by Maya Rossi
∞∞∞
That night Ava couldn’t sleep. Robin was a hundred times right. To blame Brayden for Ryan’s death had been tasteless and tactless but she had done it. Worse, she had devoted a full month to the cause of destroying Brayden Marshall she hadn’t realized she was pregnant with Max.
How different was she from his mother? She hurt him and he took the beating without retaliating because he believed he deserved it.
Ava stared up at the night sky, puzzled. Not once, had Brayden asked her to stop. Not once had he replied. Well he had, in a way. The day she published a piece about his family, he disappeared. Even more puzzling was his mother, Sarah agreeing to an interview.
The memory of her cold blue eyes so like Hannah’s and yet so unlike hers sent shivers down Ava’s spine. The call had come out of the blue.
Ava had raised her head from the table, blinking in the harsh light. She had slept in the office. Again. The light from the vibrating phone caught her eye, and she reached for with trembling hands.
“Hello?”
“This is Sarah Jacobs.”
“Sarah Jacobs,” she repeated trying to recall where she heard the name before.
“I’m sure Brayden never talked about me,” the woman said dryly.
Ava would come to learn her dry tone was a speech pattern and not intended to express anything. They agreed to a venue for the interview. An unnecessary and highly inflammatory interview. Sarah Jacobs talked about everything intended to paint Brayden red but not about her past. It had been frustrating and enlightening. Hannah and the current Mr Jacobs were safe topics but her life with Brayden and Brayden’s father had been a no go.
To her shame, her vendetta against Brayden brought both her and the news station fame. It didn’t mean Frank selected her to cover fights. No, that would have been too much change for Frank. She became the resident expert on all things Brayden and Ryan.
The more she increased in notoriety, the more Brayden diminished. The shock came when he announced his retirement from boxing. During that time, they could see him getting into a favorite restaurant, attending a major charity event or the camp he held yearly for upcoming young boxers. Ava drew the blanket to her chin, wishing she could disappear for the shame rushing through her. Even in retirement she hadn’t let him rest. In another controversial piece, she claimed Brayden retired out of guilt.
Worse had been the funeral. It was during the walkout of the church she saw Brayden for the last time. Guilt and pain flowed through her veins like black lava. Even now, looking back at the incident with fresh eyes, Ava couldn’t say what came over her.
Everything went wrong that day. It was Brayden coming over to where she stood with Deborah. It was Amy who wouldn’t touch her, who watched her warily all the time, calling out, “Uncle Brayden!”
How dare she? How dare she know the name of the man who killed her father let alone welcome him? How dare she acknowledge and confirm rumors of the brotherly bond between Brayden and Ryan kept secret for commercial reasons?
“Hello Ava,” his brown gold eyes unlike his mothers searched hers hungrily, desperately. “I’m sorry--”
Ava lost it. She launched herself at Brayden, screeching and shouting. Her hysterics threw the private, respectful ceremony into chaos. They pulled Ava off Brayden, and she discovered her nails had blood on them. Amy and Deborah cried. Guests avoided her eyes.
Later that night after the guests had left, Deborah came to see her. “Ava.”
“I know, I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me--”
“You love him, you’re hurting.”
“I hate him!” Ava hissed.
Deborah smiled wanly. “You think you do.”
“I know I do!”
Deborah closed her eyes looking so frail Ava wished to draw her close. “I’m sorry, I know you’re hurting but… don’t come over anymore--”
“What?”
“I loved Ryan, he was my warrior, my champion. But he’s gone.”
“What are you saying?” Ava asked, her heart sinking.
“I’m saying I need to heal and move on, Amy too and your presence won’t help.”
“You want to erase my brother from your life and move one? Tell me, do you already have someone else, huh?”
Deborah gasped, she grabbed the door frame for support. “Get out of my house.”
“I’m sorry,” Ava begged, contrite. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Deborah agreed. “Get out, go back to your job we both know how much you love it. You loved it more than your own brother.” Her voice broke and tears rolled down her cheeks. “He--”
“Please, Deb, ple--”
“Get out.” Deborah breathed in deeply. “I know how many dinners I cooked waiting for you to come. I watched him pace the house, praying you would come. I saw him beg you for forgiveness--”
“Please, please,” Ava wrapped her arms around herself, “please--”
“Go, just go.”
And she had done just that. She pushed Deborah’s words in a corner and forged on. She got many invitation to workshops and sports camps; she gave speeches and talks on sports brutality and aggressiveness. Frank almost refused to print the piece about Brayden’s family until she pushed.
Then Brayden Marshall disappeared.
She should have been happy, but she wasn’t. Ava cried herself to sleep that night. That morning Frank who seemed to be on her side, advised her to take a break.
