Busted (Stacked Deck Book 11)

by Emilia Finn

  I stop in the hall just outside the training room that houses our octagon. With a bottle of water in my hands, and my wraps unraveled and hanging off my wrists, I stop with a skid when I hear Emma’s tear-filled voiced.

  “You have the power to choose now!” she shouts.

  Emma is my baby niece. My snuggle bug, and my eternal ice cream date. She’s my badass baby-fighter – though of course, she’s not a baby anymore, but a woman. But she was once a toddler who spooned me while she slept, and a child who would scream bloody murder when I tried to brush her hair in the mornings before school.

  “Dammit, Rob.” Her shouting continues, bringing my brows together with concern. I’ve heard her shout those words a million times in her life. But it’s different now. There’s pain in every single syllable. “Now is your friggin’ chance.”

  I stop at the doorway and peek around the wall until I catch sight of Emma standing in front of the cage, and right in front of her… a grown-ass man.

  They’re chalk and cheese, Rob and Emma; complete opposites in every way. But they’re also two halves of a circle. Two pieces of one puzzle. I’m not sure I have any memories of these kids without them being in the same space, same room, same time.

  “I’m choosing,” Rob murmurs. “And it hurts me, I swear it does. But my choice can’t be you.”

  I watch on as he pulls his hand from hers, as he turns away and faces my direction, though I doubt he sees me. And as he walks away, I study the way my niece collapses where she is. She’s like a stack of wet playing cards, unable to stand on her own, unable to bear the weight of the world, as she watches Rob make his way across the training room.

  He passes me without a single shred of acknowledgment – he doesn’t see me, he sees nothing – then when he’s gone, and Em’s eyes stop on mine, she breaks.

  “Emma?”

  The second she crumbles, I toss my water bottle to the floor, and run to my baby, unraveling the rest of my wraps as I go. I let the fabric trickle to the floor, like blood washing away in the rain, and when I reach Em’s side, she’s curled in on herself, sobbing and in pain.

  Tears stream over her cheeks, her long hair, messy from working out, sticks to the moisture, but above that is mascara, running because of her crying. The blue of her eyes, the same blue as mine, sparkle under moisture and heartbreak, and when I reach out to pull her into a hug, she shakes. Her entire frame shakes and makes my heart skip with fear.

  “What happened, Little Bit?”

  “Uncle Jack,” she wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face in my shirt. “Oh god, Uncle Jack.”

  “Who died, Emma? Tell me fast.”

  “Me!” she cries. “I died.”

  “I don’t…” I try to pull back to catch her eyes and make sense of the anguish rocking her system. “Baby. I don’t understand—”

  “Jackhammer?” One of our gym members, a regular, stops over my shoulder and frowns. “You guys okay?”

  “Take me away.” Em’s voice trembles. “Please, before Daddy comes in here.”

  “Yeah.” I try to release her arms from around my neck, to free myself to stand, but her grip is iron, so I lift her with me.

  I’m not a twenty-year-old world champion anymore. But I’m not old or broken down either, so I lift her easily, and swallow down my grunt from her weight, then just before turning away with her, I meet my fighter’s gaze and shake my head.

  “Not a word.”

  “No problem.” He lifts his hands – wrapped, but without gloves – and takes a step back. “I don’t know what’s going on. But they were arguin’ a fair bit.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Come on, Little Bit.”

  I turn away from my fighter, away from the second fighter who stands back and watches us with a rope fisted by his side, and moving toward the hall, I make a plan to check it first to see if Em’s father – my brother-in-law – is anywhere nearby.

  It’s not that I’m going to keep this from him. But I sure as shit am gonna comfort my niece, figure out what’s hurting her, and then I’ll decide how much of this town will burn at Bobby’s hands.

  Help Em first.

  Then contain the damage.

  I set Em on her feet, but I hold her close and still manage to take most of her weight, and while we do that, I check to make sure the hall is clear. I had intended to take her to my office – privacy, quiet, and a door that locks – but on a whim, I turn right instead, toward the front entrance, and when no one is standing between us and the outside, I meet Em’s tear-filled eyes and nod.

