Then There Was You: A Single Parent Collection

by Gianna Gabriela

  I gave Cora and Ethan the time they needed to talk after that, then jogged up the stairs to tell the two of them good-bye, and now right before the sun collapses for the night, I’m walking through my door, ready to see her, to see him. Only I freeze, as does everyone else in the room. My boiling blood hardens. My heart slackens to a slow deathbed strum. Something is wrong.

  I’ve walked into a family pow-wow, except not a one of them is talking. They are all staring off into space blankly.

  “Oh my God, Riddick.” Vivian notices me first. Her frightened gaze catches me off guard as her hands fall from her puffed out, blood shot eyes.

  “Dad.” Ethan runs from the huddle straight to me. His arms are flying around my waist, gripping on to me tightly. He looks lost, confused with his innocent eyes tearing into mine with a silent plea for help. And Dane, he looks guilt-ridden, ashamed, and remorseful.

  I’m unable to speak as I look around the room for the one person I desperately need to see. She’s not here to welcome me home. No ‘How was your day?’ or ‘Hey, dinner will be ready soon.’ The only reminder she was even here is the lingering of her smell, except today that smell is faint, whereas the smell of fear overrides every damn thing in this house.

  “Jesse… he has her. He took my…. Fuck. He took her,” Ron cries out before he drops to his knees on the floor, and my heart follows.

  As I stand there with my son’s fists gripping my shirt, his sobs racking throughout this hollowed room, his entire body shaking with fear, my entire being is trying to figure out how in the hell this could have happened. How the fuck did he get to her and where do we go from here?

  It’s as if the years of training I’ve had have dissipated along with her. She’s been taken away again. Not only from me but a young boy, who by the way is clinging to me as if I’m all he’s got, could possibly lose his mother to the hands of men who will torture the hell out of her before they kill her. There’s no damn way Jesse will keep her alive. Not when he knows we’ve found one another, and definitely not when the bastard somehow found out that we know.

  “Dane, how the hell did this happen?” Tyson steps around me asking the question I can’t seem to filter out of my mouth. I wrap my hands around Ethan as tightly as I can. Truth be told, I need him to lean on as much as he needs me. Maybe more, because as I stand here on shaky legs, staring into the eyes of three people who are looking back at me as if I have all the answers, my heart collapses from this nightmare that seems to never end.

  “We walked out to get her mail, then she went upstairs to shower. I don’t know how long it was before I realized she never came back down. I went to check on her and found this. I called the station to tell you, but the two of you had already left. They should be getting here any second.” He hands what looks like a card to Tyson. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and read the words that feel like an icy hand has gripped my heart. Its firm hold sends shockwaves to my brain while I silently bleed inside.

  Something snaps. Reality stings like a motherfucking bitch when I read that he demanded she bring Ethan with her.

  “Goddamn it.” I crack the silence in my troubled mind. Ethan jerks in my arms. I feel him lift his head to peer up at me. If I dare to look at him, I’ll crumble to the ground. I can’t bear it, so I pull my shit together for all of us.

  His words must hold some sort of relevance as the sirens start to blare in the distance. I remove one hand from Ethan, dig into my front pocket to retrieve my phone, and sure as fuck, there are three missed calls. Fuck, how the hell could I have missed them?

  “Ethan, buddy, you have to let me go. I need to get your mom.” It kills me to take hold of his hands and remove him myself when he doesn’t say a word. He’s in shock, which is good to a point that he may not remember half the shit that happens once everyone gets here. I know exactly what he’s going through right now. Except I couldn’t do a thing to save my mother; but I sure as fuck will take my last breath to bring his home to him.

  “I got him.” Vivian steps in, takes him by the hand, and guides him to the couch. The look in his eyes guts me. He may not be able to speak, but he sure as hell is sending me signals through those red-rimmed eyes. He trusts me. One trustful look from him is what barks in my ear loud enough to have me running up the stairs to find the bed perfectly made. Her smell everywhere. There’s no evidence of foul play. She left on her own free will just like he asked. Except, she didn’t take Ethan. My girl knew what would happen if she did. Her brother would have killed him.

