“Touch me with that finger again,” Livy warned, “and I’m eating it.”
“Kew, please,” Joan pushed, and for the first time, Livy heard her mother sound very tired.
Aunt Kew stomped over to her chair and dropped into it, arms crossed over her chest, legs crossed at the knee, one foot shaking dangerously.
Yeah. Livy knew she’d be hearing about this little episode until the end of time. But she really didn’t care.
“I want to know what’s going on,” Livy told her mother. “And I want to know now.”
“Your father and I,” Joan began, “may have divorced when you were eighteen—”
“You divorced when I was fifteen.”
“The first time.”
And that’s when Livy began to get a headache.
“Anyway,” her mother went on, “we never stopped—”
“Messing with each other’s heads?”
Her mother paused, lips pursed, before she admitted, “It’s what we always did well. Long before you ever came along.
“But no matter how much we argued,” her mother continued, “no matter how much we threw things at each other and cursed at each other . . . we still loved each other.”
“And were business partners.”
“Yes,” Joan hissed. “That, too. We had an agreement. No matter where we were; whom we were seeing at the time; or what jobs we might be working on, we always—always—met on certain dates at this little hotel we loved by the Baltic Sea. Dates and a location that only we knew.”
Livy frowned, wondering how only she managed to have parents who would pick the goddamn Baltic Sea for their romantic getaways.
“And?”
“And your father didn’t show up for two of our set meetings. We’d been meeting each other like this for more than ten years and he’d never not shown up once, let alone twice. Even when he was dating that porn star. Even she couldn’t keep him away from me.” She shook her head, started to rub her eyes, but quickly remembered the amount of makeup she used on her face, so she stopped, and pulled back any tears that might threaten to ruin all that careful work.
“I checked with his brothers and sister,” Joan went on. “Checked with the police and morgues in several countries. I did everything, but he never made contact with anyone. I spoke to Baltazar and he agreed with me.”
“Ma, Uncle Balt would agree with anything you asked him, because he’s had the hots for his brother’s woman since the day Dad brought you home.”
Joan slapped her hand against her knee. “Stop acting like I killed Damon myself!”
“I never said you killed him . . . you just lied to me. About my own father. And I have no idea what you did to the body that’s actually in that casket.”
“That one was already dead and not by me. And I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d make a big deal about it.”
“And you had to make sure you got that life insurance before his girlfriend or Aunt Teddy did. Right?”
And that’s when they all started yelling at her. Aunts, great-aunt, mother. Standing over Livy and yelling at her in English, Mandarin, and for some unknown reason, a little bit of Italian.
All of which proved that Livy was right. Because when her family started yelling, it was usually because they were lying their collective asses off.
“She must have found something,” Shen said, busy on his laptop.
“But what could she have found? I mean, the woman was once poisoned by a cult member whom she did really horrible things to once she woke up from a brief coma, and I can still say . . . I’ve never seen her look that angry before.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Have you found her yet?” Vic asked, looking over Shen’s shoulder.
“I think so. Yes. Here it is. She took a flight into O’Hare. No bags checked. She arrived this morning. She didn’t rent a car, and it looks like she paid cash for the flight.”
“O’Hare? She goes into Whitlan’s daughter’s apartment, comes out, and immediately goes to Chicago?” Vic stared at an equally confused Shen. “Dude . . . what the fuck?”
Livy had nearly made it out the front door when she heard, “So what are you going to do about all this?”
Livy stopped and faced her family. Her mother, aunts, and great-aunt were all staring at her, arms crossed over their chests.
“What do you think I’m going to do?”
“You can’t tell your uncles.”
“You want me to say nothing?”
“What would telling the Kowalskis about this do for anyone?”
“They already know he’s dead,” one of her aunts said. “What would telling them about how he died change anything or make anything better?”
“So we let these full-humans get away with what they did to my father?”
“A father,” Great-Aunt Li-Li felt the intense need to remind her, “that you said you were disowning.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“We just don’t think you should upset things,” Joan said, stepping closer to Livy and running her hand softly down Livy’s arm. “Let’s just leave things as they are.”
“I don’t think—”
Her mother’s soft hand was now a fist, one forefinger pressing against Livy’s nose, pushing it hard. “You don’t have to think.” And her mother’s voice was low, dangerous. “Just keep your mouth shut and be smart. Understand me?”
Livy stared at her mother. Hard black eyes stared back. Eyes just like Livy’s.
Without saying a word, Livy turned and walked out.
The four women sat down in the kitchen table and stared at each other.
“She’s going to make this ugly,” Kew finally informed them.
As if Joan didn’t already know that.
Joan would be the first to admit she’d never really understood her daughter. Nor had she bothered to try. All that art talk that had nothing to do with what things cost, or how they could be taken, sold, and the cash received and split up equally among all those involved. That was what art meant to Joan and to Damon and to both sides of their families. Yet Livy believed herself to be an actual artist. She took pictures and expected people to pay to hang them in their homes. And some did. Joan clearly remembered that nosy bitch Jackie Jean-Louis coming to her house, more than once, to “discuss Livy’s future.”