  Then we run for it.

  We move fast enough that the wind tosses her hair back. Fast enough that, for a single second, her tears dry up and her hands stop shaking. We reach my Mustang in the parking lot – not the same Mustang from my youth, but the same kind, updated every few years.

  Tragically, the newer models don’t have my wife’s name scratched into the side – a long story that begins and ends with me being an asshole to the woman I would eventually marry – but more tragic yet is the fact that when I try to piss her off to encourage her to inflict the same damage, her MO now is to threaten to withhold sex.

  Not cool, Brittany.

  Opening the doors – unlocked, since I’m confident no one is gonna come into a fight gym’s parking lot and steal my ride – I hold the door for Em to slide in, then closing it again, I run around to my side and drop in beside her. Hitting the button for the ignition, my music starts loud enough that I automatically reach out to kill it, but Em pushes my hand aside.

  I glance across, but she only shakes her head, turns away, and lifts her feet to my chair to curl in on herself.

  So Eminem stays on loud as I back away from the gym and pull onto the road, and when Em sniffles into her arm, but says nothing about where we’re going, I do what I do best. I go to the drive-thru and order ice creams, then a few minutes after that, while juggling a couple of melting desserts, I wind my way up along Lookout Hill and stop at the very top as a wave of contentment settles over us.

  If I can feel that peace, then maybe my niece can too. If being here brings me comfort, then maybe it can bring it for my unusually silent Little Bit.

  “Em, honey?”

  I park at the very edge of the lookout so that our small town spreads out ahead of us. From here, we can see everything; the gym, our homes, the steel mill on one side of town, and on the other, the hospital.

  The landscape has changed a lot since my early days, when I was up here searching for my own peace; the forest surrounding the town tries to encroach a little more on the north side, but on the south, I could swear we’re missing a few trees. The hospital has a multistory parking garage now that never used to be there. And a house that was once known as Popcorn Palace – an old, Victorian-type home left forgotten in the forest so that the trees tried to move in – now looks grand, beautiful and elegant, as it stands in its renovated perfection.

  The trees surrounding the house remain, but they’re not there to overtake anymore; rather, they coexist.

  Cutting the engine but leaving the music on – though I turn it down low – I draw in a deep breath, unsnap my belt, and sit back to make myself comfortable as I exhale. “Well…” I clear my throat. Break the silence. “I’m not sure I’ve seen you cry like that since the summer when you were nine.”

  I glance across to her, hoping for a reaction, but all she does is remain in her ball, with flushed cheeks, and still struggling to regulate her breathing.

  “Do you remember?”

  Em closes her eyes.

  She tries to shut me out, but hell, if she got her stubbornness from anyone, it was me.

  “Emma Katherine. Do you remember that time I’m talking about?”

  “I broke my arm.” She remains curled in, distant, but she speaks, and that’s a win in itself. “It was the summer, and everyone was swimming.”

  “You threw the motherlode of all fucking tantrums because you weren’t allowed to swim.”
/>   She hiccups, laughs, cries… all in one. “I cried because I didn’t want to miss out.”

  “And you cried and cried and cried and cried.”

  “I didn’t cry that much.”

  “Oh please.” I take our half-melted desserts from the cup holder.

  Offering Em’s, and placing it on her bare skin when she doesn’t take it, I snigger when she jolts from the cold and turns to glare.

  “You cried buckets, Little Bit. You cried so much that we considered snapping your other arm to give you something real to cry about.”

  She coughs. “Child abuse.” Then she sniffles. “I’m gonna snitch on you.”

  “To who?” Laughing, I take my spoon and dessert and dig in past the crumbled cookie pieces. “CPS ain’t gonna take you from us now.” I pause and turn to meet her eyes. “I have nothing to lose at this point.”

  She rolls her eyes and looks down into her ice cream. “Remember that time you missed my birthday party?”

  “Fuckin’ ouch!” I bring a hand up to touch my chest. “Jesus, Em. Why would you bring that up right now?”

