Mad Love

by Ashlyn Mathews

  “Grandfather—”

  “Blaise, the cake walk was your idea. Look how well it’s doing.”

  He’s right. I did the head count, and the cake walk is a success, bringing in money that’ll help families find their missing loved ones. Each person who plays is paying ten thousand dollars.

  “You’re right. My apologies.”

  “No need, sweetheart. I want what’s best for you.”

  “Invasion of my privacy is what’s best?”

  “No, Granddaughter. I am giving you the opportunity to be the strong woman you were meant to be had that bastard not kidnapped you. Heed my words, Blaise, a reckoning is coming soon, and you most of all will reap the rewards.”

  His words are cryptic, as usual.

  “Playing the role of a knight from the Dark Ages again, eh?” I tease.

  Grandfather smiles. “What else is there to do with a brother named Arthur?”

  Next to him, my great-uncle smiles too. His smile widens when the song ends and a number is called.

  “Looks like we have a winner,” Great-Uncle Arthur says with a sympathetic smile, understanding his brother’s meddlesome ways well.

  The winner drops a string of f-bombs, and then he whoops. The guests do this weird gasp-laughing thing that gets the blood pumping fast through my veins.

  Ignoring the rapid beats of my heart, I utter a wish and a prayer. I hope the winner is someone I can stand to be around for a whole day, who won’t give up the location to my private cabin in the woods, and who isn’t a serial killer or a stalker.

  Faking nonchalance, I look away from my great-uncle’s face and stare straight ahead. Maddox strides to the middle of the room and stops. My mouth drops open. He raises a brow, a challenge for me to present him with the “winning hand” as was announced before everyone bought their tickets to the last and most anticipated cake walk.

  Darn it, I never saw this one coming. I mean, his chances of winning was one in ten. And the amount to play increased to twenty-five thousand dollars.

  “Need us to chaperone, Blaise?” one of my cousins ask, his blue eyes sparkling.

  My other cousins duck their heads, but I don’t miss their wide smiles. Of course, they’re having too much fun at my expense.

  It’s always been like this with them, and the reason I begged Grandfather for archery and fencing lessons. I would rather be one step ahead of my rambunctious cousins than to be brought down by their signature arrows or a flesh wound from their sharp-as-hell knives and swords.

  Behind me, my team is silent. I push back my chair just enough not to hit Granger in the legs. With my head held high, I walk across the ballroom, stop in front of the sexy guy with the smirk on his face, and in a loud voice, congratulate him, tapping him quickly and lightly on the shoulder. There, I have bestowed on him the “winning hand.”

  “She speaks,” he says near my ear as he leans into my personal space. “I can’t wait to see your posh place, darling.”

  Posh? Pfft. Who says that word these days? I don’t play into his ploy of goading a reaction from me. Instead, I tilt my head back to the team standing behind me.

  “Give Granger your cell number. He will have my assistant get in touch with you.”

  Maddox shoves his hands in his pants pockets, and tipping his head to the side, he looks at me like I’m one of his prized limited-edition sports cars. I’m nice to look at but too valuable to take for a ride.

  God, that is such a crass analogy, comparing taking a car for a ride to having sex. But if he’s making that comparison, it’s likely he won’t risk taking me for a test drive and “wrecking” me. Therefore, he’ll spend the day with me and take back with him whatever impression he leaves with. Hopefully, it’ll be I am to be seen but not touched.

  He takes my relief the wrong way. A look of relief is my famous blasé expression.

  “Do you do none of the heavy lifting, Blaise? Does everyone do the communicating for you? Are you not capable of lifting your own goddamn fingers to do your own work? Never mind, don’t answer. You’re nothing but a spoiled brat who uses her trauma as an excuse to not do a thing but spend money on fancy clothes, an entourage of beef cakes for bodyguards, and a party house in the middle of nowhere.”

