by Ivy Layne
Chase was there, pulling me into his arms, stroking his hand over my hair the same way he had when I was a child woken from a nightmare. He rocked me, murmuring, “Shhh, Vivi. I’ve got you. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Violet
“Are you going to throw something at me if I tell you I think this is a bad idea?” Chase’s eyes slid off the road and touched on my set face.
I’d made the mistake of telling him about the crystal tumblers. I didn’t lose my temper often but when I did, well, the mess in Aiden’s office attested to the result.
“Maybe. If I were you, I wouldn’t take the risk,” I warned. “I told you I could do this by myself. You insisted on coming with me. I appreciate the support, but if you’re going to be an ass about it, you can let me out and I’ll call for a ride.”
Proving I was serious, I unlocked my phone and tapped the icon of the ride share app.
Chase snorted in disgust and rolled his eyes. “Put that away, Vivi. There’s no way in hell I’m letting you do this on your own. I just want it on record that I think it’s a mistake.”
“So noted. I’m not stupid. I’m fully aware that this is probably a terrible idea. Can you understand why I still have to know?”
Chase didn’t answer, just tapped his index finger on the steering wheel. Finally, he said, “You do remember me moving us to Atlanta and not telling you why, right? So, yeah, I get it. That’s why I’m driving all the way to Huntsville, why I called and made a fake appointment to award LeAnne Gates a cruise she didn’t win.”
“Thanks. What did Gage say when you told him you were taking the day off?” It was the closest I would come to asking about Aiden.
“You don’t want to know.”
I took in the set of his chin, the hard line of his jaw. “Yeah, I guess I probably don’t.”
I was trying not to think about him. Aiden. Just the sound of his name in my head came with a spike of agony. Aiden. I never wanted to see him again. Never wanted to see any of them again. And my brother was tied to them for the rest of his life.
I closed the thought out of my mind. I could grieve, and wallow, and sulk over Aiden Winters later. First, I had to get through the morning.
“Looks like this is it,” Chase said, slowing in front of a gatehouse manned by a security guard. Chase gave the fake name he’d used when he made the appointment and we were waved through. Easy as that.
We followed the GPS directions through a maze of streets filled with identical, oversized McMansions. The landscaping was pristine and consistent. There were no toys on the lawns, no cars parked on the street, no basketball hoops in the driveways or trampolines in the yards. Everything around us was carefully monitored perfection. I’d bet the neighborhood association would form a lynch mob if a blade of grass grew a millimeter too long. I had the sudden urge to tell Chase to turn around, to forget the whole thing.
Then it was too late, and we were there, coming to a stop in front of number fifty-seven Arcadia Drive. I stepped from the car and pulled on the ice queen like an old cardigan. My hair was back in a sleek twist, my makeup in shades of charcoal, my lips a deep, perfectly lined rose. I wore the gray linen sheath with plum heels, pearls at my ears and around my neck.
Perversely, I wanted my mother here with me in spirit as she never would be in person. She’d made her mistakes as a parent. I was the first to point that out. But she’d taught me how to be strong. How to keep my weaknesses to myself, how to fight even if I used chilly politeness instead of my fists.
I was ice, from the inside out. Whatever happened inside that house, I would put it behind me and move on. I would put all of this behind me and move on.
I thought I was ready. When the door swung open and LeAnne Gates laid eyes on Chase, she smiled the smile of an older woman appreciating an attractive younger man.
I needed a moment to compose myself before she spotted me. It was like looking in a mirror. Lavender eyes the exact shade of my own in an oval face crowned by thick, shiny hair in the same strands of gold and platinum I’d brushed that morning.
Unlike my classic sheath dress and designer heels, she wore a hot pink tank top with a plunging neckline over a bra that pushed her breasts high and together, the skin between wrinkling in protest.
Her leopard print capris were skintight, showing the line of her thong across her hip, the black lace peeking up in the back. Her feet, with toenails the same hot pink as her tank top, were jammed into a pair of clear plastic slides with heels that had to be at least 4 inches.
Her hair was teased into a style I hadn’t seen since reruns of eighties soap operas and her mascara was so thick it looked like caterpillars lay across her eyelids.
Those black-rimmed eyes lit on me and she froze. She knew. She went stiff, started to swing the door shut. Chase’s hand flew up to block her. He wedged his foot in the door, easing her back, pulling me inside along with him.
“You can’t just come in here,” she said. “I’ll call security.” Her voice grated against my ears, shrill with a twang that wasn’t Alabama, wasn’t Tennessee.
“We’ll only take a few minutes of your time. I can promise you, this will be less complicated if you talk to us now. You don’t want us to come back.”
She went still at the vague threat, her eyes locked on my face, wide and afraid.
“You’re not supposed to be here. How did you find me? No one is supposed to know. That’s how it works.”
“Why don’t you tell us how it works, Ms. Gates,” Chase said, easily. “Let’s just sit down and have a chat. Then we’ll get out of your hair and you’ll never see us again.”
Chase didn’t bother to be harmless or charming very often, and it always threw me. When he flashed that smile and twinkled those blue eyes at a woman, young or old, they melted.
Suckers.
