Dane - Book 2: A Foster Family Saga

by Phillips, Avery

  I suspected Darien Griess had a higher than average IQ, or at least the acting chops to pull off the appearance of heightened intellect. It was a quality worthy of respect and close watch, because he had a penchant for using his superior understanding to undermine the intelligence of others.

  I followed my parents into the hull of the small yacht named Walk on Water, which was a well-appointed sea vessel with dining and entertainment area, as well as a small bedroom and bath. The walls were cream at the top and wood-paneled on the lower half. My shoes clacked on the hardwood floor. I glanced around at the white sofas of the entertainment area and small kitchenette with chrome appliances and ivory countertops. Recessed lights illuminated the modest space.

  “This place is nice,” I murmured, looking around.

  “You like it?” said Griess. “I’m thinking about buying it. Stewart’s letting us stay here awhile. I take it you spoke with him?”

  I nodded, saying nothing. Sissy stepped in as if sensing tension, bustling around in the kitchen collecting plates and silverware.

  “If I had known you were coming, I woulda fixed more.”

  “Would have, dear,” Darien corrected.

  My mom waved him off and continued, “Why, I remember when you were a teenager, you’d eat the whole fridge.” She chuckled. “Dane, son, would you help me set the table?”

  “Yes, Momma.” I took the delicate white plates from her hands and noticed her fingers were trembling. My eyes snagged hers, and I whispered, “It’s okay, Momma. I’m here.”

  She smiled shakily, nodding. “Now, you boys have a seat while I bring over the food.”

  Darien said, “Why don’t you take the boy up on deck and chat, Cecilia. I’ll man the kitchen.”

  She wiped her hands on a dishrag and looked askance at Darien. I wondered if he was feeling magnanimous or just trying to trap her somehow. My mother appeared fearful of the handsome man standing near the sofa with a grin on his face, and I understood her concern. Darien was a rattlesnake with bright, pretty colors, like a lure to the poison.

  “Well, all right,” she murmured. “I guess that’s fine. Come on, Dane Evan.”

  I glanced suspiciously back at Darien before following my mother out into the balmy night. It seemed too easy to get her alone, even though Darien could see us through the glass windows. He wouldn’t be able to hear us. I took the chance, however. I might not get another.

  “You sent for me,” I replied.

  “Oh, I didn’t think that letter would really get to you, Dane. It was just a moment of weakness. I didn’t mean to trouble you. You came all this way! Jesus and Mary, I’m so happy to see you!” She grabbed me in another tight hug.

  “I’m glad to see you, too, Momma. I want you to come back to New York with me. You don’t need to be around when the shit hits the fan. That stolen money, you didn’t have anything to do with that, did you? Even if you did, I’ll hire the best lawyers and take care of you. We can leave tonight.”

  The whole while I spoke, Sissy shook her head with an apologetic smile. She grabbed my hands and patted them. “I told you, I’m fine. I just wanted to see you, is all.”

  “Momma, stop it. Stop covering for that jackass. I can’t let you stay here hiding out on a borrowed yacht ’cause that son of a bitch has to lay low from the law. You think the cops don’t know how to find you guys? It’s only a matter of time.”

  “Dane, Darien did not steal that money. Regardless of what you think of him, he’s not that bad of a man. We’ve been getting along fine without you,” she said, and she caught herself with her hand to her lips.

  “Without me? Like I wanted to be away, like I haven’t tried my damndest to find you all these years! I’m trying to help you! I’ve been trying—”

  “Don’t raise your voice at your mother, boy,” said Darien, stepping up behind me.

  I spun around, glaring at him. He didn’t seem a bit bothered by my presence on the yacht, and it made me itch that I was more uncomfortable than he was.

  “No, it’s okay, Darien. Don’t get mad,” my mother said. She put her hand on Darien’s chest and sidled up to him, and the both of them looked at me like they belonged together. I seethed. Sissy wasn’t trying to leave. She was right where Darien wanted her.

  “Okay, look. I’m sorry I interrupted dinner. Mom, it was good to see you. Goodbye.”

