by S R Nulton
“But he was doing this at your show in May too,” I mentioned. “Remember? Just after JJ got thrown out, he was circulating and talking to all the donors. Five or six approached me and told me he was saying the most mean spirited things. He may have found it easier when JJ wasn’t buzzed and creating a scene. After all, she was trying the same thing, but it was even less effective.”
Ethan sighed and massaged his head. “I just bet JJ is behind the whole thing. It is just her style. And the worst part is, she’ll probably win. Beauty always seems to triumph in the court of public opinion.”
“Oh, quit feeling sorry for yourself,” I shot back, shocking both men. Apparently they weren’t used to being talked to like that. Tough. “That’s how you ended up with a tornado in your office. And while your right that it sounds like her, things still don’t add up perfectly. If she was trying to ruin you by driving away your customers, why would she show up demanding money? She would be actively trying to make sure you were broke, not assuming you had a lot and that she could leech off you again. No, if Cayden isn’t the mastermind then someone else is.”
“Probably Neil,” Geo groaned. “He’d never let Cayden go off on his own. Dear old Dad is way too controlling to let that fly. He’s been going a bit bonkers ever since we started declaring our independence from him. Neil could be using this all as an elaborate ruse to draw you back into the fold. I swear he’s part fox with the way his mind works.”
I frowned. “What do you mean? I mean, I know he’s controlling. He was crazy about micromanaging at times, but does he really try to get you guys back under his control?”
“Ha!” Ethan snorted. “When I was first starting out, I didn’t know how to do background checks on people. I was getting more popular very quickly and Neil managed to sink his claws into me by having one of his many subsidiaries approach me about working with them. They were going to loan me money for a big art show. It wasn’t until I looked into why they never tried to collect that I realized just who owned the loan. With Geo, Neil actually bought his business loans from the holders without Geo’s knowledge. It wasn’t until this year that he was able to get completely out of debt and away from Neil.
“The man does it with all his kids, in one way or another. Heck, I know he tried at my show in May. The employee that was fired? The one who took all that information and tried to sabotage the event? She was trying to force me into asking for his help to fix things and use his resources to get guests there. It backfired, though. He forgot about you, Aggy.”
I blushed under his intense gaze and said nothing.
Geo cleared his throat and looked at Ethan. “Okay, we’ve talked that out. Now we need to figure out what you’re going to do about money. Your art provides for this entire place, but what are you going to do if that money dries up? We both know that losing this place would destroy you E. You have to have your space and a solid home otherwise you start going a bit… well, it isn’t good.”
I didn’t know the whole of Ethan’s past, but I knew that his relationships with his parents were awful. I could only imagine how horrible it would be to give up his private sanctuary and have to deal with them again. Still, it wasn’t time to dwell on it.
“Don’t worry about that, Geo,” he responded, echoing my thoughts.
“I can’t not worry! Don’t you see that! You’re my brother and I don’t want to see you hurt. I also know you won’t accept a loan from me unless there’s no other way.”
Ethan sighed. “Man, relax. You seem to think I have all my income tied up in this property and my art, but I don’t. I did listen to all those lectures you gave me in college about diversifying. I have a very good stock portfolio as well as a bunch of patents and I invested in several companies that have grown a lot since I helped them get started. It was enough to buy this place outright and pay off my mortgage completely just before I got married.”
We watched as Geo practically collapsed in relief. “Man, you have no idea how happy I am to hear that.”
I laughed. “We could pretty much guess, hun. And don’t worry, you aren’t the only one who cares about Ethan. We’ll get through this. But right now, we need to eat because the steak isn’t getting any warmer and popping it back on the grill means we eat shoe leather for dinner.”
The boys started laughing but followed my advice in between telling me all about the various culinary mishaps they’d had over the years.
College guys and cooking apparently don’t tend to mix well.
~
Geo crashed at the house that night. It was a lot of fun, actually. We decided to stop thinking about all the problems we were facing and have a good old-fashioned movie night. The only problem was we had drastically different tastes in movies. Ethan was into dramas, Geo was weirdly obsessed with romantic comedies (mostly so he could try out the pick up lines when he was bored) and I was hoping for some explosions. We settled for comedy and watched “Clue,” followed by “Blazing Saddles” and passed out during “Princess Bride”. I blame the ridiculously comfortable sectional and recliners, because I have never fallen asleep during that film before. It’s almost sacrilegious.
The laughs were a distant memory soon enough, though.
Ethan was on the phone with his lawyer again the next morning. This time, Geo and I got to listen in. Speakerphone is a wonderful thing.
“Morning, Jim. Sorry for calling so early.”
“No problem, Mr. Black,” Jim responded. “Is this about the restraining order or your father’s offer?”
Ethan looked up at us in surprise.
“What offer?”
“Oh, I thought he would have called you about it. Well, Mr. Montgomery called me late yesterday afternoon and asked me to offer a deal to you. He said that he is willing to make your little income issue disappear. He claims to be ready to offer financial help or assistance in restoring your reputation. He said that the offer has no expiration date and he is ready and waiting whenever you decide to ask for help.”
