What You Deserve : A Gem Stone Book

by Mary Martel

  Maxine looked at me, and her gaze immediately softened. “Don’t worry, Gemma girl. We all know you’re not going to kick us out of here just because that cow demands it of you. I was there when your father had those papers drawn up for you, and there’s not a damn thing she can do to you now.”

  Maxine turned back to my mother and sneered across the table at her. “The only person leaving this house will be you. I’ll thank you kindly for doing that sooner rather than later. We all will, most especially your daughter.”

  Maxine pushed her chair back and stood up with her back straight and her head held high. She looked down her nose at my mother and smiled in triumph. “He never loved you. He told me so all the time.”

  The other two nannies burst into surprised laughter as my mother’s face turned an alarming shade of red. This was so not good.

  My mother’s hands came up and she slapped them down on the table. Her palms splayed out, her fingers spread wide, as she pushed herself to her feet. She leaned into the table and leveled her heavy glare on poor, stupid, but brave, Maxine. “I’ll have you know, Maxie, that’s not what he said when he last fucked me weeks ago.”

  I cringed at hearing the Maxie part, and her lame ass attempt to cut Maxine down by pretending to have her name wrong but just close enough that she could get away with it without actually having to apologize, but instead giving a coy little smile at the same time as an innocent shrug to her shoulders.

  Gin had taught me about several of her sneaky tricks.

  She was also an expert liar and manipulator. A quick glance around the table told me they all mostly believed her lies and bullshit.

  I sighed, completely over the entire thing. “She’s lying,” I told them in a bored voice I didn’t have to force or pretend. “At least about the last time they had sex being weeks ago. I should know, I heard them going at it at Gin’s funeral’s after party. That was about two weeks ago and she’s making it sound longer. And I know they had sex then because I heard them going at it. Why she’s lying about this now is anyone’s guess, but I’m going to assume it’s to either get a rise out of you ladies or to hurt you. Take your pick.”

  If my father had been screwing her this whole time, I’d be making another trip to the cemetery real soon to spit on his godforsaken grave, and then I’d likely go a little bit insane. Who could blame me though?

  “Oh,” Maxine purred in an over sexed up voice, “I know he did her then. He came home and told me about it the very next day. He was devastated and so ashamed of himself over it. Why, he claimed she got him drunk and practically raped him. Please don’t hold it against him, Gem, he would have hated you knowing how badly he messed up on the day you guys buried your sweet Gin.”

  Practically raped him? Sweet baby Jesus.

  I looked at the other two and asked, “Did you guys know about this too?” My curiosity demanded answers, and I wanted to give them to it.

  “No,” Ginger snapped without hesitation, and she turned her glare from my mother to her would-be sister wife, Maxine. “He never told us any of this, but then again we weren’t his favorite. Maxine always was. You gave it to him real good, didn’t you, Maxine?”

  Ginger slammed her chair back so hard the feet screeched loudly and painfully across the floor. She stormed out of the room, and her partner in crime got up without a word and chased after her.

  Thankfully, there were no doors to slam shut behind them.

  Also, thankfully, Maxine had taken the brunt of everything and no one had demanded I give them money or set them up as if they were one of my mistresses. I knew I’d asked Maxine to be here for a reason.

  Maxine looked down at me and winked. “They don’t like me because I refuse to sleep with them. Also, you should know just in case she tries to pull something.” She tilted her head in my mother’s direction without taking her eyes off of me. “Your father got a vasectomy right after Lilian was born. He didn’t want to have any more children. No one knows that outside of his doctor, me, and now you and that bitch. Better safe than sorry, right, Gemma girl?”

  I nodded my head in agreement. “Thanks, Maxine.”

  “Anything for you.” She blew me a sweet kiss, turned on her spiked high heel, and sauntered out of the dining room with a serious sway to her hips that hadn’t been there when she entered the room.

  My mother glared at her back the whole way out. I imagined that was why Maxine put in the extra effort to shake her ass. She gave my mother something good to look at while she walked away.

  “You need to put a stop to this right now, Gem. Before it gets out of control. If you give into everything they ask of you, they are just going to keep on taking. They’ll use you up until you’ve got nothing left to give. You’d be smart to get rid of them now. Kick them to the curb, Gem.”

  You’d be smart to get rid of them now.

  Kick them to the curb, Gem.

  Kick them to the curb.

  Kick.

  Them.

  To.

  The.

  Fucking.

  Curb.

  My right eyelid twitched as my vision began to turn red. Get it together, Gem. Do not explode all over this bitch.

  I remembered raising my little hand to the bars on the gate, wrapping my fingers around the iron, and never wanting to let go because my twin was on the other side and locked away in the great big house on top of the hill.

  My mother, she’d kicked us to the curb once and hadn’t looked back since.

  And now she wanted me to do the same to what amounted to my father’s second family. I wasn’t like her. I couldn’t do it, and I didn’t even want to because my father’s second family was really the only family I had left now. Even if I didn’t like all of them, I didn’t want to lose them.

  “Why are you here?” I asked in a barely controlled voice. Each word felt like shards of glass being forced out of my throat. I wanted to throw something at her.