  I turned around to walk away, vowing to myself that this was my final attempt. I had flown across the country and driven to the edge of the world to give my mother a chance to escape the hell Darien ran, but she was so used to the madness, she couldn’t imagine a better life for herself. Wherever he was, that was home…and my presence didn’t make a difference.

  “Now, don’t do that,” Darien said, stopping me. “Look at your mother. Cecilia, don’t cry. He’s going to stay for dinner, right, Dane? You didn’t travel this far to turn right around. In fact, why don’t you stay for the night? The sofa folds out.”

  “I’m not staying here,” I said adamantly.

  “Just dinner, Dane. Please?” my mother said. I saw she was silently crying. It broke my heart. Everything about my mother broke my heart.

  I sighed heavily and stared out at the rippling waves of the waterway, wishing I had a way to convince my mother to leave. “I’ll stay for dinner,” I said.

  Sissy brightened immediately, the same flighty emotions of my childhood—crying one moment and smiling the next. With spirits low, I followed them back inside. The table was set and a serving tray displayed baked tilapia with brown rice and sautéed mushrooms. I sat on one side of the table while Darien and Sissy took the other.

  I had missed my mother’s cooking. I picked up my fork, listening to Sissy chatter about life on the yacht, and Darien mutely stared while I ate. I slowly chewed the delicious fish and sipped red wine.

  “How long are you guys planning to stay here?” I asked. I cleared my throat and wiped my mouth with my napkin.

  “Long as it takes,” Sissy replied. “I like it out here. I didn’t even know Darien could sail.”

  “Can you?” I asked, looking at my stepfather. He barely inclined his head. No telling where he had picked up the skill. I glanced back at my mother, who wasn’t touching her food, and noticed Darien hadn’t touched his plate either. “You’re not hungry, Momma?”

  “Oh…yes, I—”

  “She’s just too excited to eat. She hasn’t seen you in a while, son. How have you fared out in New York? Has Cornelius been taking care of you?”

  “I take care of myself,” I said. I cleared my throat again. I reached up to wipe my mouth but dropped the napkin. When I reached to pick it up, my hand was a Technicolor red and orange and my fingers appeared to double. It was difficult to swallow. My mouth seemed heavy, my throat dry. My eyes drooped as my breathing grew more labored, my throat seeming to swell, and sweat beaded along my upper lip. “Shit.” They’d poisoned me.

  The fork clattered to the floor as I sluggishly scooted out from the table, stumbling loudly on my hands and knees. The jolt made my insides slosh with nausea, and a headache pounded at my temples. My stomach roiled with each move as I tried to drag my body to the door. I put one elbow in front of the other and pushed off. I opened my mouth to cry for help, but nothing came out but a nonsensical wail. I squeezed my eyes shut because the world had appeared to split in two. Please, God, I prayed in my head.

  I heard Darien get up from the table.

  “Is he all right?” Sissy whispered frantically.

  “He’s fine, Cecilia. I told you I wasn’t going to hurt him.”

  “Naaaa,” I croaked as Darien knelt over me.

  “Shut up,” he spat.

  He roughly grabbed my hands and bound them with zip ties. I groaned as the plastic cut into my skin. I couldn’t believe this was happening, that Sissy was letting this happen. My heart pounded hard in my chest as fear gripped me.

  Slow, thunderous heartbeats rang in my ears, and my head lolled back weakly when he yanked me
up to drag me to the bedroom. I tried to dig my heels into the floor to slow his progress, but my body wasn’t my own. I had been drugged, poisoned. Wild eyes rolled around in my head until they settled on Sissy’s face. She looked terrified…and excited.

  CHAPTER 10

  I woke up in a strange place with no memory of what had happened or how I had gotten there. I rolled over on a polyester duvet on a lumpy queen-sized bed. I started to stretch but couldn’t lift my arms the way I wanted. Glancing down in surprise, I noticed black zip ties bound my hands and my ankles. The bed lurched upward and sank back down like a rollercoaster, and the wavelike motion forced the contents of my stomach to spew from my mouth and splash the floor.

