Chapter 2
Chapter Two
ISABELLA
I loved my family. I truly did. I knew that through the worst of what life threw at us, my siblings would stand by my side. Then again, when I proclaimed that sentiment to myself the first time all those years ago, I hadn’t had quite as many siblings.
Family dinner now had a whole new spin to it—one that either came with stress, drama, or absolute loathing.
It surprised me, however, because the latter turned out to not be with the other Cages.
The seven brothers who were still strangers though we were slowly becoming friendly.
Perhaps even family. No, the anxiety and anger occurred with the family I had grown up with.
Or at least, the woman who raised me.
“Mom. You have to stop. There is literally nothing I can do,” I repeated for what felt like the fifteenth time during this dinner alone.
It didn’t seem like she was listening to me. Instead she continued to rant about that woman.
The other wife.
My mother was of average height and had the same chestnut-brown hair that I did.
While I had cut my hair to my shoulders, she had cut it short enough to show the nape of her neck and she shined with it.
She’d had long hair for as long as I could remember.
It had been down to the middle of her back, and she would braid it at night so it wouldn’t be too tangled in the morning.
I’d always loved brushing it as a little girl, and then my sister Sophia would add ribbons and other pretty things to the braids when we had been growing up.
Sophia, a future principal ballet dancer, always had lace and random satin ribbons on hand.
When Dad died, Mom had kept her hair long for the funeral—and for that fateful day at the lawyer’s office.
But after our first required family dinner, we had come by her home afterward to visit and been shocked at her new appearance.
I didn’t know if it was grief, anger, or finally wanting to do something that our dad hadn’t let her, but either way, it was still a bit of a jolt to see.
Mom’s voice brought me out of my reverie. “There has to be something you can do. I don’t understand why you have to spend a single evening with those people.”
I winced at her tone, because it was so unlike Constance Cage Dixon for her to speak about people like that.
In fact, the other woman, a.k.a. my father’s real and first wife, was usually the one who spoke in those icy tones whenever Mother would defend us for even existing.
Melanie Cage ruled with an iron fist and my brothers had been forced to deal with her their entire lives.
I knew most of them—if not all of them—had cut her out of their lives, but she was always there… waiting.
And yet every time I looked at my own mother, I was reminded that she lied.
She had lied my entire life. And knowing that, it was hard to even speak with her anymore.
This had been the first dinner I’d come to in a few weeks and perhaps my last. While I knew my younger sister, Emily, was doing her best to keep the peace, the rest of us were at a fragile state of not knowing what to do.
Kyler had left town to go on tour. Sophia and Pheobe were each in love and spending more time with their significant others and their families.
And that left me—alone and honestly too angry and confused to sit for too long with this woman I didn’t recognize anymore.
It was no wonder the panic attacks had settled in and getting a full night’s sleep hadn’t been in the cards for me for longer than I could count. I wasn’t sure if it was because of family, my mother…or him .
And not the him that haunted my dreams.
But the one who haunted my nightmares.
“Please stop talking about our family as if they’re vermin,” Sophia said, her voice smooth, if a little forceful.
She squeezed her boyfriend Cale’s hand, and he gave the two of us a sympathetic look.
I liked the man for her. He treated her well and dealt with the insanity and antics that was the Cage family.
The fact he stood up for Sophia when needed but also stood back so she could fight for herself spoke volumes.
“That’s not what I’m doing at all,” my mother backstepped.
“But with all of those lawyers on that side of the family they take everything from us. With how smart you are, Isabella, why must you eat dinner with them once a month? Surely you can use those brains of yours that you always boast about to do something for good.”
The pointed slap felt almost physical at this point.
Growing up, we had our roles—even if we didn’t agree with the labels.
Pheobe, the youngest, the bright and sunny.
Then Emily, the earnest and hopeful. Kyler, the only boy—at the time—and the most athletic and talented.
Sophia, the graceful and willowy dancer.
And me. Isabella. The brain. And apparently the boastful brain.