Usually, I had to resist the urge to snicker. Today I was grateful as LeAnne Gates relaxed and led us into her parlor.
The room was decorated in rose and avocado, the velvet couch a shade of gold that would have been all the rage in the seventies. Every piece of furniture was covered with plastic. It crackled as I sat, sticking to the backs of my legs before I smoothed my skirt down.
Our unwilling hostess crossed the room to the drink cart and poured herself a generous serving of vodka. She didn’t bother to offer a drink to either of us.
“I don’t know what the two of you are doing here,” she began. “I told the other one I wasn’t talking.”
“Other one?” Chase probed.
“Maxwell’s boy, and the one who came with him. Snotty assholes. Maxwell was a gentleman. Gentlemen enough, if you know what I mean.” She leered at Chase and took an impatient swig of her drink. A cigarette appeared out of nowhere. She popped it between her lips and lit it, taking a long drag.
She must have seen something she didn’t like in my face, because she stabbed the cigarette in the air in my direction and said, “Never drank or smoked while I was working. Having my fun now.”
“While you were working? In what capacity were you working for Maxwell Sinclair?”
“You playing a game? I told the other one. You want me to talk, you get out your wallet. I don’t do nothing for free.”
“How much?” I cut in. “How much to answer our questions?”
There was a hint of fear beneath her sneer. She looked me up and down. “More than you have.”
Chase leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees, and sent her an affable smile that belied the words that came out of his mouth. “We have a copy of the contract you signed with Marshall Pitt. We’re not sure how legal it was and we’re considering asking some friends in law enforcement for their opinion. If you don’t want to talk, we won’t waste any more of your time. I’m sure they’d be happy to help.”
She fell for his bluff hook, line, and sinker. “That sumbitch was never supposed to turn over my name. None of y’all should be here.” She stabbed the cigarette
in the air towards us again before taking a long drag and exhaling in Chase’s face.
He sat back and started to stand, holding his hand out to me. “Let’s go. I’ll call Detective—”
“Wait! Wait. Ten thousand and I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Cash.”
Chase dropped his hand to his side and looked down at her. “Five and not a penny more.”
“Chase!” I hissed. What was he doing?
“Done. But I ain’t saying nothin’ until I see the money. This bank don’t take checks.”
“Agreed. But you don’t get the money until I’m satisfied with your answers.”
She got to her feet and tottered on her slides across the thick carpet to the drink cart, splashing more vodka in her glass.
I watched in fascination as she stubbed the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray and lit another from the pack I now saw she had concealed in the hip pocket of her capris. A diamond studded gold lighter flashed and she blew a cloud of smoke in my direction.
“Well? No money, no talking.”
Chase turned to me, handing me the keys to the car. “There’s a briefcase in the backseat. Go get it please.”
“Chase,” I said, again, under my breath.
Before I could articulate my protest, Chase pulled me to my feet and leaned in, whispering in my ear, “You want to do this, we’re going to do it. I figured it would go this way, and I came prepared. Go get the briefcase, Vivi.”
A little shocked, I took the keys and did as he asked. I wanted to tell him to get it himself, but I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone with LeAnne Gates. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to, so I did as I was told.
I came back to find her halfway through her second cigarette and second tumbler of vodka. A haze of smoke hung in the parlor. I had no idea what had been said while I was gone, but Chase was gritting his teeth and looking at our hostess as if she were a cockroach under his shoe.
I handed him the briefcase and sat beside him pretending I expected to see the neatly wrapped stack of hundred dollar bills he removed and set on the coffee table. I guess it was a good thing I’d brought him with me. I’d been so focused on finding this woman, it hadn’t occurred to me to arrive prepared for bribery.
LeAnne Gates picked up the stack of cash and ran her thumb across the top, riffling the bills. She waved the money under her nose and inhaled, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “I just love the smell of money. If they made it into a perfume, I’d wear it every day.”
“What work did you do for Maxwell Sinclair?” I asked, tired of her stalling.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Violet
“You look smarter than that, girl. You know what I did for Maxwell. That’s why you’re here.”
“He paid you to get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby,” Chase said, answering my question.
She tapped her index finger on her nose then pointed it at Chase. “You got it in one. I can tell you’re the brains of this operation.”
“How did it work?” Chase asked. “Did he have a client before or after you got pregnant?”
“Before, of course. He’d get an order, find the right man, put us together, and most of the time I popped out exactly what the client wanted. That’s how you get the big payday. Clean bill of health, right hair color, right eye color.”
She pointed the cigarette at me and shook her head. “You were a problem. Those eyes. Only one with my eyes. It’s a—whad’ya call it?”
“Recessive gene?” Chase offered.
“That’s it. Recessive. Shouldn’t a come out. Lost me a quarter million. I was lucky they took you, but they said it was close enough and they didn’t want to wait.”
“How many times?” Chase asked. On the way here, I’d imagined asking so many questions. Now that I was confronted with this woman who’d given birth to me and sold me as easily as she might a litter of puppies, my mind was blank.
“Nine. I tried for ten, but the last one wouldn’t catch. Lost two in a row, Maxwell said I was done.”
