Tansy’s finger glanced off Orion’s nose. The beast that always lay just beneath Orion’s civilized façade snarled and lashed out. He grabbed Tansy’s hands and held her motionless. Shaking her a few times for good measure, Orion glared down into her face until he saw the fear in her eyes shift from shock to pure terror.
Good. She needed to be afraid. He wasn’t some tame lap dog, and if the woman was going to be anywhere near him she needed to understand this. “Don’t touch me. Ever,” Orion growled deep in his throat. “I swear if you hit me one more time I will turn you over my knee like some spoiled brat and I will spank you so hard that you won’t be able to sit down for a week.”
Tansy swallowed and licked her lips. “You wouldn’t dare! My grandmama will have you for dinner.”
“She can try.” Orion laughed right in Tansy’s smug face. “But she’ll find out that I’ll happily spank her too. Then I’ll put my fist in your father’s face and spend the next year carefully purchasing and dismantling his financial holdings until your family is just as penniless as the Ariosas.”
Thanks to her shallow nature, that was the comment that seemed to get through to Tansy. Physical violence meant nothing because she had no framework for what that would really be like. But the idea of financial poverty or ruin was simply more than Tansy could bear.
“No!” she whimpered. “Stop it.”
“You stop it,” Orion said through gritted teeth. “I’m so sick and tired of your shallow words and your idiotic conversation. You want to be with me? Fine. Your grandmama wants us to get married? Fine. But you had better learn to keep your mouth shut. And if you think you’ll have more than a reasonable allowance every month to spend, then you’d better think again. I’m not giving you access to anything more than a credit card with a pathetically low limit. At least Eleni Ariosa works for her money. You want to be a mooch? Fine. But I’m going to put so many limits on it that you’ll be crying when you can’t even buy a pair of shoes.”
She struggled and squirmed in her efforts to get away from him, but it wasn’t unlike a tiny bird trying to escape a wolf. Finally he let go and Tansy stumbled backwards. The skirt of her dress sported a huge tear and her face was mottled with rage and fear and something else. Without another look at Orion, Tansy went running off through the house. He watched her grab hold of the stair rail and go dashing upstairs as though she were running to her room to hide. Good. The girl needed to hide. She needed to keep hiding or he was going to lose his temper and rip her head off.
“Orion?”
He exhaled long and slow and tried to rein in his temper. It would do no good to be rude to his mother in public. Not right now. Finally, he felt as though he could have a short conversation with Tisha Olivares-King. “How can I help you this evening, Mother?”
She glared at him. “Don’t give me that crap!” she grunted. “Like I don’t know you’re secretly going behind my back with your brothers to plan my murder.”
“Like you did our father?” Orion retorted.
There was a moment when he thought she might actually crack and say something that the King brothers could use to pin the murder of their father on her. But it was over in a breath and she only laughed off his comment with a wave of her manicured hand. “Don’t be ridiculous! Your father was killed in a hunting accident. You know that. The coroner ruled it an accident. The whole thing is over.”
“Right. Over.” Orion didn’t have the patience to argue about this right now. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to know if you heard about Eleni Ariosa.” Tisha had the gall to grab his arm and begin to shake it as though she could not contain her excitement. “Alaina got herself arrested for shoplifting at Orville’s yesterday! And Eleni is so broke she couldn’t even buy a few dresses for her mother. Aren’t you glad that we got rid of them?”
“Got rid of them.” The phrase was baffling if it was applied directly to the situation as it had happened. The only thing that Orion could guess was that his mother was pretty much changing history to suit her version of events. Orion shook his head. “You didn’t get rid of anyone. You and Alaina had some falling out because you suddenly decided that you were afraid she was trying to steal from you.”
Tisha looked affronted. She slammed her hands down on her hips. Her beaded silver dress was so tight that for a moment it actually looked as though it might pop open. “She was! That witch was planning to marry her daughter into our family so that she could have access to my money!”
“Your money,” Orion muttered. He shook his head. This was a pointless conversation. It really was. And yet he felt compelled to have it over and over again. “So basically she would be mooching money that you wanted to mooch for yourself because neither of you have ever worked a day in your lives to actually earn a living.”
“I worked!” Tisha protested.
Tisha wagged her index finger in his face and looked as though she were about to try and smack him too. There was no way he was about to let another woman get away with that shit tonight. No. Way!
“Enough,” Orion snapped.
He grabbed Tisha’s finger and squeezed. Not only was he stronger than she was because he was male. Orion was more than just a man. He was more than just a human, and for a split second he saw a flicker in his mother’s eyes that left him with no doubt that she realized she had pushed him too far.
“Orion, you need to calm down,” Tisha said quietly. “I don’t know what got you so riled up, but you need to relax. I was just reminding you that you dodged a bullet with those people. That’s all.”
“I dodged a bullet?” Orion snorted. “You tried to marry Eleni to Jason and then Edward. You were really careful about that because you knew that our father’s will didn’t leave them with much in the way of money for the Ariosas to tap into. You were trying to screw over your own friend even while she was trying to pull one over on you. It’s such a load of crap! Don’t you understand that? You were using each other and now you’re both pretending to be angry about it. The whole world knows, Mother.” Orion let that sink in for a minute before landing the death blow. “The whole city of Dallas is laughing at the two of you. Just look around and you’ll see.”
