I opened a very small, very cute, and very busy little flower shop in the main area of Navesink Bank. I had just so happened to luck out when the only florist we had in town decided to retire to Florida. And since I lived with Mark, and I worked, and the only real, large purchase I had needed to make was my car after I finally got my license, I had most of my chunk of the money from the holdups to use to make this dream a reality.
I had been working at, and loving, a nursery one town over, learning all the ins and outs of growing and taking care of various flowers. And while it made me happy, I always wanted to be my own boss. I watched Kingston flourish with his business, and it made me see how much I wanted to have something to call my own as well.
So I took my dreams and business plans to Charlie and Ryan and asked them to give me their honest opinion on the viability of my plan, them being the better business-heads in the family. To my utter shock, and delight, they had both been optimistic, insisting we needed a florist and that if my goals were modest, not to make a fortune, then I would be happy.
With their approval, I powered ahead. I went ahead and took over the old florist seeing as they had the right setup with fridges for the flowers and shelves for displays. All it needed was a little modernization, and it was ready to open. And thanks to Mark being a badass contractor, that work was all managed in under two months.
Then I had my grand opening.
Within two weeks, I needed to hire help.
Within a month, I felt like an actual success.
Charlie and Ryan were right; I would never get rich. But I was making my own money. I was calling my own shots. I had a normal, stable job where I paid taxes and felt like a productive member of society.
My mother would have been proud.
Not just of me, but all my brothers too.
Through many ups and downs and trial and error, they had all found their way as well.
"Well, well, well," I said as the door opened and in walked Rush. "Did you come to bring me to lunch?" I asked, belly reminding me it was time to eat. In fact, I was a little too hungry, and I was starting to wonder if maybe I was pregnant. We hadn't been planning on it per se, but we also hadn't been as careful as we used to. I may or may not have put my new Ring in on the exact same day and, as the packaging warned, that was the only way it was effective.
"No, I, ah..." he said, looking almost... sheepish. Rush? Looking sheepish? What the hell.
"Are you... here to buy a woman flowers?" I asked, huge smile proving completely unstoppable. "Oh my God! Are you?" I asked when he seemed to go just a little red.
"Okay. Forget it. I don't need this. I'll order online," he said, holding his hands up, walking backward toward the door.
"What? So you can get a broken vase and wilted flowers? No, come on, come pick something out. I won't tease you anymore." Okay, that was a lie, but I was going to wait until he at least picked out the flowers first. Because there was no way I was missing out on teasing him when he had gotten the chance to completely torture Mark with questions. And I wanted to know what kind of woman could get a man like Rush to buy her flowers.
She had to be something special.
"So, she likes lilacs," he said, voice low. "Do you have lilacs?"
"Sure," I said, smiling. "In the backyard at my house. Not for sale."
"Oh," he said, face falling.
"Relax. I will cut some for you and make them pretty. Pick out a vase," I said, waving a hand toward the wall where I kept them lined up on shelves. "Where'd you meet her?"
The look came back, the almost oddly shy one. "At the office."
"At Fee's office?" I asked, knowing most of her women were moms or grandmas. It was a great way to make a buck for women whose schedules didn't allow for a nine-to-five at minimum wage. Plus, Fee offered great benefits. "Aren't they all... wait... no way!" I said, smile going huge.
Because there was one girl, one single girl who worked there. But she wasn't an operator. Oh, no. She was the sweet, kinda mousy, very out of place girl at the front desk.
When Rush's face went red again, I knew.
Oh, boy, I bet that was going to be a good freaking story.
Mark - 3 years
I lost a bet on the gender of my own damn kid.
It was really just par for the course. I had been losing every single bet I made for the past several years, especially in the kid department. Lea popped out three that I was wrong on. Rumor was, she had another on the way that I'd be wrong about as well. And Dusty had just had her first. Again, I was wrong.
But I put almost a grand on my first being a boy.
I think all my brothers bet on a girl for the sole reason that I was in a losing streak and it was smart not to bet the same way I did.
I wasn't disappointed that it was a girl, of course; I was happy no matter what we wanted. But damn, I needed a fucking comeback in the bet department.
Scotti had been a, well, terrible patient during her delivery, something I had fucking delighted in. She was a fighter. She raged at my sisters-in-law when they tried to tell her to breathe through it. She told her brothers to get vasectomies because they should never do this to a woman. She had begged the nurses for the drugs. Unfortunately, she had been too far into labor for the drugs.
So she just screamed and cursed through it all.
And then there was a very tiny, very healthy, very loud baby in her arms.
"Elizabeth," she declared, giving me a smile. "We can call her..."
"Eli," I said, feeling that all-too-familiar stabbing sensation.
He was more than halfway done, I reminded myself.
He would get to know his namesake before she even started school.
If he came back to us at all, the small, bitter little voice said at the back of my mind. It was hard to stay positive after three years of no contact. Eli had fired Ellis, so we couldn't even get him to get us information. And we knew no one on the inside. Our contacts knew no one on the inside.
It was radio fucking silence.
