But it wasn’t like I’d done the most depraved, irredeemable things out there.
The absolute worst for me was the guy who liked to tie me up. It was the worst because the first time he’d done that had been the moment that made it absolutely clear that I didn’t own my own body.
Now I did.
Chapter Eighteen
The next morning, Cash barely let me out of his sight the entire time we got ready for the meeting with my parents. I wanted to wear full-body armor, as if that could stop my parents from hurting me, but Cash was my armor.
“You ready?” he asked while I gave myself a last look in the mirror.
I was looking for imperfections. The imperfections my mother would see when she saw me. I could predict every single thing she’d say to me and it took everything I had not to put any extra time into my hair and makeup.
I couldn’t give her that.
Couldn’t give them that.
“Not even a little bit?” I answered as a question.
“Baby, I’m going to be there. Gio and Sal are going to be there. We all have your back. You can do this.”
I had to give it to him. Once Cash had known I was going to be facing my parents, he’d never questioned the decision. He didn’t like it, obviously, but he didn’t try to talk me out of it.
I gave him a nod and grabbed my purse and we headed out, lambs to face the wolves.
We met up with Gio, Sal, and the girls in the lobby.
Gio had tension in every muscle like he wanted to murder someone. He probably did.
Sal had anger simmering at the surface, as if any small thing would set him off. He wasn’t as demonstrative as Gio was. He kept inside.
I fidgeted. Of course I was nervous but I was going to try to hide it as much as possible.
“I ordered a car,” Gio said when we got over to them. “That way, we can all ride together.”
He wasn’t kidding either. He’d ordered a large SUV so we could all fit and the two bench seats would face each other. Cash went first, with me next. Bailey squeezed in next to me with Sal on the end.
“Talked to Garrett this morning,” Sal said, which brought everyone’s attention to him. Gio didn’t look like he knew what Sal was talking about. “Wanted to find out how this was going to go down.”
“Good idea,” I said. If we knew exactly what was going to happen, maybe we wouldn’t be as on edge.
I was lying to myself and happy to be doing so.
“We’re meeting in a conference room at the courthouse.”
I scrunched my face up at him.
“They’re in the least secure prison known to man,” Sal said. “They aren’t exactly a flight concern.” I supposed that made sense. “So, we’ll meet them there. It will be us and them in the room and both exits will be guarded. They say what they will and then we leave. He also mentioned we could have as much time as we wanted.”
“Which is next to none,” Gio offered to Sal’s nod.
The closer we got, the more I started to wonder why I’d pushed for this to happen. Then I remembered. If it gave us the chance to have them out of our lives forever, it would be worth it. Cash held my hand firmly in his, which brought an interesting question to mind.
“When you say it’ll just be us in the room,” I started, “does that mean the three of us or the six of us?”
Bailey and Bianca both perked up with widened eyes, as if they hadn’t considered they might not be in the room.
“Good question,” Bailey said, giving me a nudge.
“It’s up to us,” Sal said. “We make the rules here, Gemma.”
Our eyes locked and we had a silent conversation. It wasn’t like that before all of this had happened, but we could do it now. We could know what each other thought by sight.
In the end, I blinked, then gave a curt nod.
“You guys should be there,” Gio said, but then he focused in on Cash, who raised an eyebrow. “But not if you can’t handle it.” I was about to speak up, but he kept going. “Our parents are nasty people, the things they’ll probably say—”
Cash went back to staring out the window, as if what was being implied meant nothing, and waved his hand at my brother, his middle finger raised up before Gio could go any further.
Though Cash did squeeze my hand again to reassure me.
Garrett was already at the courthouse when we arrived because he wanted to make sure everything went off without a hitch so that we could all be done with this.
He said he’d prefer if after this, all communication went through him again.
Again.
That meant communication was going through him before and I’d never heard a word of it. I wondered if Gio and Sal had known but I wanted to hug the crap out of the three of them for keeping me out of it.
For trying to protect me.
We were all silent on the elevator to the third floor, but when we stopped, I knew I needed to have a talk with the girls before we got into that room.
“I need to use the restroom.” I glanced from Bianca to Bailey, silently pleading with them to come with me.
“Oh yeah, me too,” Bailey said, joining me.
“Yeah, I probably should’ve gone before we left the hotel,” Bianca said and followed us as we headed in the closest restroom we could find.
“Do you really need to go?” Bailey asked as soon as the door closed.
“No.” I gave myself a quick once over in the mirror and hated that I was getting self-conscious again. “I needed to talk to you two.”
“We figured that,” Bianca said, stepping toward me. “Talk.”
I took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly.
“I told Cash everything last night.” Both of their eyebrows shot up because clearly, I hadn’t told them hardly anything and I wasn’t so sure that Sal and Gio had given them all the gory details.
“How did he take it?” Bianca asked.
“Good.” That wasn’t true. “I mean, not good, but he took it. Anyway, he hates my parents and he’s pretty angry right now.”