Jim was quite dutiful in his recitation, but sounded incredibly uncomfortable relating the last part of the offer. It seemed even he could tell that it was shady.
Ethan’s face was filled with anger, but he kept his voice restrained. “Jim, would you give me a moment? I need to talk this over with my partner.”
Jim’s voice was full of relief. “Of course! Should I call you back?”
“No, I won’t be long. I’ll just put you on hold for a moment, alright?”
As soon as Jim gave his agreement, the phone was put on hold and Ethan looked between Geo and myself.
“Well, what do you make of that?”
“The timing is suspicious,” Geo responded. “Right when it becomes obvious that you are losing money, suddenly he contacts you? And through your lawyer, no less? He wants whatever happens to be binding. This isn’t good, E.”
I nodded. “There are two possibilities that I can see. The first is that the rumors finally reached your father’s informants or got bad enough that he decided he should do something about them. The second is that he was the one who put Cayden up to all this. And I hate to say it, but I’m leaning pretty heavily toward the second option. Neil is a snake, but a well informed one. Even if Cayden started on his own, I’ve no doubt your dad was right there suggesting a way to improve his method and making Cayden think he did it all on his own.”
“I agree,” Geo said. “But regardless, Neil isn’t someone you want to be indebted to. He will use it to his full advantage until he has you wrapped in chains of your own making.”
Ethan thought for a few moments longer before putting his lawyer back on.
“Jim? Tell him no. Emphatically.”
A sigh echoed from the other end of the line, but Jim simply said “Yes, sir,” and hung up.
“Well, that wasn’t how I expected today to go.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ethan, you’ve been saying stuff like that a lot lately. Let’s just agree that none of us has any clue what’s going to
happen next and expect more crazy family issues, yeah?”
Oddly, neither man seemed happy about my compromise. Wise of them.
CHAPTER 10: FAMILIA
THINGS WERE A bit tense for the next few weeks. Geo left after sleeping off the movie extravaganza while muttering something about retribution and how he was going to call in a few marks. It didn’t make much sense to me, but I left it alone. I’d seen Ethan’s brother switch from his normally carefree persona to something more serious and I wasn’t in a hurry to see it happen again. I figured it was best to let him do what he needed to do and deal with the fallout after. I mean, it’s not like he was going to have anyone killed.
At least, I was pretty sure that was off the table. I hoped.
Hmmm… maybe I should check in on him.
Meanwhile, Ethan and I got back to our normal routine, working steadily through the various commissions we were being given and preparing for a few potential art shows. While Ethan played with gold and granite, I worked in the office, getting a new spreadsheet set up to track commissions. Unfortunately, that meant I had to delve into the old files… again. The paper cuts I ended up with sucked, but at least I could identify the trend Geo had already noticed. Art commissions were abnormally low, though the demand for personal defense jewelry was on the rise and looked like it would end up making him more money in the long run.
Oh, and Rosa had to be informed of everything, which naturally led to a very passionate speech in Spanish that I felt fortunate for not understanding. All I knew was that the recipient was not going to have a very pleasant afterlife. Also, I’m pretty sure that she called down a flesh eating disease on them, but again, I didn’t really listen too closely because I didn’t want to know.
Anyway, since we were back to our routines, it came as a bit of a surprise when Ethan wandered into my office just after lunch one day.
“Hey! What’s up?” I asked in confusion. We had literally just seen each other for a meal a few minutes before, so not much had changed. “Did you run out of something?”
He shook his head and played with his cell phone. “No. I, um… well…”
Rosa bustled in behind him and shook her head at his reluctance. “You’re invited to dinner with the family on Friday night.”
I frowned. “The family? As in the Montgomery’s?”
“No, the Pacificos,” Ethan said, looking really uncomfortable. “My foster family. Well, adopted now, but up until I was 18 they just fostered me.”
Okay, to say I was shocked would be a huge understatement. I knew that Ethan didn’t share a last name with his father and that his upbringing had been unusual, but I’d never learned any of the particulars. Also, I couldn’t imagine the Montgomery’s losing only one child through CPS but not the others. Heck, any at all would be unusual. They were the type to use nanny’s to raise their children and never actually get involved with them.
Still, a lot of things began to make sense…
“Okay. Well, I’d love to go,” I replied, hesitantly.
Rosa nodded and then turned to my boss. “You tell her or I will, niño. She should know.” And with that, she walked away.
Ethan looked a bit nervous, so I gestured for him to take a chair and waited for him to speak. Luckily I didn’t have to wait long.
“My mother abandoned me. At the hospital. When I was first born.”
…
He said it so fast that it took me a minute to comprehend just what he’d said. And that was not what I was expecting, so it took another minute for the shock to wear off and my brain to fully engage.
“What? Why? And what kind of person abandons their baby?” I was pissed at the woman. I’d never seen Mrs. Montgomery before, but I knew she was a stay-at-home mom and a socialite. The only people I’d ever heard of abandoning their babies like that were drug addicts or pregnant teens, people with very little hope of supporting their child. The idea of a wealthy, married woman doing something like that was horrible!