  “Oh,” I groaned in distaste, bringing both hands to my mouth to wipe the vomit. A woman appeared in the doorframe, and immediately everything came flooding back to memory. “Sissy,” I growled.

  “Honey, did you get sick?” she asked soothingly. She disappeared from the door and came back with a bucket and cloths. “You just lay still and breathe slow, all right? It’ll pass soon. Rough seas right now.”

  I struggled to lift my sick body up from the lumpy mattress to see out the window, and as far as the eye could see, there was water. The sky was lightening with dawn and the horizon was clear. We were in the middle of the ocean. I shakily turned back to Sissy and glared. “What… Did… You… Do.”

  “Shh, shh,” she said. “You sleep it off. When you’re feeling better, we’ll talk.”

  “I want to know where I am. Now!”

  Darien stepped into the room behind my mother, and she dropped her head, studiously cleaning the floor of my vomit. I stared at my stepfather with sheer rage. His eyes looked dead. He seemed like a psychopath. There was no remorse, no regret written on his face.

  “You’re in the Gulf of Mexico, Dane. Think of it as our little family vacation.”

  I struggled against the binds, unable to snap the ties. I threw myself forward, but the softness of the mattress made it impossible for me to get much leverage. I scowled. “Let me go.”

  “Cut you loose? I will. You can’t go anywhere now, though. Unless you can walk on water.” He chuckled, turning to my mother. He nudged her in the back with the ball of his foot hard enough to make her fall forward on her hands inches short of the mess. “Cecilia, get that shit off my floor and get your ass back on deck. We were enjoying the sunrise together.”

  “I’m coming, baby,” she said demurely. When he ambled out of the bedroom, Sissy turned limpid blue eyes on me and smiled weakly. “I’m sorry for his gruffness. You know Darien.”

  I did know him, and I should have known better than to eat anything he had prepared. My own parents had drugged me and sailed me out to the Gulf of Mexico. What would happen next was anyone’s guess, but it didn’t bode well that Darien was running the show. The fact Sissy would go so far as to help him poison her own son made me wonder: “How could you hate me so much?”

  “I don’t hate you, Dane,” she said, as if I were a child with limited understanding. She smiled blithely at me like what she said made all the sense in the world, and I wanted to scream. “Like Darien said, this is our vacation. Well, how else were we going to get you to come on a trip with us?”

  “You know something,” I ground out. “I came here looking for you because I thought I could help you see the light, but you crave this darkness, don’t you? It’s all you know. You’ve been mired in the muck for so long that you can’t even see the shit anymore.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sissy shook her head, and her raven curls danced around her pretty face as her lips curved in a small smile.

  “I’m talking about the fact that nothing about this situation seems wrong to you!”

  Her face hardened. “Oh, it does. It does, all right. I think it’s a crying shame you turned against me all those years ago, and you turned up your nose at everything Darien did for us. Then you ran off to California to be with Cornelius. It wasn’t Cornelius spending quality time with you, taking you to football games. Wasn’t him talking with you about the things you needed to know to be a man. Now, was it?”

  “Don’t you make this about my father. This is about you and Darien Griess!”

  “He put everything on the line for you, and what did you do—you ran off to college and turned your back on us like we didn’t exist anymore. You were embarrassed by us!”

  “Ma, who the hell would be proud of a con artist and common criminal for parents? You had every opportunity to do the right thing, and you chose this. You know who really put everything on the line? You did. You bet the farm on Griess, and he won it, Momma. He snatched every piece of goodness out of your life and handed you a handful of regrets, which is all you had left to give to me. ‘I’m sorry, Dane. You know how Darien is, Dane. It’s gonna get better, Dane.’ When the fuck are you going to see that you don’t have to take this anymore? I have money now.”

  “I do, too. I earn my keep.”

  “You steal. You take stolen goods for a living.”

  “We work. You don’t know. You don’t know nothing about what I’ve done since you been gone. Darien pled the blood of Jesus and turned his life around, and you come up in here with all your high and mighty judgment. He’s tried his best to be a better man than he was in the past. Don’t even run the streets no more.”