Livy’s future? Joan had always thought her future would be the same as Joan’s and her sisters and her brothers and their mothers and aunts and uncles and on and on. But Jean-Louis and that ridiculous family of hers kept pushing the art thing again and again until Livy actually believed it. And she was as stubborn as . . . well, as stubborn as Joan. So Joan knew there was no point in fighting her. Instead, she’d let her go off and do whatever she wanted. Art school? Sure. Why not? Jobs taking pictures for fancy magazines? Whatever.
There was simply no point in getting a bug up her ass about it because Livy was going to be Livy.
“Well,” Joan snarled, “I’m not giving any of those Kowalskis the life insurance money. He was my husband.”
“Ex-husband,” Kew reminded her.
Joan scowled at her sister.
Li-Li tapped her long, manicured nails against the table. “Stop this. We need to know what that girl is going to do.”
Joan laughed. “I’ll tell you what she’s going to do.” She looked at each of her sisters and her aunt. “She’s going to tear this world apart to get at whoever did that to her father.”
Aunt Li-Li nodded her head. “Then we should cancel the job.” When her nieces just stared at her, thinking of all that money slipping through their fingers, she added, “If you want to keep some control of this situation, Chuntao, then we stay. It’s what a caring family would do . . . and we pretend, very well, to be a caring family.”
Joan looked at her sisters. “She’s right. We do very well at pretending to be a caring family.”
CHAPTER 9
Livy stepped off the plane and headed throug
h the airport. She didn’t have any luggage. Just her trusty backpack and a whole lot of bitterness.
But the thought of going back to her apartment and facing whatever nightmare was there had Livy dropping into an empty seat in the middle of busy JFK.
She had no idea how long she sat there, staring at absolutely nothing. But, eventually, a text came in on her cell phone. At first, she was going to ignore it, assuming it was Vic again, who’d been trying to get in touch with her ever since she’d left him standing by that van. But then she decided to look anyway.
Hi. It’s Blayne. Can you come to a meeting about the wedding?
Although Livy knew this was probably a bad idea, she realized going to a meeting about a wedding she wanted nothing to do with was way better than going home.
Livy stood and headed toward the exit and, hopefully, a cab. But after less than a minute, she stopped and looked behind her. That was when she realized that airport security was following her.
She didn’t know why. She hadn’t done anything. Then again . . . Toni had mentioned that when she was in a bad mood, Livy had a tendency to growl under her breath and glare a lot.
If she was doing that at the moment, Livy didn’t know. Still, she did jerk her body toward the security team, smirking when they backed up and instinctively placed their hands on their weapons.
Livy turned and walked out of the airport and grabbed the first cab that could take her back to Manhattan.
Vic snapped awake as soon as Shen walked into his room.
“She got a plane back from Chicago,” Shen said. He’d been monitoring her movements as much as he could from his computer. But Livy, unlike the rest of the universe, wasn’t much for revealing her whereabouts through her cell phone or social media. So Shen had to use more unsavory means in order to locate her.
Vic was surprised that Livy had gone to Chicago. As far as he knew, she had no connections there. No family. But after a little digging, he found out that the Kowalskis and Yangs had safe houses all over the States and a lot of other countries. Where those safe houses were specifically located, though, Vic couldn’t find out.
Yet he still found it strange that Livy had sought out her family. For as long as he’d known her, she never went to her family for anything. If she needed help of any kind, she went to Toni or Toni’s parents. No one else seemed to be of use to her. Including Vic.
He’d tried calling her, texting her, e-mailing her . . . everything. And Livy never once called him back. He had no idea what she’d seen in that apartment or why she wasn’t talking to him. But hearing from Shen that she was back did make him feel a little better.
Vic got out of bed and headed to the bathroom for a quick shower.
“Do you even know where she’s going?” Shen asked.
Vic stopped and faced the panda. “I have no idea.”
“I checked your cabinets before I came up here . . . no Livy.”
Disappointed to hear that, Vic said, “I’ll try the Sports Center first.”
“Good plan. You also going to give Dee-Ann a heads-up about what’s going on?”
Vic thought on that a moment before deciding, “Probably not.”
“Probably also a good plan. That woman terrifies me.”
Livy walked into the private dining room of the Van Holtz Steak House in Midtown and dropped into one of the chairs around the big table.
There were already six people in attendance. Blayne, Gwen, two older felines, plus the future grooms, Lock MacRyrie and Bo Novikov, whom Livy knew through her work with the Carnivores hockey team.
Blayne waved at Livy from across the table but before she could speak, the wedding planner, a She-tiger whom Livy had heard was the mother of Cella Malone, leveled bright gold eyes on Livy.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the overpriced wedding photographer. Glad you could join us.”
“Barb,” Blayne said to the feline. “You promised to be nice.”
“I don’t like it when my clients are taken advantage of.”
“Livy would never take advantage of me! She’s one of my closest friends!”
Barb shook her head. “Blayne, you say that about everybody.”
“Because it’s true.” She grinned. “People love me.”