“I was born deformed,” he said, like that somehow made it all okay. And, in his mind, it just might. “There was a problem with the delivery and they had to use forceps to get me out. Something happened, it was out of the doctor’s control, but I ended up scarred.” He rubbed his face, tracing a scar that he just said he’d had since birth. “I was lucky I hadn’t lost my eye, actually. But then they realized I had a clubfoot as well. My mother… she apparently thought that was too much to deal with, so she left me there.”
I blinked. “Oh my God, Ethan. That is horrible. Is that why you were raised in foster care?”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t foster care, exactly. One of the doctors took me in and my parents paid for what I needed. Kind of like how knights would foster each other’s kids back in the middle ages and Renaissance.”
And suddenly so much made sense. Geo’s huge reaction when he thought she was insulting Ethan’s limp and scar. Ethan’s love of Da Vinci, an artist from the Renaissance, as a child. The fact that he didn’t meet his half-brother until college, despite the fact that Geo was raised by Neil in the Montgomery household… So many pieces fitting together, revealing a more complete picture of the man I was getting to know. In the end, there was only one thing left to say.
“Your parents are real pieces of work. I’m glad you weren’t raised by them.”
Okay, maybe two things to say. It was more of one giant thought though, so it still counts.
Ethan frowned. “What makes you say that? I mean, I agree, but why do you think that?” He clearly hadn’t expected my response, which made me more upset, but I pushed those emotions down because I had a feeling he’d misunderstand why I was angry.
I couldn’t stop myself from snorting though. It’s kind of an involuntary response when I find a question ridiculous. “Easy. If they were, are, that concerned with appearance that they would abandon their kid… well, they would have destroyed you completely if they’d raised you. Instead, you grew up with people who clearly wanted you. They weren’t stuck with you, they chose you.”
“How do you know they didn’t do it for the money?” he asked with a small smile.
“Well, for one, you said it was a doctor who took you in after your mom left you. Not that she asked someone to take care of you, just that she left and someone else filled in for her. And then there is the way that you said your parents paid for what you needed. You would have mentioned if they paid the doctor to keep you. Oh, and they adopted you after you were technically an adult. They didn’t need to. It wouldn’t give them any benefits, but they wanted you enough to spend the money to claim you as theirs.”
He seemed surprised and happy. Part of it was probably the fact that I’d picked up on those little hints, but part of it seemed to be that he hadn’t thought about it in quite those terms before.
We sat there in silence for a few minutes before he finally stood so he could get back to work. “So, dinner on Friday?” he asked.
“Yep, dinner on Friday.”
“Good. Oh, and Geo will be there too, so expect weird flirting and verbal smack downs.”
I laughed. “Sounds good to me. Now go! We both need to get back to work.”
~
Geo was just parking when we pulled up outside an elegant home on the outskirts of the city. Like many homes in that area, there was minimal room for a yard, but the house itself was at least a hundred years old and had been very well cared for.
“Come on, Aggy. Time to get out,” Ethan said gently.
I nodded and opened my car door, feeling oddly apprehensive. I had no idea why I was so nervous about meeting his foster family, but I very much was. It kind of felt like I was meeting the in-laws. But that was silly. There was nothing going on between Ethan and myself. Except friendship, which did not mean I was gaining more family, just more acquaintances.
“Why did they invite me?” I asked for the thousandth time.
Geo grinned as we reached him and threw an arm around my shoulders. “Because, girly, you�
��re living with their little boy! They have to meet the new girlfriend!”
I blushed hotly and Ethan groaned. “Geo, knock it off. She’s freaked out enough as it is without your stupid jokes.”
Clearing my throat, I asked, “But how do they know about me at all?”
Neither man answered because we were interrupted by the door opening.
“Boys, what are you doing standing around in the cold? Get in here!” demanded an older Hispanic woman. She looked to be in her forties, but something told me that it was just good genes and she was somewhere closer to her mid-50s. She smiled brightly as we walked up and held a hand out to me after fiercely hugging the other two.
“Doctor Marina Pacifico. And you are Aggy?” I nodded shyly, but thawed a bit as her smile grew. “It is a pleasure to meet you, mija.”
“You too, Doctor Pacifico.”
“No, no, no,” she said with a wave of her hand. “You aren’t a patient and I’m not working, so you can call me Marina or Mamá, like everyone else does. I’m just used to introducing myself that way multiple times a day that it’s hard to turn off sometimes.” She laughed lightly and pulled us into the house.
At that point many things became clear.
“Hi, Rosa,” I called out with a grin. Looking back and forth between the two older women, I came to a realization. “Sisters?”
“Cousins, actually,” Rosa responded before coming over to give me a hug. Then she whispered, “I’m secretly keeping her informed on her wayward son, but don’t tell him.”
Ethan just shook his head. “Rosa, I’ve known that for years. I just don’t care. I know Mamá needs to know what’s going on in my life, but I also know that I’m horrible at calling her. It was just easier for all of us to make you the middle man.”
She put her fists on her ample hips and scowled at him. “You’re ruining my rep! Besides, it’s more fun to be a double agent than to just be a gossipy housekeeper.”