“I need the work, Frank. It’s the only thing keeping me sane.”
Reluctantly, Frank sent her to cover a small pre-fight press conference. It was a disaster.
Every time she raised her hand, both fighters ignored her. Even her fellow journalists gave her a wide berth. No one wanted to touch her. Somehow, she fought her way to the front and got in the fighter’s face.
“What are your chances of winning, Peter?”
He gave her a flat look. “None.”
“None?” Frustrated and angry at his obvious disdain for her and the question, Ava gave him a saccharine smile. “Answer the question for your fans who are eager to know your approach to the fight. What will it be, what’s the strategy going in?”
“My fans know where to look for me, Miss Miller. At my podcast, social media, meets and greets. As for my strategy, you should be satisfied I have none because what if God forbid my opponent suffers a heart attack during the fight?”
The other boxer joined the conversation then. He put an arm around Peter’s shoulders. “I and Peter have been friends since forever. We came up the ranks at Brayden’s camp for boys. After what happened to Brayden, we boxers will stop the use of press conferences to promote fights. The sport is brutal but we fight because we love it.”
Frank hadn’t blamed her for the outcome of the press conference but the silence around the office spoke volumes.
Ava stayed home that week, nursing her wounds. Robin called several times but Ava was just too depressed to talk. It was Robin who took her to the doctors despite her protests to lodge her complaint of fatigue and restlessness.
She was pregnant.
With the news came the clarity she had lacked for months.
Frank closed his mouth shut after a full two minutes. “You’re resigning.”
“Yes.”
“For God’s sake, why? If it’s about what that fool Peter said, he was just whining his mouth. This fire about Brayden and Ryan will die down and it will be business as usual.”
Ava smiled for the first time since Ryan dropped to the canvass. “I don’t want business as usual. I want something different. I want to live my life fully. I want a family.”
“You can have that here.”
Ava shook her head. “I had that. You know my story already. My mother was a drug addict with two kids, I and Ryan. She took Ryan to our father to raise, and I thought he ran off without me because we always talked about running away. We were close, he was my family. He fought my mother’
s johns for me. I was devastated when he left.” She wiped stray tears off her cheeks. “When we met again, I didn’t embrace him because I was still angry. I kept our relationship a secret because of this job. I’m tired Frank.”
“Good luck then.” He winced, rubbing his chest absently. “I wasn’t so good to you. Know you have a job here, anytime,” he ended gruffly.
Chapter Twenty
“I will go apologize.”
“You’re going all in,” Robin snapped, sashaying past to deliver drinks to the next batch of customers.
Terry was buzzing this late evening as there was a baseball game scheduled to begin in an hour. It was also Ava’s favorite writing spot. Turning to freelance writing and blogging after leaving HTV had been a success so far. It afforded her a freedom and independence she never had chasing stories and assignments as a reporter. Hindsight was twenty/twenty because at one time Ava scoffed at freelance writing.
“What do you think she meant?” she asked Max Marshall who reached up to catch her nose with his little fist.
“Thank you, thank you for coming into my life at the very moment I needed you,” Ava murmured, drinking up her bundle of joy with her eyes. At just three months old, Max looked so much like Brayden it would be foolish to even demand a DNA test. They had the same mouth, chin and high forehead. The only part of hers he took was probably her hair.
Her pregnancy had been a ride. She was almost two months gone and with the stress of that period had no idea she was pregnant. The last thing she expected was to get pregnant by Brayden given his obsession with wrapping up twice. It must have happened the times Brayden was too hot for her to wrap up and had to pull out.
Just thinking about it scorched Ava’s cheeks. Max touched her ear and giggled, playing with her earrings. She inched away before he would try to take it off by cutting her ear off. “Where do you get your cheerfulness from, oh dear one?”
Jami perked up when Robin walked in and went back to sleep.
“You might forget he has a daddy but genetics never lie,” Robin said, dropping in the chair opposite.
“Why are you so adamant about my telling Brayden about Max?” Ava groused.
“You ever notice how Tom’s different from his siblings?” Robin asked after a long moment.
Tom was Robin’s eldest and the most defensive teenager Ava had ever met. Behind his sneers and scowls lurked a heart of gold though so Tom was most people’s favorite of their brood. “He’s just a teenager,” Ava said.
“You weren’t here, he was even worse when we first got him.”
“Got him?”
“He’s not my child though I wish he was.” Robin’s eyes became shiny with unshed tears. “The day he called me ‘mom’ I cried for days and guess what? He cried with me, said he would have done it sooner but he had to be sure I won’t hurt him, he was ten. Ten freaking years and already so prickly with fear.”
Ava was speechless. “I had no idea.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“How did it happen?”
