by Rebel Hart
“Oh my god,” she muttered. “Yeah. It’s happening again. It’s already giving a reading.”
“And?” I said.
She looked up at me and winced. “Pregnant.”
My hands fell to my stomach and I just stared at the floor in shock. “I’m… pregnant?”
“Birth control only severely reduces the chances of getting pregnant. If you continue to roll the dice, and I know you like to, statistically, one is gonna get through.”
“Nique,” I huffed. “I can’t be pregnant.”
“Why?” she said. “You love Bryce. I can tell.”
“I… maybe, but I…” I scoffed. “My family wants him dead. My family wants me dead. What am I going to do?”
“There are options,” Nique said. “You could abort it, or adopt it out… If your family kills you, then you won’t have to worry about it.” She chuckled and then shook her head. “I’m sorry, that’s not funny.”
“No. It’s not!”
“Ooh!” She shot up to her feet. “Tell Bryce!”
“What?! How is that going to help me?”
“Is there like a whole family code… thing? If he knows you’re carrying his baby, he’ll never let your family kill you, right? He’ll protect you. Family looks out for family.”
Though Nique was, once again, pulling lines from bad mafia movies she’d seen, she also wasn’t wrong. Maybe that was the best plan of action, to tell Bryce that I was pregnant and hope his family would protect me for that. I had no loyalty left to give my family anyway—they made it very clear they would have no problem killing me, and I could only imagine if they knew I was carrying a baby that was half a Misterro, they’d only do it faster.
“Okay… That’s not such a bad idea actually, but I don’t have my phone. I don’t have a way to contact him.”
“So let’s just sneak out of here. We’ll go back to the rental and get your phone, then we’ll call Bryce.”
I nodded, trying my best to keep from freaking out. “Yeah. Okay. Yes.”
“Okay.” She held out her hand for mine and pulled me to my feet.
On the verge of having a full-fledged breakdown, though I was, I tried to keep breathing and remain calm. Once I was with Bryce and safe, then I could panic all I wanted. We were just about to walk out of her bedroom, when we heard a slamming against the front door.
“Oh no,” I huffed. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.” After all the effort I’d put in keeping Nique safe, I put her in danger by coming to her place. Why did I do that? “You have to hide.”
“What? I’m not hiding!”
“Nique, it’s probably my brothers or my dad!” She started to reply, but I cut her off. “No! You don’t understand. If you try to interfere, they will kill you.” I shoved her into the bathroom and closed the door. “Do not come out of here. Swear.”
Tears started to fill her eyes, but she nodded. “I swear.”
I closed the door and then walked into the living room just as the door splintered open. My brothers both stormed through the front door, and I was standing there waiting, ready to hand myself over to prevent them from hurting Nique.
“Why did you have to go and do that?” TJ asked. “We were working on protecting you. If you had just come home. You didn’t have to haul off and make things worse for yourself.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “How do you know already?”
“Dad got the information as soon as it went live. Of all the stupid ass shit you could do, why would you ever give away MasCat?”
“What?”
“MasCat, at your urging, did an emergency vote to approve Gina Misterro’s software, and it passed unanimously. A 1.9 billion dollar deal that’s going to give the Misterro family almost exclusive financial power over the entire Las Vegas strip. I know Dad threatened you, but we were taking care of it. You didn’t have to go that far.”
“I didn’t give away MasCat! Why would…” My heart sank. I didn’t leave my phone at the rental. Bryce had it, and he used it to make the MasCat decision for me. As much as I wanted to get angry, I couldn’t. Somehow, I knew he wasn’t doing it to hurt me. He probably thought it was the best way to protect me.
So I’d do the same for him.
“Fine. I won’t lie anymore.”
Marcos frowned. “I can’t believe you’d turn on your own family like that.”
“Whatever. They said they were going to kill me. They don’t care about me. I was only worth keeping around as long as I was useful. The Misterros will make better use of that deal, and if I’m going to die anyway, why not?”
“Well there’s nothing we can do now,” TJ said. “If we try and protect you anymore, Mom and Dad will kill us too.”
“Then don’t protect me anymore,” I said. “I’m prepared to die. I stand by my decisions.”
TJ walked over and snatched me by the arm and dragged me out of the house. “I didn’t want to have to do this.”
“I know,” I said, looking sideways at him. “I don’t blame you, but I’m not gonna run anymore.”
21
Bryce
It had taken all of Baylor’s energy to get me to drive outside the city to meet up with my parents. Even though it was getting late, they were insisting upon popping a bottle of champagne to celebrate the closed deal and my official foray back into the family business. All I really wanted to do was crawl into bed, but Baylor said that wouldn’t be good for me and insisted that I come with him to enjoy a drink and relax.
“There he is!” my mom said as Baylor and I walked into her office. My dad was standing in there as well, filling glasses with champagne, and my mom lifted a couple of them and walked over to us, handing us each one. She then wrapped her arms around me and gave me a tight squeeze. “Oh, I am so proud of you, Bryce. I’ll admit, with how long it seemed to be taking, I wasn’t sure you were going to pull it off, but I know now that I was wrong to doubt you. Managing the deal while putting all the blame on Mariana Westun herself, it’s inspired.”