  And here we are again with her right next door. The tape is playing on repeat to a certain extent. I have no idea what the hell Jesse is thinking by having her right next door. Either the crazy lunatic wants me to bust the goddamn door down so he can start firing at me, or he wants me to hear her scream in fear. To live the rest of my life knowing she’s within my reach, yet with one wrong move, I could kill her.

  “I may kick your sweet little ass for not calling me, Angel.” That’s when I notice the nightstand open.

  “Fuck!” I roar. She found my dad’s old .45 caliber. “Motherfucker.”

  “Anything?” Tyson barrels into the room. His eyes are roaming every inch of the wide-open space.

  “She has my dad’s gun, man. That thing will blow her wrist apart if she shoots it.” I don’t give a shit about the fact that if she uses the gun, it will surely surface that he’s my father. What I do care about is that Cora has no idea how to use what she more than likely thinks is an everyday pistol. It’s a rare double-barreled pistol that will blow the head off a goddamn grizzly bear.

  “I’m going in. Fuck this shit.” I turn to face him, my eyes flaming with the hatred I feel for the son of a bitch who must have contacted Jesse the minute the bastard left our building. We fucked up by letting the prick go. Even though he was followed, which he knew about, we couldn’t contain him any longer without proper evidence or we would have blown this investigation to hell. Instead, he fucked us straight up the ass in a way he’ll pay with his life for.

  “Right now, I don’t give a flying fuck who Richard Chapman is. I want that motherfucker brought back in. You tell McGraw that bastard is mine.” I spit out his name right along with the dog shit that prick shoved in there when he shoved his lying words down my throat.

  “Riddick, wait. You’ve got to do this right. You can’t—” I cut him off with a glare that would cause a cobra to lower its head.

  “Fuck you. I can and I will. I’m not waiting for them to come up here and question me or to tell me to lock it down because I’m personally invested. They can fuck off right along with this job. That is my life over there. Everything I have wished for came true a little over a week ago; and I’ll be goddamned if I stand here and let some agent who can’t begin to understand the history I have with her lock my ass down. So you either rally your ass back down there to tell them what I said, or you scale down those pillars with me and help me get Cora back to our son,” I shoot back. His brows are lifting so high I swear they start swimming in his hairline.

  21

  CORA

  “When was the last time anyone got our mail?” I examine the bills, flipping them one by one while talking to Dane as if he’ll have an answer. The man hasn’t left my side all day. He’s a great guy and all, but for God’s sake, all I’ve been doing is sitting on the beach or walking back and forth from my house to Riddick’s all day. I’m in desperate need of some alone time, a glass of wine, and a long hot shower.

  “By the looks of that stack in your hands, I’d say it’s been a while.” He chuckles from beside me as we enter Riddick’s house.

  “I wonder why? The last thing I’m thinking about is the mail, Dane.” I lift my brows as I bait him with a cunning smile.

  He doesn’t even take a nibble at my goading comment. He responds with a solid grunt. I roll my eyes at how serious he is. Yes, I’m thankful he’s been in my face, around every corner for the past few days, but the man needs to loosen up. Jesse would be as stupid as
he looks if he tried anything with the security we have here. I’m surprised we haven’t had any of our neighbors moseying around, wondering why it looks like a Mafia king lives in the neighborhood.

  I sigh in absolute contentment when I glance at my dad and Ethan when we walk through the front door. They are engrossed in a movie, which catches Dane’s attention, so I make my way back to the immaculate kitchen to help Mom and Vivian with dinner.

  “Your car payment is due and look, here’s a coupon from bestvibrators.com. You may want this since you’ve sworn off men,” I tease Vivian, then toss her stack on the table in front of her.

