by Wylder Stone
Fear flooded Genevieve to her core as she rushed down the long hall to the first door on the right and punched in the keyless lock code. They were high-tech. Everything was electronic, even the door locks. The idea that something happened to Ruby, despite Genevieve’s efforts to protect her, was overwhelming. She’d let them down.
Inside the expansive apartment, Genevieve paused, listening for any sign of trouble. She was listening for Ruby. Though long past midnight, the lights were on throughout the place, yet no sound could be heard. Taking a deep breath, she dug deep for the confidence she needed to forge ahead and face whatever danger she brought home with her.
With every step, slow and methodical, she took in her surroundings. Remaining calm was her greatest challenge, but it was also the first thing she was taught to exercise when faced with a crisis. It could mean the difference between life and death. Patience was everything. Ruby had to have been asleep when James left. With a building full of Force’s, she was more than safe, but that didn’t mean waking to something like this wouldn’t be frightening. The Force men were used to staring danger in the face, but Ruby wasn’t.
“Vivi?” a small voice said from the dining room. Ruby. When Ruby was small, she struggled to say Genevieve. It came out Vivi and stuck. Everyone called her Vivi – everyone but James.
“Ruby? Where are you, honey?” Vivi said in a hushed tone, still not sure what she was about to encounter.
Looking around the open floor plan, she could see from one side of the large apartment to the other without any obstructions but didn’t see the little girl she was desperate to find.
“I-I’m over here.” The little girl sniffled.
Following the sound of her small voice, Vivi rushed toward the kitchen and found Ruby sitting on the dining room floor, hugging her knees with tears in her eyes.
Kneeling in front of Ruby, Genevieve put her hands on the girl’s shoulders and looked her over. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? Tell me, baby. What’s wrong? Did someone hurt you?”
Before Ruby could answer, Genevieve was on her feet, looking around, trying to find clues, but to what, she didn’t know. When she looked back down, her eyes were met with a look of confusion before Ruby looked around, as Vivi did, trying to figure out what she was looking at or looking for.
“Are you okay, Vivi?” Ruby questioned, now filled with her own concern.
Awareness set in, and Vivi took a seat next to Ruby. “Yeah. I mean, are you? I thought something was wrong. Your text worried me. What’s going on?”
“I woke up, and…”
“Your dad was gone? You were scared? You know your uncles are here, right? This place is like Fort Knox. No one can get in unless they are supposed to be here. It’s the safest place in Santa Marina.” Patience was thin, and emotions ran high as Vivi began filling in the blanks where Ruby didn’t answer fast enough for her liking.
All signs pointed to an overreaction. Obviously, no one else was in that apartment. Adrenaline still held the wheel, though, and Vivi was trying to regain control. If not for the little girl, then to reassure herself.
“Why are you acting so weird?” Ruby asked, a puzzled look matching her tone.
“Oh. Uh, nothing. I thought your message was… You asked for help, so…”
“You were worried?”
“I was, Ruby. I thought something had happened.”
“In the Elite Building? With all of my uncles here? Are you sure you’re okay, Vivi?”
Leaning down to kiss the top of Ruby’s head, Vivi sat next to the girl and wrapped an arm around her. “I am now, kiddo. So, tell me, what do you need help with?”
“Oh.” Reminded of the small personal crisis looming, Ruby looked at her feet. “I have a…problem. One I couldn’t call my uncles or Dad for.”
“Okay, so what is it? What could be so bad this late at night?” Vivi teased.
“I, uh…uh. Started my, uh…” she began, looking at Vivi with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. “I woke up with a stomachache, and it wasn’t…a stomachache.”
“Oh? Ohhhh. You mean your, uh…” Vivi waved an aimless finger in front of Ruby, trying to decide what to say next. She knew this day would come and was fast approaching, but nothing could have prepared her for the late-night discovery of Mother Nature and her bad timing.
“Yeah.” Ruby hiccupped. “I can’t tell Dad. Plus, he won’t know what to do. He’s a guy and only knows about computers.”
