It was now Elena’s turn to nod in agreement.
My mom and Elena had a unique relationship with one another, too. They were almost like best friends inside the house, arguing and gossiping all day long, but obviously Elena worked for our family and had for many years. Elena was also a generation older than my mom. They had their own mother-daughter dynamic in more ways than one.
“You know Kevin called this morning, Madison,” my mom said, “He heard what happened. It was on the news. He’s worried about you.”
Kevin was the last thing I wanted to think about right now. He should probably be less worried about me, and more worried about the various diseases he’d likely contracted from Angelica. I still felt one hundred percent committed to my decision to utterly delete him from my life. I’d given my parents the abridged version of why we were breaking up, just saying that he cheated on me. That was all the explanation they were going to get and would just have to deal with it. My dad knew better than to pry. My mom, however, had been fishing for more details (she had really liked him). They weren’t going to come from me.
I resisted the urge to reply with ‘Kevin who? I don’t know any Kevin.’
“Ok,” I replied blandly instead, “Well now that he knows I’m alive, there’s no reason to call him back.”
“If that cheating asshole bothers you again, go get yourself a restraining order,” Elena advised, having now moved onto gently layering gauze over the wounds, “You’re a lawyer. You know what to say to get one.”
I smiled at that, even as my mom shook her head. Elena had been instantly whipped into an incensed frenzy on my behalf when she learned about Kevin. She had no pity nor patience for bad behavior of any kind. She said it was God’s job to forgive people, not hers. I guess I’d learned my unilateral hatred of cheaters from her. My mom, on the other hand, would forgive murder if the apology was sincere. I was somewhere in the middle most of the time. Not with Kevin though. He was dead to me.
“Alexander Durant texted while you were in the shower, too,” Elena added, handing me my cracked phone, “He wants to meet you for drinks tonight. Eight o’clock. He also wants to know if you’re doing ok.”
Both my mom and Elena looked at me expectantly. They knew, courtesy of Elena reading my diary back in the day, about my teenage fascination with Alexander Durant. Privacy was not something that could be expected where Elena was concerned, a lesson I had learned much too late. Now Elena and mom clearly wanted an update on what was going on between me and Alexander. I wish I knew.
“Are you sleeping with him?” Elena asked me bluntly.
“Elena!” My mother exclaimed, covering her ears as if shocked that I might be having sex. Then when she didn’t hear me vociferously denying it, she lowered them and looked at me with wide eyes, “Wait? Are you, Madison?”
Ok, our family was a bit weird.
But all families are weird. And Elena was definitely a permanent part of ours, and we loved each other. We probably couldn’t get rid of her if we tried (which we never would). She had her own family too, and they’d become an extended part of ours. I thought of her daughters as my aunts and her grandkids as my cousins. Labels, boundaries, and secrets just weren’t things we did.
I nibbled on a piece of toast as Elena finished with my left arm. My silence was clear enough confirmation. There was no point in lying about it. I wasn’t ashamed. My mother pursed her lips thoughtfully, but neither woman said anything. They exchanged a long wordless gaze that I couldn’t interpret.
The phone rang downstairs and my mom left to answer it, leaving Elena and I alone. In the absence of my mom, Elena shifted back to Spanish. For some reason I’d never spent much time thinking about, we always talked together in Spanish when we were alone, even though Elena spoke perfect, native English and my Spanish was only so-so.
“You need to eat all of that. Todo,” Elena eventually added, heavily accentuating the vowel sounds in the Spanish word for all to drive her point home. She pinched my upper arm and wiggled it back and forth to demonstrate my lack of adequate adipose tissue, “You really are much too skinny. They didn’t feed you enough in Port-au-Prince.”
“Lo estoy haciendo,” I replied petulantly, shoving the entire piece toast in my mouth and earning me a sharp look that soon softened. She pushed my damp hair off my shoulders in a rare display of affection.
