by S. L. Scott
Turning back, my mind begins to connect the dots.
An abandoned building.
A dilapidated warehouse.
All the things I saw when I was first captured—this isn’t that place.
I know this place.
I know this garage.
This is my garage.
My penthouse garage.
My feet stop as I look around in shock. “Holy fuck. We were right here all along?”
This time when my mom nods, I see the sadness reach her eyes. “We found your motorcycles hidden behind a parked truck.”
“But Jason . . . he lives in the penthouse.”
She sighs sadly. “He feels terrible, but he never had a reason to come in here. He doesn’t have a parking spot.”
“Fuck.”
My mom starts walking toward the sidewalk just beyond the exit. “I know you feel the need to swear, but maybe we can tone it down a bit.”
Now that’s funny. “I’ve missed you.”
That makes her stop and turn back. “I missed you, too. You turned into a man when I wasn’t looking.”
I grew up when she was dead. She’s alive. I run my filthy fingers through my equally dirty hair, not even caring. The pressure of my hands on my head keeps my mind from blowing any more than it has. I’m struggling to comprehend the gravity of this moment. I’m alive. I’m alive because my dead mother saved me. Looking down at my shirt and clothes, my grimy hands, I say, “It was bound to happen whether anyone was paying attention or not.” Remnants from the bitterness implanted from my father taints my words.
“I’m sorry for leaving.”
I catch up and walk next to her, even though it’s a struggle to walk at this pace. I hate being so weak. “You were murdered. I was left to mourn with a monster who hated me.”
We keep walking down the street to an older model gray minivan parked at a meter. The back door slides open when we approach, but before she climbs in, she says, “I owe you a lot of apologies. I know this. I also know you have a million questions, but please, time may be of the essence, so let me answer them on the way.”
“On the way to where?”
“A safe house.”
“What? No. Take me to the manor. I need to see Sara Jane.”
“Get in the van, Alex.” Her look is as pointed as her tone. “We must go.”
Peeking inside the van, Cruise sits in the third row. His face is fucked up, but a bloody smile creases the dried blood on his cheeks. Both of his eyes are swollen, but I see just enough of that spark that has always been him. “Damn, brother,” I say, looking him over.
“I live another day for women to continue to love me.”
I laugh, his high spirits still intact.
“Alex?” I turn toward the front and even in the dark of night I see the friendly face I came to rely on for more than taking care of the manor, but someone who helped take care of me after my mother’s death. “Neely? What are you doing here?” I climb inside and embrace her the best I can from this awkward angle.
The door slides closed behind me when she replies, “Long story.” Her hand runs over the back of my head, and she holds me so we can see each other better under the streetlight that trickles inside the vehicle. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You too.” Damn tears come threatening again.
“Let’s go.”
I sit in the middle seat, next to my mom . . . my mom who is alive. My head is spinning, and as much as I’m sure it’s from lack of nutrition, seeing my mom isn’t helping. She’s alive. She came back. They are the only words I can focus on. And Neely? Jason? Buckling up seems frivolous compared to all we’ve been through, but I do it without a second thought. “I have so many questions I don’t know where to begin.”
My mom reaches over and takes my hand. “We have business to take care of.”
Neely adds, “And a score to settle.”
“I need to know. How are you here?”
After checking the time on the dashboard, she says, “I staged my death.”
“But there were cops and paramedics at the scene. Witnesses.”
“All staged. Everyone was paid.”
“How? Your death was major news.”
“And I had all the money in the world to create whatever scenario I wanted to.” She stares at our hands that are clasped together. “I hated leaving when you were only nineteen, but you were a survivor. I knew that. You were starting to make a life for yourself. A life that was not your father’s.”
“I was partying too hard. I was looking for trouble in the worst of ways. I was not starting a life, but hiding who I was.”
“It was a stage, Alex. We all rebel against who we are at one time or another.”
I’m surprised how accepting she is that I was making all the wrong decisions. “Is that what you did?”
“I did what I had to do so one day you could have everything you deserve. The Kingwoods . . .” She looks out her window. “Your father was so dashing in his white tux jacket and black pants. Slicked hair and slicker tongue. I fell for him. For his good looks and charm. I fell for his vision of our future, but it wasn’t me he wanted. He wanted my family’s name, my fortune. His father wanted more.”
“No one hates him more than I do, but one thing I know is he loved you. More than anything. More than me.”
Her head swivels to me. “How is that possible? How is it that he could look at his own flesh and blood and despise you like he did? I didn’t give you life, but I gave you my heart and all my love, my precious boy. He was going to challenge you, to push you to your own demise. So I sacrificed myself. With me out of the way, he would realize the only ally he had was you, his son. He would bring you into the mix, and you would again be in line to inherit the Kingwood fortune.”
Money. It always comes back to dirty money. “I would’ve rather had you.”
Reaching up, she touches my cheek as if she can’t believe I’m real either. “He would’ve never allowed it. I was a prisoner in that manor. I was sold to that man for a dowry worth millions, millions he turned into billions. That’s all yours now.”