All we did know was that he was still alive and that he did use the commissary money we filled his account with every week. What he used that for - food, items for his cell, bribes, we had no fucking idea. But he used it. So, that was something at least.
I also knew that Fee, the genius that woman was, had found a small loophole in his 'return to sender' rule for all mail from us. He did not return the letters written in Becca or Izzy's handwriting or the pictures from little Mayla. Those ones he kept. Those connections he wasn't able to brush aside.
That gave us hope.
But those were thoughts for another day.
This day was about little Elizabeth and the amazing woman who brought her into the world.
"Happy Birthday, you weird, squishy combination of DNA," Atlas declared, looking down at the blanket-draped baby in his arms like it might declare a nuclear strike and take him and the whole hospital out. He had proven himself capable of handling Becca, Izzy, Mayla, and Jason, being that they were older and he could ask them what they were screaming, crying, or fighting about. But he was shit with the babies. The first time he had held Danny, he had almost dropped him when he wiggled hard and burst out of his swaddle.
"You could just call her Elizabeth," Scotti said, smiling at her brother. "Or little girl. Or little lady..."
"Yeah, well, where's the originality in... oh, God," he groaned, eyes going huge. "It's, um, it's," he went on, his brows furrowed as he jumped up and moved toward the bed. "It's like gurgling or some shit. I don't know. Take it. Take it, damnit," he begged, trying to shove the baby at Scotti who was laughing and groaning at the same time, holding onto her stomach and lower which she claimed felt flayed.
"Here," I said, reaching for the baby and saving him any further PTSD from the incident, understanding that panic. I hadn't handled Becca all that well in the beginning either. I generally loved her... from a safe distance. Until she stopped being so fragile. "She's just hungry," I explained to ease that
frantic look on his face. "Don't worry. In a couple months, she won't be so scary."
"If you say so, man. Better me than you, that's all I can say."
I smiled at that, remembering thinking the very same thing. Eventually, though, he and all his brothers would be wrapped around her little finger, and she would completely change everything for them, even their ideas on possible fatherhood.
"Is King coming up?" I asked as he walked toward the door.
"Yeah. He's just finishing up for the day. He'll make it in before hours are over though."
Kingston was a fucking busy man these days.
But I knew he was perhaps the most excited out of all of them to have a niece. It was clear that was a man who did want children of his own, but he never got the chance to have them yet.
"Text me when you guys get back to the house. I'll drop in with some food or whatever the fuck I am supposed to bring after a baby is born."
With that, he was gone.
"He looked green," Scotti declared as I moved back toward the bed. She reached for her robe thing she was in and started to pull it down as Elizabeth started whining, her chubby face getting red and angry in indignation.
"He'll get over it," I assured her as she pressed Elizabeth to her breast.
"And here I was thinking it would be Nixon who was awkward with her."
"We thought the same thing about Ryan back in the day. But like Nixon, he just had a knack for babies."
"So," she said as the baby started suckling, looking up at me with a tired smile. "One down."
"Four to go," I agreed, smiling because we both had come from families of five kids, and both sort of agreed that maybe it would be the goal.
"You got some work to do on that house now. We don't have room for five."
"And a chicken."
"And you know they are going to beg for a dog some day."
"So long as it isn't related to Coop," I agreed. "Wherever that mutt ended up."
"So your brothers are taking bets on her eye color..."
"Oh, fuck," I said with a grin.
Scotti- 6 years
He didn't make parole at five like we expected, for reasons we didn't get to know about. I figured he had gotten into a small amount of trouble at some point, gotten into a scuffle, gotten another couple months put on his sentence.
But today was supposed to be the day.
The only reason we knew that was because when Ryan called the jail to put money into his commissary, it got rejected.
The energy around us was palpable. The men were expectant. They wanted their brother. They missed him every single damn day he was gone. They worried themselves to ulcers. They raged and paced and fell into dark places at times. Like around the holidays. Like on his birthday. Like every single time a letter was returned to sender.
I understood why they were excited.
But that was why my stomach was in knots.
Because I had a feeling that they were getting their hopes up, that this day was going to be downright heartbreaking to them.
I glanced over at Fee, Lea, and Dusty, seeing a similar tension in their eyes. The kids, luckily, were mostly unaware. We had all, as a group, decided to not make a big deal about it to them, not wanting to make them nervous or get their hopes too high.
Becca was old enough to be sat down and talked to about it. In fact, Fee and Hunter had very much told her what Detective Lloyd had told them to tell her, information she accepted with the wisdom of a kid who grew up in a non-traditional world. Izzy and Mayla weren't far behind Becca, but didn't remember their Uncle Eli quite as well as Becca did.
As for Shane and Lea's group, six-year-old Jason, five-year-old twins Jake and Joey, and one-year-old Sam had never met their uncle. Neither had Ryan and Dusty's Danny who had just turned four, Ford who was three, or the very newborn Gia.
My children, well, they obviously hadn't met him either. His namesake, Eli, was three. Jules, whose real name was Julia, Helen's middle name, was two. Our youngest, just a couple weeks old, born just two days after Dusty and Ryan's Gia, was Natalie.