  Maddox’s words carry in the silent ballroom. I should run away and hide from embarrassment, but I’ve experienced firsthand his kind of misplaced anger. I go with my first guess.

  In a low voice, I say for him only, “It’s okay not to be at your top-notch best performance.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I tilt my head toward the corner of the room where we’ll have privacy.

  Granger gets the message. He grabs Maddox’s arm and steers him to the corner. The rest of my team split up. Two help my cousins get the guests out the door, shutting down the party. Granger and Marco have my back.

  Tomorrow, there’ll be headlines about my humiliation at the hands of the notorious “Mad” Maddox Stassi, the guy rumored to have had his sister’s rapists castrated.

  Maddox was never charged with the crimes. My cousins said the men didn’t talk even when offered federal protection. I don’t blame them for keeping mum. If Maddox was responsible for the vigilante act, he might have gone after their tongues next.

  Yes, that’s the stand-up citizen I’m empathizing with though he lambasted me in front of a crowd of partygoers excited for something scandalous to dissect and gossip about.

  “Maddox—”

  Granger holds up his hand. I exhale, and shrugging, I wait for Granger to put in his two cents. This won’t take long. Like me, he’s not a huge conversationalist. Action means more to us than words.

  “Apologize.”

  See what I mean?

  “I will after she says her piece.”

  O-kay, then.

  “Pent-up frustration and you’re taking it out on me.”

  “Come again?”

  To make my point, I slide my eyes down to his crotch without moving my head and then slide my gaze back to his face again. He smirks.

  “I can get it up just fine, Blaise.”

  I set my clasped gloved hands over my heart. “Thank goodness. I wouldn’t want to entertain a grouchy eggplant.”

  “Eggplant? Seriously, Blaise?”

  “If the color fits . . . ”

  “It doesn’t. So no need mentioning it again.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “Good,” he volleys back, the smirk never leaving his face.

  “Are we done here?”

  “Well done. Like an egg boiled until it cracks done.”

  I almost smile. Almost.

  “Give your number to Granger, please.” I back up, and giving him a small wave, I do smile this time. “See you later, eggplant-a-gator.”

  “Yeah, sure, talk a while, crockie.”

  Crockie?

  God, we’re cheesy. But I would rather have cheesy than his anger. There’s no need to be angry over not being able to get it up when there are more important things in life, like finding closure for families of missing children.

  4

  Blaise

  Is it a coincidence that my grandfather leaves this earth and goes to heaven the same moment my goddaughter is born into this world? As I was celebrating with my men and Sylvia the birth of little Isabel, I received a call from my great-uncle.

  Hours after the party ended, my grandfather’s live-in housekeeper went to bring him his usual midnight sweet snack.

  According to Bethann, she believed him to be sound asleep, worn out from a day of birthday celebrations. She shook him by the shoulder, having been given strict orders in the past to not keep him from indulging in his sweet treats. When he didn’t awaken, she shook him harder, afraid he would chastise her if she didn’t give it another try. He didn’t make a sound or move. She felt for a pulse and he didn’t have one. Bethann called 911 then started CPR, but it was too late.


  Thank goodness I’m with my men. I drop my cell phone, clueing Granger that something is terribly wrong. Or is it my stricken expression? They make things happen quickly and soon we board a private flight from California, where I grew up and spent many summers and holidays with my cousins and grandfather, back to Long Island.

  We arrive back at my grandfather’s estate at eight in the morning.

  My chest aching and my face streaked with shed tears, I sink into the chair across from my great-uncle inside my grandfather’s grand office. The walls are lined with built-in bookcases, and the shelves are filled end to end with books. Where there aren’t books, there are frames upon frames of pictures of me and my cousins.

  I stare at the one of grandfather with his bow and arrow and us kids with our own set. We’re smiling. Ecstatic at taking pot shots at one another. Grandfather made it his business to equip us with survival skills including learning how to handle knives and shoot a gun.