“You need to be careful with that Durant,” she said to me, her expression gentle but serious, “I don’t want you to be hurt. When your mom called me to explain what had happened so I wouldn’t see it on the news, I just about had a heart attack on my kitchen floor. Do you want to kill an old woman? I know you’re on the rebound from Kevin—the worthless bastard—but you deserve someone who will make you happy and keep you safe. Durant got you blown up!”
“That’s not fair, Elena,” I interjected, “I don’t think he had anything to do with the explosion. The FBI are investigating. I looked up the names they mentioned to me and they’re some Colombian gangsters.”
“Maybe he’s not to blame for that,” Elena replied, still looking unconvinced, “but he was never nice to you when you were younger. He was cruel to you for no reason but that he could. Those Durants, they think they’re better than everyone else. I met the old one, the other one that had the French accent when he was younger and still in charge. He came to the house and acted like I was part of the furniture. I would expect that, since I’m a housekeeper, but he didn’t treat your parents any better. He was even awful to his own children! We were all just objects to him.”
She wasn’t generalizing about the family; she was talking about the Durant patriarch, the original Alexander Durant. The grandfather of the man I knew. I knew OG Alexander Durant was a French immigrant, but I’d never met him. He had become fairly reclusive since his retirement in the nineties and become something of a local legend. People would brag that they had spotted him out as if he were a rare exotic animal. I suppose these days, he would have to be in his late eighties. A snarky voice in my head crowed that he was the same age as Angelica’s husband. From everything I’d heard he was a brilliant businessman and an all-around scumbag. Maybe it was no wonder why Alexander was the way he was.
“I know what I’m doing,” I said to Elena, feigning confidence, “I’ll be going back to Brooklyn in a few days anyway, and he’ll be going wherever it is he’s going. It’s just a harmless little fling. So, what’s the big deal?”
“Hmm,” Elena said noncommittally, “Well, far be it from me to get between a grown, single woman and a good time. He’s a fine-looking man, I’ll give him that. But he had better watch out. If he hurts you, he’s going to have to deal with me, your mom and dad, Clara, and my Colt .45.”
If my mom had said that I’d have laughed. But Elena was dead serious. I made a mental note to warn Alexander. If given the choice between a pair of Colombian gangsters or Elena, I’d take the Colombians any day of the week. Elena didn’t make idle threats.
“You’re going to meet him tonight then?” Elena asked me. She didn’t cast any judgment in the way she asked the question. She asked it casually, as if she were asking if I thought it would rain later. We both knew better. Elena knew how to read me better than mom did. Even better than Clara did. I wondered what she was reading from me then.
I didn’t understand what was going on between Alexander and me. My feelings were all mixed up. Did he just want to use me? Did I want to use him? The explosion last night had made everything even less clear than it had been. But I did know one thing for certain:
“Yes,” I said to Elena, trying to keep my voice calm and casual when I felt anything but, “I’m going to meet him tonight.”
17
Alexander
For what had to be the fiftieth time, I looked down at my phone to reread my texts during the Uber ride to the Durant compound. I was worse than a desperate, horny teenager with a crush. It was pathetic and gross but knowing that did nothing to stop me. I had an immature infatuation with M
adison Clark, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to be properly ashamed.
Is it still alright if I pick you up from your house at eight? I had asked her a few hours after she’d texted that she received her own uncomfortable visit from agents McKinney and Wallace.
Yes that’s fine. It gives me a chance to sleep some more. Do you think it’s safe for us to be out? The FBI said we could still be targets. Her reply to me had taken a full, agonizing five minutes.
I’ve got a security team watching both your house and mine. They’ll follow us tonight but will keep a discreet distance. Admitting that I had arranged for her to be protected made me nervous because I couldn’t predict how she would react. I didn’t want her to think I was being controlling and creepy, and although it would be easier, I also couldn’t bring myself to lie to her either.
