She walked into the room with her cane, took one look at the man on the ground with his still-hard cock hanging out, then one look at me, disheveled and scared out of my ever-loving mind, then stuck her cane underneath her armpit and reached into her purse.
Then she pulled out the biggest motherfuckin’ gun I’d ever seen and aimed it at the would-be rapist’s face.
That’s when I realized who, exactly, had been in the house with me.
The serial killer that, by last count, had murdered seventeen women.
“You will remain on the floor or else,” my grandmother ordered.
The man laughed and got up, putting zero weight on his bad leg.
That’s when I saw all the blood.
It was everywhere.
He tried to take a step toward my grandmother, slipped in the blood, and tried to use his bad foot to catch himself.
It didn’t work.
All he managed to do was fall back to the ground.
The man cursed and tried to get back up, but my grandmother stupidly took a few steps toward him, placed her gun on top of the fridge, then went all professional golfer on the guy’s dick.
She switched the cane around until the grip was toward the ground, then used her forty years of golfing experience to take aim at the guy’s still-hard dick—how the hell was it still hard through all of this?
I physically heard the thwack of the guy’s dick getting smacked with the handle of her cane.
I would never, not ever, be able to describe it.
The low-life went down to the ground completely, then turned, or tried to turn, into the fetal position.
While he was distracted, my grandmother picked up the gun again, twisted the cane around, and then marched until she was standing over the man who was now crying—quite loudly—on the ground.
“I don’t know what you were trying to do,” she hissed as she aimed the gun right at the man’s face, “but I don’t like it when Popes are hurt.”
While the guy’s eyes were on her, aimed at the gun she had trained on his face, she did something with the cane.
I heard another ‘pop-like’ sound and felt my stomach curdle at the high-pitched scream that came out of the serial killer’s mouth.
I covered my mouth as I realized what she’d just done.
Ruptured his testicle. Or something. I wasn’t sure what. But her cane lifted from between his legs and she stepped back.
“Call the authorities,” my grandmother urged as she stood over the man. “Tell them the Popes are in trouble and need assistance.”
I didn’t tell them that.
After hurrying toward my grandmother’s discarded purse, I reached into it and pulled out her fancy phone with delicate rhinestones—rhinestones that were probably real—and called 911.
I told them that Taos Brady’s girlfriend was in trouble.
That would get them here way faster than anything else would.
I knew it.
• • •
TAOS
My heart was pounding as I hurried toward my front door.
There were about twenty-five police cars on my lawn and in my street.
Local police. State police. FBI. State troopers. You name it, and the agency was in my house.
Getting out of the patrol car that’d given me the lift here, I ran hard to the front door, scared as fuck of what I would see when I got inside.
The moment I breached the entrance of my door, a hundred-and-fifty-pound weight slammed directly into my chest, wrapped her legs around my torso, and clung on so tight that I knew she was scared.
“Oh, fuck. I’m so sorry, baby,” I whispered into her hair.
Fran didn’t reply.
Only held on while she shook. And shook hard.
My eyes met Chief Wilkerson’s, and I quietly asked what happened despite the shaking woman in my arms.
“Tell me,” I ordered.
Chief looked at the woman in my arms, then back to me.
“She showed up in your house, and he was already in it. We’re thinking, in your haste to leave, you forgot to set the alarm, and Pasqual took advantage. He was in here waiting, likely for you, when she arrived alone. He took advantage and tried to…” Chief Wilkerson trailed off.
“He didn’t succeed,” she whispered. “I channeled my inner Taos and got away when he was trying to undo his pants. I ran to the kitchen and grabbed that paring knife you refused to let me put into the dishwasher. When he grabbed my hair, I fell to the floor, and swiped out.”
“She severed his Achilles tendon,” Chief Wilkerson said when the woman in my arms trailed off. “Around that time, Madame Pope came in the door, ready to rip you a new asshole, and found them fighting instead. She held him at gunpoint with a fifty caliber and accidentally ruptured one of his nuts, that were still hanging out, might I add, with the end of her cane.”
“She took a swing at his hard dick, too, with the handle of it,” she whispered into my ear. “I didn’t tell them that part.”
I shuddered at the thought.
Both were downright heart-attack-inducing.
The woman sure did know how to go for the heart of a man.
“We arrived to find her still holding him at gunpoint. He’s currently at the hospital getting his dick and balls looked at,” Schultz said as he came into the room with Easton. “We got everything.”
My brows rose. “What?”
“He confessed. To everything,” he said. “Citing his anger at you for taking his buddy away that he used to play with. Worked his way back here, planned on doing it in his old stomping ground. Succeeded for a few months, and then you figured it out. The connection with their hair.” Schultz gestured at Fran’s hair, that was the only thing you could see since her face was buried so deeply into my neck.
I had to take a seat as the ramifications of the day hit me.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for causing you trouble on this day.”