Tisha gasped in horror. She did glance around surreptitiously, but it was probably to see who might have heard Orion make his disparaging comments, not because she honestly believed that they held any grain of truth. She was far too self-confident for that.
No. Tisha Olivares-King was going to have to hit rock bottom really hard in order to even realize that’s where she was. The only thing left was for Orion and his brothers to figure out how to make it happen before their mother managed to screw them all over as she stomped on their lives in order to finance her endless string of parties, shopping trips, and frivolous spending.
Chapter Three
Eleni put her book down for just a few moments and exhaled a sigh. Her tiny little house in Addison. The tiny town was north of Dallas downtown, and once Eleni had gotten the offer of a contract to work at Addison Elementary as a second grade teacher, Eleni had happily settled down there in a tiny house she rented for a modest sum of money. Modest meaning the house and the amount of rent that Eleni were paying was so much less than what her mother would have considered respectable that Eleni was considered by her family to be living in squalor.
If squalor included independence, peace and quiet, and the eager anticipation of a Christmas holiday spent here at home with her tiny pre-lit tree and a cup of hot chocolate, then Eleni was absolutely thrilled to be living in squalor. Of course, squalor also had the benefit of making certain that there was no way in hell that her mother was ever going to try and move in with Eleni.
At least not so far.
Eleni stared at the windows and watched the rain come down. It was only four-thirty in the afternoon and it looked like it was a good deal later than that thanks to the dark overcast sky and the endless rain falling in sheets to the already sodden ground.
This was th
e first time that Eleni had ever been actually afraid for what was going to happen to her mother. She glanced at her cell phone. It showed seventeen missed calls in the last hour from a blocked number—her mother. Evidently Alaina had been trying to contact Eleni, which of course meant that she had bonded out of jail.
What if her mother actually wound up having to pay a fine or serve time for the shoplifting charge? It was a scary possibility. Alaina lived across town in Highland Park in the huge house that Eleni’s father had left to them after he had died of a heart attack when Eleni and Embry were still in high school. Ever since then, their mother had been steadily spending her way through their father’s life insurance, investments, and even her daughters’ trust funds.
The phone buzzed again. It was simply letting Eleni know that the blocked number was trying to call. Again. Eleni didn’t want to talk to her mother and yet there was a slight fear that if she didn’t answer the phone call, Alaina would just show up on the doorstep.
Eleni snatched up the phone and growled into the speaker. “What?”
“Don’t you speak that way to me!” Alaina said shrilly. “You had better get your ass over to my house now. Do you understand me? We need to go to Italy to get your sister and I need your credit cards to buy plane tickets.”
For just a moment Eleni was pretty sure she had heard wrong. The absolute preposterousness of her mother’s assumption and statement were just too much. Eleni felt the solace and peace of her home begin to crumble like a stale muffin. “I’m not buying you a plane ticket to Italy, Mom.”
“Yes, you are.” Eleni heard Alaina shifting the phone as though she were pinching it between her ear and her shoulder. There was a crazy lot of background noise. It sounded as though her mother were someplace really crowded. “Now give me the number. I need to put it into this computer thing. It would be so much easier to call a travel agent for this, but mine is busy.”
“Busy meaning the guy realizes that your credit cards are maxed out, you have no more money, and he knows he’s not going to get paid for anything that he does for you?” Eleni was starting to feel sick. This was getting bad. Very bad. If her mother couldn’t even get the travel agent to return her calls it meant her financial situation was even worse than she had first thought. “Mother, you have to stop spending.”
“Oh, it’s just a little dip in the market. Don’t be silly.” There was another noise. The computer was beeping on the other end of the line as though her mother had done something to really piss it off. “I have plenty of money.”
Wait a second. What was her mother doing on a computer anyway? Eleni was pretty sure that her mother didn’t know how to use a computer and had probably never owned one to begin with. “Mom, where are you?”
“Some store.” Alaina sounded as though this was the last thing that mattered. “I was at the mall buying clothes for our trip to Italy. I just thought I’d stop by this super convenient store to buy the plane tickets. They have all these floor models.”
“And you want me to give you my credit card number.” It wasn’t a question really. It was more that Eleni was beginning to realize exactly what her mother was playing at here. “You must be out of your mind, Mother. I’m not paying for plane tickets, your clothes, or buying you a laptop or a tablet either. I’m not giving you a dime, and I’m not going to go crash my sister’s vacation to Italy.”
“Your sister’s vacation?” The background noise behind Alaina’s phone call shifted. It sounded as though her mother had stepped away from a display case or something and was trying to get someplace that had less noise. “It’s not a vacation!” Alaina began to shout. So much for privacy or less noise for anyone in the vicinity it seemed. “She moved! I’m simply going to stay with my daughter. It’s perfectly reasonable!”
“You must be joking.” Eleni exhaled a shaky sigh. “You think I’m going to take you to Italy and let you squat with Embry?”