Ok. Thank you for doing that. See you at 8
I told myself the promise of seeing her in a few hours was what would power me through this visit as the Durant estate sprung into view ahead of me. This should be quick. I just needed to get in, ask my father a few simple questions, and then abscond with a new vehicle from the garage. But visiting the family homestead was never a low-stress affair. My family was bizarre, and not in a charming, funny sitcom way.
“Dude, your folks seriously live here?” My Uber driver asked, turning his head to look at me in the rearview mirror as we crunched up the long gravel drive. I nodded disinterestedly; that reaction no longer phased me.
There had been a time when I was proud of the house. It was the ostentatious manifestation of the American Dream. Only in America could Alexandre Durant, the son of a pharmacist born impoverished in the suburbs of Marseille, come to Philadelphia with nothing and become Alexander Durant, titan of industry.
“This shit looks like Hogwarts,” the driver mumbled a moment later as I was closing the door. That at least made me smirk. It did kind of look like an Edwardian baroque styled Hogwarts. And much like Hogwarts, it was haunted.
I padded through the wide, dark marble hallways, seeing no one. That was hardly a surprise. With only a handful of permanent residents, one of whom was a bed bound, senile ninety-year-old man, you could go entire days here without running into anyone It could be more than a little unsettling. My cousins and I used to make up stories that a spectral, monstrous killer lived here with us—the vengeful spirit of someone our grandfather wronged. Now, the only ghost here was my mother’s.
As per usual, I found Alexander Durant Junior in the room that he referred to as his study. A man of less pomp and circumstance might refer to it as a ‘media room’ or even a 'man cave'. Not my father. He arrogantly called it a study despite the fact that it contained exactly zero books and its central feature was a bar. It was truly an insult to studies everywhere, and a testament to the inflated ego of a man whose greatest achievement in life was not bankrupting a company he inherited.
“There he is!” My father boomed when I entered, looking up from his laptop and announcing my arrival to the otherwise empty room, “Joyeuses Paques! Happy Easter! Did you go to mass? Alex, you look pretty good for someone who just got blown up. I told your aunts there was no reason to drive downtown this morning.”
“Your concern for me is truly touching,” I remarked, going for the bourbon. I could already tell he was in a mood. He only spoke French or called me Alex when he was in a mood. The rest of the time he called me ‘Son’ or ‘Buddy’, neither of which I liked any better.
“Oh please. You know your aunt Deborah insisted on calling me up after rushing all the way down there at four a.m. just to rub in how heartless I am. It was history repeating itself. So you’re late to the pile-on. She acted like you were halfway dead or something. She’s always so dramatic.” He shook his head disapprovingly.
“That’s Deborah,” I replied dryly, “always getting so excitable when her nephew almost gets assassinated by Colombian gangsters.”
That got his attention. My father snapped the laptop shut and straightened in his enormous leather recliner-throne. “Is that what the police are saying?” He queried me, suddenly interested now that the bottom line might be impacted.
“Ever heard of the Chacón brothers?” I asked, adding, “The FBI seems to think they’re to blame.”
My father didn’t reply. Instead, he took a deep drink from his highball glass and stared at the liquid within for a moment as if it contained the answer. When no wisdom was apparently forthcoming, he set the glass down and sighed.
“I was hoping it wasn’t that. I should have kept you on the phone longer last night,” he finally said, “One of the members of the Colombian delegation phoned yesterday afternoon and said that his contacts in Bogota had heard rumblings that Marco, the older brother, was going ape-shit over the plant closing. Cesar, the younger one who is sort-of Marco’s lieutenant and enforcer, was dispatched to take care of it. Hopefully this was the extent of their plan. They’re gangsters, not geniuses. I did inform the FBI yesterday morning, mind you, right after I heard.”
“Wait, you knew I was being targeted and didn’t tell me?” I asked, appalled. This was a new low. My father shot me a venomous glance.