Three down, all girls.
Mark was just about having a heart attack.
As were all my brothers who would surely never think they should be allowed to one day date.
I hoped for my poor husband's sake that the next and final two would be boys. I hoped it for my girls as well. As a girl who grew up with brothers, I wanted that for them. Granted, they would have Jason, Jake, Joey, Danny, and Ford to look out for them. So no matter what happened, they would have a bit of insulation from the world. Which was good.
"Do you think it is bad news that we haven't heard from Charlie and Helen?" Dusty asked, eyes a little swollen, Gia being a bit more difficult than her previous two babies, always up at night with colic. She quickly defended her sleeplessness, insisting Ryan took her so she could try to catch up, but said that there was no way she could sleep through her baby crying. So neither of them got any sleep.
Charlie and Helen had gotten up before the sun had even risen, and drove all the way up to the prison, having no idea what time he might be released, and not wanting to miss him.
It was the middle of the day.
It wasn't looking good.
If they had him, if he was with them, they would have at least texted someone so everyone stopped worrying. And I doubted the prison released anyone after five or six in the evening.
"Six years," Fee said, looking at the backs of the men we all loved so much. "So much has changed. I mean, just look at that," she said, waving a hand to the backyard where the kids were all in various levels of play. "When he left, it was just my girls. Just the three of them. Now there are thirteen. I don't think, even if they can get him back, I don't think the videos we all took of every event will ever make him feel like he was caught up. I think a part of him is always going to feel like he doesn't belong in the way he used to. You guys know Eli," she said, then gave me a sad look. "I guess you didn't really get to know him much either."
"He's just... he's got the kindest soul," Dusty insisted. "I know all these men are good and giving and sweet. But Eli just always had something a little extra. He was more patient, more introspective, more... I don't know... is 'soulful' too cheesy?"
"It's cheesy alright," Lea agreed with a smile. "But it is also accurate."
"I worry what prison could have done to that part of him," Dusty went on, blinking hard at the tears that were swimming in her eyes. "It's nothing. Just the hormones," she insisted, shaking her head.
It wasn't.
We all felt it.
It was always my deepest fear. Not for myself. I knew I would get by well enough. It was what I had always worried about for my brother. I worried it would make Kingston hard, would take away the goodness. I worried it would steal Rush's humor. I worried it would turn Nixon and Atlas, make real hardened criminals out of them.
So while I didn't know Eli for long enough before his incarceration to truly feel how they did, I could relate.
It was all of twenty minutes later when Charlie and Helen's late model black SUV pulled up.
There was a mix of both hope and fear in my belly, making it feel like it dropped and swirled simultaneously as all the women seemed to move forward at once on numb legs.
There was a long second where we knew nothing. The windows were darkened. We could barely even make out Charlie and Helen, let alone anyone possibly in the back seat.
But then the front doors open and out walked Charlie and Helen.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Five.
No one was in the backseat.
"Oh, no," Lea said, voice a hiss.
Charlie looked at his sons, face blank. Helen's, oddly, was equally blank. She wasn't devastated as we were expecting if things went a different way than we had all been hoping.
"He wasn't fucking there," Charlie hissed, looking bewildered. "We got there before the prison night lights eve
n went off for the day. Sat right outside the front. Finally, I was worried they were closing so I went in and they said he was already released, that we must have just missed him."
"We watched all day," Helen said, shaking her head.
"Maybe he was counting on that," Ryan said, looking like he was holding it together for the most part. But that was Ryan for you- strong, stalwart, calm, able to detach himself from situations so he could keep a clear head. "If he didn't want to be seen, maybe he shaved his head. Maybe he changed just enough to slip by unnoticed into a cab or bus."
"Where would he go?" Helen asked. "Back to his place?"
"I will go and check," Shane declared, giving Lea a look.
There was a loud ringing in Charlie's back pocket, making Shane freeze mid-stride and turn back as Charlie, a very composed man, fumbled for his phone, hope clear on his face.
"Mallick," he clipped into the phone.
We didn't see relief though.
In fact, it was maybe the first time in six years that I saw Charlie Mallick slip into loanshark-mode, criminal-mode. In general, the men kept that stuff away from the women and kids as much as possible. I had seen it in Mark and Shane here and there, when they got a call about a job that needed to be handled. I even saw it when Mark came home after a job, carefully burning his clothes, washing all traces off his body, then bleaching the bathroom.
But it was a whole other thing to see it on Charlie, on the man I had long since started to see as my father figure.
It was almost shocking to see the sweet, caring, loving grandfather to my kids go cold so fast.
"Lo?" he asked, not because he needed that clarity for himself, I didn't think, but because he wanted his sons and wife to know who was calling him.
And me, well, I had been in Navesink Bank long enough to finally understand the careful power dynamic of all the syndicates in the town.
There were The Henchmen MC, allies, gun-running bikers.
There was Richard Lyon and his cocaine.
Once upon a time, there was Lex Keith and his evil, and some twisted fuck known as V as well, both long-since dealt with.
Mark (The Mallick Brothers #3) Page 21
