We were supposed to be leaving in an hour and I was desperate to escape his office. The mention of my mother and our agenda for the day ahead fell like a lead weight in the room.
“Very well,” my father said as I walked away. But it was the first time I heard emotion in his voice that wasn’t disgust or anger.
I was just barely around the corner from his office before tears fell on my face.
“Gabriella,” Malik called as I reached the bottom of the stairs.
He walked toward me once I paused. Then he slid his hands into the pockets of his dress pants. He casually leaned against the banister. “Your father and I have been working for two years on my slow takeover of his organization. We’ve done everything possible to keep this quiet from his enemies and anyone who can’t be fully trusted. The fact that you’ve now spilled his greatest secret to the FBI is detrimental in ways you can’t begin to comprehend.”
“I get it.” I brushed tears off my cheeks and looked away. “But I’ve already apologized and it wasn’t done maliciously.”
Sadness flashed in his eyes when he said, “It is bad enough for a man to lose his wife, but this is simply something he doesn’t need to be dealing with right now. Perhaps in time, he’ll grow to be less angry with you, but for now, you need to understand he’s just lost the only person he’s ever cared about.”
I flinched and looked away. “I get that, Malik, I do. But you realize that you’ve just said my father has only loved one person…and this whole time he’s had a daughter who’s wanted nothing but that from him. I might not understand the pain of losing a spouse, but I do understand the pain of losing a love you so desperately want.”
I walked away, leaving him with more sadness in his eyes, but with my point also made.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I looked down to the main floor and a small ache gripped my chest. Malik was still standing there, his eyes on me, but his gaze and thoughts were clearly far away. With a small nod of his head, he pushed off the railing and walked away, leaving me feeling as small as a mouse.
When I was done in the bedroom, my limbs weighted with grief, I went to the entryway simply dressed in jeans and a black short-sleeved shirt. I had no idea how my father managed to get all my clothes from the hotel, but when I woke up in my childhood room that morning, everything was hanging nice and neat in my closet. I hadn’t even heard anyone enter my room, much less spend the time organizing three suitcases full of clothes and bath accessories.
I fished through my purse, searching for my phone. Ignoring the several missed calls and text messages from Tyson, I quickly slid through my contacts and pressed “call” when I found Eleanor’s name.
Tears were already falling down my cheeks, my voice barely audible, when she answered.
“Gabriella?” she asked when I didn’t answer the first time she said my name.
A choked sob ripped from my throat and I gripped the phone tighter. “Eleanor,” I said, my grief and sadness apparent.
She gasped, and I closed my eyes, practically able to see the wretched expression on her face. “Oh no.” Several moments passed while I listened to her cry. “When?”
“Last night.”
My eyes snapped up and I saw my father come into the entryway. Claude hurried past my father and opened the front door. I followed reluctantly as Eleanor said, “I’ll be there by tonight. Just let me pack and get a flight.”
“I need you,” I whispered, feeling selfish for admitting it to her.
Her kind voice replied, “And I’ll be there for you. By tonight.”
I nodded at her promise and ended the phone call, slipping my phone back into my purse.
“Aunt Eleanor,” I muttered to my father once we were seated in the back of his town car. “I didn’t know if anyone had called her yet, but she’s on her way.”
His gaze stayed fixed on the window, unwilling to spare me a glance. “Thank you for calling her,” he finally said.
We spent the rest of the short drive to the funeral home in silence, lost in our own thoughts, our own memories of a woman who loved hugely but quietly.
For the next several hours, my father and I sat next to each other at the funeral home, going through all of my mother’s final wishes to make sure everything for her viewing and funeral would be done according to her specifics. The fact that my mom had even planned her own funeral made me dig my nails into the palms of my hands so I wouldn’t lose it. My father was stone cold the entire time, a block of ice issuing demands and not taking no for an answer.
