Chapter Twenty
A week later I am still reading the large book of Rudyard Kipling’s stories. The old binding and yellowed pages hold the same appeal as this house, as the Grand—the same as Kip himself. Battered and beautiful.
Banging is coming from outside. Kip has been busy restoring the fascia around the house. I’ve been meaning to do this for years, he said to me. But I never felt inspired to until you.
They aren’t the only ones battered here. I’ve made it through too.
Clara is not in the house. We were able to enroll her back in school once I legally got custody of her. The judge was initially suspicious of the circumstances we’d been living under. A ratty motel room and a job stripping didn’t exactly inspire confidence. But it turned out he had taken bribes from Byron back when he’d been in Tanglewood. Kip privately reminded him that some scandals were best swept under the rug.
And so Byron’s corruption actually helped us for once.
As I’ve done many times before, I flip to the beginning of the book and look at the poem inscribed there. The jungle is a scary place for those who wander in… Written by Kip’s mother, who loved poetry. There are a few notebooks full of scribbled thoughts—a stanza here, a phrase there. There aren’t many fully formed poems in verse, much less rhyme. This one is different.
The phrasing is simpler than her usual, less dense. Simpler. More childlike? The subject matter isn’t childlike, though. Life and death. Being lost and never found. So why write it in a book of stories for children? In this book she’d given her son?
It holds its secrets tightly furled, locking out the wind.
It wasn’t always there. I’d asked Kip about it. All the times he’d read the story as a child, this page had been blank. Only after his mother died, when he’d been paging through the book for memory’s sake, had he first seen the words.
The jungle is a scary place for those who wander in…
There’s something that brings me back to this poem, to this book. Like she’d left a message for Kip. Or me. As strange as it sounds, I feel like this poem is meant for me. I know how scary the jungle is. I know how it feels to wonder if death is the only way to get out.
I sigh and take a sip of my tea. Lukewarm. I’ve been sitting here a long time, staring. I run a finger over the ink, long dried. Her handwriting is sweetly slanted and looping. It makes me feel hopeful. From what Kip has told me about her, she was hopeful, despite what her husband had done, despite what Byron had become. So why write something so dire while her other son, Kip, was off fighting in the military?
I read through the poem again, lingering on the last line. The key is underground.
What if she had been talking about a literal key?
Everyone had thought my mother had the jewels. Or Kip’s father. But what if his mother had them all along? I feel a sort of kinship with this woman I’ve never met, enough to guess she wouldn’t have wanted to use what had come from her husband’s affair. She had remained in this modest house. Would she have been able to give up the jewels entirely, though? Would she have been able to throw them away, give it away, knowing her son might benefit from it someday? I’m not sure I could have done that, thinking about what Clara could do with that money. Just like I resorted to using Byron’s name with the judge to make sure Clara could stay with me. We’ll do anything for the people we love, even rely on the ones we hate.
Standing up, I gather the book in my arms and run outside. “Kip!”
And then immediately feel contrite when I see him on a ladder. What if I’d surprised him into falling? He doesn’t look surprised though, doesn’t wobble at all. Instead he leans against the metal ladder as casually as if it were a wall, as if he weren’t fifteen feet off the ground.
“Morning.” He is wearing those boots and those jeans that I love. His legs look impossibly lean and gorgeous.
I stop and ogle him for a moment, appreciative that he is mine. He is the one onstage now.
He notices, of course. His smile is small and smug and male. “Need something, honey?”
He likes to call me that when he has sex on his mind. The first time he watched me closely, thinking it might offend me. Watching that closely, he could see what the word did to me instead—it got me hot. What can I say? I’m an animal when it comes down to it, and I’ve been trained to like that word on his tongue, to like what he does to me when he says it.
But I can’t be distracted now. I hold up the book. “I need to go to the Grand.”
His expression darkens. “Why?”
“I think I know what the poem is about. I think I know where she put the jewels.”
* * *
We stand in front of the fountain. It had been cracked before, the statue missing with only a hole where it would be. A hole that someone could drop something into. It takes construction equipment to break it apart. The stone crumbles into pieces. It will never be rebuilt.
Both Candy and Lola are there, even though the Grand won’t open for another few hours. They’re here to see me off. It feels like the end.
It feels like the beginning.
I hug each of them. We are friends. That is one real thing that came out of this. It’s friendship born of survival and strength, of darkness and fire. We walked through that fire together. I came out alive but not unscathed. There are burns on my skin—some that are visible, like the dark red wound where the bullet went in. Some that you can’t see, only feel.
Lola’s lower lip is trembling, but I am the one who cries first. I am the one leaving. Even though I don’t want to go back, it’s still sad to say goodbye.
“Come visit me,” I say. There’s a part of me that wants to say come with me. Leave this place. But that would be a form of disrespect.
We all have our reasons for working at the Grand. Mine are gone now.
She gives me a sad smile, pulling back. “You should find different friends.”
Rich friends, she means. Girls who aren’t strippers or prostitutes or druggies. I squeeze her hands, keeping her with me. “I’m doing all right with the friends I have. I never got to thank you for watching out for Clara.”
After a little more interrogation I had been able to rest easy. Clara hadn’t seen too much that night—and Ivan had kept his hands off.
Lola brushes it off. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”
“I do.” Then in a lower voice, I ask, “Do you think it was wrong of me to keep her hidden like that?”
Her dark eyebrows shoot up. “What? No way. You kept her alive. You kept her safe.”
“Yeah.” I know it’s true, but there’s a part of me that feels guilty anyway. Our father had kept us locked up under the guise of protection too. Maybe he meant as well as I did.