“Yeah,” I said, glancing sideways at Baylor.
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and held his glass up. “Well the particulars aren’t important. Here’s to the best of us, Bryce!”
My parents each grabbed a champagne glass and held them up as well. “To Bryce!”
Everyone took sips except for me. I was already drunk off of intense regret. Mari said that her family wouldn’t hurt her, but I assumed she didn’t have confidence in her family the way I had confidence in mine. Threats aside, I didn’t actually think my mom or Baylor would ever actually hurt me. Hearing my mom lay the MasCat situation out the way she did though, I began to wonder if I’d put Mari in more danger by manipulating the MasCat deal. Maybe I’d protected her from my family, but did I put her in more danger from hers?
“Bryce?” my mom called out. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Don’t like the champagne?”
“Um.”
Baylor took a step forward and held out his arm. “He’s just tired. A long day of carrying the entire weight of our family on his shoulders is exhausting, you know?”
“That makes sense,” my dad said. “You’ve had a lot of pressure on you. It must be nice to have it all off. If I were you, I’d just want to crawl into bed too.”
My mom tossed an irritated look at my dad. “Why didn’t you say that before? I wouldn’t have forced him all the way out here for a drink?”
“It’s fine!” Baylor said. “The man deserves a celebratory drink, and he can take the whole day off tomorrow and sleep as much as he wants.” He tapped my shoulders. “What’s a drink with family, huh?”
“You’re sure that’s it?” my mom said, looking me up and down. “It feels heavier than that.”
Baylor tried to answer again, but I stuck my hand out to stop him. “No. That’s not it.” My parents both lowered their glasses and watched me nervously. “Um… I fell in love with Mariana Westun.”
My father’s cheeks puffed up before he blew out
a burst of air and my mom lowered her brow. “You told me that wasn’t a risk.”
“I didn’t think it was,” I said. “It’s fine. I’m not turning or anything, I’m just… I’m afraid she’s in danger now from her family.”
“You regret sealing the deal?”
Reluctantly, I indeed. “I do. I mean, I’m happy about what it means for our family, I’m just unhappy with the risk to her to do it.”
“Mom,” Baylor said. “Can we… go save her?”
“No, we cannot save her!” my mom yelped. “She’s the enemy.”
“She’s not!” I said. “She…” I hated what I was about to say, but I had no other choice. “She could have killed me, but she didn’t. She feels… the same, or at least similar. I think we just want to be together, but we know it can’t work.”
“But it could,” Baylor said. “We can take Mari in. If she’s shunned by her family anyway, all her inroads come to us. It’s a good move emotionally for Mr. Never-Falls-In-Love and a good move strategically for us.”
“We would also have access to all of the Westun Family secrets,” my dad tacked on. “The question is whether or not we can trust her?”
Before I could say anything, my mom’s phone pinged. She walked over to her desk and lifted it up, then she looked up at me. “Someone is looking into you.”
“Me?” I said. “Right now?”
After typing a few things on her phone, my mom put her phone on speaker and handed it to me. It rang a few times and then a voice answered, “Hello?” It was very shaky and nervous.
“Hello?” I said. “Who is this?”
“Um… This is N-Nique. I’m Mari’s cousin.”
“Hello Nique, Mari’s cousin,” I replied. “Is there a specific reason you’re looking into me?”
“I remember Mari saying she was looking you up once and you were able to know right away,” she said, her voice still wavering like crazy. “I wanted to let you know that Mari’s in trouble. Her brothers came and snatched her out of my house about ten minutes ago. Mari took the fall for the MasCat thing and said she was ready to die for that decision.”
“She took the fall for it?” I said. “She could have spared herself if she said it was me!”
“I think she wanted to protect you, because…” she cleared her throat. “She’s pregnant.”
That felt like a gut punch. I fell a few steps backwards until Baylor caught me and guided me down to one of the couches. “She’s what?”
“She loves you and she’s carrying your baby, so you’ll go save her, right?” she whimpered. “You won’t let her parents kill her will you?”
I looked up at my mom and she nodded. The relief was only marginal, because I still didn’t have the time I wanted to process what I just heard. Mari was in danger, and that took precedence over everything else. “I’ll find her. Thank you, Nique.”
Nique immediately started to sob. “Please save her!”
“I will.” I looked at Baylor, who already had a determined look on his face. “I promise.”
22
Mari
At first, it seemed like a strange thing that Marcos would hold a gun to my head and force me to drink a bottle of water, but now that I was waking up with a painful headache, tied to a chair in a dark room, it was becoming a little clearer. I looked down at my stomach, praying that whatever I’d been given wasn’t dangerous to my baby. Maybe I’d only known about its existence for an hour, and maybe I was about to die anyway, but I still felt protective. At least until there was nothing left for me to do, I had to protect it.
My only regret was that its father would never know of its existence.