“The will stated if we didn’t have dinner with our siblings once a month, the company will dissolve. Their inheritance, as well as ours, will go away,” I answered for what felt like the one hundredth time.
It wasn’t as simple as all that, but getting into the legal jargon with my mother was an endless loop of exhaustion. One other thing that made my chest tighten.
“You’ve never needed that money. Why do you need it now?
” Mom stared at me as if I had all the answers and refused to give them to her out of spite.
Who was this woman and where had the kind and flighty mother I’d grown up with gone?
Had that been a mirage the same as our father who hadn’t been within our grasp in the first place?
I met Kyler’s gaze from across the living room, and he just shook his head, bringing his beer to his lips. He had it dangling between two fingers, one leg sprawled over the recliner as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
We both knew that wasn’t true.
I help up my hand. “I really don’t want to get into the fact that we could have had a little bit of a cushion when we were growing up.
” I’d had to take out loans for college, the same as Emily and Pheobe, not to mention classes for Kyler and Sophia.
The interest alone killed us. However the other Cages had wiped that debt clean.
Not because of charity, but because no Cage would be in debt because of our father.
It was our new oath. I shook my head and continued.
“But we can’t go back. We can’t go back to the vacations and colleges that we didn’t even look at because we were afraid of spending too much money with so many siblings. ”
Kyler snorted. “And it turns out dear old Dad was completely loaded. In more ways than one.”
I glared at my brother, as my mom put her hand to her chest, looking askance at the crude joke. And it wasn’t even a good joke.
“I don’t want to argue right now,” Phoebe put in as she squeezed her fiancé’s thigh.
Kane had his arm around her shoulders and brought her closer.
Between Sophia and Phoebe, the two of them had found their partners.
The people that clicked for them. And so in this moment they had someone to lean on when it felt like all was lost.
Our other sibling, Emily, hadn’t been able to make it to dinner tonight, and for that I was grateful.
What once had been joyous, albeit a little noisy, occasions was now rife with stress and accusations.
Nothing like the required meetings we had with the other Cages.
Those were far more…fun now. Mostly because we leaned into the farce of it all.
And I didn’t have to be the most organized and strongest in the room anymore. It was a bit…unsettling.
“We aren’t fighting. I just want to make sure that my children aren’t forced into anything.”
I sipped the last of my wine and set my glass on the table. “A little odd that you worry about us now considering you knew about Dad’s other family the entire time.”
“Isabella. I don’t want to fight about this anymore.”
She always said that when she was on the defense.
As if she hadn’t been the one to bring up the topic of the Cage family in the first place.
I held up my hand as my sisters tried to speak, but I noticed Kyler didn’t even bother.
He was angrier than I was. In this moment it didn’t matter that I actually liked my new brothers.
No, it was the fact that my mother lied .
While we had thought our father was out on business trips, or dealing with his many responsibilities, he was living with his other family. In any other situation, I wouldn’t have thought it would have worked for the thirty or so years it had.
But the sole reason it had was that the wives had been in on it.
Our father’s first wife, Melanie, was his legal wife. She was ice cold, and honestly a little scary. While people thought I was scary because I lifted my chin and stood up for myself, Melanie was cruel.
I saw the way she acted with my seven other brothers. And while they had lived in a much higher economic status and a different purview, they hadn’t had the comfort and love that we had.
Sometimes I needed to remind myself that although Dad hadn’t been around much, Mom was. And she was warm, loving, and always there for us. She never missed a recital, game, or award ceremony. While we couldn’t do every sport we wanted, because money had been an issue, we never felt without.
And she had been a liar the entire time.
That was what hurt. What felt as if I’d had the world stripped from me, leaving me bare to the elements where nothing was what it seemed. Once again there was a betrayer in my life. Would she leave just like the rest?
I wasn’t sure I would ever forgive my father, but then again, I wasn’t sure I cared enough to bother. That might make me a terrible person, but our father had turned into a controlling megalomaniac. Or perhaps he always had been, and I had been too lost in my own ways to notice.