by S. M. Maddox
I’m gonna fight you, bitch.
Roland had snuggly tucked Otis’ body in the back of his Dodge charger as I slowly made my way to the car, stumbling through my tears.
“I’ll send someone for your car later on.”
“What if he puts a tracking device on it before then?”
Roland smiled, showing all of his teeth in an evil Joker type grin. “I sincerely hope he does. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than finding him on my property, uninvited.”
Walking to my mailbox one last time, I glanced around me. Where was he now? Was he still watching? Had he been watching me the whole time, just toying with me and letting me think I was safe? How much of an asshole was he really, to take on the Andersen brothers? Obviously, he wasn’t just stupid, but also delusional. I reached inside, pulling out a single, folded up piece of paper.
YOU SURE MOVE ON QUICK, DON’T YOU BABYGIRL?
I crumpled it in my hands, a shudder of rage and nausea ripping through my body. I’ll be damned if I lose Jack, Otis, and Roland. This stops now.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jessie
Beads of sweat were dripping down Roland’s face as he drove. He’d turned the heat on max, trying to calm my shaking body. I looked down at my hands, nervously picking and pulling my cuticles to smithereens while I focused on remaining as calm as I possibly could.
A chirping sound filled the car as a call came in. Roland answered, putting the Bluetooth call on speaker.
“Where the hell have you been?! Did you fall off the face of the fucking planet RoBro?” He sounded younger. What was the younger brother’s name? Thor?
“Something like that. I was just about to call you. Are you at the house now?”
“Where the fuck else would I be on a Sunday afternoon except home making waffles with Anya. You’d understand if you were--- wait, were you with her this whole time?”
“She has a name, which is Jessie, and yes, we were together,” Roland said, sounded more business like than I’d heard him in a while.
“Fuuuuuuucccckkkk, RoBro, you really are in balls deep. Did you propose? Offer her the world?”
Smiling, I couldn’t help myself. “He sort of did.”
“Shit. She’s, you’re, there? I, uh, sorry ma’am.” I couldn’t help but giggle. He went silent after that, waiting for Roland to kill the awkwardness of the moment.
“Get Dad, Magnus, and Anya. Emergency family meeting in about fifteen minutes in case they’re listening.”
“Holy fuck. In case they’re listening? Who’s listening? What in the actual hell did you do, Roland?”
“Just fucking do it ok, Baby Bro? Quit asking questions. And tell Pierre to whip up a mean couple of omelets. See you in a bit.”
I’d completely forgotten I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. Roland took my hand in his, and kissed it.
“Don’t worry, Malone. I’m going to handle this.”
The car rounded through the trees, slivers of sunlight slashing in between the branches and landing on the dark dashboard in front of me. I kept trying to sing to myself, to hum little songs and all the lyrics perfectly. If I stopped, if I thought of Otis wrapped up in the trunk, I’d break down again in a matter of milliseconds.
“I don’t want you to die,” I whispered loudly through my shaky voice. Roland’s expression was calm, somber, even though he was still partly covered in the blood of my dog.
“I already told you, Malone. I’m not dying until I’m a wrinkly old man asleep in your wrinkly ass arms with all our wrinkly ass kids around us,” he said with a quirk in his brow, trying to lighten my mood.
I burst out laughing. “And why will our kids be wrinkly?”
“Because we’re going to live for centuries, obviously. We’re too stubborn not to, which by default will make our kids stubborn asses too. I estimate we’ll be around 565, give or take, which will make them,” he paused, trying to do the math in his head. “Let’s see, if I knocked you up this weekend, and let’s face it, I sure as shit tried, then that’ll make our oldest kid at least in his or her early 530’s.”
“That’s preposterous. I’m on birth control.”
“Well, you need to shut that shit down right now or my spermy will beat it out of you.”
“Your spermy?”
“Sperm army. Obviously. I don’t know if I ever told you, but I’m descended from Viking royalty. I come from a long line of strong spermys.”
“Who said I even want kids?”
