Chapter 25

That moment when you say something really fucked up and everyone thinks you’re kidding…

-Text from Coke to Cora

Coke

“Your daughter’s all right, but she’s been roughed up.”

Cora’s earlier words hit me like blows from a battering ram.

I’d driven away from my shop—the bomb-making materials that’d been in the back of Cora’s car now safely moved out of not only Cora’s car but also my yard.

Now, I was standing in my driveway, staring at my house while Luca gave me a quick rundown of everything that had happened since we’d left.

“Overall, I think she’s okay,” Luca continued. “She has a split lip, a black eye, and bruises on her throat. Her shirt was ripped. It looked like she was in a struggle, but I have only been able to assure that she didn’t need an ambulance ride.”

Had tried to take her.

I swallowed and choked down all the fear and anger that threatened to consume me.

“Okay,” I cleared my throat.

I walked into my house, Gabe at my heels and Luca at Gabe’s back, and came to a halt in the kitchen just inside the door when I saw Cora.

She was wearing cutoff jean shorts, a tank top, and had her little poofy-headed chick in her hands, smiling down at it.

My daughter was at her side, rubbing the chicken’s head with one finger.

I surveyed my two girls, noting that both of them looked shaken.

What I did not notice was my daughter’s eyes being filled with fear. They were filled with awe.

“Daddy, did you see these chickens?” Frankie asked, holding up another chick.

Out of the eighteen that she’d put into an incubator, only two had hatched. Both of them were quite cute, in an ugly chicken sort of way.

Cora loved them, though, and I suppose that was all that mattered.

I hadn’t realized that I’d ever get chickens again—when I was younger, that used to be my least favorite thing in the world to do—cleaning up after the chickens.

However, I found that I’d do just about anything to see a smile on Cora’s face.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to control my anger. “I see them every day when I have to feed them. A certain someone only remembers to pick them up and cuddle them, not actually feed and water them.”

Cora’s lips twitched. “I don’t think it’s me forgetting to do that as much as you doing it before I can.”

I shrugged, then calmly walked to my daughter, turning her so I could survey her face.

“You okay?” I questioned.

I didn’t care about the mess of antiseptic wipes on the counter, the fifteen Band-Aid wrappers, or the mess that the two women had left in their wake as they’d cleaned Frankie up. Something that would’ve bothered the hell out of me not so long ago didn’t so much as break the surface of my panic.

“I think she needs stitches,” Cora admitted. “Her lip is pretty split, and I don’t think the steri-strips I have on it is going to cut it.”

I studied the cut on her lip and winced.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s not.”

Frankie’s shoulders slumped. “Dangit.”

“You’ll have a nice scar,” Luca said, eyeing Frankie from his position at the kitchen table.

Outwardly, he looked fairly calm.

Inwardly, I knew that he was feeling just as unsettled as the rest of us.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Frankie winced. “It was an accident.”

“It was an accident?” I repeated. “How does something like this” —I gestured at her body with one hand— “happen on accident?”

She fisted one side of her shirt and grimaced as best as she could due to her split lip.

“I literally fell down the stairs.”

Luca snorted.

I didn’t bother to roll my eyes this time.

“Frankie…”

“Swear to God.” She held up the Vulcan sign with her fingers. “But…it was only because I got a text from somebody. I was too busy being shocked by what I saw to pay attention to where I was going. One second, I was taking the steps, and the next I was rolling down them. Look, my phone is even shattered.”

I looked at the phone, then back up at my girl. “What kind of text were you getting that you were so shocked?” I asked as if I believed what she’d said.

I was still quite skeptical.

My daughter wasn’t clumsy. With eight years of ballet under her belt, she was as far from it as one could get.

This time, Frankie hesitated. “I don’t think you want to see it,” she admitted.

Gabe snorted.

“I’m pretty sure he does,” Gabe drawled.

Frankie held out her phone.

“It’s the first message.”

I opened her phone, went to the messages, and felt my stomach nearly fall out of my ass at what I saw.

No wonder she’d tripped.

“That’s your mother…doing a line of cocaine.”

“Holy crap,” Gabe drawled. “Talk about damning evidence. Who’s that man with her? Who sent you that?”

“That’s my friend from high school. He asked for my telephone number through Facebook, and I gave it to him. Then he sent that about two seconds later. He said he was at his brother’s house and recognized her,” Frankie whispered.