“Well, we will need to let him know, but we can handle the rest. We have everything we need – easy peasy. Okay?”
Because the night had plenty of room to get worse, it seemed, James walked in on their conversation.
Not expecting to see Genevieve and Ruby sitting on the dining room floor huddled together, James was quick to jump to conclusions, worry setting in when he saw the late-night tears his daughter wore.
“What happened?” he questioned, only mildly containing his panic before looking at Genevieve with a hard stare. “What did you do?”
She took to her feet, feeling the sharp edge of his words cutting her. “What do you mean, what did I do?”
He looked between his daughter and Genevieve for a moment, both seeming offended. “She’s crying. What happened? Are you hurt, Ruby?”
Concern was something James wore like a vest since his wife passed years ago, but a nurturing nature didn’t come with it. He was standoffish, lukewarm at best, and his emotions were bundled up tight and bundled deep.
“Ruby has a personal issue. We’re dealing with it and will fill you in when it’s more appropriate and less embarrassing for her,” Genevieve offered, her hands on her hips.
“She’s my daughter. You’ll tell me now. What the hell is going on? A personal matter? She’s eleven.”
If only she could get James to read between the lines, Genevieve shot him a challenging stare and raised brow, hoping he’d catch a clue, “She’s almost twelve, a tween. Kids her age, especially girls, have personal issues that aren’t – dad-friendly.”
“Are you kidding me? Personal issues? Until she’s eighteen, her issues are my issues. Someone needs to start talking,” he demanded.
“Vivi?” Mortification washed over Ruby’s face as an already awkward conversation just became even more so.
“James. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one. I have it taken care of, okay? Just…trust me before you embarrass yourself and Ruby.”
“That’s just it, Genevieve. I don’t trust you. You’re sneaking around, and now you have secrets with my kid. What the hell is going on around here?” James didn’t get mad, nor did he raise his voice. If anything, he grew more silent as things heated up. Tonight was the exception.
“Jesus, Dad. Why are you being so mean to Vivi? She’s helping me.”
James’s expression was etched in surprise by his daughter’s directness. “Excuse me. Watch how you speak to me. If your Nana Maddy heard you speak that way…”
Maddy was none other than the family matriarch, James’s mom, Maddy Force. Loved by all and feared by all, she was the one person her towering sons, who faced danger on a daily basis, wouldn’t cross. Not even on a good day.
“Nana isn’t here. What happened to your face?” Her face crumpled in disgust as she examined the swelling and bruising settling on James’s cheek, leaving his appearance as roughed up and battered as he felt.
Without hesitation, both Genevieve and James responded simultaneously, though each had opposing ideas on how to address the proverbial elephant in the room.
“He fell,” Vivi quickly said.
Only to be contradicted by James. “I got in a fight.”
It didn’t strike James as odd that Ruby would question his appearance, and he didn’t see any reason to hide it because his job occasionally crossed dangerous lines. And Ruby had seen all of the Forces banged up before. It was simply their life and their kind of normal – the only life she knew. With that thought in mind, he didn’t hesitate to drop truths, even if they
might upset her. As smart as he was – bordering genius, depending on who you asked – he wasn’t all that bright when it came to sensitive subjects and his daughter.
Ruby looked back and forth between the two, arms crossed, trying to decide who was telling her the truth. She was a Force, and even at eleven, it was hard to pass something over on her, especially the challenging stare down between Vivi and her dad.
Making her decision, she questioned, “A fight with who?”
Again, in perfect sync, Genevieve and James fired off answers simultaneously, albeit different answers.
“A drunken vagrant,” Vivi said, only to be challenged by James’s unforgiving honesty.
“Genevieve,” he said with a grin.
Ruby’s jaw dropped. “Vivi kicked your…”
James’s challenging stare was quick to turn on his daughter. “Watch your mouth. Don’t even think about saying…”
“Butt?” Ruby finished with a sassy grin.
