“Will Chisolm. He’s a top exec in the finance department.”
“You know your employees better than I do.”
I nodded. “What is this supposed to prove?”
“Nothing so far, but I think we’re getting somewhere. I believe the leaks are coming from the finance department of Townsend. I’ve been able to track them down that much, so far.”
“Deborah has nothing to do with this,” I sneered.
Rick held up his large hands in a surrendering fashion. “I’m not saying she does. I’d hate to be the one to tell another man his wife is screwing him behind his back. I’m just saying, I’ve tracked the breaches to the finance department in your company. Will is one of your top guys in that department. He also is pretty close with your father, so one could speculate that means he has insider information that no one else would have. He knew about your father’s stroke … one of the few who did. Doesn’t Deborah work in finance for—”
“Don’t question me about my wife. Ever.” My voice was coated in steel.
Rick stared at me, pausing for a moment, before proceeding to pick up his knife and fork, cutting into the remainder of his food.
“Just remember, you hired me to get to the bottom of this. And you paid upfront. Cash. So it’s my job to deliver. No matter where the twists and turns lead, I will track them down until I get the answers you asked me to get. Just brace yourself because those answers could end you up in a world of hurt if you’re not prepared for them.”
I watched as he casually bit into his last piece of steak, savoring it as if he hadn’t just delivered me with the possibility that my wife was in some way connected to the deception threatening to take down Townsend Industries.
Chapter Twenty
Aaron
“Mark, hold my calls for the next hour,” I barked out as I passed my head assistant’s desk, striding down the hallway toward the glass door.
“Your meeting with Merc is at two,” he called after me.
“Shit,” I grunted, having forgotten all about the meeting with my vice president. My head was too occupied with outside distractions. Glancing at my watch, I discovered it was just after one in the afternoon. “Reschedule it.”
“What time?” he called again to my back as I’d already pivoted to head for the door.
“Any other day besides today.”
“Okay, and—”
“Mark, if you ask me one more thing before I walk out of this door, I assure you you will not have a job to come back to tomorrow.”
Mark’s lips clamped shut and he didn’t even flinch as he placed his attention on the computer screen in front of him.
With that I turned and walked out of the door, pressing the button on the elevator that led to the private garage where the town car that’d brought me into work was parked. I should’ve felt guilty for threatening Mark, but as the longest assistant I’ve ever had—with close to two years—he understood me. Truth was, I wouldn’t really fire him … well, not over asking another question. Either way, my focus was off at work and I needed to talk to someone about it, so I headed to the one place I thought I might get a little perspective.
“I think this might be the first time you’ve ever been down to the station,” Carter greeted, a stunned expression on his face as he came down the stairs of the fire station. He was dressed in the dark, navy blue pants, and short-sleeve shirt that was his uniform. My eyes drifted down to the bright, white and golden patch that read Lieutenant Townsend, distinguishing him from the rest of his squad. A swell of pride hit my chest, not for the first time, at the sight of him in his newly minted position.
“I was here a few years ago when you were first assigned to Rescue Four.”
His forehead creased, eyebrows dipping, and then rose. “That’s right.” He snapped his fingers, pointing at me. “I recall. That was a long time ago.”
I nodded. Long before either one of us were husbands or fathers.
“What’s up, bro?” he questioned, giving me a wary look. “Everything okay?”
I shrugged. “Not quite. Do you have a lunch break or something?”
He frowned. “I’m on a twenty-four hour shift. We don’t have lunch breaks during those.”
I narrowed my gaze on him.
Slowly, a grin spread across his face and he patted me on the shoulder.
“Calm down, I’m messing with you. I actually just clocked out when Captain came up and told me you were here to see me.”
“You don’t need to get home?”
He shook his head. “Michelle’s still at work. Diego’s in school for the next couple of hours, and Sam’s with the sitter. What’s up?”
I pushed out a breath. “I’m starving, let’s get something to eat.”
“There’s that Italian place you like that’s not too far from here.”
“Buona Sera.”
Carter glanced over at me.
“Let’s eat somewhere else.” That restaurant was where I’d had my first unofficial date with my wife. The place I took her while courting, and when we first married. It was a place for just she and I. I wasn’t in the mood to share it with anyone else, even if that someone else was my brother.
“Cool. Let’s check out the new Asian fusion place down the street.”
I refrained from frowning, hating the concept of Asian fusion anything, but I was hungry and I hadn’t come here to spend an hour deciding where to eat.
Fifteen minutes later, Carter and I were sitting across from one another, while our waitress brought our glasses of water with lemon.
“Do you need more time to order or are you ready now?” she questioned through a wide smile as she looked between the two of us.
We ordered our food, and I waited until the waitress left, not missing the extra glances she tossed our way, before turning my attention to my brother.
“I need to talk to you.”
Carter gave me a deadpan expression. “I assume that’s why we’re here. What’s up?”
“I, uh …” I paused, not even knowing where to begin. For the first time in a long time I found myself stumped.
“How bad did you fuck up?”
My shoulders sagged. “Bad.”
He whistled low.