“I know the feeling,” Bailey said. She was a small girl, but could hold her own in any situation, even a physical fight.
“I need you two to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid in there today.”
“Like what?” Bianca asked.
“Like murder my parents with his bare hands.”
The girls snorted.
“I… make sure he hangs back with you two no matter what. Can you do that?”
“We can do that,” Bailey declared.
“We’ve got your back, Gemma,” Bianca said, rubbing her hand up and down my bicep.
I nodded, so we were done.
“He said he wants to marry me one day,” I said as a whisper. I hadn’t decided I was going to tell anyone about that, but apparently, somewhere along the way, I had.
“Duh.” Bailey rolled her eyes.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Gemma, he looks at you like you hung the moon and the stars and everything beautiful in the world. The way he brushed Gio off in the car… That’s a man in love. Gio can be scary. Most guys wouldn’t cut him off like that.”
She wasn’t lying.
When we came out of the restroom, the guys were waiting right where we’d left them. Cash leaned against the wall, his hands shoved in his pockets. He furrowed his brows and I smiled in response.
I was fine. That was what his face wanted to know, but I was fine.
“All set?” Gio asked.
“All set,” I answered.
Inside the conference room was an oval table, which was clearly set up for us to be on one side and them to be on the other. They were already there. My mother and father and aunt and uncle. They were sitting together talking quietly until they heard us come in.
I’d hoped they’d be in horrible orange jumpsuits, but they weren’t. It was khakis and collared shirts for all of them. The outfits were so similar that I knew this was their uniform, but they
looked like they were straight out of a dystopian film where the government had taken over.
I supposed for them, that was sort of true. Though the prison they were in was like a country club and while Mom would be on one side and Dad on the other, they’d been allowed to visit each other once a week.
Same thing for Sal’s parents.
So nice they get to stay in their relationships, I thought, then mentally vomited all over myself.
Cash, Bianca, and Bailey didn’t sit down. They stood by the wall near the door. It wasn’t a large room. Cash could get to me in two strides, but he was still annoyed about not being able to hold my hand through this.
It surprised me how well I could already read him. Then again, I’d been trained to do that.
Gio pulled out the center chair and indicated that was where I would be sitting. Then the guys sat on either side of me.
“Let’s get this over with,” Gio said, twirling his finger in front of him to tell my parents to speak.
It pissed me off how relaxed and healthy they seemed. They were in prison. They should have looked the part.
I wanted Dad to be someone’s broken-down bitch and maybe Mom should have had a few prison tats.
Was it too much to ask that she have a teardrop inked at the corner of her eye or something?
The thought made me laugh.
Which garnered sidelong glances from Sal and Gio, who probably thought I’d finally lost it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Cash and the girls lying in wait. They held themselves rigid and serious, but here I was not even listening to the parent-bots across from me.
“Gemma, are you paying any attention?” my mother snapped at me.
“Not exactly,” I said, shaking my head.
A grin spread across Cash’s face.
“Well, put a little effort into it, little girl. This is important.” That was my father.
I used to think he called me “little girl” because he didn’t remember my name. I still wasn’t actually sure.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said back.
My response ended with Gio chuckling and Sal letting a big smile cross his face. When he smiled he was very handsome and it was sort of infectious because the girls began grinning like fools then too.
It was the wrong thing for me to say, though. I could see it in the narrowing of my mother’s eyes on me and the slight tilt to her head.
She was about to strike like a snake.
“Have you put on weight, Gemma?” Her voice sounded sickeningly sweet.
The blood drained from my face. Of course that was the first thing she’d hit me with.
Movement from the side of the room caught my attention. When I glanced over, Bailey was gripping one of Cash’s arms tightly and Bianca the other, both of them whispering a hundred words a minute at him.
I shook my head slightly, which made him take it down a notch, but I knew he was on edge.
“I have put on weight, Mother,” I said as sweetly. “And it’s fucking amazing.”
In reality, I’d only gained maybe seven or eight pounds. Not even enough to change clothing size, but enough to fill myself out a little. I wasn’t about to let her ruin what felt good to me anymore.
We were done with that.
“And you expect to keep a man interested like that?” she asked, as if I’d completely let myself go, gained a hundred pounds, and stopped shaving my legs.
“Absolutely,” I said back with a big smile and another quick glance at Cash.
He’d relaxed quite a bit at this point, leaning back against the wall with his arms and ankles crossed, but he grinned at me. I believed what I’d said. Those pounds made no difference to him. In fact, I’d noticed curves in places they didn’t used to be and when I’d said as much to Cash he said he’d noticed and loved every single contour.
Then he winked at me. He was an excellent winker. It was sexy and it sent heat flaming to my face.
“Is this why you asked us here?” Gio asked. “To check on Gemma’s weight?”
“Or bribed us here?” Sal corrected him.