“Profitable venture,” Chase commented.
She winked at him and tossed back the rest of her vodka. “Profitable and easy. Only thing my mama ever gave me was a clean health history and a body that was good at having babies. All I had to do was eat right, avoid smokin’ and drinkin’ and keep my fingers crossed I had a boy when the client wanted a boy and a girl when they wanted a girl.”
“What did you do if they wanted a boy and you had a girl?” I asked, horrified by the potential answers. Her response didn’t make me feel any better.
She shrugged a shoulder and I got the feeling she truly could not have cared less when she said, “It depends. Sometimes I tried again, sometimes they took what they got.”
“And if you tried again? What happened to the baby they didn’t want?”
“Who knows? My job was to hand over healthy babies and cash my check.” She flexed her toes, slapping the sole of her plastic slides against her heel. Her eyes narrowed on me, she said, “Don’t you get any ideas. You’re nothing to me. You were a payday and that money’s been spent. Once you walk out of here, I don’t want to see you again, you understand me, girl?”
She dismissed me. Pulling another cigarette from the pack at her hip, she lit it, looking at Chase with a heavy-lidded gaze. “Now, if you want to come back, you’d be more than welcome as long as you keep your questions to yourself.”
I repressed the urge to shudder in revulsion. The thought of Chase and this woman…ugh. So much gross I didn’t know where to start.
“So you don’t know—” I didn’t know how to ask. I couldn’t bring myself to call the man who’d impregnated her my father. For better or worse Henry Westbrook was my father. I didn’t have to articulate the question. She knew what I wanted to know.
“Don’t know. Don’t care. Maxwell delivered him, I fucked him until I got pregnant, then he disappeared. He cashed his check, I cashed mine. Mine was a hell of a lot bigger on account of all the work I had to do.” Her laugh was a cackle that made my skin crawl.
“When was the last time you saw Maxwell Sinclair?” Chase asked.
“More’n five years ago, which is what I told the other one and his partner.”
“You didn’t know he was dead,” Chase pressed. Surprise flashed across her face.
“Dead? He’s not dead.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because I get my check every month, right on schedule, signed by Maxwell himself.”
“Check for what?” I asked.
“Check for keepin’ my mouth shut.”
I gave her a blank stare, then looked at the stack of money on the couch beside her. She rolled her eyes and tried to share a sympathetic glance with Chase. “She always this naïve?”
Chase ignored her question. “Did you tell this to Maxwell’s son?”
“Nah. They pissed me off. Telling me to keep my mouth shut, like I was going to go around town blabbing. Told me to keep away from any of the babies I had, like I’d want to look for them. If I’d wanted my own, I would’a had one. Little parasites.”
Tilting her head to the side, she gave me a speculative look. The light dawned, and her eyes widened before they narrowed again. “The brown-eyed one with the stick up his ass was yours, wasn’t he? Looked rich. You listen good. You get him hooked on that pussy, make him pay ‘fore you start saggin’. You fuck him good, you’ll get yourself set up before he trades you in.” Another jab of the cigarette in my direction. “There. Good advice. Don’t say I never gave you nothing.” She cackled again, exhaling smoke in my face. My stomach turned over.
Chase looked at me, clearly at the end of his patience. “Are we done?”
I let out a long breath. There wasn’t a question in my mind of my answer when I said, “We’re done.”
I lowered my window when I got in the car, hoping the fresh air would clean the stench of smoke from my clothes and hair. Neither of us said anything as we followed the GPS directions out of
the maze of streets and through the security gate.
We were speeding down the highway when Chase said, over the rush of wind through my open window, “I never thought I’d say this, but that woman made Suzanne look like fucking Donna Reed.”
Trust Chase to make me laugh. Our mother always hated it when he called her Suzanne. And he was right, Suzanne wouldn’t win mother of the year, but compared to LeAnne Gates, she’d been a pretty good deal.
She hadn’t hugged or tucked me in at night. She’d tried to sell me in marriage to a man old enough to be my father and kicked me out of the house when I refused to let that same man rape me. And still, she was a better mother than LeAnne Gates.
I snickered. “You sure you don’t want to go back and take her up on her offer? She really seemed to like you.”
“Let’s never mention that part again.”
“Deal. And I’ll pay you back. I didn’t think—”
“No, you won’t.”
“Chase—”
“Violet. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Just shut up.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and blew out a breath. “Fine. Throw your money away.”
“It was a cheap price to pay if we can consider this whole thing over and done.” He took his eyes from the road and looked at me until I raised my gaze to meet his. “Is it? Over and done?”
“For me? Yeah. Yeah, it’s over. It’s depressing and kind of gross. But it’s over. Someone’s going to have to tell one of the Sinclairs what she said, though. About their father.”
Chase sighed. “What a bitch. Not telling them their father might be alive. I’ll make sure they know.”
“You’re all in the loop over there now, aren’t you? Working with Gage, getting to know the Sinclairs…”
“Vivi, it’s not like that—”
I waved my hand in the air and shook my head at him. “Ignore me. I’m just having a shitty day in a shitty week. I’m glad things worked out for you. With the company, and the Winters. I’m just—”