“No…well, yes,” he said
“It was a misunderstanding,” Genevieve defended. “I thought he was someone else.”
“And who exactly is this someone else that you felt the need to…”
Genevieve cut him off before he could finish. “Are we back to this, really? I already told you.”
Ruby began to giggle. “I wouldn’t make her mad again, Dad.”
“You stay out of this, kid,” he warned.
“Geez, lighten up,” Ruby said before turning to Genevieve. “Vivi? I, uh, need to take care of…this.”
Her choice of words hit James like a stone wall he didn’t see coming. As heated as he had become, fixated on both Genevieve’s gallivanting and Ruby’s secret, being dismissed so easily by his daughter shut him down so he could retreat back into himself. She’d come to expect James’s distance and seemed unfazed. Just the idea was haunting and paralyzing because he felt like a prisoner of his past, and it prevented him from being the person his daughter needed.
“Vivi has this one, Dad. Please be nice to her. It’s not a dad thing. Nothing is a dad thing anymore,” Ruby said as she left the room.
Crushed, James tilted his head as his shoulders fell in defeat. “Ru… C’mon. You know if you need me, I’m here.”
Pausing, she looked over her shoulder. “Sure. I guess.”
James just stared, his mouth moving and head shaking, but words escaped him. What could he say?
“That’s what I thought.” Ruby left the room, her voice lacking disappointment, which wasn’t lost on him. You couldn’t be disappointed if there was no expectation, to begin with. He had a habit of disappointing his daughter. He hated that, but he still couldn’t be who she needed him to be.
“Why the book?” James asked Genevieve, his view still aimed in the direction Ruby retreated. “What has happened? What milestone?”
“You really want to know?” she questioned. “She started her period. Not exactly a dad talk, James.”
“Her what? She’s only eleven. Really?” Flustered, James tried to wrap his mind around the very simple fact his little girl was growing up – fast. She wasn’t so little anymore, and that pained him even more. He was missing so much of her life, despite being with her almost every day.
“She’s almost twelve. It’s normal. What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. I figured by the time she was twenty-five or something?” James ran his hands through his hair, unsure how he really felt as his emotions were warring with one another.
“Stick to computers, James.” Genevieve shook her head and trailed off in the direction Ruby had disappeared.
4
Genevieve sat on Ruby’s bed and waited for her to finish up. She knew this day was coming and had been prepared for it as she had for every other Ruby milestone. With her mother now gone, Genevieve tried to fill in the gaps where she could, which made everything Genevieve was currently facing more challenging and threatening. Someone knew Ruby was close to her and would play a bountiful pawn in a sick game. James’s distance was probably equally to blame, but he was still lost.
James and his wife, Hannah, were high school sweethearts. Hannah could have had any guy in school, but she chose the guy in all of the tech and robotics clubs over the jocks. Though James was as big and handsome as his brothers, he was all about the smarts. His twin, Jackson, was his opposite and handled the locker room jock thing.
Right out of high school, James found himself a comfortable job with the feds and a full-ride scholarship to pretty much any tech school he wanted. Landing the job with the feds was purely by accident, and the exchange he made for a term in prison when caught hacking the shit out of Washington DC on a dare.
Hannah died in a fatal car accident when Ruby was very young. It was a painful ending to a beautiful life. Hannah had asked Vivi to look over her family if anything should ever happen to her. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time because everyone had some sort of fail-safe in place should anything ever happen to them. It was more of an honor to be asked, and nobody really expected it to come to fruition. But it did, in this case, and Genevieve made good on her word. So she was there for all the milestones. She’d never replace the girl's mother, but Ruby would always know she had someone in her corner – especially when her dad struggled to.
“Well, that was…weird,” Ruby said, pulling Genevieve from her thoughts when she entered her bedroom.
“Oh, it’s all going to be weird for a while. Just remember it’s all normal, and the weird only lasts for a short time. It’ll feel like a quick minute by the time you get to my age,” Genevieve said with a smile. “C’mon over here. Cozy into your blankets, and let’s get you tucked in. It’s really late, kid.”