  “Oh, you are so funny.” She smirks, then picks the coupon up and flings it at me as if she’s releasing a Frisbee, her eyes glued to the flimsy piece of cardboard as it barely misses my head and helicopters its way to the floor. She laughs. It’s great to hear her laughing. She’s been gloomy since the day after her night out, when, after prodding her ass, I found out she never went out at all. She went to work, is what she did. Picked up another shift.

  “Oh, did they change our work attire in our contracts since I’ve been gone?” I asked her teasingly.

  “Screw you,” was her tight-lipped response.

  “Right. That’s what I thought.” I lifted my brows, narrowed my eyes, and stood there with my hands set firmly on my hips, waiting for her to open up and tell me what the hell she has going on in that head of hers. She left, went to sleep at our parents’, and after several short phone calls later, she told me “Fuck it” and “He can go to hell,” so now here she sits with her bitch attitude, eyes glancing in every direction just waiting to see if Jude will walk through the door.

  Even though my darling sister refuses to admit it, I know damn well she put on those clothes for one reason only that day. Vivian was hoping to run into Jude. I have no idea what he’s doing or if he’ll show up announced. I told her that. I also repeated that she’s on her own with this one. That Riddick and I are not getting involved, and she may as well tear the bandage off that’s wrapped around her head and have it out with him once and for all.

  “When did you swear off men?” Mom looks over her shoulder from the counter, where she’s cutting up vegetables for the salad. I thought I’d surprise Riddick with a nice, comfortable family meal. Let him kick back with a beer in his hand while we all sit around and talk. We could all use a time-out from the storm clouds that are lingering around us even if it’s only for one night.

  “Since I decided that all men except Dad and Ethan are assholes,” her sharp-witted tongue lies. She’ll be back out there as soon as she gets over being shunned and embarrassed. Maybe. I don’t know. I think she really liked him or still does. Who the hell knows with the way she’s been acting?

  “I see.” Mom rolls her eyes at Vivian’s dramatic outburst.

  “I’m going to take a shower before Riddick gets back. I smell like sweat, ocean, and coconut.” I do, actually, but that’s not the reason I really want to escape. It’s because I know Mom is going to start in on Vivian and I don’t want to hear her whining over something she did to herself.

  “Okay,” they both say in unison. I peek my head around the corner to holler down the long hallway at Dane, so he knows where I am. When he hollers back to tell me Riddick is on his way, I practically run up the stairs with my mail still in my hands. I do a quick flip through the white envelopes to make sure there is nothing important and stop when I notice the familiar handwriting on an envelope. A silent scream rips throughout my entire body. All four walls in the spacious room close in on me, and my blood stops surging through my veins.

  “You’re a week early, Jesse. You know, don’t you?” I whisper.

  I stand there allowing the rest of the mail to free-fall to the floor, knowing in my mind I should wait until Riddick gets here to open what feels like a card. My hands start to shake as I slide my finger under the seal. After everything we’ve been through and everything we know, maybe there’s a clue to his whereabouts. A detective I’m not. However, if there’s anything in here at all that we can use against my brother, I will call Riddick right away. I do find it highly suspicious, though. Not once in all the years he’s been doing this has he been out of sync with his cards. He has always made sure they were delivered somehow on my birthday, no matter what day of the week it fell on. Even the year it was on a Sunday it was delivered by a courier.

  “So, why now, Jesse? Are you afraid of me now? Scared of what I might do?”

  I draw in a long, deep breath before I slide the card out, glance briefly at the front of the card with ironic dollar bills mismatched in every possible direction. “Fucker.”

  Like an old, worn-down wagon wheel, my head spins, my palms are clammy, and my blood boils with so much fear that I’m afraid I will never be free of it. Ever.

  You walk out that door and straight to your house with that punk of a son of yours thirty minutes after you open this, Cora, or I’ll wipe your back deck with Vivian’s blood after I fuck the cunt. No cops, no Riddick, just you and him.

