The Waterford China was out.
I walked into my four-story mansion on the corner of Mulberry Rd. and Pinewood St. and noticed the set-up immediately through the open door across the marble-floored foyer. The room was littered with fractured gold shards of light from the low hanging, six-tiered chandelier over the formal dining room table and the soft swell of Beethoven played over the surround sound system.
Fuck.
I was tired to my bones after a sleepless night dreaming about the ways Zeus had touched me and the impossibilities that faced us now that we were going to be together. This was followed by a rough morning with Sammy, who had thrown a fit because his exhausted mother had forgotten to buy enough of his favourite sticky toffee pudding, so he’d had ice cream for breakfast instead. It seems like a small difference, but to a child with Autism, routine could mean everything and even though I’d tried to right his morning, poor Sammy was completely thrown off by the change and even Mute’s presence hadn’t brought him peace of mind. When I’d left, I was surprised but touched that Mute had offered to stay with Sammy and his single mum, Margie, who’d practically cried at the offer of help even though it was from a biker.
To top it all off, even though I’d texted him, Zeus hadn’t been in touch all day.
So, I was too tired for what I knew the Waterford China meant.
Company. The kind that my parents wanted to impress.
“Louise, thank God you’re home. Really I know I encouraged you to volunteer, but it seems like you spend every spare moment at the centre,” Phillipa said as she breezed into the room on a cloud of Nina Ricci perfume and kissed the air at the side of my cheek. “You have fifteen minutes to get ready before the Venturas get here. Wear the dress I had Yasmin put out on your bed and the pink pearls, not the cream or the white.”
“Mum, I’m really tired,” I said softly, swaying slightly on my feet because honest to God, I was fading fast.
She pursed her lips at me. “Louise, you can’t play the sick card only when it suits you. Besides, chemo doesn’t start again for another week so I know you can’t be feeling that badly.”
You know shit, I screamed inside my head.
Instead, I nodded. “Okay, I’m just going to lay down for ten minutes and then I’ll get ready.”
“Fine,” my mother said with a dismissive way of her hand. “I need you on your game tonight though. These people are very important. Javier Ventura is one of the richest men in Mexico and he’s decided that Entrance of all places could be a marvelous place to open a Canadian branch of his business.”
“Great,” I muttered, dragging my feet to the grand staircase so I could find some brief solace in my room.
“Oh, and Louise? Make sure Beatrice looks presentable, will you? I do wish she’d grow out of this awkward stage.”
I waved a hand over my shoulder as I walked away but otherwise ignored my mother’s criticism of my sister. I wasn’t surprised when I opened the door to my pink-and-white room to find said sister, sprawled on my bed reading one of my Cosmo magazines.
Immediately, she said, “Do you wanna take a quiz to see what kind of man you’ll end up with?”
I snorted as I dropped my bag to the ground, kicked my loafers off and face-planted to the frilly bed beside her. “No.”
“Yeah, I got Skater Boy. I mean, do skater boys even exist anymore? Aren’t they like so early 2000s?”
I could feel her swing around on the bed so she was sitting facing me and then I hummed as her hand stroked over my hair.
“How’s my favourite sister?” she asked softly.
“Better now,” I said, like I always did.
I turned my cheek into the bed so I could look at her and smiled tiredly. “Ready for another dog and pony show?”
“Yep. I’ll be the dog, you be the pony,” she said with a wide, brace-filled grin.
I closed my eyes as I smiled. “How was your day?”
“Good. I got a 99% on my biology test today. Mr. Warren told me that one day I may even surpass you in brains and beauty,” she said with a girlish giggle.
Immediately, I frowned and leaned up on my elbows. “Bea, baby, you already surpass me in both. I hope you don’t need Mr. Warren to tell you that, and I hope you don’t take what he says too seriously.”
Bea blushed slightly and wrapped a long strand of my hair around her finger. We had the exact same shade of pale hair but other than that, we didn’t look much alike except for our stature, five foot nine. She’d yet to fill out like I had, and something told me she would be long and lean instead of curved like me, but I knew she longed to be exactly like me even when I told her she could be better.
I fit our hands together, feeling the ridges in our skin line up and locked tight as I braided our fingers tight.
“Love you, Bea,” I said before pressing our joined hands to my heart.
She grinned, wide and happy, so carefree it took my breath away. “Love you more.”
The sharp vibration of my phone buzzing in the front pocket of my jeans broke our moment. I flipped over and had it in my hand, screen unlocked before Bea could blink.
Guardian Monster: Pick you up ’round the block at 9pm tonight. Tell your parents you gotta sleepover or somethin’.
My heart filled with helium and threatened to float into my throat. I hugged the phone to my chest and tried not to squeal like a little girl with delight.