Ruby giggled. “I wish Mom was here.”
“Me too, kiddo.”
“Oh, I’m glad you’re here, Vivi. I just miss her. I think Dad still does too.” Ruby wove her fingers together while a sullen mood settled in.
“I’m pretty sure he does too,” Genevieve said.
A long pause stood between them. “Sometimes, I think I’m forgetting her. Like her voice and her smell. That scares me.”
“Oh, honey, you won’t forget her. All of the important things are stuck with you forever – like how much she loves you. Your dad does too.” Genevieve slipped out of Ruby’s bed and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Now get some sleep, runt. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
When Genevieve reached the door, Ruby called out, “Vivi?”
“Yes?” she replied.
“I love you.”
Genevieve smiled. “I love you too, Ruby.”
She flipped the light switch and closed the door behind her before she saw James’s shadowy silhouette leaning against the wall just outside the room. Genevieve’s heart pinched. He had been standing there the whole time, listening. Opening his mouth to speak, he finally dropped his chin to his chest and shook his head before walking away without a word.
“Wow! What the hell happened to your face?” Troy asked James with a chuckle. “Who do we thank for that one? Wait, lemme guess… Vivi is finally sick of your shit.”
Troy was the youngest Force, but he was, by far, the biggest. He was also a smart-ass and liked a good prank. A laugh at others’ expense always worked for him because was he was rarely challenged, compliments of his intimidating, oversized nature.
James tossed a go to hell look his brother’s way, earning a round of laughter from the rest of the Forces surrounding the table. Though they all lived in the same building, they tended to get together at The Force Bar & Grill, which was owned by their parents. It was a convenient drinking spot because they had the best draft beer on tap around, and it was only a couple of blocks from home.
James sent the standard text they all did from time to time, requesting their presence for a shot of something warm and smooth to go with the bullshit they were sure to toss on the table. This particular night was going to be more than a single-shot kind of shoot-the-shit session, especially since Tro
y nailed it. Genevieve was sick of his shit.
“It’s been a heavy day. It’s mostly…Ruby,” James admitted, tossing his first round back, appreciating the slow burn sliding down his throat.
“Ru? She okay?” Derek replied, using Ruby’s nickname as all of the brothers sat a little taller and puffed out their chests.
The Force brothers were as rough and tough as they came. They’d each taken their hits and given plenty in return. They loved hard and fought hard, but there was one thing that could take those larger-than-life men, full of macho grunts and groin scratching to their knees. Ruby. That little girl, known for her hot, redheaded temper and stubbornness, had each of those men’s men wrapped around her little finger.
“No, she’s fine. I guess,” James offered, swirling the amber liquid around the glass he held. “I don’t know. She’s just…growing up.”
“Okay? So, she went a little sassy and gave you attitude?” Owen, the eldest of the bunch, questioned.
“Worse,” James fired back with a shake of his head.
Jackson, James’s twin brother, who was also his opposite, turned red in the face. “Boys? It’s boys, isn’t it? I told you school was a bad idea. There’re boys all over that place.”
“School isn’t an option, Jackson. He can’t not let her go. Besides, she’s already smarter than all of us. Thank God she only got her dad’s smarts and not his ugly mug,” Troy teased.
“Yeah, she looks like Lyla. Acts like her too, especially the redhead behavior part,” Derek added with a laugh, referring to their sister Lyla, who lived in Bear Springs. Ruby was the spitting image of her aunt Lyla.
James crossed his arms and leaned into the table, propping himself on his elbows while he stared off. “She has her ma’s heart, though. Everything good about her is her ma.”
A somber moment of silence filled the space as they each took a moment and remembered Hannah. She had been like a sister to all of them, so each of them was deeply wounded by her loss. All eyes skirted to James, who took it worst of all and still struggled daily with her absence. He was given a lot of grace over the years as his brothers picked up the pieces for him, time and time again.