“Tom’s mom was an old girlfriend. She turned up one day said she had cancer and didn’t have much time, do we need a DNA test?”
“That’s fucked up.”
“Tom expected to be turned away, it was later we learned she had gone knocking on the doors of old boyfriends only to be turned away. Had been doing it for years since she heard about the cancer.”
“That’s fucked up, didn’t she think about how it would affect Tom?”
“She feared Steve would turn her away since he was already married and happily so. Poor girl was just calculating.”
“It was still cruel.”
“So is what you’re about doing with Max and Brayden,” Robin said.
Ava dragged Max shirt from his mouth. “Brayden doesn’t want a child or a family. I had front-row seat to his relationship with Hannah, that man’s a loner. I’m pretty sure he’s living his ideal existence right now.”
∞∞∞
Brayden
The second the limousine stopped before BMF, the reporters swamped him. Brayden used his power to cut through the crowd, careful to keep Jack within sight as he helped to push the crowd back. Coming back to New York caused his stomach to roll alarmingly. And he hadn’t had breakfast. How he missed the peace and tranquility of his middle of nowhere farm in Nashville.
But the threat of the board voting him out had been enough to get him out of hibernation. He kept his eyes straight ahead, avoiding the gazes of his employees and their hushed greetings as he made his way to the general board room.
The first person he saw was Sarah Jacobs. Brayden paused. He stared at the woman who had guided the choices of his life for a long time. And felt a sudden anger. Ignoring Jack’s questioning look, he walked to the head of the table.
Sarah tipped her head back. “Hello, son.”
“You’re in my seat.”
“What does it matter, you’ll be voted out today.” She aimed a genteel smile at the other members. “Am I right?”
A good number nodded but Luke replied loudly. “Until he is voted out Mrs Jacobs, that’s his chair.”
Sarah nodded. “Very well. You know what will happen if you don’t step down? I will tell them. Remember that.”
The moment he retook his place in the familiar chair, Brayden knew what he must do.
They began by outlining the effect of Brayden’s fall on the foundation. He had numbers, graphs and complicated equations that said as much as the foundation owed its existence to Brayden, it was time they went their separate ways.
Then it was time to vote. With twelve members on the board, only Luke who Brayden used as his replacement before he left for Nashville voted in his favor. During that time, Luke’s performance had seen the other members nominate him as a permanent member.
If he was voted out, what was the worst that would happen? The rumors of mishandling donations and funds would come up but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.
Sarah aimed a victorious smile in his direction. For so long she had pressed to be the chairman of the board. It was her son’s name on top of the building; she argued. She had projects and ideas that needed the foundation’s backing. He had refused every time.
Brayden rose to address the board for what looked like the last time. “I began this foundation as a young boy as a tribute to my late brother Benjamin Marshall. He died before he was born--”
“Because you killed him,” Sarah snapped.
Brayden hands trembled at his sides. He pushed them into his pockets, struggling to mask the fresh tide of pain the old accusation roused. “Maybe,” he finally said, ignoring the puzzled looks aimed his way.
Sarah gave the board a reassuring smile. “We’ve gotten past it.”
“Forget what I said before. I began this foundation as a teenager just after my first fight. I always thought I did it for my brother, Benjamin who I never met. He died before he was born while Sarah was six months pregnant. Maybe he would have been a very different person from me, maybe he would have been a better champion. My mother built a very detailed memory of who Benjamin would have been and fed me the information for years that sometimes I believed Benjamin lived.”
He took a sip of water to clear his dry mouth.
“I used those memories to build BMF. I’m proud of our achievements. I’m not proud of the past two years, but no one can erase what we have achieved. The foundation was my life for many years, even more than boxing. I wanted to live for Benjamin. I created the foundation out of guilt but today I’ll step down knowing the truth.”
Brayden faced his mother. “I did it for my mother, not for Benjamin. She never loved me and that’s fine. Maybe Benjamin would have loved me, I’ll never know. But I know one thing — I’ve made my peace. I’ve given everything I have to give. It’s time.”
He gathered the files and CEO plaque, walked past a shocked Sarah to Luke. Brayden placed everything on the table before Luke. “This is my perm
anent replacement. Good day, gentlemen.”
With a cry of outrage, Sarah ran towards him. Brayden blanched, unable to stop his old fear from surfacing. He pointed at Jack. “Keep that woman away from me.”
“I’ll tell everyone, you hear? I will expose your deepest darkest secret and everyone will see you for who you really are.”
Brayden quirked an eyebrow, savoring the feel of lighter shoulders. He should have done this years ago. “You mean a murderer? They already know that. Unless you mean the other thing which will affect not just me, but Hannah and Victor. Or have you told Mr Jacobs already who you really are?”