuses. There were none. Just because my mother had disappointed me didn't mean I got to check out. "I know who I am, Lay. I shouldn't have let Cole leave. My mother is who she is. Her death doesn't change anything." I wished I could believe what she believed; that there was something worth saving in my mother. Some piece that was human that we could reach. I'd let go of the hope of finding that piece, but she was still my mother. I didn't wish harm upon her and her death was what made me pull onto the property, tires squealing as I prepared to brake.
The gate wasn't closed.
Leila reached for my hand, interlacing her trembling fingers with my own. I forced my own to steady. I had to be strong for us both.
I turned off the car, heart drumming in my chest. Leila's shaking rocked through me, jostling my insides. I didn't rush to the door, my mind weaving all kinds of awful scenarios. I knew exactly what was waiting.
Cole's car was nowhere to be seen, but there were pieces of his story that told me he was the kind of man that was only seen if he wanted to be.
Leila's voice came to me, a faraway sound. Like she was standing at the end of the tunnel, shouting some message that was garbled by the time it reached my ears.
I blinked, the world slowly spinning back to life. A world where my brother was either beating our mother to a pulp, choking the life out of her, or standing over her body, holding a smoking gun. A world of violence—and I was dragging my wife back into it. I looked over at her, her words muted but her mouth and expression were animated with worry. I longed for the days when our biggest concern was navigating D/s. Hell, I'd even pick Rachel Laraby over this mess. If the worst happened, I couldn't let Leila see it.
Something in my face must have given me away because her lips stopped moving, her eyes darkening to black. Before I could tell her to wait in the car, she opened her door.
"Don't even think about it, Jacob." She booked it toward the house. "Whatever's happening inside—you are not facing it alone."
I rushed to join her, taking her hand as she reached for the doorknob. "Okay. We go together. But if Cole is out of control-"
"I won't get in the way," she finished for me. A sad resignation swept across her face. "I'll let you do what you have to do."
I entered first, my mind a wild animal that ran to and fro, wreaking havoc. What I had to do—eyes dropping to my mother's dead body or possibly disarming or killing my brother to save her. Either way, no one was walking out of here whole.
Classical music whined from the dining room. I wasn't naive enough to believe my mother would be sitting at the table, quietly enjoying an early dinner.
I felt Leila behind me and the pull of some unbearable scene before me. Some good finally came from the mask. Before I stepped into the dining room, I pulled it over the fear and anxiety. I gave nothing away.
Leila gasped behind me, our eyes drawn to the table. My mother sat at the head, still wearing that argyle sweater—and that fearful expression she let slip through the cracks earlier.
Now, she had a reason to feel fear.
Cole was behind her...holding a gun to her head.
"Good, the family's here," he said with a disturbing cheer that reminded me of Brittany. "We can get started."
Chapter Twenty-Four
"You don't have to do this, Cole."
I wanted to tell Leila her words were futile. She'd been approaching the situation calmly and rationally from the start. My mother wisely kept any smart ass remarks that percolated in her head to herself. I kept my mask in place despite the fact that my brother had a gun to my mother's temple, and Leila was coaching him down from the ledge. Like a hostage negotiator. Or someone who just couldn't accept the severity of the situation.
"When I was a kid," Cole said, his voice as steady and nonchalant as if he was talking about his day. "I used to wish I had a dining room like this. I saw these families on TV who gathered at the table and they'd go around the circle and talk about their day." He listed them off. "They'd start with the kids. Little Suzy got a gold star because she shared her box of crayons. Joseph talked about how stoked he was about some new skate park. Then Mom would talk about some new recipe she found or friend she spotted around town. Dad would gripe about his overbearing boss." Cole let out a chuckle. "We sat on a ratty couch in the living room watching other people live their lives. When I grew up I told myself that it was just television. Make believe. No family was that happy. No one got a happily ever after. Then I found out that my mother was Alicia Whitmore. Imagine my surprise when I learned that she was filthy rich and she had a son. A son that lived a life just like the ones I saw on TV."
My mother hesitantly met my eye. It was hard to read much beyond the fear, but I could have sworn I saw a sadness flicker beyond the trembling. I lived a charmed life, filled with wealth and privilege, but the one thing I wanted, needed, couldn't be bought. I pried my gaze from hers. Disgust crept over me in a shuddering wave. It took a near death experience for my mother to acknowledge that she wasn't there for me as a child? That she was still as emotionally distant?