  We’ll never know when the skill will come in handy. That’s what Grandfather said. The bow and arrow was my cousin Roman’s idea. He upped the ante when he suggested a game of cat and mouse behind the walls of our parents’ estates. It was more like an ambush from my cousins. To teach me a lesson, they claimed when I whined and groused over being their live target. No mercy just because I’m a girl.

  I get it. I’m one of the boys. A treasure in the men of my family’s eyes. When I turned thirteen, my rowdy cousins upped the ante more and resorted to dropping me off in neighborhoods hours from where we lived and taking turns hunting me down. The joys of growing up a Lexington. I take a shuddering breath, missing my grandfather dearly.

  Is his death less about coincidence and more about foul play? He was the healthiest person I knew.

  “How long for the toxicology report?” On the flight, I peppered Arthur with questions in between my uncontrollable sobbing.

  “Six weeks is what I was given.”

  “I see.” After my kidnapping for ransom, I never take anything for face value. Neither does my uncle and cousins.

  Arthur tents his hands in front of his mouth and blows out a breath. “Blaise, what’s in my brother’s will isn’t good, sweetie.”

  My cousins stop pacing and come over to stand by my side and behind me. My team is waiting outside the closed office door.

  “Blaise, I’m sorry, but he left his fortune, including the Montana estate, to ten charities. You have seventy-two hours to vacate the premises and give up the keys. The only property he’s left you with is your cabin. In twenty-four hours, all your prior accesses, including to the jet, are terminated. As executor of his will, I must enforce his wishes. Again, I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  The room closes in on me. I’m oblivious to the shock and anger in Roman’s voice when he speaks for them all.

  “How could he do this to her? She needs the protection his money gives her. Blaise can’t survive out there. People know who she is.”

  What happened to me when I was sixteen and my two eye colors are the bane of my existence. Everywhere I go, people recognize me by my eyes. Or is it the gloves up the length of my arms that has them gawking?

  Heed my words, Blaise, a reckoning is coming soon, and you most of all will reap the rewards.

  Was it only yesterday that he warned me of what was in his will? Would he have eventually told me of his plan to strip me of my security blanket? His monthly allowance is my shield from the outside world.

  “Don’t be mad at Grandfather. He has good intentions.”

  “What? To get you kidnapped again?”

  “Again?” I shift in my chair and face my cousins. “What do you mean again?” My voice comes to me from a distance. I take deep breaths in and out and talk myself down from my panic.

  “We wanted to wait to tell you, but now, after what Grandfather did—” Edward shakes his head, his expression grim. “Rylan found a threat against your life from your kidnapper.”

  Five years of silence and now he resurfaces?

  “How can you be sure it’s him?”

  Rylan walks over to the bookshelf, picks up something lying on top of a row of books, and sets two plastic bags on the desk. Inside one bag is a note. In the much larger bag are the clothes I wore when I was taken.

  “We found the clothes beneath your bedroom window. Taped to the window was the note.”

  My kidnapper somehow made it to my third-floor window?

  “Security images?”

  “There is none from that side of the house,” Rylan says. “It was Grandfather’s request.”

  A considerate act.

  Grandfather didn’t pry or demand I see a therapist. Instead, he gave me space, leaving the door to his heart open for when I was ready to talk.

  The talk never happened.

  How could I burden him with my trauma when he gave me nothing but freedom and room to grow as a person? Had I told him what my kidnapper did to me, he would’ve blamed himself, chalking it up to giving me too much leeway and indulging his only granddaughter’s independent streak.

  Until evil almost took my life.

  “He never told me.”

  As soon as Grandfather was given keys to the estate, he had Rylan and his team set up the security system. That was two years ago.

  “Your life is viewed enough through a microscope. Grandfather didn’t want images of you from your place of privacy,” Jakob adds.

  Jakob is my age. At thirty years old, Roman is the oldest. Next is Edward, twenty-eight. Rylan is twenty-three.