Her look is knowing. “Take it from someone who was bounced around foster homes her whole life. Being with family, no matter how much money you have or where you live.”
Then I can’t help it. I have to give her another hug. “Oh, Lola.”
“Be proud, that’s all. And get some of that.” She nods towards where Kip waits for me. “You deserve happiness too.”
“And you,” I say softly.
“Of course.” Desolation flashes through her eyes before she hides it.
I catch sight of Blue watching us. Watching her. His expression is unreadable, and I can’t help but wonder if he wants her.
Then why hasn’t he taken her?
She’s stage Lola again, flirty and smooth. “Maybe I’ll come visit you,” she says with a wink. “We can show your boyfriend that thing we did. In the VIP room. Together.”
She says that last part loud enough so Kip can hear. His expression turns both forbidding and curious, a dark look that gets me hot.
Lola, being Lola, notices and laughs. She heads back into the club. I frown when I notice Blue follow her in. Something is up with those to. I’m going to insist she really does visit me—and find out what the deal is.
Then there is Candy. She’s stiff in the hug I give her.
I step back quickly, not wanting to push. “Thank—”
“It was all Lola. Trust me, if it was up to me I would’ve had her strung out and on the pole in two hours flat.” Candy looks bored, but then again, that’s how she looks whenever she’s around me and Lola. She’s like the inverse. She can fake interest onstage or in the lap of some asshole. But put her in front of people she actually cares about and she turns into an ice queen.
So it’s interesting that she acts coldest to Ivan.
I give her a look that says I’m not buying what she’s selling. She just smiles, mysterious and hard.
She’s already walking away when I call out. “Did you know?”
Her face gives nothing away when she turns to look at me. “What?”
“You asked me, when you saw Kip and me together. Does she know you’re related? Did you know about him and Byron?”
“There’s not a lot that happens in this club that I don’t know about.”
“All seeing,” I say. “Like Ivan?”
Her eyes go flat. “Nothing like Ivan.”
Then she stalks off.
Then Kip calls me back, because they’ve reached the bottom, the hollow beneath the fountain.
Of course we find a pile of dirt and leaves, sprinkled in by the storms. There are also cigarette butts and other unsavory items. The fountain is in front of a strip club, after all.
And we find a leather case that contains a lifetime’s worth of jewels. Of treasure.
A bounty that even my father couldn’t have matched.
Kip is holding the box, looking inside. I wonder what he sees. Not the dusty, vibrant jewels. His father’s sin? His mother’s shame?
I place a hand on his arm. “Now you can have everything your mother wanted you to.”
He looks up at me, bemused. “What?”
“The mansion. The trips around the world.”
He smiles. “I keep my mother’s house in her memory. I’ve hardly lived there. I’ve mostly been traveling. Some for my job—private security. Others were just places I wanted to go.”
“Oh.”
“It’s yours anyway,” he says softly. “It belongs to your mother, to you, not me.”
Yes, I could use the money. Far more than Kip, apparently, with his private security jobs and jet-setting ways. I had a few thousand stuffed under the mattress back at the motel. And my father’s money, most of which was funneled into offshore accounts I didn’t have access to.
Dirty money. I’m better off without it. I believe that, but it also means I’m broke.
But I don’t want to take the jewels either.
Kip doesn’t see their rich colors, the shimmery strands of gold and cut jewels. And neither do I. I see my mother’s wish for true love—and her betrayal when she left me behind to find it. I see my father’s deepest pain when his wife left him…and the strange mercy he showed when he let her live.
These jewels belonged to my mother, but they were gifts from my father. Bought with money from booking and prostituting and shaking down other criminals. And then Kip’s father stole the jewels. So who’s to say who they rightfully belong to?
“Clara,” I say.
Kip raises an eyebrow. “A legacy?”
“We won’t tell her how they came to be here. Just that they’re all that’s left from our mother. And they’re for her. She can buy herself a mansion or travel the world. Whatever she wants to do.”
He picks up a ruby pendant, blood-red against his tanned skin. “And you? What do you want to do?”
“I wouldn’t mind traveling.” I look down at a crack in the sidewalk. No flower grows up between it. This isn’t a place for miracles. But I’m wishing for one anyway. “Mostly I want to stay in the house with the yellow curtains and the old books.”
He takes me into his arms, hands circling my waist, pulling me close. “Not much of a legacy for a mafioso’s daughter.”
I look into his eyes—this man of hard muscles and tattoos, of leather and chrome, of heart and honor. “We’ll make our own legacy.”
He brushes his lips across my cheek…my jaw…and lower. “I like the sound of that.”
“That wasn’t a euphemism.”
“Mhmm.” He’s got a very hard legacy pressed against my stomach now, rocking gently.
“Kip, we’re outside. In daylight.” At least the afternoon hour means the club is closed for business. Ivan grumbled about the hassle of it all, tearing down the fountain and the money it will take to put it back to rights, but he backed down again under Kip’s quiet demands. I suspect he has some dirt on Ivan actually—and isn’t above using it.
Some things run in the family.
Like the fact that I’m just fine with that. This bounty rightfully belongs to my sister. And for once, finally, I know I did the right thing in running. I know she’s better off in the spare room in Kip’s house, going to college, and then making her way free of the ties of her past.
As for me, I have my own bounty. And that is definitely a euphemism.
His hand slides under my skirt, pushing up. Anyone passing by could see far more skin inside the club during open hours, but I’m done flashing them. Done taking my clothes off for anyone but Kip.
“The roof,” I gasp as he licks and bites at the tender skin where neck meets shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
He is my tiger, with his quiet way of ruling and his dark stripes, his code of honor and wildness. Beautiful and free.
The End