  “Oh my God. He’s in my house?” How long has he been there? I shiver. My body breaks out in a cold sweat. God, he could have been hiding the few times we went there today. He could have killed Ethan when I took him to gather all his video games or when we went to get his wax so he could clean his old surfboard up after his competition. I close my eyes and take a deep breath as I do, the look on Ethan’s face when Riddick gave him the new board he bought him when we had our day out flashing through my mind. I have never seen that boy with a smile so wide on his face in his life when he took what the two of them called the best board in the world. That smile is my saving grace right now. One I need to hold on to when I take this screwed-up situation into my own hands.

  Confusion and panic begin to race through my mind and body; my brother can go straight to fucking hell if he thinks I’ll bring my son anywhere near him. I refuse to allow him anywhere near my son. I will kill him first if he thinks I won’t protect Ethan from ever having the displeasure of being in the same room as him. Besides, what’s he going to do to me if I don’t bring him? Kill me? His self-absorbed mind plans to try anyway. So fuck him. I will not be bringing my son with me.

  Instead of my brain shutting down and panicking, I drop the card for evidence as I scan my eyes around this room, looking for a weapon. Riddick has to have something up here. I pull out every drawer in his nightstand, searching frantically, shoving items out of way until I freeze when my hands land on the barrel of a gun. I take a deep, needed breath and slowly pull it from the drawer, before tossing it on the bed. Then I roam around the room until my eyes land on the only pair of workout pants I brought over. I quickly undress, tug the pants on, and then grab the gun and shove it down the back, the cold steel resting against my ass. I grab one of Riddick’s old t-shits to conceal the bulgy thing and run, because knowing how crazy Jesse is he’ll show up here to deliver that final blow to finally take my son away from me. I have no idea how long it’s been since I grabbed the mail or when he put the card there. God, the thought of him in my home makes me want to burn the thing down. I escape down the outside stairs as quietly as I can, my breathing erratic, my brain praying, because I feel it in my gut knowing that I’m about to come face-to-face with my deepest fear.

  Only it’s not him I see first after I hit the top step of the deck and make my way into the near dark kitchen in a rushed pace that has goose bumps laminating across my skin, my eyes starting to water as I feel them enlarge with every step he takes toward me. Cutter.

  “You bastard,” I tear into him. My hand is flying up to slap his face. The vibration from the crack to his skin starts in my palm and spreads all the way to the tips of my fingers.

  “Damn bitch, you grew the fuck up. It’s a shame I never got to tap your sweet ass before we finally got rid of you.” Cutter jerks me into his body by the back of my neck. He still smells like shit to me. Only years later, it’s dried up and rotted.

  “Fuck you,” I say
, not an ounce of fright in my tone.

  “Gladly, bitch.”

  I don’t have time to strike him again or gauge his eyeballs out before he straightens himself up, grabs me by my hair, and hauls me farther into the room, where familiar hands clench around my throat, yanking me away from one rancid smell to another. He squeezes until my legs give out, drags me down onto the floor, crazed eyes staring into my terrified ones.

  “Hello, Cora,” Jesse snarls as his icy hands turn into a vise, nails digging into my skin. My lungs begin to burn, my hands instinctively going to his cheeks, where I dig my nails into his aged face.

  “You stupid cunt,” he hisses, squeezing tighter until my vision blurs and those dreadful dark spots cloud my sight.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” I gasp out. My lungs are expanding to full capacity before those darkened apparitions try pulling me into blackness.

  “Oh, but I’ve gotten away with so much already. Money changes everything. Isn’t that right, Henley?” The most awful, strangled cry tears from my throat when the man who has been teaching my son for months comes around the corner and into my view with a smug look of deceit on a face. I once thought this man handsome. Now he’s nothing but an ugly son of a bitch who deserves to die right alongside with these two.

  “You rotten scum. I’ll kill you,” the primitive, protective mother in me speaks out.

  “Fuck you. You self-righteous snob. You’re damn lucky your little shit of a child isn’t dead by now,” he says maliciously. His demeanor has completely changed from the man who took Ethan under his wing for months to an evil, sadistic murderer; like his words say, he could have easily killed Ethan at any given time.