“Oh. You’ll want these kids. You’ll want your own fiercely loyal battalion, created from my spermy. Bonus points: they’ll look like you and me combined, which means they’ll basically be demigods. You’ll want to raise all of our sons to not be heartbreakers, right?”
“All of our sons? How many are we planning on having?”
“I haven’t actually planned on it, but I think ten sons and ten daughters is a good rough estimate to get started with. If we want more, we can always have more. And plenty of practice in the meantime We’ll have so many kids, you’ll be on permanent bed rest.” He wiggled his eyebrows viciously, making me burst into more fits of laughter.
“I love you,” I whispered to myself, but he heard me. Of course he heard me.
The car screeched to a halt, quickly parking on the shoulder of the road.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
I grinned, knowing I was a caught woman. “I said, I lo-,” I didn’t even get the words out before his mouth was crashing against mine, his perfect lips dancing the tango around my heart. His tongue found mine, playfully caressing and teasing it out of hiding. I melted in his arms as my eyes rolled back into my head. My hands tangled through his dark curly hair, twisting it and pulling him closer to me. Of all the times I’d been kissed in my life, even by Roland, I’d never been kissed like this. This was a united front, the end of life as we currently knew it. Officially engaged or unofficially, he was mine forever. And that, in itself, was better than any orgasm I’d ever had.
“Fuck yeah you do, Malone.”
The car turned up a winding road, slowing to a stop in front of massive iron gates. They reminded me of the time I visited the Breakers, one of the Biltmore homes left over from the Gilded Age, that now functioned as a museum. Epic opulence in even the smallest of details.
A snake wound its way through the top of one, framing the side and bottom before it wound itself back up to the top, where it bits it’s tail when closed. When the gates opened, it would give the appearance that it was releasing its tail.
“Ouroboros,” Roland whispered to me as I tried to take in all of the details of the no doubt hand designed gate. “Eternity. Fucking forever in your wrinkly arms, babe.”
Where a lion’s head should be placed in the center of each like door knockers, instead were two giant wolf’s heads, dark and cunning like the night.
Roland waved to the gatekeeper, a chubby old man in a cute guard uniform with gold buttons one of those little gold shoulder ropes. He looked like he’d walked out of Buckingham Palace and had gotten lost.
“Roland?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s… that’s not your security… is it?”
Roland threw his head back, laughing so hard the car practically vibrated. “No, babe, that’s Henry. He’s been with the family for years.
As the car slowly inched past the unassuming Henry, the gate slowly swung open. Immediately inside were walls of boxwood hedges on either side of the entrance, at least twelve feet high. Peering through their leafy foliage, I saw what looked like the hint of a military swarming behind them, men in dark clothing with serious looking guns and weapons making sure we weren’t intruders. Shit, he really wasn’t kidding about the security.
We slowly crept up the long, secluded driveway. I suddenly had the feeling I was in some gothic romance novel. I was positive that there were going to be possessed children on the grounds, a melodramatic moor in the distance, and a mad woman in the attic. And a
ghost. Definitely a ghost.
A bronze sculpture of a stallion greeted us around the next turn, its wild mane frozen in mid-gallop as a small stream of water sprayed at its hooves, giving the illusion that it was running through a stream. Directly behind it was yet another guard station, this one empty, and a second set of equally as intimidating iron gates.
“You guys really have a thing for animals, huh? You big softie.”
“Soft, I am not. We have nicknames. We’re basically local legends,” Roland touted, and I could swear for a second I heard Gaston’s voice in his boasting.
“Yeah, the Serpent, the Stallion and you’re the Wolf. I got it. I’ve heard the stories,” I rolled my eyes at him teasingly.
“Damn straight, Malone. You’re about to be in a whole room full of greatness.”
“Oh, my. I hope I can handle it.” I put my hands up to my cheeks, mirroring The Scream for the second time this weekend.
Roland glanced over at me lovingly, “You can, or you wouldn’t be here.”