  She pursed her lips unhappily as she studied me with a careful eye. I didn’t have a good feeling about this.

  “I want you to come home with me, Gem. You belong with your mother. Especially now when we’re both grieving and hurting so badly. I need my daughter with me right now. After finding Gin like that, I want you close so I can keep an eye on you and make sure you’re safe. I know you think you’re old enough and mature enough to be on your own, but I don’t think you have the first clue as to what you’re doing. Come home with me. Just for your senior year. You know it’s what Gin would have wanted for the both of us. She wouldn’t have wanted either of us to be alone right now and you know it.”

  It was about control and her need for it. With Gin and my father gone, the only person whose life she was in control of was her own, and I could tell she wasn’t all fired up about it. My father knew this, and he’d done what he could to free me of her iron fist just in case the worst happened. Well, the worst did happen, and I was back to not hating him again. It didn’t even come close to making up for the mistakes he’d made when it came to his children, but it was nice not hating the man. That felt good.

  And he stuck it to my mother one last time, which didn’t feel good but instead felt freaking awesome.

  “Go home,” I told her in a calm voice I absolutely did not feel. “And don’t ever come back here. I’m going to have the code to the gate changed as soon as you leave, and the security codes to the house will be changed as well. If you come back here, I’ll be forced to phone the police. And, and I really want you to hear me, Mother, because I’m not messing around with you, if you even attempt to phone or harass my father’s family in any way, I’ll get a restraining order against you for every single one of them. Don’t think I won’t either, because I’ll do it just to spite you.”

  I sat back in the chair and crossed my arms over my chest. Our eyes locked and we went into stare down mode, waiting to see who backed down first.

  Surprisingly, she looked away first and her hands clenched into fists as she turned away from me
. Victory was mine, though, I didn’t feel like I’d won anything. She wouldn’t forget this moment and would likely attempt to make me pay for it later.

  Well over it, I sighed. “Just get out.”

  She looked back to me with a sheen of tears shining bright in her eyes. Oddly enough, they looked to be genuine. I didn’t know she had it in her.

  “You’re an ungrateful little bitch,” she whispered harshly, in the ugliest voice I had ever heard come from another human being in my life. “I knew when you were born that I should have smothered you to death in your sleep.”

  I jerked as if she’d physically struck me. She might as well have. She’d scored a major hit with those words, and I didn’t think I’d ever forget them.

  They left me bleeding on the inside from an invisible wound.

  To my horror, she kept right on going. “You’d cry all night and wouldn’t even stop when I’d pick you up and try to rock you back to sleep. The only thing that would make you stop was putting you in Gin’s crib with her. As soon as you were placed next to her, you’d stop crying immediately. Only for Gin.”

  My eyes stung with unshed tears that I didn’t want her to see. Already wounded, this just kept getting worse. I had never heard anything like this before, and it hurt my heart to hear it now.

  I didn’t want to hear any more, but she wasn’t going to leave until she said her piece, and I’d be made to listen. She’d been hurt by my father’s will and by what Maxine had said, and now she needed someone to take that pain out on. I was the only one left in the room, and she was intent on shredding me to ribbons.

  “Your poor sister, even as a baby you clung to her as if you were trying to steal away the very oxygen she breathed. It was disturbing to watch, and I wanted nothing to do with you from the start because it repulsed me. You repulsed me, Gem. You clung to your sister as if you didn’t know how to live on your own. You wonder why I wanted to get you away from her so badly? She needed to be able to live without you trying to smother her and snuff out her light.”

  The more she talked, the less I actually felt. I could feel myself shutting down. It wasn’t like a switch had been flipped and off my emotions went. It was more like they’d bled out of me with each word out of her mouth.

  My mother had gutted me, and I knew she wasn’t finished yet. It would just get worse from here. I braced myself for it.

  “I tried to explain it to your father, but he never saw it. We argued and argued about it, about you, and eventually you were the reason I had to kick the two of you out of my house. I wanted to send you off to boarding school by yourself, but he wouldn’t let me, said it wasn’t fair to send you and to keep Gin at home with us. I wanted you gone, and he went with you. If it weren’t for you, your father would have lived his life happy with Gin and myself. Instead, he ended up with those whores and raising—”

  “Shut your goddamn filthy mouth.”

  My mother whipped around at the sound of Franklin’s low, dangerous voice, and my head tipped to the side. He stood in the entryway to the dining room. His face looked to be set in stone and his hands were balled up into fists at his sides.

  How long had he been standing there for and just what all had he heard?

  From the look on his face, he’d been there for a while.

  I reached up with the back of my hand and swiped away the tears I hadn’t been able to stop from falling sometime during my mother’s loving speech. Another thing for her to hold against me whenever she wanted to.

  “Why’s your weird gay friend here, Gem?” my mother sneered at me after completely dismissing Franklin and turning back to me. She turned her back on him entirely. It was the least smart thing she’d done since she’d arrived today. “Let me guess, you let him move in too. Is he sleeping in your room with you or did you set him up like one of your father’s disgusting, breeding whores?”