  “What are his demands?” I expect nothing less from my kidnapper.

  “Leave the authorities out of his personal vendetta against you; otherwise, he’ll take your life. And, we must renounce your ties to the Lexington family or he’ll expose your father’s secret,” Rylan says.

  I’m less concerned about my safety than I am about my father’s good name.

  “And what is that, exactly?”

  I push back my chair, stand, and look each man in the eye. Years ago, I overheard Arthur beg Grandfather to tell me who my parents were, but I thought he meant my parents as individuals before they became a couple.

  “You’re not Jack Lexington’s daughter, Blaise,” Arthur says with a mixture of relief and sadness.

  To think he might have held on to this secret for twenty years has my heart hurting for him.

  “You are Cillian McCabe’s. He and your father were rivals. Your father was desperate for a child. He gutted Cillian’s woman’s belly and stole the infant. He stole Cillian’s child, Blaise.”

  My world shifts off-kilter.

  “You’re wrong. My father would never do such a horrible thing. He was the kindest, most gentlest man.”

  “A desperate man on the brink of losing the love of his life will do anything. Your mother went through a deep depression after she had a miscarriage.”

  My poor mother. “Did she know?”

  “No, sweetie. Your father told her he secured you from a young mother who wasn’t in a place financially or emotionally to care for you.”

  “Did my supposed mother have different-colored eyes?”

  “Cassandra didn’t,” Arthur answers.

  I direct the rest of my questions to him. He’s the one who has held on to this secret for my father and my grandfather. If what he claims is true.

  “And the members of their families? Do any of them have one eye blue and the other green?”

  “None that we’re aware of, but the bloodline’s been diluted and there are illegitimate children. You could’ve inherited your eyes from a distant relative removed many times over.”

  “Did Cillian suspect my father of stealing his child?”

  “No. Someone else took the fall and claimed the baby died during the trauma of being ripped from its mother. Cillian killed the man.”

  “What you’re telling me is . . . is deplorable and something my father would never do, desperate or not. I refuse to take what is said at face value.”

  “I
understand. It’s a lot to take in. For now, concede. Give the boys and me time to find the bastard. We can’t have a turf war on our hands.”

  He makes a good point. My cousins and the McCabes are competitors in the nightlife industry of the Bay Area. They both have stakes in nightclubs, strip clubs, and the bars that cater to a rougher crowd.

  “And when you find him?”

  “The choice is yours. Tell or keep our family’s secret.”

  “Except you’re not my family. Not if what you’re telling me is true.”

  “Family is about more than blood, Blaise. Remember that when we hunt down the bastard and deliver you his head. We don’t tolerate someone going back on their word.”

  My grandfather did the unthinkable when the ransom was delivered to him. He negotiated with my kidnapper. He’ll pay, but I mustn’t be contacted. Otherwise, hell will rain down on his head.

  After five years of silence, why did my kidnapper break his promise? Does he have something to do with my grandfather’s death? Most importantly, was he aware of my grandfather’s plan of shutting me out of his will, leaving me vulnerable to the big bad world, most especially him?

  God, I wish my grandfather were alive. I didn’t get the chance to tell him happy birthday or that I loved him. Somehow, I have to make this right. I have to find a way to honor my memories of him.

  5

  Blaise

  After I met with my family, I took a flight to California. On the private jet, I inventoried my assets. Once I pay my team, I’ll have a little over three thousand dollars in my bank account. I’m grateful for what I have, but what I need most is time.

  The elevator ride to the private office on the top floor seems to take forever, the air stifled with testosterone. Surrounding us are Maddox’s security guards. Standing next to Granger is my assistant, Collins. In her hand is a briefcase with the proposal. We put it together on the flight over. The rest of my team is pouring over my kidnapping case.

  For now, I’ve instructed them to steer clear of my family. I don’t want to give my kidnapper a reason to expose my family’s secret. It’s not his secret to tell.