  “Because misery likes company,” she whispers and slides her spoon through her ice cream. She’s yet to taste any. But she stirs it, mixes the cookie in. “I had a mermaid birthday cake that year. We had a party in the backyard. A pool party,” she chokes out.

  “I missed it,” I admit, because I owe her that much. “I was so caught up in my own shit that I completely forgot about your party.”

  “I think that’s what’s happening again, Uncle Jack.”

  Finally, she brings her tear-filled gaze over to me. Her face is already puffy, her cheeks red, and the skin around her eyes much too pale.

  “I think my best friend and I just broke up. Like, our entire friendship just exploded.” She looks back to her ice cream, and swallows. “He doesn’t even remember that tomorrow is my birthday.”

  “I don’t… I doubt…” I stop and clear my throat. Because who the fuck am I to brush off her words? Her feelings? “Um…” I try again. “What happened?”

  “Rob is my best friend.” She drops her feet to the floor, and angling in her seat, she finally begins to stab at the ice cream and bring a little between her lips. “He’s always been mine, right?”

  I nod and eat a little of my dessert. “Right. It’s always been Em and Rob. Always.”

  “But then there’s this bitch. Grace.”

  “I know who she is,” I murmur. Follow along, know the details, so she doesn’t shut down on me after too many ‘huh?’ moments. “Grace has been around the estate. You don’t like her?”

  Fresh tears slide over her cheek. Silent, but powerful and full of grief. “I can’t stand her. She’s poison for him, Uncle Jack. She’s a leech, and I swear, it takes everything in my power not to toss salt into her eyes every single time I see her.”

  Chuckling, I dig into my cup for a little more. “I mean… I can’t say I always liked your mom’s boyfriends. I wanted to slam their heads against a wall – often. But… it’s not really our choice, hon. You don’t get to tell him who he can date.”

  “But…” Her chest lifts and falls with dramatic, silent sobs. “It’s supposed to be me!”

  My breath explodes out on a whoosh, and my brain stops; for just a second, it all goes blank and powers off. “Uh… what?” I toss my spoon back into the cup, and set my ice cream aside. “Do you have a brain injury?”

  “No, I…” she chokes out a pitiful laugh. “He’s mine, and I love him. He was always mine, Uncle Jack. Since forever. But I guess… I dunno. I didn’t always know it, so when he dated, and it bothered me, I brushed it off as protectiveness for my friend. And when he dated, I dated too, I made sure that I was keeping up. I tolerated his dates, and Grace…” She literally shivers. “She always annoyed me, but I left it alone, since I don’t get to tell him who to date.”

  “But now…” I bring my brows closer together. “Now you’re not going to tolerate him dating?”

  “It’s not even that.” Tears begin flowing again. Heavy, fat tears that flood over her cheeks and stop above her bow lips. “He chose her over me, Uncle Jack. He and I…” She swallows. “We, uh… kissed.”

  “You kissed?!” I can’t help my explosion. My demand. My fucking stroke. “You are basically… You were raised…” My words are disjointed and stuttering. “We put the three of you in the same fucking crib half the time, Em!”

  “He’s my best friend,” she cries. “And maybe it has to stay as friends. Maybe there’s no more there for us. But even as friends,” she turns and meets my eyes with hers. Hers break my fucking heart. “He still should have picked me, right? Family means I come first before that bitch.”

  “Well…” I rub a hand over my jaw. And when that doesn’t help, I bring both hands up to rub my face. “I think I’m in shock.”

  “You don’t have to be all weird about it, ya know? It’s annoying.”

  “I’m not trying to act weird! I’m trying to process. Because, I mean, I know you guys aren’t related by blood. It’s totally above board and all that, but Bobby and Jon… best friends. And Tink and your mom… since they were kids… and we diapered and bathed you three at the same time… all the fuckin’ time. And in my head…”

  It hurts. It all hurts my brain!

  “I never considered there to be twins, Em, but triplets. It was always the three of you. And now you’re saying you have the hots for one of them, and it’s taking me a fucking minute to process.”

  “He chose her,” Em chokes out. “He told me to leave, and she got to stay. Then today, he told me he chooses her.”