I pulled back, fisting my hand lightly in her hair to pull her back from my neck, and stared into her tear-filled eyes.
“Don’t you ever, not ever, think that you don’t come first with me,” I ordered. “Hell or high water, you need me and I’m here.” I paused. “I’m just sorry that you had to go through that alone.”
“Let me get to my sister, motherfucker!” I heard Mavis yell.
“Mavis,” I heard Murphy’s low voice urging her to be calm.
“Fuck you,” Mavis growled. “Thanks for the ride but go the fuck away.”
“Let me have your kid.”
The growl came, and then Mavis entered a few seconds later sans child, staring wildly around the room until she found her sister.
She came straight for us, throwing her arms around both of our necks as she buried her face between us and pulled Fran in close.
“I fucking hate our grandmother, but I love what she did,” she declared.
“I think that we’re going to have to invite her to our Vegas wedding,” I found myself saying, wanting to lighten the mood.
Mavis and Fran snorted in unison. “We wouldn’t go that far.” Fran sniffled.
Then I had two crying women in my arms, and I couldn’t help but think how lucky of a man I was.
I just wished that I had one other woman here with me.
• • •
Later that night, as the wee hours of the morning started to creep up on us, I lay in the bed, eyes wide open, holding the woman that meant the world to me.
“You’re thinking pretty hard up there,” she muttered as she flipped her head from resting on my right pec.
She moved until her head was in the middle of my sternum, and even in the dark, I could tell that she was staring at me.
“I…” I paused. “I can’t believe that I almost lost you.”
My admission caused her to pause for such a long time that I wasn’t sure she was going to reply.
But then she did.
“That could’ve bro
ken me,” she whispered. “I dissociated for a little bit. Closed my mind off to what was happening, and it was really bad.”
I heard her swallow, but the thickness in my throat was so tight that I couldn’t get the words to leave my mouth.
“I kept hearing you tell me to fight. Fight, Fran. Fight.” I felt the wetness of tears on my chest, and I knew that she was crying again. “And I knew that I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t let you find me like that. So I fought.”
Thank God.
Thank God that she fought.
“I’m selling my house,” I told her. “I can’t… we can’t stay there anymore.”
She sighed. “I don’t think I want to, either.”
We were quiet for a few long seconds and then, “I want to kill him.”
She sighed. “I know you do. But just think, Grandmother is going to do things worse to him than killing him. Just let her do her thing.”
At her words, I realized she was right.
Pearl Pope had already done her best to make the fool’s life a living hell.
Pasqual didn’t have any idea what was coming. Pearl Pope was a force of fucking nature.
CHAPTER 25
Pinning book ideas should give you some kind of developmental credit.
-Taos to Fran
TAOS
There was nobody at the service.
Nobody, that was, unless you counted the two quiet women, and the babbling little baby at my side.
Sure, Chief Wilkerson, Madden and even Schultz, had offered to come, but I hadn’t wanted them there. I’d wanted to do this alone, yet two females hadn’t allowed me to have what I wanted.
They were being nice. I knew.
But I didn’t want false platitudes on a day like today. A day that felt dark and deep and didn’t really feel like there would be an end in sight.
I just wanted my girl.
And my girl had a sister that had insisted on coming, too.
So, though it was a sad affair, the giggles of Vlad filled the air despite the darkness.
It actually felt more right than anything.
“Would you like to say a few words?”
I looked up at the man that was helping officiate the service.
Though my grandmother went to church, she never went to the same one two weekends in a row.
I swear she was at every single church in the area, and never let on that she liked any particular one better than the rest.
So we’d decided to have just the funeral home put it on at my grandmother’s house, and not tell anyone when and where.
It was… freeing.
I didn’t have to deal with the false platitudes. And my grandmother’s true friends, the ones that lived thousands of miles away, were all too old to be traveling themselves. So we’d done a video conference of the service, and that particular torture had just ended.
“No.” I paused. “Can you give us a few minutes? Then we can wrap it up?”
The funeral attendant, a man in his late fifties, smiled. “Everything is already taken care of. Since you have no body to transport, if it’s sufficient, we’ll leave you to your own devices?”
I nodded. “Actually, that sounds wonderful.”
After he left, I stared up at the spray of flowers that dominated the front of the room.
“Your grandmother will never be underdone, will she?” I mused.
Mavis snorted. “My grandmother had to have put a small fortune into that. You’re lucky your entire damn living room isn’t filled.”
I flashed a quick grin, then got up from my position between the two of them.
“I think the worst part now is going to have to be going through all of this,” I mused.
“We’ll help,” Fran promised.
I knew they would.
It was like the two musketeers. They were each other’s best friends. If one needed help, the other would always be there.
I looked to the table of food that had been delivered from the gym members.
“What the hell am I going to do with all of that?” I wondered.