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Son of a bitch,” I handed the phone back. “Send that to me.”

“And me, too,” Gabe interjected.

I had a splitting headache.

Goddammit.

I honestly had no fucking idea what was going on with Beatrice anymore.

She wasn’t the woman I knew, that was for sure.

Beatrice had always been careless, but this? Her snorting a line of cocaine? That was the most reckless thing I’d ever seen her do.

“Let’s get you to the hospital,” I murmured. “The faster we get it done, the faster you can leave.”

If only that were the truth.

***

When a man gets to a certain age, there comes a time where he no longer likes drama. He wants to be who he is. He doesn’t want to deal with his ex-wife’s bullshit. He doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t want to do a goddamn thing.

All he wants to do is live his life. Drink his coffee and beer, love a good woman and sit back and relax.

He gets to a time in his life where he no longer deals with anyone’s shit.

Whether that person is his ex-wife or his future father-in-law who isn’t crazy about the idea of him being with his daughter. Oh, and he doesn’t think you can keep her safe.

Unfortunately for me, I was dealing with both of those at that very moment.

“All I’m saying is that she should come home,” Gabe said. “You’ve proven that you can’t take care of what’s yours.”

He looked pointedly at my child, and I felt my entire body still.

Cora was in the hallway, talking to Luca, and Gabe and I were in the waiting room while Frankie was taken to x-ray to ensure that she didn’t have a broken wrist on top of a broken nose and split lip.

“If Cora wants to go, I won’t stop her,” I murmured, feeling as if I was a failure.

Gabe was probably right. Until I could get this shit figured out, I would continue running around in circles.

“She will,” Gabe said absolutely.

I wasn’t so sure. Gabe might be surprised what Cora would and wouldn’t do. Her home wasn’t his home anymore. It was mine.

And Cora had already proven that she didn’t like change.

But, if he could convince her to go, I wouldn’t argue. Right now, I needed her safe, and the safest place to be was at her father’s where she would be under twenty-four-hour protection.

I just didn’t think she’d go. Not willingly, anyway.

Gabe’s phone rang, and I chose to walk away and leave him to his call.

Thank God that I did, otherwise I wouldn’t have seen Beatrice and her mother walking into Frankie’s room as if she owned the place.

Cora, knowing that Frankie wasn’t in there, backed away, moving farther down the hall where Frankie and an x-ray technician had disappeared.

Luca followed her, keeping an eye on the proceedings that were going on behind him by using the mirror on the wall that the doctors and nurses used to push beds around corners and make sure that they weren’t going to hit anybody in the process.

Beatrice walked into the goddamn hospital room like she had every right to be there.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I didn’t have time for this.

Then the nurse rounded the corner with my daughter, and things went to hell.

“My baby, are you okay?” Beatrice started forward.

I reached her before Beatrice could throw herself at Frankie.

“Don’t touch her,” I snarled.

Beatrice looked at me like she was taken aback.

“That’s my child,” she disagreed, trying to pull herself away from my grasp.

“Actually,” I shook my head. “I don’t give a flying fuck if she’s yours or not. You need to leave.”

Just then, Tyler rounded the corner, looking pissed.

His eyes narrowed on Beatrice, and he reached for his handcuffs.

“Beatrice Solomon, you’re under arrest for…” Tyler never got to finish his sentence.

He went to name off a list of laws she’d broken, such as conspiracy to commit murder with a goddamn bomb being at the top of said list.

The moment that Beatrice saw Tyler, she reached into her monstrosity of a purse.

She came back up with something in her hand. A flip phone.

What the fuck?

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” She shook her head. “You’ll get me out of here over my cold, dead body.”

Amadea breathed in a full breath of air, then moved closer to her daughter. “What is he talking about, Beatrice? Bombs? What’s he talking about?”

She sounded like a broken record.

But she also looked almost a little terrified.

Then Beatrice flipped the phone open and started to laugh maniacally.

By this time, we had everyone in the entire building staring at the spectacle.

Frankie was still in her wheelchair, with her nurse standing right behind her. Cora and Luca were farther down the hall, trying to stay out of everyone’s way while also still close enough that they could intervene if something happened.

Then there was Gabe, who was standing behind Tyler, fists clenched.