“I don’t want it.”
“A ruler doesn’t reject his duties. He just learns to live a life alongside them.”
King. I chuckle to myself. “God, I’ve been so blind. Decisions I thought I was making were made for me years earlier. I was a pawn in a game I didn’t know I was playing.”
“You made some of your own choices and some you were encouraged toward.”
Encouraged toward? My throat feels dry with disgust from the deceitful lies, the life of lies I’ve lived. I push it all down and demand, “What choice did I make on my own?”
“Sara Jane Grayson.”
Three words. One name. Sara Jane Grayson makes up the whole of me, the only part of me that wasn’t controlled like a puppet on a string.
Neely interjects, “You are your own man, Alex. Don’t let this information overwhelm your better senses. You know who you are. You’re not your father or your grandfather. You’re not . . .” She struggles with the next word, but says it despite the pain it conjures, “April.”
My mom rubs my arm. “If I hadn’t left when I did, I wouldn’t be here now. I was suffocating. Every breath I took, he stole. He was obsessed with me and yet, he still slept with other women. I could never please his appetite for more. So it wasn’t only you that wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough for that man. He was just like his father.”
Remembering the papers in the office, I ask, “But he’s not my father, is he?”
Her lips part, but she quickly gathers herself. “What do you mean?”
“You mean, what do I know?” I rub my forehead, trying to ease the heaviness. “I found my birth certificate. My father was my brother. My grandfather was my father.”
“When did you—?”
“The morning I was taken. It all came together.”
The van stops outside a small clapboard house. Neely parks the ve
hicle in front, and the side door slides open. I almost forgot Cruise was with us. He was so quiet in the back. I don’t blame him. He steps out and stands there, looking around the suburban street. “Where are we?”
Neely responds, “A safe house. Come on. I want to clean you up before I take you to see a friend of mine.”
“A friend?”
“A doctor. You need to be examined. We need to start treating what those sick bastards did to you.”
The three of them head for the front door, but I stand on the lawn and look at the sky. There are no stars to be found. But the air is fresh. The air is free. I inhale deeply because I need it.
Sara Jane.
I need her.
I want to live in her solar system and reunite in her universe with the heavenly stars surrounding us once again.
My mom calls to me, “Alex?”
Looking toward the house, I go. “Coming.” I trudge across the lawn, ignoring the first hunger pangs I’ve been able to acknowledge in weeks, if not longer.
Inside the little house, just beyond a paneled half wall, Cruise is perched on a yellow barstool while Neely takes a cloth to his face. She says, “After your shower, we’ll go. You’ll find clean clothes in the bathroom.”
With my hands on the back of my head, I’m shocked by how we got here. How is my mother alive? How is Neely right in front of me as if she’s been in on this from the beginning?
Cruise comes over, and we don’t bother with our usual handshake. We hug. I hug my brother because I can. He’s alive because he survived, because he fought, fought for me. “I owe you,” I say.
When we part, he says, “Nah, you’d do the same for me.”
I would, too. “That’s what family does for each other.”
He slips down the hall, and I hear a door close. If I reach up, I can touch the popcorn ceiling. I trail the tips of my fingers over the bumps and crevices and then flatten my palms just so I can feel a different kind of pain than the one I’ve lived with for too long. The plaster breaks, the white dust showering down around me and I lower my arms.
My mom walks in from a back room and stops as if she’s walked in on something private. Our eyes meet somewhere in the middle—hers fraught with worry. Mine full of questions and thoughts of betrayal.
The change in her demeanor comes quickly. She’s not the gentle mother I once knew. This woman is fearless and confident. This woman has spent four years becoming a force to be reckoned with. She comes to me, takes my hand, and leads me to the couch. When we sit, she says, “I know this is a lot to take in, but I need you to stay with me. I need you to accept the situation for what it is, or we won’t be able to finish the job.”
“The job?”
“You know who your real father was, but it’s your birth mother that is the most dangerous. I met her at a party once before she had you. She danced all night and had the attention of every man—of every Kingwood—there. She was happy to be the center of attention.” She takes a deep breath, lowering her shoulders that were riding up to her ears in tension prior. “She changed. I want to blame the drugs, but I know different. She thought having you was her acceptance into the empire.”
“She didn’t want me?” Love me?
“Not in the way a mother should want her child,” she corrects as if that will make a difference. I lean back on the couch, the rough fabric of the cushions digging into my raw skin beneath the thin cotton of my shirt. “The first time I held you, I knew you were mine. I didn’t give birth to you, but I would raise you. Love you. I would save you from whatever bad you had escaped, without you knowing the hell you were brought into.” When I open my eyes, she adds, “I would love you so much you wouldn’t know anything but goodness.”
“All that went away when you died.”
“I couldn’t tell you. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t, but I couldn’t. You wouldn’t have been able to carry that silently inside.”
“So it was easier to have me mourn your death?”
“Yes.”
That simple. I walk to other side of the room and stare at a family photo that must have come with the house.