“Patience is pregnant.”
“Whoop!” he cheered, clapping, genuinely excited by the news.
As I glared at him, I’m sure my face was turning red with the anger that was starting to well up in me.
Carter suddenly quieted upon seeing my expression. “Wait … you’re saying that was your fuck up? Getting your wife pregnant?”
I took a sip of my water before answering. “Do I need to remind you of what happened the last time she gave birth?” I fucking hoped I didn’t.
“Of course I remember. But, Aaron—”
“It’s not uncommon. Women die carrying and birthing children almost every fucking day. And it’s not just women who don’t have healthcare. And I won’t go into the stats for women of color …” My voice trailed off, my hands balling into fists at the tension this particular conversation always brought up in me.
“You’ve been doing your research.”
“Of course. I’m preparing a chart to show Patience to explain to her why getting an abortion is the right thi—”
“Wait. Stop. Don’t say another word. Did you just fucking say what I think you did?” He didn’t even bother to hold his question until our waitress finished placing our plates in front of us and left.
I remained silent, my jaw flexing as I grinded my teeth together, waiting for the waitress to leave. When she did, I looked back to the brother who was only older than me by a few months.
“I did,” I said, in response to his question.
“Start from the beginning. I’ve gotta hear this.”
I hesitated, but finally pushed out a breath, and told Carter what happened the evening Patience first told me she was pregnant.
“She hasn’t really spoken to me in the last two weeks.
”
“I bet,” Carter stated, shaking his head as if he agreed with my wife.
“She can’t have this baby. All she needs to do is understand the possible consequences and why she cannot have this cannot happen. I am more than open to adoption. I’ve made that—”
“Adoption?” He pulled a face, frowning at me over the forkful of food he’d brought halfway to his mouth. His blue eyes, just like Mother’s, narrowed in the same way hers did when she gave me one of her disapproving expressions.
I didn’t get those looks too often, but when I did I had to avert my eyes. But I refused to turn away from Carter. I wasn’t in the wrong here.
“Aaron, you just asked … no, excuse me, you demanded that your wife get an abortion. Can you take a second to pause and think about how that made her feel?”
I rolled my eyes up toward the ceiling. “I know she was upset.”
“Upset? Upset?”
I lowered my gaze when I heard his fork clink against the porcelain dish in front of him.
“The kids spill their juice on a white sofa, expect your wife to be upset. You come home an hour late to a romantic dinner she had planned, expect her to be a little upset. You come too quick and she doesn’t get off—”
“She always gets off first,” I interrupted sternly.
Carter rolled his eyes. “You know what the fuck I mean. When you demand that your wife, whom you have four kids with already, get an abortion—not because you can’t adequately take care of the child in some way but because you’re scared of what might happen, you need to expect she’ll be way passed upset.”
“She almost died!” I yelled, slamming my fist on the table. I ignored the onlookers who I could see out of my peripheral looking our way.
Carter, however, wasn’t disturbed in the least. My anger rarely bothered him.
“Get pissed all you want, but just know, you fucked up.” He shook his head. “I can’t fucking believe you,” he said before stick a forkful of food in his mouth.
We were silent for a few minutes as we both ate. I didn’t even taste the steamed red snapper and sautéed vegetables I’d ordered. At that point, I was just eating for sustenance, having not eaten since the night before. I had all types of tension coursing through my body. I hadn’t touched my wife in two weeks. The longest we’d ever gone since the twins were born and she’d been cleared after the six week check up. I was horny, agitated, and though I loathed to admit it, scared shitless.
“Did you even stop once to consider she might be scared?”
My eye rose to meet Carter’s as he stared at me.
I sat back in my wooden chair, knowing he had more to say.
“Have you? I mean, yes, you were there. You walked into the hospital room to find her being worked on by nurses and doctors. I’m sure that was terrifying. I couldn’t even ima—” His voice broke off as he shook his head. “But Patience was the one who went through it. She was the one who bled out minutes after delivering her two children. Did you once stop to ask her how she felt about being pregnant?”
I opened my mouth to respond but no words came out. Clamping my mouth shut, I wiped my lips with the linen napkin that had sat in my lap.
I shrugged off Carter’s words. “After we brought Thiers and Andreas home, she agreed that we were done having children. We’d consider adoption in the future but her getting pregnant wasn’t an option.”
“I’m sure this was right after she got out of the hospital and you did most of the talking in that conversation.”
My scowl deepened as I narrowed my eyes on Carter. “I didn’t force her to agree.”
“You probably didn’t.” He tilted his head, conceding that point. “I’m sure if Patience didn’t want that she would have made her disagreement vocal enough. But it’s what? A year later, and here she is pregnant. So what changed?”
“Nothing. She simply forgot to take her birth control.”
Carter grunted. “So you made the decision to not have anymore kids but you left the birth control up to her?”
“She agreed, asshole. And I didn’t leave it up to her the way you’re implying. She chose to get on the pill.”
Carter wiped his mouth, nodding. “I’m sure.”
He didn’t sound too sure.