Tyler, for his part, didn’t look like he cared about the cell phone that Beatrice was aiming at him.

“Step away, or I’ll blow us up.”

Tyler froze at Beatrice’s words.

Along with everyone else in the vicinity.

I stared blankly, trying not to let my growing terror show on my face. Did she really have a bomb?

I studied her face, saw the seriousness there, and the utter lack of caring, and realized that she most likely did. She had a fuckin’ bomb. In her purse. In the middle of a hospital. With our daughter only a foot away.

“Beatrice,” I tried. “Maybe we should go outside and discuss what’s wrong with Frankie? She had a bad fall today, and they still need to sew her lip up.”

Beatrice didn’t seem to comprehend what I was saying to her.

But, what did happen was that I brought her attention back to me, and she let her anger loose.

“All I ever wanted was to be a family. I wanted you to go to work for Daddy. I wanted our baby to grow up doing exactly what I did!” Beatrice paced. “But no. Not the proud Coke Solomon. I had everything planned! You had no choice but to marry me. Daddy offered you that job…and you turned it down!”

I had. Her father had offered me a job. A good one at that. One where I’d be making a good chunk of money to basically be a peon at his company.

But, I’d never once wanted that.

I wanted to forge my own path in life. Make the money to support my family on my own. I didn’t want a handout, and honestly, I’d been quite offended to have one offered to me because I’d knocked up the man’s daughter.

And I’d made a life and name for myself, despite Beatrice’s every attempt to hold me back.

“Beatrice,” I said carefully. “I didn’t want to work for your father.”

“I know!” she screamed, shaking the phone at my face. “Don’t you think I know that?”

I carefully moved myself forward, trying surreptitiously to place myself in front of Frankie.

Frankie was huddled on the floor next to the nurses’ station. The wheelchair was in front of both the nurse and Frankie.

But should Beatrice well and truly snap, a wheelchair wouldn’t be enough to stop an explosion.

“I had to make my own money. That’s why I never followed you.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, likely sounding just as confused as I felt.

“I’m talking about working for my father,” she hissed. “He made me actually work! I don’t like working!”

Who liked working?

Nobody.

Yet, it was a necessary evil. Something everyone had to do—or at least almost everyone.

“And he didn’t pay me enough. So, then I had to get a second job to be able to afford to live,” Beatrice continued. “Mom helped, of course, but Daddy hated it when Mom gave me money. He said I was spoiled, and I needed to learn to control myself.”

The woman wasn’t making any goddamn sense. None.

She was rambling on and on and on.

Beatrice suddenly scrambled up to me. “You made me do things that I didn’t want to do!”

It was then, with her close enough that I could see into her eyes, that I realized that Beatrice was high as a fucking kite. Her pupils were so dilated that I could barely see any of her irises.

What the fuck was she thinking?

She’d obviously already imbibed today. How had I not seen that on her before?

“What did I make you do?” I asked cautiously, watching as Cora and Luca started to back farther down the hallway.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Frankie move. With Beatrice where she was, she couldn’t see the movement.

“You made me use my body,” she hissed, leaning forward. “Do you know how degrading it is to sleep with men who are with you because you need money?”

No. No, I couldn’t say I did.

“No,” I murmured. “I don’t.”

And never would. I’d work myself into the grave, so my family could have money, but I sure as fuck wouldn’t give my body to someone just to get a little bit of money.

“No, that’s right. You have no idea what it’s like,” she sneered. “I have a father who hates me but loves you. I have no skill sets. I get paid half of what I’m worth, and I still don’t have a job because my father refuses to hire me.”

Amadea looked spooked, and she was blinking rapidly as if she was trying to make sense of what was going on.

Good luck with that, Amadea. We didn’t know, either.

“So, then I have this bright idea to borrow some money from a man,” she kept rambling. “But I couldn’t pay it back fast enough, and I had to get money quick…or else.”

Beatrice looked at Frankie then, and her eyes narrowed.

“I really do love you, baby. But he said he’d forgive the debt if I allowed him to borrow you for a few days,” Beatrice continued.

Then Beatrice lifted a crude looking bomb out of her purse with a timer already counting down.

It read 4:09.

Four minutes and nine seconds.

I sucked in an audible breath.

Then all hell broke loose.