  “Oh, cut it out, Momma. Don’t tell me he’s conned you, too. You’ve known him long enough to know if his mouth is open, his ass is lying. You expect me to believe he didn’t steal that money from that church? How could you stand behind him?”

  She looked ashamed, and studied her hands wringing the damp cloth. She dunked it in the bucket and went back to scrubbing the floors.

  “Cecilia?” Darien called, out of sight. I knew he had heard every word of the argument, and I knew it probably brought him pleasure to know we were at odds. He had my mother in a way I never could.

  They left me in the bedroom to stew in my anger. Hours passed and the heat was sweltering. Plus, I had to go to the bathroom, but I couldn’t get up until Darien decided to free me. The time alone left me stuck in my head, pondering ways to get out of the situation. I had my cell phone. I could still feel it in my pocket. The fact that it was there gave me no comfort. If Darien left it on me, it was likely useless. I could only pray Gervais would find me. He had the Houma location, and he knew the name of the boat. He was resourceful. Somehow he would send help.

  In the meantime, I had to keep myself alive. It felt dire the way the yacht rolled around on the ocean, giving me seasickness. I threw up again around noontime, when the sun was high in the sky and the room heated up like an oven. I felt dehydrated and weak. I needed sustenance, water, and something to settle my stomach.

  It was the loneliest room, abandoned by my mother, which made me think of Hanna too—abandoned by her. Or, rather, shunned. I longed to see her face, and wondered if I would ever see her again. If I got off this boat, I vowed to myself that I wouldn’t just call, I would go to her. Somehow I would convince her that I was sorry. But my thoughts twisted on me, broiling with impotent rage. I imagined Hanna becoming like my mother. Love did strange things to women. I didn’t want her bending to my will, running at my beck and call. There was enough of Darien Griess rubbed off on me that I had to worry I would misuse her again, which she didn’t deserve. The kindest thing I could do for Hanna was stay the fuck away.

  I tried to count the hours by how ravenous my hunger became. It was late in the afternoon before Sissy returned to my cage with a paper plate holding a sandwich and cookies. “Eat slow,” she said. She dropped the plate on the bed in front of me and walked back out. I had to try to eat with my hands bound, which resulted in me having to lie on the crumby duvet when I was done. I slumped back on the mattress and stared out the window up at the sky. It was how I realized the yacht had stopped sailing and was standing still.

  Finally I had had enough, and I shouted for Darien.

  “You ready
to act right?” he asked with a smirk. He came toward me with knife and snapped the ties on my wrists and ankles.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I asked tersely.

  He pointed at the door and I hopped up from the bed, wincing at the pins-and-needles sensation in my feet. I walked on aching legs to the bathroom to handle my business. When I came back out, Darien was waiting for me.

  “Come sit a spell up top,” he said.

  I sullenly walked behind him, having nowhere else to go. Sissy sat on a bench staring out at the ocean. She looked up and smiled when I walked out. “Glad you could join us. Ain’t the water nice?”

  “Christ, you sound uneducated.”

  I glared at Darien at the statement. “It’s pretty, Ma.”

  Darien gestured to the bench across from my mother and I took a seat. He settled beside me, close enough to make my skin crawl. “Still sick? You look haggard. It’ll pass soon, especially with the yacht at a standstill. Your mother and I wanted to talk to you about something very important, right, Cecilia?”

  She ignored him, kept her gaze directed at the ocean. I looked from her to Darien, curious about what would come next.

  “So, son, you might have guessed that we’re in a tight spot. We need money. You know your mother’s pride. She didn’t want to ask, but I said to myself: what’s the point of having a rich CEO son if we can’t depend on him to help us out of a jam?”

  “You don’t have a son,” I stated.

  “Don’t be callous, Dane. Of course you’re my son. I raised you.” He chuckled, his flinty eyes showing no amusement. “I’m going to write down a number and you tell me if you can help out, all right?”

  He took out a black pen and wrote on the back of a napkin, then slid it across the bench to me. I barely glanced down before saying, “No.”