“I can’t believe you’re okay with this female’s outrageous cost, Bo.”
“I know she’ll be on time,” Novikov said flatly. “That makes her worth every cent. Now if I could just get the rest of this wedding on some kind of schedule—”
“This is going to be fun, Bo,” Blayne argued. “I’m not turning it into some kind of nightmare event so you can feel we’re on time.”
“I don’t think I’m asking for a lot for this thing to at least start at a certain time.”
“This thing is our wedding.”
“It sounds like it’s going to be complete chaos. Chaos!”
Livy didn’t really pay attention to the bickering. Instead, she was busy staring down the She-tiger across the table. The lioness beside her—Gwen’s mother, whom Livy had met at one of the derby bouts—watched silently, but Livy could tell she was happily anticipating a good fight.
“You’re being unreasonable!” Blayne yelled at her mate.
“I’m being unreasonable? By expecting some order out of what’s quickly turning into an insane event?”
The She-tiger, still staring at Livy, suddenly raised an eyebrow. A move that Livy found . . . offensive.
So, in a calm, reasonable way, Livy scrambled across the table, her fangs out, her claws leaving gouges in the shiny wood.
She nearly had all those fangs and claws embedded in the roaring She-tiger’s face when big grizzly bear arms wrapped around Livy and yanked her off the table. Lock, like most grizzlies, was surprisingly fast and smart, pinning her arms to her sides so that she couldn’t claw at him or anyone else.
As Livy hissed at the She-tiger, and everyone stared at her, Bo Novikov nodded his head. “Livy’s right. This meeting is taking too long.”
Now everyone looked at Novikov, watching as the seven-one hockey player stood up. “I’ve got training.”
He walked out and Livy decided that was a good idea, too. She pulled away from MacRyrie. Picked up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder.
“Send me a schedule of when you’ll need me there,” she told Blayne and Gwen. Then she walked out of the restaurant.
Once outside, Livy debated where she should go next. The fact that she hadn’t been able to get into it with that She-tiger left her feeling . . . empty.
So Livy did the most unreasonable thing she’d done in a very long time . . . she went home.
CHAPTER 10
Livy pushed on her apartment door. She had to push hard . . . because there was a body in front of it.
Using her shoulder, she shoved and one of her cousins finally rolled away, allowing Livy to walk in.
She stepped over bottles of beer, wine, vodka, and whiskey; nearly empty bags of junk food; and puddles of vomit and blood. Yet Livy didn’t understand just how bad this party had gotten until the king cobra slithered across her feet.
They’d brought in poisonous snakes. A honey badger–shifter delicacy, which Livy wasn’t against now and then. Yet she was relatively certain her neighbors didn’t want to go to their bathrooms to find king cobras slithering out of their toilets.
Livy walked through her living room and down the short hallway to her kitchen. She stopped in the doorway. Melly was passed out on the floor, a half-eaten puff adder lying across her stomach.
Crouching down beside her cousin, Livy gently pushed the hair out of Melly’s face. “Melly? Honey? Can you hear me?”
Slowly, Melly opened her eyes, looked up at Livy. She smiled.
That was when Livy punched her in the face.
Melly came up swinging, dragging Livy to the floor with her. The rest of Livy’s cousins roused themselves from their drunken stupor to try to separate them.
Completely sober, however, Livy was able to
push her cousins off and grab hold of Melly by the front of her dress. She lifted her cousin up and dragged her, kicking and screaming, to the bathroom.
By the time Livy had the toilet seat up and Melly’s head shoved under the water, the rest of her cousins had Livy by the arms and hair and were pulling her back.
Melly jumped away from the toilet, black-and-white hair dripping wet, gasping for air. Then she came at Livy.
Yanking her arms away from the hands holding her, Livy rammed into her cousin. Snarling and hissing, they battled their way out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, across the bedroom, next to the bedroom window . . . and eventually out of the bedroom window.
Still fighting, the pair fell the sixteen flights until they landed hard onto the roof of a black-and-white sedan. Livy landed on her back, but she quickly flipped over, pinning Melly underneath her by holding her cousin’s arms down with her knees.
Far away, Livy heard raised voices yelling at her as she pummeled her cousin repeatedly on the face and neck, but she chose to ignore all that.
Finally, hands grasped Livy and yanked her back.
Someone leaned in and tried to help Melly. It took a second for Livy to realize it was a cop. Whether Melly even realized that, Livy didn’t know. She just knew her cousin started swinging at him while screeching, “Let me at that cunt! Let me at that cunt!”
“You little weak bitch,” Livy hissed, a greater insult not known to the honey badgers.
“You ungrateful whore!”
“I’m ungrateful?”
“A weak, ungrateful whore!”
Livy yanked her arms away from whoever was holding her and dove at her cousin. She took her, and the cop holding Melly, down hard.
Far away, Livy heard raised voices yelling at her again as she pummeled her cousin repeatedly but, also again, she chose to ignore it.
“Vic! Vic!”
Vic turned around, but all he saw were the oversized, treelike sports guys walking toward him. But amid all that bulk was a raised arm waving.
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