I sized up my brother, ready for the crazy sheen that he'd first broadcasted. The stone cold killer that would empty his gun into my mother's brain then go make a sandwich. There was something different in his eyes now, a spark that contradicted the steady hand that knew no other end to this story but death. I saw the little boy that he claimed grew up, not the jaded, forgotten man who got wise that life was shit and then you died. The little boy I could reach.
"I can only imagine how devastated you must have been when you found out that the family you never knew you had was as disappointing as the one that raised you-"
"I raised me," he bit off. "They did nothing more than cash checks. I don't expect someone like you to understand."
"I can’t have had a crappy childhood because I grew up with money?" I hurled back at him. "Money is just as empty as your television. There was plenty of it to throw around. I missed my dad? He'd send me some overpriced, limited edition toy. He taught me that love was something that could be bought...that flashing your credit card was all a Whitmore had to offer. My mother taught me how to be indifferent, to use masks and money to keep people at a distance."
"Oh, cry me a river," Cole snorted. "Poor little rich boy. Swimming in money and opportunity and you just wanted to be loved."
"Is that what this is about," my mother's voice was broken in tiny pieces, long past the stone that usually flowed from her lips. This was gravel and with the slightest gust of wind it would be swept up and unheard. "You want money? I can give you money."
Cole's face tightened and I reflexively lifted from my seat. His finger was still uncomfortably close to the trigger and though he didn't say a word, I knew what he was thinking. If she thought this was a matter of money, she really wasn't paying attention. Under normal circumstances it was irritating—adding a gun to the equation made the offense unacceptable.
"I'm talking to my brother," he said through clenched teeth. "If I'm in the mood for your lies or contributions that completely miss the point, I'll let you know." He lowered the gun and I tried to calculate the odds of bridging the distance and pushing my mother from harm's way without the gun going off. As if he could read my mind, Cole threw me a look that said, 'I dare you'. I wouldn't risk him popping off a few rounds meant for me that struck my mother. Or Leila.
Fuming, I leaned back in my seat. "You want to have a conversation? Talk."
He pulled out the chair beside my mother and let out another chuckle that told me he knew Alicia Whitmore wasn't the kind of woman to sit idly by when opportunity knocked. With the gun sitting on the white tablecloth, she could breathe and was doing her own calculations.
"Don't even think about it," Cole warned her.
"You've already threatened my life," she said tersely, eyes flashing. "What on earth can you do to me that's worst than taking my life?"
He said it as calmly as talking about the weather.
My mother promptly shut her mouth.
I expected Leila to start in on how we were all better than this. She was trying to buy a few precious moments. Cole would roll his eyes and try to explain that too much pain had been doled out for reconciliation.
Leila’s lips were twisted to one side, her eyes on the tablecloth. It broke my heart that the reality of this was sinking in; that the cycle of violence seemed impossible to break.
I felt Cole's eyes boring into me and I realized he was still stuck on our fruitless conversation. Instead of pissing me off, the continuation of this mindless cat and mouse game, I remembered Leila's words. How Cole came in with murder in his eyes, but she saw past the hurt and thirst for revenge. She saw someone that like me, longed for another path, another way to right the scales. A way out.
Just like me.
I pried the Whitmore mask from my face. It has never done me much good. Keeping the pain and regret locked away just isolated me and held me back from moving forward. From healing.
"You're probably expecting me to tell you how you should forgive our mother." I waited until his eyebrows arched, expecting me to beg for mercy. "I believe that what she did was unforgivable."
"Jacob!" Leila gasped, practically leaping from her seat. I wanted to tell her that she was the reason that I changed tactics. She was the reason I thought I could reach my brother—because she reached me.
Cole looked just as surprised, his eyes rounding with interest. I didn't bother looking at my mother. Let her worry that she was finally atoning for her sins—and it would come at the hands of her children.
"When I saw her name seared into Brittany's skin, I quickly went from horror to shock to denial." I tilted my chin in my mother's direction, but I spoke to Cole alone. "Even after all these years, I'm still hoping for a woman that may never exist."