As I sat there, woozy, my mind started to drift to an alternate reality. What if I had managed to tell Bryce that I was pregnant? What would his reaction have been? Part of me tried to convince myself that he was such a commitment-phobe and meathead that he wouldn’t have been happy to know it, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew that wasn’t true. He’d probably look at me with that same, overwhelmingly loving gaze he kept giving me back in the rental. Staring at me like I was the only thing in the world and would actually probably be happy about the baby.
Was it a little girl or a little boy? I wish I knew. A little baby boy that had his mysterious gray eyes and my blond hair? Or maybe a little girl who was going to end up with long brown hair that was darker at the top and lighter at the bottom just like his, with my shining green eyes shining out from her face. Either would have been fine with me, even if it came out looking just like him.
That would mean it would be a beautiful baby regardless.
I started to laugh, thinking that Bryce would probably be the dorkiest father. I’d get to watch as this suave, cool, ladies man devolved into a diaper bag toting, helicopter dad that I’d eventually have to fight with to let our kid do normal stuff like date or go to the movies with friends. He’d definitely be the hot dad.
Hell, we’d be the hottest parents of any of our kids’ friends.
A single tear slid down my face as I thought about it. I wished so much that I could have that life. Even if there were a way to take my baby out and give it to Bryce to take care of. I’d die for that. I wouldn’t even think twice.
“It’s odd to smile at the edge of death.”
I frowned and looked around the room. I’d heard my dad’s voice in that scary, dark tone before, I just never imagined I would hear it directed at me. He wasn’t in my view, but that was my dad’s go-to move. To raise the anxiety of his victims by always staying just out of sight. He liked to be compared to the grim reaper that way, the only time you see him is in the final seconds before you die.
“It’s also odd to murder your daughter, yet here we are,” I replied.
His dark chuckle filled the room. “You always were a smart ass.”
“Like father, like daughter.”
Defiling his typical pattern of behavior, my father stepped around the chair and looked down over me. “Tell me, Mariana,” he hissed my name in his thick, Italian accent. Even though he was a first generation American-born Italian, he somehow managed to hang onto a deep accent that worsened when he was angry. “What makes a woman at the edge of her life smile? Is it love?”
“If it were, would you kill me?” I asked with a smile.
The corner of his mouth twitched, a sign he was losing patience. “I’m just curious. What does a man like Bryce Misterro offer to a woman like you? Smart, beautiful, a family that supports you.”
I couldn’t help but open up into a loud laughter. “A family that supports me? Is that what you call constantly being supportive of my brothers and not me. I always get that irritating, narrowed, disapproving look. Like no work I did was good enough for you.”
“You know I was proud of the work you did for our family, Mariana,” he said.
“Did I?” I said. “Because I spent a little over a month with a guy who made me feel more pride towards the work I was doing in just our time together than I’ve felt in my entire twenty-four years as your daughter. What did Grandma always used to say when I was little? She’d say she was proud of me, and you’d say she wasn’t the only one. What would she always tack on right at the end?”
“‘I’m the only one around here saying it.’”
“That’s right,” I said. “She said that because no one else was saying it, and you know what always confused me about that? If I was proud of someone and had just been accused of not being proud of them. The very first thing I would do is immediately rectify the situation. Say I’m proud of them, but you never did. Mom never did. Even TJ and Marcos, they never did. When they got older, sure, they’d compliment me, tell me what I was doing was good work, but I could never shake the feeling that was them just keeping me in line for you. For a man as proud as you are, you’d never admit to being proud of someone unless you actually were.”
“So now that I’ve said it, you believe it?” he said.
“Well, no, but only because
there is one other circumstance that I think could convince you to say it,” I explained. “If the only person who could prevent you from losing billions of dollars was sitting in front of you and you were hoping that the threat of her life and the emotional damage of being rejected all her life would cause her to change her mind.” The slick smile he had on his face fell. “And you know what, daddy? If we were having this conversation a month ago, it would have worked. But I know what it’s like to be loved now. So you can go fuck yourself.”
He leaned back from me and his nostrils flared with anger. Though I knew there had to be a table not too far away stacked with instruments of torture, he lifted his hand up high over his head and brought it down hard across my face. The smack echoed across the room, and thanks to how highly observant I’d been trained to be, I actually recognized the specific level of echo.
We were in our tower suite on the strip. It was where my father chose to do a majority of his killings, because it was easy to sneak bodies and bloody materials out with the regular cleaning of the hotel rooms. I’d been brought there against my will for one reason, and one reason only.
To be killed.
“You look as if you have something more you wish to say,” my father said, walking now towards the back of the room. He walked just slightly too far for my vision, but when he came back, he had a large sledgehammer in his hands. “Let’s hear it.”
I shook my head. “No. Nothing else. If you’re going to kill me, you should hurry.”
“Why? Because you think he’s coming to save you?” He chuckled. “Even if he cared enough to do that, he couldn’t get past your brothers. You will die in this room.” He leaned in until he was close to my face. “With no one who actually loves you.”
He lifted the sledgehammer up and prepared to swing it down at me, when a hand caught it from behind. I thought that maybe it really was someone coming to save me, but then my mom walked out from the shadows with a frown on her face.