My father cut my mother off. “No. We’re planning on being out of here within six months and would like to return to our positions in the company.”
“No,” Gio said, staring right at him. “Anything else?”
“You need to hear us out,” my uncle father piped up. Sal’s mother was sitting back with her arms crossed over her stomach, staring right at him.
He glared back at her. A silent conversation was taking place and I wished I was privy to it.
Then again, maybe I didn’t want to be.
Sal and his mother had a weird relationship that I could never understand. I didn’t think anyone did.
“We really don’t,” Sal said. “We did what we agreed to. We’re here. We heard you. Now we can go.”
Sal stood, then Gio, so I followed.
“Wait.” The foursome popped up out of their seats, but Dad was doing the talking. “If you want us out of your lives, fine. But we want the company back. I’m sure we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement.”
“You know,” Gio said with a smirk, “the last time you offered me ‘a mutually beneficial agreement,’ it wasn’t so mutually beneficial. And I use the word ‘offer’ very loosely. So, I feel pretty confident answering for all of us.” Gio moved forward, his hands coming to a rest on the table, so he could lean even closer to the vial specimen that was our father.
“The three of us will sell off the parts of the company for pennies on the dollar, then tear the fucking thing down brick by brick before we let you anywhere near it. We have a record of the shit you’ve done and you’ll never start another company like that.” Gio stood tall, glanced at Sal, then me and said, “We’re done here.”
As we slid out from behind the table, a quiet rumble started amongst our parents. They were pissed. Mom made it around Dad quick enough to grab my arm, which got Cash moving.
“Do you honestly think anyone is going to love you like this, Gemma?” she asked. “You need us. You’ve always needed us. If we tell people about the things you’ve done… you’ll be alone forever. No one is going to love a corporate whore.”
I yanked my arm right as Cash closed a hand around my bicep to pull me away.
“Too late, Mother,” I said. “He already knows everything and he loves me anyway. Whether I was the corporate whore you created or not. You’ve lost.”
I wished I had a camera to forever remember the look on her face. Honestly, it was epic enough that I didn’t think I needed one.
Suddenly, Cash was in her space, which made me lunge forward to pull him back.
This wouldn’t end well.
“You ever fucking say anything like that to her again and I’ll be the one in prison.”
He turned and took my hand, and then the six of us left the room and the Diamati/DeLuca family behind.
Chapter Nineteen
The plane ride home was quiet and uneventful. Sal made sure we were out of Chicago that afternoon, which got us back in Harbor Point right before dinner. The car dropped the six of us off and we all went to our respective houses.
Again, I could’ve guessed how Sal and Gio were going to work off the tension created by seeing our parents. It wasn’t a bad idea. Getting lost in the person you loved… yeah, there were definitely worse ways to spend the rest of the night.
Cash and I landed on my couch side by side with a groan, then sat quietly.
I couldn’t believe my luck where he was concerned. I wasn’t an easy person to be in love with. At least, I didn’t think so. He’d heard a lot about me over the last few days, but he was still there. Everything my mother had ever told me was wrong.
“I love it here,” I said with a sigh.
“I kind of love it here too,” Cash said back, staring down at me. “Actually, I used to only like it here, but now I love it.”
I gave him a little grin.
“So what do
we do now?” I asked because I honestly didn’t know. I thought I was free before, but now I knew I was.
It was a relief.
It was exciting.
It was terrifying.
My parents were now in the past and Cash knew everything, saw every single ugly part of me, but loved me anyway.
Our last night in the hotel, he’d said he’d kiss away every bad thing that had ever happened to me.
I’d told him that was a big commitment. It could take forever.
He’d said he already knew that but was willing to spend the rest of his days making sure I was safe and knew that I was loved.
I wasn’t sure how I was so lucky to come across that man randomly around Harbor Point.
“Well,” he said. “My mom did text and say they’re having dinner together tonight if we want to join them. She wasn’t sure if we were back or not. We don’t have to, but a little Dante can sometimes put things in perspective.”
Yeah. Perspective. That was what we’d call Dante.
“I like the sound of that,” I said softly.
I didn’t think it was Dante that he wanted to give me perspective. More than likely, Cash being Cash, he thought spending time with his family, who were great, would help take my mind off the fact that I had a shitty one.
We quickly changed, then left for the farm. Cash said something about stopping at his house on the way home to grab some more clothes and I loved that it wasn’t even a question as to where he was going to be sleeping that night.
When we got to his parents’, he waited for me to come around the car so he could slip his arm around my shoulders as we slowly went into the house.
“You’re back,” his mother said, maybe a little more excited than she probably should have been.
I mean, it was us.
“We’re back,” Cash replied. “I’ll go grab a couple of extra plates.” He kissed the side of my head before releasing me to take a seat directly across from his mother. His dad was to my left while everyone else was down to the right.
Love by the Rules (Harbor Point Book 3) Page 19