He rubbed my thigh as the car came to a stop in front of a giant fountain in the middle of a roundabout. A valet person materialized out of thin air in a red and black uniform, with more gold buttons. He opened my door as Roland came around, my backpack containing all of my notes and laptop slung over his shoulder.
“Thanks, Chauncey,” Roland nodded to the valet as he handed him his keys. Then, his voice lowered to a hushed tone. “Would you mind taking the contents of the trunk to the back shed, please? You’ll need to wear a poncho or something to do it.”
The contents of the trunk. Giant tears formed in my eyes, clinging for dear life to my eyelashes, as I tried to distract myself with thoughts of anything but my dead baby boy.
“First of all, I love how you know all your staff’s names,” I tried to sound upbeat, but my voice came out in a shaky squeak. “Second, how many staff do you have on payroll?”
“Ah, too many to count really. I don’t know everyone. I make it a point to know the people in my office and home, though. Loyalty is an expensive commodity to buy, but it’s much cheaper if they already feel like you care about them. Chauncey there took out a student loan from Andersen Ltd. We offer interest free student loans, so long as they’re employed with us throughout their schooling. Less stress on them to come up with money, less stress on us to rehire honest employees and retrain them. Savvy business decision. He’s going to school to be a phlebotomist or a vet or some shit.”
Teasingly, I punched him in the ribs as we walked up the elaborate front lawn. If Downton Abbey could’ve been filmed here, they would’ve. “There is an insanely wild amount of difference between those two fields. You don’t actually care about your people, then?”
“No babe, I totally care. I just can’t remember what he’s going to school for. I can tell you he’s never called out, he always brings a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, and he always sprays a squirt of that ghastly new car scent in my car every time he’s here. Shit makes me nauseous, but I complimented him on doing it once and now he thinks it’s our thing. Every morning on my way to work, hot or cold, I have to drive with the windows down just to air my car out for long enough so it doesn’t give me an all-day migraine.”
“Why don’t you tell him?”
“Because I’d hate to kill that sparkle in his eye. He’s proud, and the stinky shit keeps me humble. Reminds me how much all of my actions affect everyone around me. Let’s say I have a bad day and I take it out on Stinky Shit Chauncey, he’s gonna go to school pissed off. Maybe his grades slip that day, maybe it spirals into that week or that month or that semester. Maybe my bad mood is the beginning of his downfall and he loses his ignorance is bliss illusion on life by the time he graduates. Butterflies and waves and dinosaurs or whatever that shit saying is. I’ve never understood philosophy.
“Pretty soon, that student loan he got from my family? He’s feeling really resentful that a family of rich, self-entitled, ungrateful bastards is paying his way through college. All of a sudden I’ve got an enemy for life because I was a hateful prick to one of my employees. Not worth it. Much better business sense to have a migraine on the days he works.”
“Oh,” I said, contemplating the level of depth and self-awareness he’d just thrown at me.
“It’s easy to have a bad day, Malone. It’s much harder to have a bad life.”
“It’s not philosophy, it’s chaos theory.”
“What?”
“Chaos theory. The butterfly effect. That’s what you were trying to say. In Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum talks about how a butterfly can flap it’s wings in Peking and cause rain in New York.”
“Like I said, butterflies and dinosaurs and shit.” He reached his arms over his head, stretching and flexing as we walked, his muscles taunting me to touch them beneath his thin undershirt. It’d been at least ten hours since we’d had sex, and my body was having withdrawals.
“Can I fuck you right here in the open?” This man would be the death of me.
Roland stopped walking, turned to me and smirked the most mischievous grin I’d ever seen. “I mean, I certainly won’t stop you if that’s what you’d like to do, Malone. But you should know there are roughly sixty armed security guards on the grounds right now, and about half of them are watching us walk up to the house. Not to mention my family is probably watching out the window.
“Furthermore, if you decide that exhibitionism is another of your kinks, I will see that as a challenge to make you scream so loud that poor Henry comes waddling all the way up the driveway to save you.”
He licked his lips slowly, making my knees quiver. His hooded eyes challenged every notion in my body and, for a split second, I seriously wondered if exhibitionism might be fun after all. I shook the notion from my thoughts.