“What’s going on?” Bea asked, lunging for my phone when I just shook my head at her.
“Buzz off,” I told her, laughing as I held her forehead back with the palm of one hand. “It’s private.”
“Oh come on, Loulou, tell me! I’m your best friend. Who else are you going to tell? Is it Reece?”
Fuck.
Reece.
God, I had barely talked to him all week and even though we weren’t officially exclusive, I had pretty much physically and emotionally cheated on him.
Damn, I really needed to talk to him.
“I’m going out tonight and I need you to cover for me in case Mum or Dad decide to care for a change. I won’t be back until tomorrow night.”
“Ooooh,” Bea crooned while waggling her eyebrows. “Are you finally going to go all the way with Reece?”
I bit my lip, grateful beyond all belief that Reece had never pressured me to have sex with him. We’d done hand and mouth stuff—a lot—but we’d both hesitated about the final deal and until now, I hadn’t realized just how much I’d wanted to wait for the impossibility of giving it to Zeus.
Now that impossibility was on the verge of becoming a reality.
“Maybe.” I grinned at my little sister and pounced forward to pepper her face with kisses, loving the sound of her giggle in my ears and loving for the first time in my life, the possible future that was unrolling like a red carpet at my feet. “I’ve gotta take a shower and get ready.”
“Make sure you shave your legs. Nothing worse than a missed patch of stubble,” she called after me through my laughter as I bounded off the bed, rejuvenated by the plans for the night. “Even you can’t pull off Sasquatch legs.”
I flipped her the bird over my shoulder as I shut the bathroom door on her giggles.
“Louise, darling, there you are,” my mother cooed as I swept into the formal dining room, twenty minutes later than expected. “You’ll have to excuse our daughter, Javier. She is just so busy these days with her extracurriculars. You know, she’s a talented ballerina, an IB student, a cheerleader, a member of the school board—”
“Please, Mother, I’m sure Mr. Ventura doesn’t want a laundry list of my accomplishments. They must be nothing compared to his,” I interrupted with a sweet, subdued smile cast at my mother and another, more appropriately awed one aimed at the tall, immaculately groomed Mexican man beside her.
He clasped the ends of my fingers as I held my hand out for a handshake and brought them to a surprisingly full mouth. “Modest and beautiful. You have a rare breed here, Phillipa.”
“Thank you,” I said softly but I’d already taken the measure of this man in the expensive, custom-made suit and Italian loafers, with the slick hair and the gold ring on his pinky.
He was candy coated, poverty enrobed in class. It was obvious in his manner, in the shrewd almost feral look that made his brown eyes murkier than most; swamp water that held hidden depths, most of them filled with monsters.
I knew monsters, I’d had one as a guardian growing up, so I knew what to look for.
And Javier Ventura was one of them.
“She is lovely, isn’t she?” my mother agreed after taking a sip of her dry vodka martini with a lime twist.
I’d been making her that cocktail since I was a young girl. Whenever my father cut her off and the serving staff had to refuse to serve her, she used to send me into the alcohol closet for the copper cocktail shaker, a plump green fruit and a martini glass she made me chill in the fridge first.
It was one of the reasons Debra had been willing to keep me on at The Lotus. I made a mean martini.
“Smart as a whip too,” my dad said, rounding the table where he had stood with Mr. Warren, Headmaster Adams from Entrance Bay Academy, Harold Danner, the staff sergeant, and his handsome officer son, Lionel, all of whom were frequent guests in our house. “You should see her IQ scores, Javier. She gets it from me, of course.”
His laughter was meant to play his comment off as a joke, but I knew better and as I watched Javier smile thinly, I knew he realized it too.
“I’m sure,” he demurred before his eyes came back to me. “You must meet my wife, Irina. She’ll love you.”
As if on cue, a glamorous dark-haired, pale-skinned woman floated into the room, probably from the restroom. She wore a white dress that hugged her curves indecently and so many diamonds she looked like walking star shine.
Cue the trophy wife.
“Ah, you must be the Louise we hear so much about,” Irina purred as she glided forward to take my hands in hers. Her red lips blossomed into a beautiful smile. “Just lovely. You know, I mentor many young girls just like yourself. You must come to my studio some day and pose for me.”
“My wife is a skilled photographer and director back in Mexico,” Javier explained.
I pursed my lips but didn’t say anything even though their Mr. & Mrs. Smith perfectness was giving me the creeps.
“Let’s sit down for dinner,” my mother suggested and began to usher people to their assigned chairs.
I took my place in the middle of the table on the left, between Mr. Warren on one side and Javier on the other. Immediately, they both leaned toward me, moths to the flame of my youth and beauty, to the glimpse of my breasts nestled in the draped folds of my satin pale pink chemise.