I expected my mother to try and defend herself, but she remained silent. Leila reached for me beneath the table, her hand a solid reminder that everything would be okay. Even sitting here with a gun within my brother's reach and a very real reason to use it, I knew we stood on a precipice. And I could be the one to pull my brother back to safety.
"God only knows how much energy I've wasted over the years trying to figure my mother out. Trying to figure out a way to get something that I'm not too sure she's capable of giving."
Cole sat back in his chair with a smug look on his face. "You think I don't know what you're doing? Next you'll tell me that nothing good will come from making Alicia hurt. That I'll just hurt myself in the long run. The thing is—I don't care about hurting myself. I care about showing a woman who thinks she can just use people, hurt people—that she can hurt too."
"I don't believe you."
His eyes went dangerous. "You're calling me a liar?"
"I am. You're lying to yourself. I know because I did the same thing. Still am, in fact. Because I need to believe that people can change and grow and learn from their mistakes." I remembered the way he broke down when Leila talked about the kidnapping. "You did." Guilt flashed in my throat, the ache of it rounding my next words. "I did. I have to believe she can too."
I looked at my mother and for the first time, I didn't try and search for some sign of humanity; a sign that my words were sinking in. She was who she was. I wouldn't waste my life searching for her. I wouldn't let her turn me into a monster—and the best gift I could give my brother was to steer him away from the path I walked.
"If you're expecting justice or some sense of relief after you pull that trigger, you'll come up wanting." I glanced over at Leila, the smile on her face warming my soul as she blinked through the tears. "If you want to start over, see if we can find out if we have something in common besides our desire to shake some sense into our crazy mother, that door is open."
I thought my mother had never given me anything but disappointment. I was looking right at something awesome. A chance to build some sense of family. We'd done a bang up job of hurting each other, but I had to believe there was a chance for something more.
Leila helped me believe in love again. Maybe Cole and I could help each other believe in second chances. In family.
Cole was no longer clutching the gun. I saw the anger slipping between his fingers, but he made a final stand. "You want me to just let it go. How am I supposed to do that?"
"I can't answer that for you," I let the sadness creep into my voice. "And it's not something that happens overnight. But I want you to know you have a choice. You can choose hatred or you can let go." I said the thing that I never thought I'd say. "I'll be here. We can figure out together."
Leila leaned forward. "We're here."
His eyes batted between the both of us, the gray narrowed and skeptical. When he rose to his feet, I knew there was a chance he could say the hell with all of us. Do what he came to do. The gun was right there.
He picked it up—and tucked it out of view.
A collective sigh rippled across the room. I had no idea what came next, but for the first time since I met my brother, I felt like I had something to look forward to.
We were far from perfect; we were battered and scarred. But we were family. And everyday was a chance to get it right.
Epilogue
Entry #5
It's been months since I've even cracked this thing open. I struggled to find the right words to say to my wife, stuck on taking away her pain. Avenging her...when all she wanted and needed was love. I feel like some sappy greeting card, but letting go of my anger and the hate that I carried around like an anchor took us to a place I never thought I'd find.
A place of peace.
Brittany was finally getting the help she needed. She was still a royal pain in the ass from what I heard—Leila visited her once a month. She said it has nothing to do with forgiveness. It was her way of channeling the hurt and turning it into something positive.
Cole and I managed to have conversations with no guns or balled fists in sight. He was studying public policy...he knew that he couldn't take down operations like Eichmann's with bullets alone.
My mother and I...lets just say my expectations have been lowered. We play our roles when the occasion calls for it and we avoid each other if we can help it. If the therapist read these words she'd say the only way to clear the air was to let go. That we we're family.
I let go of my fairy tales.
Leila was the only family I needed for now...when we had a little one that turned our world upside down in the most terrifying and exciting ways, they would never have to wonder if they were loved.
~
Thank you for taking the time to read The Billionaire Dom Diaries series. Please consider leaving a review. xoxo, Ava
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About the Author
Ava Claire is a sucker for Alpha males and happily ever afters. When not putting pen to paper or glued to her e-reader, Ava likes road tripping, karaoke, vintage fashion, and fantasizing about her favorite book boyfriends.
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Blog: http://avaclaireromantica.blogspot.com
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Stay tuned to my blog for up to date information on my works in progress and release schedules!
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