I grabbed his hand and roughly pulled him the rest of the way before I lost my wits about me. Roland was snickering, a half pace behind me, the whole time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jessie
As soon as we walked in the door, no sooner did I have a chance to glance around at the massive foyer and (two?) ballrooms to either side of me, I was attacked by a woman about the same height as me, only skinner everywhere except her stomach. She tackled my body with a weird side hug, wrapping her arms around my shoulders more for support than welcoming. She looked as if literally any minute she was going to give birth to quadruplets, at least.
“EEEEEEEE!!!! I’m so happy to meet you!!!” She squealed directly into my head. I couldn’t help but cringe and imagine closing the door at where sound entered my ears.
I stumbled back with the weight of her throwing me off balance as she continued to cling to me, until I wrapped my arms around her and gave her an awkward little passive aggressive back pat that I hope conveyed, “Get the fuck off me, you banshee.”
An extremely handsome, lithe man with a long dark ponytail and bright green eyes stepped forward to peel her away. “Sorry, she’s a little emotional right now.”
“Holy fucksticks, Anya, when are you gonna shoot those things out?” Roland quipped beside me.
“Tuesday. I’m scheduled to be induced, provided I don’t go into labor before then. And you know there’s only one, Rolly.”
“It looks like there’s ten in there. I think you just might go into labor before then, one way or another. That thing is gonna rip itself out of you Alien style. I hear fucking is a great way to get things rolling.”
“Trust me,” the dark, handsome younger man said, lovingly gazing over her ballooned body. “We’ve been doing all the things. The kid is stuck.”
They were a precious couple. The kind of couple you see on Hallmark cards or whatever. OK, maybe they weren’t on Hallmark cards, but you could see that they were clearly made for each other. Whatever battles they’d had, they’d conquered and won. Each one’s energy bounced and reflected off the other, like two glowing magnets. He wrapped his long, tattooed arm (is that a snake’s ass?) around her shoulders as she me
lded into his frame, and I couldn’t tell where she began and he ended. Oh, I get it now. It’s a serpent. He’s the baby brother. Duh.
They excused themselves from their temporary, disgusting, public displays of canoodling to introduce themselves. Thor held his hand out first, “Ms. Malone, pleasure to meet you, again. Officially this time. This is my future bride and current mother of my child, Anya Warren.”
Anya, much calmer now that Thor was around, randomly started crying as she held out her hand. “I’m so sorry, I’m really so sorry to cry on you. I’m just so happy to meet you. We didn’t think Rolly would ever settle down.”
“Rolly? I’ll have to remember that. It’s really ok, I know you’ve got a lot going on right now.”
“Ooooohhh!!! We’re going to the best of friends and sisters! I really need to know right now if you’ll be a bridesmaid? NO! MAID OF HONOR!?” She screeched as loud as she possibly could, and I was certain that Henry was on his way up the driveway.
“Anya, what the fuck? Tone the girly shit down, she hasn’t even had food yet,” Roland barked, wrapping his arm around my waist in united support. “Baby Bro, calm your estrogen down.”
Thor’s eyes blazed bright green flames, like that time when Cersei lit King’s Landing up with wyldfyre. Anya was crying real, hurt tears from Roland’s sudden, gruff demeanor. I looked up at Roland, reaching up and twisting his nipple hard beneath his shirt as a warning. “You, back up and apologize. Don’t mind him. I’d love to be in your wedding, Anya.”
A devilish grin spread over both Anya and Thor’s faces. “Oh, you’ll fit in nicely. Magnus is waiting for us in the conference room.”
“Sure thing. We’ll get our omelets and meet you there.” Roland placed his hand on the small of my back and steered me through the massive mansion.
The thought occurred to me that I might should leave a trail of breadcrumbs for myself. We’d already passed the two huge ballrooms on either side of the elaborately furnished foyer, along with a sprawling, seductively rich looking library, complete with dark cherry bookcases going up at least two stories.