By the time we returned to the house, I barely mustered up the energy to walk up the stairs and collapse onto my bed. Just as my eyes closed, the heaviness of the day pulling me toward sleep, my phone began buzzing in my purse. Half asleep, I dug it out of my purse and cried when I saw a text message from Tyson along with several more missed calls.
Blackbird: We need to talk.
My fingers flew across the keypad.
Me: Never again.
Blackbird: Let me explain.
Me: Are you in the FBI?
Blackbird: Yes. I need to see you.
I laughed out loud and shook my head.
Me: I will never see you again.
Blackbird: There are things you need to know. Trust me, Blue. I’m looking out for you here.
That was rich. I stared at the text message. As if I could trust him again.
Me: Go to hell.
Before he could reply, I turned off my ringer and dropped my phone back into my purse.
And as I finally fell asleep, I did so with more tears wetting the pillow beneath my cheek.
Chapter 20
I curled my feet beneath me and draped a blanket over my lap. On the other side of the couch, Eleanor pressed her lips together and blew a breath across the top of her mug, cooling her tea.
She’d been here for two days, making good on her promise to be in Detroit the night after I called her. But since her arrival, we had been busy with not only the visitation and funeral preparations, but the actual services themselves.
In addition, there had been a steady stream of my father’s men coming in and out of the house. He was meeting with various members of his organization and palpable tension seemed to hover in the air. I didn’t think it was solely due to losing my mother.
The reception at our house after the funeral had lasted hours due to the fact that everyone who was anyone wanted to show their support for my father, and, what felt like an afterthought, me.
I had moved to Eleanor’s side, clutching her hand while the forever-long line of people offered their condolences. I figured about half of them were genuine. The ones who I knew were genuine were my, apparently, brand new friends from Fireside Grill. When I saw Paige walk toward me with her husband, I had begun shaking. When Suzanne followed with her husband, and then Chelsea and Camden, Eleanor had to wrap her arm around my waist to keep me from collapsing.
They had swallowed me in hugs and warm kisses, whispering how sorry they were for my loss. Suzanne told me she and her husband had gone to Fireside for lunch, and when Declan was surprised to see her there, telling her my mom had passed and about the funeral and reception afterward, they had all rushed to my house.
I had never had friends as amazing as these women, and I promised I would call them as soon as everything settled down after.
At least the burial service earlier in the day had been a private affair with only me, my father, Eleanor, Clarissa, and Claude, along with my father’s most trusted men, in attendance. Malik had been absent, which I spent no further time thinking about after noticing.
Now Eleanor and I had chucked our funeral wear and were lounging in the living room in sweats, with Clarissa hovering nearby to ensure we ate.
“We haven’t had much time to speak,” Eleanor said and took another sip of her tea.
I clung to my coffee and pressed my lips together. “There hasn’t been much else to say.”
I had already told her all about Tyson. Even to her it seemed like déjà vu. She had let me cry on her shoulder, both of us crying over my mom’s death, which we expected, and me also crying over Tyson’s betrayal, which I hadn’t expected at all.
“What are you going to do now?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. I have the week off work and I was supposed to move into my apartment last weekend but I postponed that.”
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to postpone all of the furniture deliveries, so my non-lived-in apartment was filled with furniture. I was debating about what to do with the furniture and the place. How could I live in Latham Hills now?
“Maybe I should stay here for a while,” I told Eleanor and watched the expression on her face. To her credit, it stayed perfectly blank.
“I feel bad leaving him now,” I said, in reference to my father. Although why I should was a mystery even to me.
But the fact was, he and Eleanor were the only family I had, and she was leaving tomorrow. A part of me wanted to jump on the plane with her and go back to Colorado, where everything was simpler. My heart surely never felt like it was being pounced on and pecked into a thousand jagged pieces when I was living among goats and chickens.
“Have you spoken to him yet?” she asked, her voice soft.
She didn’t have to say his name. I already knew. She already knew that he wasn’t far from my mind. Sometimes when I cried myself to sleep at night, I imagined Tyson’s arm around me, comforting me and holding me close.