  I shook my head at her in disgust. Franklin wasn’t gay, and if he was that certainly wouldn’t make him weird. I mean, he certainly was weird and all kinds of a dick, but how the hell would she know that? She didn’t know a damn thing about him outside of the fact he was my best friend.

  Unless, of course, she’d looked into him in hopes of finding something she could use against me. Now that I wouldn’t put past her in the slightest and should have thought about sooner.

  Damn it all to hell and back.

  I wasn’t even going to touch on the whore bit. Technically, my father had never paid them in cash so they couldn’t really be considered whores, right? It was just one more way for her to demean their relationships.

  Franklin acted like he didn’t hear her and stomped through the room toward her. Or, maybe he had heard her and that was why he looked even angrier than he had half a minute ago.

  Franklin grabbed my mother by her bicep and wrenched her out of her chair. My mother cried out as she stumbled, and the chair sailed back through the air. It landed on the floor with a clatter as Franklin dragged her through the dining room and in the direction of the front door.

  My mother fought and clawed at Franklin’s arms and chest while shrieking in his face.

  I got up from my chair and rushed around the table to help him so she didn’t hurt him too badly. By the time I got around the table and reached them, Franklin had it under control and obviously did not need my help. He had my mother’s arms wrenched around behind her back as he forcefully pushed the woman forward and through the house.

  I followed behind them toward the front door. Her shrieking had drawn quite a crowd, and all the nannies and the house staff had come out. They were lined up along the hallway, watching with wide eyes as Franklin forced my mother to stumble forward against her will.

  Maxine stood amongst the shocked crowd with a giant, smug smile on her face. The shit was going down and Maxine was having the time of her life. I was glad someone in my life was happy since I certainly wouldn’t be finding it any time soon.

  Ginger ran forward and very helpfully opened the front door for Franklin. A smile overtook her pretty face, and she ended up looking just as smug as Maxine did.

  The people in my life who were happy in this moment just kept on racking up. First Maxine, now Ginger.

  Rhonda, the other nanny, giggled outrageously, and my mother’s struggle doubled at hearing it.

  Franklin got to the threshold of the front door and roughly shoved her forward. My mother stumbled on her high heels and tripped. Her feet went out from under her, and she cried out in pain as her bare knees hit the cement.

  I might have felt bad for her if she hadn’t just tried her hardest to annihilate me and partially succeeded. I hoped this was the last time I saw the woman for a very long time, because I didn’t think I’d be able to walk away from going another round with her, there wouldn’t be much of me left.

  “Don’t come back here,” Franklin said as he glared down at my mother. She stared up at him, blinking slowly with her mouth hanging open. “I heard your daughter tell you she didn’t want you coming around here and to stay away from her family. You better heed her warnings, bitch, because you’re not my mother and I won’t have any problem tossing you out on your ass, and I’m capable of doing way worse to you than Gemmy would ever dream of. Don’t tempt me. Your days of treating your daughter like garbage are over. Now get the fuck off her property. And, before you even think about calling the cops on me, I want you to think about who my father is before you reconsider.”

  And with that, Franklin slammed the door shut in my mother’s stunned face. He turned all the locks on the door and then he moved over to the panel on the wall where the security system was located. He angrily pressed a few buttons on the screen before looking out the window on the side and nodding his head in satisfaction.

  “She’s leaving,” Franklin informed me quietly. “We’ll get a locksmith here to change all the locks and then we’ll call about changing the codes for the gate and the alarm.”

  Huh.

  I hadn’t thought about the locks o
n the doors too. I didn’t know why she’d have keys, but then again, she shouldn’t have known the codes to everything for this house either and she did.

  Franklin was usually an incredibly bossy, take control type of guy, but the way he’d been with me for the past several weeks took things to a whole new extreme. Six months ago, I would have hated his behavior and pushed him away because of it. Now, I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me, but I kind of liked it. It felt nice to have someone looking out for me and taking care of things, but mostly taking care of me.

  Taking care of everyone else fell on my shoulders now, even though I absolutely did not want it to. And even before when I’d mostly taken care of myself, there’d been no one but Gin, and I was barely allowed to even see her.

  This felt different. Like a shift had happened between Franklin and me. I didn’t know how far that change went, or just how deep that well ran, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Franks didn’t seem uncomfortable in the slightest with this shift. Which almost bothered me more than the actual shift itself, as odd as that sounded.

  “Do you want to stay for dinner, Frankie?” Ginger asked in a bright, happy voice like that whole scene hadn’t just played out in our dining room and foyer.

  And did she just call him Frankie? What in the holy hell was that all about?

  “Sure,” came Franklin’s easy reply.

  You know what? Fuck it, I thought. If Franklin wanted to stick around and have dinner with the nannies and their kids, then good for him, he could do whatever the hell he wanted to. I sure as shit wasn’t going to, I’d had enough of them to last me for a good long while, thank you very much.

  I turned my back on all of them and headed toward the stairs. They called out to me, but I tuned out all of their voices as I made my way up the stairs.

  I knew Franklin would follow me. He always did, and he didn’t disappoint this time. Though he did wait until after he’d eaten dinner with my father’s family, and he brought a plate of food up for me with him.