“You’re angry,” she says, keeping her distance. “I understand. You have that right, but please know it was to protect you and your future.”
“Not my future. My fortune.”
“Yes. They’re one in the same, Alex.” She stands and when I dare glance back, she runs her hands down the front of her jeans. “He would have killed you eventually. Anything to hold on to what he didn’t want to share.”
“It always comes back to money, but without me, he had no one.”
“That money was rightfully yours, and he would have spent every last cent until his dying breath if he could have gotten away with it.”
“But he killed himself. Why?”
“My guess is because he couldn’t see any other way out, and his pride would not allow him to concede his guilt. When you discovered April, you brought his worst nightmare back to life. He knew she had motive and anger to want revenge. She would not go quietly. She hadn’t after twenty-three years.”
“He wasn’t stupid enough to think she was dead, was he?”
“No. Not stupid. But arrogant. And a coward. Even I was surprised to hear how cowardly he was to kill himself.”
Taking a breath that fills my chest, I absorb her pain, her desperation that fills the air. “You had the perfect plan. Stage your death before you were killed, smothered by the corruption. Then come back to stake your claim with evidence of how they murdered you. But why did you wait so long?”
“I didn’t expect you to start digging into my murder. Suddenly there were rumors of April and her partner, Garvey, colluding with Nastas O’Hare and Connor Johnson who had staked their claim blackmailing your father before he shot himself, his plan and your fortune unraveling before his very eyes.”
I squeeze the bridge of my nose. “I brought all this on. The more I uncovered, the greater the domino effect came into play. I awakened a line of tragedies.”
“They never saw me coming, but they saw you. You became a target, so I had to change the original plan—”
“And rescue me.”
“The Kingwoods are long gone and you were having to pay for the dirty deals they made. I’m giving you a way out. Garvey’s gone—”
“That was him back there, wasn’t it?”
“There was no way he could live.” Exhaling, regret crosses her face. “He was the one who captured you.”
“What?” I find it hard to believe that piece of shit had the balls.
“This is a lot, but I need you to hear what I’m saying and trust me.”
“Of course I trust you.”
“April had you kidnapped. Garvey is not your cousin. He’s not her nephew. He’s a squatter she used to live with.”
I squeeze my eyes closed. Memories of him looking at the clock on the mantel and how he seemed to be casing the place come back to me. “They planned this together? How would they benefit? Neither had access to any Kingwood wealth unless they . . .”
“Unless they had leverage. Yes. Neely worried April would hurt Sara Jane to get you to sign over everything to her, so she watched out for her. Taking you and not Sara Jane was their first mistake. And then they took Cruise.”
“Mom. How could she?”
“She didn’t love you like a mother should,” she says, repeating her earlier sentiment.
Fuckers. “They’ll pay for this.”
“Well, as I said, Garvey’s dead.”
“And Jason?”
“Jason has been a valued associate. I first found him two years ago.”
“He works for you?”
“He’s his own man, and a free agent of sorts. I hired him to help me out. He’s been invaluable.”
“He’s in love with my girl.”
She smiles. “He might be partial. I’ve not seen him care for someone like he does her. But you have nothing to worry about. He barely exists to
her. All she sees is you.”
“Sara Jane, is she okay?”
“Sara Jane has shown enormous strength in the face of horrible trials, but that won’t last. We’re concerned it won’t take April long to figure out what’s happened and act. Go shower so the doctor can examine you.”
I shift, anxiety coursing through me again. “We need to go now.”
“No. You’ve suffered blood and weight loss. We need to ensure you don’t have wounds that need immediate attention. Jason will head back to the manor to watch over Sara Jane after he wraps up his business at the garage.” I don’t want him to be the one who protects my girl. It should be me.
“And you trust him?”
“He’s been loyal to me and the cause. We made sure Chad found him when looking for someone to watch over Sara Jane. You thought you were the only one looking out for her, but we wanted all our assets protected.”
“She’s not an asset. She’s my heart.”
“That’s why we wanted her protected. It was all coming to a head.”
I can’t sit here. “I need to go to her.”
“And you will.”
“Fine. I’m leaving in ten minutes though.” I’m going no matter what, because if I have only one breath left to give, her name will fall from the end of it.
34
Sara Jane
Alexander was dangerous.
When I met him I had no idea the trouble he’d bring to my life, but reflecting on the years we’ve shared—I’d welcome it with open arms all over again. Alexander is my puzzle piece. We fit together by design.
“We can go out to dinner,” Shelly offers. “You need to get out of this place even if for only an hour or two.”
“I can’t. What if he comes home?” I walk onto the balcony, searching the dark for the lake in the distance. I know it’s there. I have the image memorized, but I hate that I can’t see it. So much like Alexander.
My heart still undulates to the rhythm of the lake when we bonded. There was no end to me and no beginning of him. It was us in the dark waters, making love, making a life together. Despite the precious memories, hope drifts away each day. I tried to catch it, but like a balloon it’s floating too high in the sky for me to reach.