“Jesus Christ. No. I had no idea you were the target. Or Madison Clark, if the bomb was meant for her. Although why would it be? Honestly, everyone including the FBI and my contacts in the State Department expected it to be me. Plus, it was just a rumor. So, I just stayed here since it was safe. This place is a fucking fortress.”
“This place is a fucking prison,” I said under my breath.
“Well the important thing is that you’re ok,” my father was saying, “and the parties can meet to close the deal this week.”
Technically those were two separate things, but I resisted the urge to point that out. My father had begun to conflate me and my company in casual conversation in recent years. Strangely, this could actually be construed as a compliment coming from him, although it also betrayed a key part of his flawed worldview: human beings and their economic value and/or potential to him were inextricably linked. No economic value equaled no personal value. Even where his family was concerned. Especially where his family was concerned.
That’s part of why I liked Madison. She genuinely didn’t give a shit about any of the criteria my father used when examining a fellow human being. Plus, she believed in concepts like universal human dignity, equality, and fairness. I may not be a good person, but I know good values when I see them. I wasn’t seeing any at the moment.
“Is there anything else you know about this that you haven’t told me?” I followed up. I wanted to be irate that there had been a deadly threat floating around that he had been aware of and about which I knew nothing until my fucking car exploded, but betraying emotion in this situation would mean inviting him to use it against me. It was better to be condescending and nonchalant. That at least irritated him. Sometimes when my father was irritated he made mistakes and let things slip.
“No Alex, there isn’t. You know what I know. You sound like that tool from the FBI, what was his name? He said he’d been to visit you, too, but that was literally all the information I got out of him.”
“McKinney?” I offered, remembering my own sour interaction with him this morning with distaste.
“That’s the one. God! What an obnoxious little cunt. And the other one was just sitting there like he’d been taxadermied and stuffed. Where do they even find these guys?”
“Midwestern public universities?” I quipped.
“What, from the primate research labs?”
“Worse. The college of liberal arts.”
“Our country is going to shit. I tried to hire your uncle’s favorite military contractors to figure out what actually happened, but someone beat me to it. I’m assuming that’s you.”
I nodded. So maybe my father and I weren’t entirely dissimilar. Still, it was much better for both of us if we limited our direct interactions. This was, in fact, our first face to face conversation in several years
. Intermediaries, usually lawyers, handled the business end. Texts sufficed for the personal stuff, with phone calls as an absolute last resort.
“So, what exactly were you doing out with Clark’s daughter last night anyway?” My father asked next, proving to me why keeping his knowledge of my life to a minimum was necessary, “I meant what I said about not compromising the relationship between Clark and Durant Industries, Alex. Leave her alone.”
“Please don’t meddle in my personal life.”
“Please don’t meddle in my professional one. Are you fucking Madison Clark?”
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“You are. Of course you are! Why do I even ask? Listen, ordinarily I couldn’t care less. But this is Clark’s only child. His only daughter. I don’t want to see a repeat of the past.”
He didn’t come right out and say it. He didn’t need to. The FBI had already stabbed at my sore spot with a hot poker this morning. An unspoken, screaming argument played out in my brain. It wasn’t worth it, even if I won. This was only another battle in a long war of attrition. One of us would probably have to die to end it.
I hadn’t sat down during our conversation, so to leave, all I had to do was drift toward the door. My father watched me with irritation, but I knew he wouldn’t stop me from going. Chasing after me would be an unacceptable sign of weakness. It would show he cared.
“You and me both,” I agreed.
18
Madison
He picked me up on a motorcycle. On a freaking motorcycle! I knew his car got blown up, I was there, but come on. If there was one thing he could have done to make my family even more worried about my safety, it was showing up on that.
He was wearing beat up jeans and a black leather jacket that made him look deliciously sexy, naughty, and dangerous. He looked nothing like the restrained businessman I went out with last night, or the unconscious trauma victim of early this morning. One could almost think he was doing it on purpose to confuse me.
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