“Louise,” they both said at the same time and then chuckled.
“Please, guests first,” Mr. Warren said with an elegant wave of his hand. “I can speak to Louise any time.”
Javier’s lips thinned but he nodded his acceptance then waited until it was Mr. Warren’s turn to frown and turn away to speak with my mother on his other side. Only then did Javier lean even closer to me to say, “You look absolutely lovely in that dress, Louise.”
“Thank you,” I said neutrally, curious to see where he would take the conversation.
In my experience, it was either to issue a backroom invitation to test my virtue against their lascivious intentions or to offer me up as a possible candidate for their son or grandson.
In this case, I thought it might be something else.
“I can see why your parents are so proud of you,” he continued as our cook, Mrs. Henry, served him an individual portion of her famous French onion soup.
“They raised me right,” I preached.
I was almost surprised I remembered how. It’d been awhile since I’d had to do any ass kissing but I guessed after years of it, it was muscle memory.
“I’m sure,” he agreed but there was vein of dark humor in his voice that I wanted to excavate.
So, I said, “What is your business with my father?”
He laughed softly. “Assertive. I like a woman who knows what she wants.”
I sent a skeptical glance at Irina that had him laughing again, this time louder so that my parents both sent me approving glances from each end of the table. This was, after all, what I was there for; lubricating the guests with my looks, youth and charm so that my parents could swoop in and take from them whatever they needed: political merit, money, social connections or extramarital affairs.
“Irina would surprise you, I think. She is very involved in my businesses and quite successful with her own.”
“Mmm.”
“As for my business with your father, I hope to open a Canadian branch of my import/export company. In order to do this, I need his political support getting the right tax exemptions and his moral support, as I won’t open a business in a town where outlaws run rampant.”
I startled slightly, hesitating with a spoonful of gooey onion goodness suspended and dripping halfway to my mouth. Carefully, I settled it back down and turned my eyes to his bright, intelligent gaze.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean you have a cancer…” His dark eyes caught the light of the chandelier and reflected like obsidian, inhuman and deadly sharp when pointed, as they were at that moment, at me. “In this town, I mean. The Fallen MC, as I understand it, have run roughshod over this city for years. I plan to rectify that.”
“And how might you do that?” Lionel asked from across the table.
I wasn’t surprised he was listening. We weren’t friends exactly because he was a good nine years older than me, but we’d been around each other all our lives and I knew him well enough to know that he listened to everything and missed very, very little.
Javier smiled at his wineglass as he stroked the faceted stem of it. “When there is an infestation, you must not kill one rat at a time, you understand? You must take them all and to do that there is an order to things. First, you take away their food, their basic means of survival. If there is no food, the rats will panic. Then, you set the traps. Those eliminate the stupid rats, the young and the old, the women and the children, maybe. All that remains are the male rats and they are hungry, growing mad. Finally, you smoke them out and as they spill out their little rat holes you shoot them one by one until the last rat remains, the strongest rat of the bunch but the one who had to watch all the other rats die before him. And then you put a bullet in his brain too.”
There was a long stagnant silence full of disgust like a still pond filled with breeding mosquitoes.
“I’ve heard rat poison works too,” Lionel suggested drolly.
I hid my surprised laughter behind a cough I covered with my napkin, but our eyes caught and danced at each other from across the table. His were green, greener than wet grass and ripe Granny Smith apples.
“Of course,” Javier said with a one-shouldered shrug as he dabbed daintily at his mouth with his napkin after finishing his soup. “Less poetic of course, but if we’re talking about rats then I suppose that would work.”
“But we aren’t talking about rats,” I stated softly.
His eyes glittered again as he shot me a sly smile. “No, Louise, I don’t believe we are.”
A shiver rattled the backs of my teeth as it worked down my spine. I looked over at Lionel with wide eyes, letting my fear seep into them slightly. He had no reason to know that I was afraid because those “rats” Javier spoke so eloquently about included people I cared for, a person I loved more than anything else. He probably thought I was just some scared, naïve pampered little girl frightened by a man talking about rat killing at the dinner table. Still, his eyes were sympathetic as he inclined his head at me then shook it slightly.
He wouldn’t let it happen, I knew, seeing that. Lionel Danner wanted The Fallen MC put away just as much as the rest of the police force, maybe even more as long as he could claim the glory over it, but he was a good man, one of those throw-back policemen you saw in old Westerns. He had a moral code and everything, which meant he wouldn’t let The Fallen be smoked out and shot like rats, not if he could help it.
It didn’t bring me much comfort though, because I very much doubted he could.
I looked back to Javier and found him watching me with those crow’s eyes, black as bad omens. “You’ll see, zorra, within the year The Fallen will be wiped clean from Entrance.”