“Yes.” Alaina sounded pouty now. This was getting bad. There was someone shouting in the background. Wait. Were they telling Alaina that she couldn’t leave the store? “Your sister and her selfish in-laws owe me, Eleni. They owe me for just ditching me here in Dallas and going to have a fabulous new life in Italy!”
“Mom,” Eleni snapped. She really didn’t have time to waste listening to her mother whine about Embry getting something that Alaina did not have. “Mom! Are you holding merchandise right now? From the store? Do you have a computer or a tablet or something in your hands right now?”
“What?” There was a horrendous beeping noise on the other end of the line.
Eleni leaned forward. She was perched on the edge of her seat now. She had a very bad feeling that her completely self-centered and self-absorbed mother was about to shoplift again. However unintentional it was, she was still about to break the law again!
“Mother! You’re shoplifting! Stop! Stop right now before you wind up back in jail.” Eleni’s heart was pounding a staccato beat in her chest, but she seemed to be the only one who realized what was happening.
“I’m not shoplifting.” The exasperated and almost indignant note in Alaina’s voice was cut off abruptly by what sounded like a store employee shouting at her to stop or they would call the police. “Oops.”
“What oops?” Eleni demanded. “What did you do? Mom? Mom?”
But the line went dead. Eleni put her hands over her face. She could not believe that her mother was so completely oblivious to anything but herself and what she wanted in that moment. It was almost like she had no basic understanding of social behavior. She had been a rich entitled woman for so long that Alaina Ariosa didn’t actually know how to live like anything else.
“It’s sad,” Eleni whispered. She exhaled a shaky breath and then sent a quick text to her sister in Italy.
It was kind of hard not to be angry with Embry for just running off. It felt like Embry had just deserted Eleni and left her with the mess that went along with caring for their mother. But Alaina had been financially abusing Embry, her young husband, and even his family. There had really been no choice for the Orvilles. They’d had to disappear. And maybe Eleni understood that. But it did not make it any easier to be the one left behind to clean up the proverbial mess.
Eleni’s phone rang again. This time it was not the blocked number. It was something else. A number that Eleni didn’t know. She pursed her lips and wondered if it was really worth answering the phone at all. She didn’t want to deal with this right now. She didn’t want to deal with anything.
But that wasn’t the way Eleni was wired. So she looked longingly at her book, but finally picked up the call anyway. “Hello?”
“Ms. Eleni Ariosa?”
“Yes,” Eleni murmured hesitantly. She was afraid of the voice. It was female and didn’t sound particularly mean and yet Eleni was afraid of what this unknown person might have to say.
“My name is Skye Kincaid.” There was a pause as though Eleni was supposed to recognize the voice. Then the person named Skye chuffed out a little noise that suggested she was annoyed. “I’m married to Jason King.”
“Oh! Right. I think I’ve met you once or twice maybe.” Eleni struggled to put a name with a face and a voice. She recalled a woman with pale strawberry hair and intense blue eyes who had become a thorn in Tisha Olivares-King’s side. Maybe this wasn’t a bad thing after all. “I’m sorry. Your last name threw me. How can I help you?”
“So I’m writing for my own online news outlet now,” Skye quickly informed Eleni. “I have several of them actually and they’re all linked together. But I have one in particular that I call Hey Dallas and I was wondering if you would be willing to do an interview for me.”
“Me?”
“I’ll be honest with you.” Skye paused, and Eleni felt her gut twist with apprehension. “The whole city is pretty much talking about your sister’s recent and somewhat surreptitious trip to Italy and your mother. I’m really not trying to be rude, but I generally hold the belief that if you tell pe
ople the truth, then they’ll stop making up their own version and lose interest far more quickly.”
“But that wouldn’t actually sell more online subscriptions,” Eleni pointed out to Skye. What was the women playing at here?
Skye laughed. “No doubt, but that’s not what I’m out to do. I would get a huge bump from having an actual source and a real story. I would offer real information and people pay good money for that. Just because I’m not trying to make things worse and capitalize on it doesn’t mean I won’t make money. Then I move onto the next story and work on that. It’s pretty simple. And it makes sure that people know I’m telling the truth. That’s what I want. The truth. The absolute truth. No lies. No exaggerations.”
Eleni could not help but think that this was a very novel way to run a news service, but maybe it was also a better way. There was no doubt in her mind that Eleni was sick and tired of people speculating about her mother and their situation.
“Please?” Skye actually pleaded. “I’ll be dead honest here. I went to this horrible party last night because my mother-in-law insisted on it. Right? And the only topic of conversation was your family. I think it’s horrible. But people are speculating because your mother made a huge scene in a department store in front of God and everyone. Then it got even more coverage because this was the first that anyone knew about the sale of that store.”
“Yeah, I don’t know the details about that.”
Skye snorted. “Fortunately I have a source pretty close to that situation that can help me out with that part.”
Eleni realized she didn’t know anything about her sister’s decision to flee or how it had come about. That was probably just as disturbing as everything else. “How about I tell you what happened with my family and you tell me what happened with the Orvilles? My sister kept her family’s decision a secret, and I’ll admit I kind of feel like I want to know what happened.”
“That’s a fair trade,” Skye decided. “Can I come over now?”
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 97