  “If he’s in love, Little Bit, if she’s his—”

  “Oh please,” she repeats my earlier words on a scoff. “She’s nothing but his whore. She’s convenient. She’s excitement and a fun time.” Then she stops and shakes her head. “What she isn’t, is me. No matter what he says, she’s not it for him. I don’t believe that.”

  “So… maybe there’s something else. Like you’re missing information.”

  “No. What I’m missing is an opportunity to cave that slut’s face in.”

  I should be mad. I really should be the grown, mature adult right now and discourage the violence brewing in this car. But instead, I chuckle and sit back against the leather.

  “I swear, if I closed my eyes right now, I’d be certain I’m sitting with your mother.”

  “She can get mean sometimes.”

  “She really can,” I laugh. “Did anyone ever tell you about the time, back before Aiden married your Aunt Tina, and before Jimmy married Iz, we were all at this function for your dad’s upcoming fight?”

  At least I’ve caught her attention. Her teary eyes, red and swimming, come to me.

  “It was just a couple months after your mom and dad’s wedding, I think. Aiden brought this date to dinner, but the date hit on Jimmy.”

  “Oh damn,” Em predictably hisses.

  “Mmhm. When that bitch hit on Jimmy, and your mom overheard…”

  “Did Mom kill her?”

  I burst out laughing. “She damn well tried. She had to be held back. But it’s so much funnier to me, because I think… maybe… she said something about rearranging that slut’s face too. Now you’re almost the same age that she was then, and you’re basically a carbon copy of your mother.”

  I stop for a moment, and smile. “Few people around here see the devil in your eyes, Little Bit. They put the blame on those twins for a lot of shit. Or on Bry. But see, your mom was good at that too.”

  Her brows come together with inquisition. “Good at what?”

  “At acting all pure and shit. Men have fought wars defending your mom’s purity. They swear there’s no way she’s got the crazy in there. But she’s my big sister, so I see what others don’t. Just like with you, Em. I see your crazy too, and I’m just saying, I’m fairly certain I know who spiked the punch that time at prom. I know who took the screws out of my fence after I put the fuckers b
ack in to keep you kids on the estate. I know who broke Bry’s leg, and I know why your car was dusty last month.”

  Em’s cheeks pinken, and her eyes go to an invisible spot of dust on the dash. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard that before. Now…” I grab my ice cream again, and swirl the newly melted bits. “Are you feeling a little better?”

  Shaking her head, she reaches up and wipes stray tears from her cheeks. “Nope. Because nothing’s changed. He went with her, and he said he’d get back to me when he feels like it.”

  “Oof.” It’s like a sucker punch. For me. For Em. “That was a dick move.”

  “Yeah,” she whimpers. “It really was. I don’t know what to do now, because this is the first time in my entire life I haven’t had my best friend around.” She draws a deep breath, then lets it out on a sigh. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  I have all sons. All brutes who show no emotion at all except when their mom is in the room. Which makes being advisor to a girl that much trickier. But I was around for when Kit and Bobby started dating. I was around for the shitshow that is a nervous Kincaid trying to impress Kit. And I was there for when an emotionally unavailable chick was falling in love.

  I got this.

  It’s fine.

  “I think… I think that you know Rob best of all. You and him have this bond, Little Bit. So I think, perhaps, you need to ask yourself this first: is he usually cruel? Uncaring? Unkind?” I shake my head. “I already know the answers, but you need to decide those things for yourself. And then, when you do, I think you’ll acknowledge that you’re missing information. So then you get to decide what’s next.”

  I watch her profile. Her pert nose. Her pointy ears as she thinks.

  “You can stay mad at him,” I continue, “potentially run him down with your sneaky racecar, and be done with it all. Hell, you could probably even convince people he ran himself down. Or…” I pause to make sure she’s paying attention. “You can seek the truth.”

  Her breath shudders, her chest vibrates. “But what if the truth is that he’s really in love?” Her voice cracks. And that fear, that very real monster on her shoulders, almost breaks me. “What if I’m just a friend, and she’s his one? And then, if she’s his one, I’m gonna have to be nice to her. I’ll have to accept her.”