“You’re going to eat everything that you can in two days.” Fran got up and walked to the table, pulling back a few pieces of tinfoil. “Then we’re going to throw it all out and never think of how many calories we just consumed.”
We all had a chuckle at that.
Then a sparkle caught my eye.
I moved toward the shimmer and found myself staring at a shelf with photos of me.
My grandmother had a single shelf that was exclusive to only me.
On the shelf over were the rest of our family.
But something brand new caught my eye.
It was a photo of just the other day. Of Fran, my Grans, and me.
We had full plates of spaghetti in front of us, and it was a Polaroid photo sitting on her shelf between photos of me when I was twelve and fifteen. It was taken using my Grans’ new camera that she’d gotten for her girls’ trip.
Next to that photo was a Post-it Note that said, “Give this to Tay.”
And next to that Post-it Note, there was a black box.
I reached for it and felt my breath catch.
It was my grandmother’s diamond ring.
The one that she wore. The one that my mom wore.
And she wanted to give it to me so that Fran could wear it.
She hadn’t offered that to me when I’d asked Maria to marry me, and now I knew why.
Because what I felt for Maria, and what I felt for Fran, were two entirely different things.
Feeling my heart contract, I pulled the ring out of the box and fisted it in my hand.
Turning, I saw Mavis and Fran talking close, gesturing to a pile of boxes that we were going to use a little later to get started on packing up my Gran’s things.
And I knew what I wanted to do.
Walking up to them both, I said, “Fran?”
She turned to me, and I dropped down onto one knee.
“I know that this isn’t the place or the way that you would want a proposal to go,” I said as I got down on the white-tiled floor. “But I wanted to include her.”
Tears started to stream down her face as she quickly nodded her head. “It’s okay. I promise.”
I took her word for it and continued.
“A couple of years ago, when I broke things off with my ex-wife,” I said, “I didn’t realize that there would be anything out there for me. I thought…” I took a deep breath. “I resigned myself to being alone. And my grandmother always said that there was someone out there for me, but until I met you, I never believed her.” I pressed my hand to my broken heart at the thought of my grandmother. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife? Will you prove my Grans right?”
She looked at the ring, then looked at my face, before nodding hard.
“I will.”
EPILOGUE
I love you because you’re exactly like me, and I’m the best.
-overheard conversation between Taos and their children
FRAN
Eight years later
“Mommy, when are we leaving?”
I grinned down at my son, Taos Dean Brady Junior, and shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m thinking it’ll probably be in a couple of hours.”
Dean sighed and threw himself down on the couch. “That’s like, forever.”
I looked at my seven-year-old son and rolled my eyes. “It’s closer than it was a couple of hours ago.”
My son, so much like his father, rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Mom.”
“When did you get this attitude?” I asked. “You got it from Vlad, didn’t you?”
Dean snorted. “Whatever.”
I whatevered him right back, then went in search of my husband.
I found him in his office in his recliner. I also found our daughter in his lap.
She had her hand covering her nose, and she was flapping the blankets.
I frowned, wondering what would’ve caus
ed her to do that, and then laughed when Taos leaned to the side and let one rip, the flatulence leaving his rancid ass so loud that it interrupted the movie that they were watching.
Hotel Transylvania 3, I thought.
But honestly, they all rolled together at this point since we had to watch them so many damn times.
Our daughter, Italya, flapped the blankets again, causing me to snicker.
So that was the reason for the nose covering.
I was just about to open my mouth and call out when a buzz sounded from my pocket.
I pulled out my phone and glanced at it.
My grandmother’s name flashed on the screen of my phone, and the buzzing finally caused Taos to look away from the television.
He winked at me when I pressed the phone to my ear and backed away.
“Grandmother,” I said.
“You know how you asked me to do that favor for you?” she asked.
I frowned. “Which one?”
I asked her to do a lot of favors. Like leave me alone. Yet, she never did any of them.
“To find Taos’ brother. Greer.”
My breath hitched at her words. “Yes.”
“I found him,” she said. “It’ll cost you.”
I smiled as I eagerly hurried to a piece of paper. “Anything.”
She snorted. “It’ll cost you a weekend with my grandchildren.”
I looked over at Dean and knew that he’d hate that. But he’d also do just about anything for his father.
Like going to a CrossFit Kids competition representing Madd CrossFit, even though CrossFit wasn’t his favorite sport in the world.
Now, our daughter, Italya, adored everything CrossFit. She was Taos’ mini-me to the extreme.
She could snatch better than eighty percent of the gym.
“I can let you have them for the day,” I said. “But I can’t promise you the weekend. You know how they are.”
“You allow them to be like that,” she snipped. “I’ll take it.”
“Tell me everything you know,” I urged.
• • •
Three hours later, we were at a CrossFit competition that was being held with our kids, and our daughter was up.
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