“And now, things have changed.” He set his finished plate to the side and leaned in, arms folded over the table. “Look, I’m not telling you what to do. But you came to me for a reason. I’m certain Father would just tell you to get your head out of your ass and stand by your wife, holding her hand, and to take your ass out to the store to get whatever weird shit she’s craving.”
“Hostess cupcakes,” I supplied.
He paused looking at me, questioningly.
“She craves them when she’s pregnant.” I’d already seen a few wrappers in the kitchen’s garbage can a few days prior. A small form of guilt hit my belly when I realized I wasn’t the one who had made the grocery store run to get what she’d been craving.
“Yeah, well, Father would likely tell you to quit your whining and head to the store to stock up on Hostess cupcakes. But, you didn’t go to Father. You came to me. And my advice will be a little different. I’m Patience in your marriage.”
I gave Carter a look like he was crazy. “You’re two months pregnant?”
He huffed rolling his eyes. “Screw you, asswipe. Anyway … I go to a job everyday that could kill me. Hell, given all of the shit that’s happened with the squad and department lately, I was closer to death than ever, remember?”
I nodded solemnly, hating that I did remember.
“Yeah, and through all of that, and my subsequent promotion, Michelle has never, not once, asked me to quit. She’s not even hinted at it. She hasn’t asked me to try to transfer to a station with fewer and less dangerous calls. None of that. And if she did, I wouldn’t hesitate to oblige her. Deep down, I’d fucking hate it, but I’d do it. You know why?”
I pushed out a breath but didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to.
“Because family over everything. If my wife needed me to be in a safer role so she could sleep better at night, that’s what I would do. But that’s not the heroic part. The real hero in this scenario is my wife. Because she’s never asked me to change. She knows me better than anyone on this planet, and she knows I’d do it for her. But she also knows it’d go against who I am at my core. Protecting, serving, and saving people is the cornerstone of who I am. Not who I choose to be but who I was born to be. It’s the same reason I left for the military at eighteen without a second thought. Same reason I quit, too. I was tired of killing people. I chose to save them instead. It’s how I met my wife. And she knows asking me to go against my base instinct would be her asking me to betray myself.”
Turning to stare out of the window, I inhaled deeply and exhaled. I wasn’t asking Patience to betray herself. I was just asking her to put our family first. The faces of our four children came to mind. I couldn’t imagine a world in which they didn’t have their mother to raise them. No. The deeper truth was, I couldn’t imagine a world where I didn’t have her with me, always. To raise our children, to grow old with, to fight with, and then make up with. That was a world that just couldn’t exist.
“No,” I shook my head. “She’s not you, Carter.”
“Aaron—”
“No,” I said more firmly, to the reception of more stares from around the restaurant. “Patience is not you. Our children, the ones who are already here, need her. I need her. She can’t have this baby.”
I was adamant in my decision. Nothing was changing my mind. Not even my stubborn wife.
Chapter Twenty-One
Deborah
Present
“You know they’re all up to something, right?” I said, looking over my shoulder as I sat on my side of the sleigh bed in our master bedroom. A smile blossomed on my lips when I found Robert’s sizzling gaze on me.
His smoldering eyes ran over my shoulder, up my neck, and to my face
until he met my eyes.
“They’re always up to something. Little shits.”
I giggled. “It was you who decided to have four of them.”
He shook his head. “No, that was decided by something greater than me, princess.”
I let out a sigh. How that pet name could still sound so damned good from his mouth after forty years of marriage was beyond me.
“C’mere,” he growled.
I yelped when he moved quicker than a man his damn age should be allowed to move, and I found myself on my back, my husband hovering above me. I lifted my hand and ran is through his greying hair. The color might’ve been different but it still felt soft and silky to the touch.
“Can I tell you something?”
“You better talk fast.”
I let out a sigh when he buried his face into the crook of my neck. “I really liked the shaggy look on you when we first met.”
His head popped up. “At Stanford?”
“That is where we first met, right?”
“Princess, you and I met even before we got to this place. But yeah, that was where we reunited in this lifetime.”
The butterflies in my belly flapped as they normally did whenever he made some mention of us being “written in the stars” as he put it.
“You liked my hair long?”
I nodded. “I did. I love it short, too, but you were so damn handsome with that long, seventies look. Even though every other guy had the same long hair, you stood out above them all.”
He kissed my bare shoulder before pulling down the strap of the dark blue negligee I wore. He pressed another kiss to my shoulder, and then to my lips, allowing his lips to linger over mine, savoring the moment.
Pulling back, I laid my head against the cool, Egyptian cotton bed sheets. “Did you ever doubt us? Me?”
He paused before looking me in the eye. “Not for a second.”
****
Then
Robert
I strolled into the usual diner where Rick and I met, nodded at the waitress who’d become used to seeing my face—every Wednesday morning at seven a.m. I’d been doing this same routine for the last three months. Meeting with Rick to get what new information he’d been able to uncover. It seemed like every time we parted ways I grew more and more pissed off and tense. Even Deborah was beginning to ask why I was so damn agitated while at home. This shit needed to end soon.
Until My Last Breath Page 18