Chapter 25
“Y ou sure you’re good with driving a stick shift?” Catarina asks, her eyes wary as she swings her car keys around her finger, her body hiding behind her front door, likely naked since I know her woman is behind her.
“I can. A friend taught me when I lived in London.” I pat her bare shoulder. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt your baby and I appreciate you letting me borrow her.”
The cold keys to her Jetta fall into my hand. “I don’t do this for just anyone. She’s my first love. I practically gave birth to her.”
“And I’ll stroke her like a lover.”
She points at me. “You better. Care to tell me where you’re going again?”
“To see my dad.”
“But there’s more to it than that. I can tell. Call it a lesbian’s intuition, but we have a sixth sense for these things.”
I shake my head. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You’re deflecting.”
I sigh, leaning against her doorframe. “It depends on how you look at it. My life has always been a bit on the strange and unusual side. That’s all.”
“Are you going to explain what that means?”
“Yes, but not this second.”
“Are you meeting up with your secret boyfriend for hot sex?”
I do my best to hold in my blushing. “Definitely not. In my case, man-given orgasms tend to leave a trail of destruction behind.”
“You should try batting for my squad. We’ll change your world.”
I grin cheekily. “I have no doubt. Too bad the only vagina I want to touch is my own. I’ll pick you up for the show. Thank you.” I blow her a kiss and then I’m gone, heading west, listening to Bach and realigning my thoughts.
I haven’t told many people in my life about my relationship with the Fritz family because it’s a difficult one to explain.
My father works for them, and I grew up in the staff house behind their massive mansion.
But they’ve never treated me as the help’s daughter.
They treat me as their daughter. As their sister and friend.
That’s not even including Luca because how do I explain that one?
So much of what we went through that summer feels private to me. It was a moment in time with lasting reach. Tentacles that have permanently wrapped themselves around me. Every encounter with him felt like a dream and I was living for the hope of it. For the hope of us that was crushed.
He was the broken bad boy, and I was the quiet good girl wanting to break free.
Now I don’t know what we are other than still tangled in each other’s web.
But it’s not like he’s any old guy I can chat up my friends about. He’s Luca Freaking Fritz. Billionaire. Playboy. Notorious bachelor. Famous as can be.
How do I explain to them that I’m already breaking promise after promise I’ve made to myself and all within a matter of weeks? I allowed him to fuck me in an alley and come all over me while he watched me masturbate. I have no clue what I’m doing. What I’m ready for and what I’m not.
All I know is that I need space. And time.
Before I cross that irrevocable line and I’m lost to him forever—the way I thought I was once.
I told myself it wouldn’t matter what he had to say.
That his excuses were meaningless after everything the last four years did to me.
But what he told me in the pool… his actions in the last couple of weeks… his tattoo…
The ride out to the compound is mercifully traffic free and I pull around the main house to the back where I grew up, staring at the staff house that’s a mix of single rooms that utilize the common areas, including a shared kitchen and small one or two-bedroom apartments.
My dad, mom—until her death—and I lived in a two-bedroom, but when I moved out, Dad chose to switch to one of the one-bedroom apartments, making room for the head gardener and his family to have the two-bedroom.
So, it doesn’t quite feel like home.
Hell, I practically spent more time in the main house playing with Rina and occasionally Grace than I did back here.
Stepping out into the November sunshine, I enter the house, head up to the second floor, and knock on my dad’s door. He opens it not even two seconds later, a cup of tea—ever the Brit—in his hand and a smile on his face that pulls one of my own.
“You’re late.”
I roll my eyes, kissing his cheek as I walk past him. “Three minutes.”
He shuts the door and I take a moment to look around.
Oddly enough, I don’t come in here often.
Any time I ever came to visit or even when I moved back, I was staying in one of the extra rooms in the house.
It’s small, barebones, and so clean you could likely eat off the floor, just the way he likes things.
Clean. Utilitarian. Organized.
His whole life has been like this, and I wonder if it’s a trait he picked up in the military.
I never asked him because he doesn’t talk much about his life growing up or his life in the British military and certainly never about his time with MI6.
Then again, my father never talks a lot about anything.
He was an orphan. Spent time bouncing between foster homes and the streets until he joined the military at sixteen.
Then he met my mother on an assignment.
Then he got shot and Dr. Fritz was in the right place at the right time and saved his life.
Dr. Fritz convinced my father to retire and move to the States to play the part of estate manager and chief of security. But my mother didn’t retire. She spent as much time in Israel as she did with us, only to die.
My fingers find the picture of her in a silver frame sitting on top of his console table.
I look so much like my mother, but with my father’s eyes.
“I’m not sure I trust my memories of her anymore,” I tell him, an ancient sadness creeping back in as it does every time I think of her.
“She was never around much and even when she was… she’d leave again.
I don’t know why she always did that.” Even when I begged her to stay.
“I don’t know her favorite color or flower if she even had one.
Hell, I don’t even know how she died.” There have been so many times in my life I wished I had my mother.
Even when she was alive, I remember wishing that.
Wanting to call just to hear her voice and not being able to.
It’s a horrible thing feeling abandoned by someone you love. Someone who has sworn to love you always. What Luca said to me today in the pool… about my feeling as though he abandoned me—
My dad clears his throat from somewhere in the kitchen, ripping me from my dark thoughts. “Come sit down.”
I take another second before tearing myself away and joining him at the table.
It smells wonderful in here, like cooked meat mixed with something savory, and I already know what he’s made for me.
My suspicion is confirmed when he sets a large plate in front of me with two fried eggs, sausage, hash browns, tomatoes, baked beans, and a biscuit.
English breakfast, my favorite.
“Thank you. This looks delicious. I’m starving and this will last me all through rehearsal.”
“Your mother had been away from us for two months when I got the call,” he starts and my fork freezes in midair, my eyes growing wider than the plate before me. He nods at my fork. “Eat or I stop talking. You’re already too thin.”
I’d snort at that if I could find my voice or muster any humor. Thin is not something I’ve ever been. I’m curvy with big boobs and a good sized booty. I just happen to have a narrow waist. I take a bite of my food, forcing myself to chew and swallow, though I’m not sure I taste any of it.
He smiles, but it doesn’t touch his eyes. “As I said, she was away for two months. Not uncommon for her, but I hadn’t heard from her in over a week and she had always made a point to check in with me somehow every few days. So when she didn’t, I knew something was wrong.”
Tears build in my eyes. I can’t even begin to imagine that level of fear. Not being able to reach your loved one, not knowing if they were okay while you’re home taking care of your oblivious child. And then getting a call to say they weren’t.
I clear my throat, forcing down another bite so he’ll keep going.
“The Israeli government didn’t tell me much. I didn’t expect them to. The English government wouldn’t have said anything either if the roles had been reversed. But I had an old mate still inside MI6 and I called in a favor.”
“Dad…”
“Do you want to know?”
I drop my fork, choosing my coffee instead, and think about this. Do I want to know how my mother died? Doesn’t change the fact that she’s dead, but…
“Yes. I want to know.” I stare at my father, my hand gripping the wood table in one fist, my coffee mug in my other while my food sits forgotten. I can’t manage another bite. My stomach is in knots, my heart pounding so hard, it’s racing through my ears.
He leans back in his seat, still holding his teacup, his gaze going to the window, lost, almost as if he’s picturing it in his head.
“She was infiltrating a terrorist organization in Yemen known for its exportation of arms throughout the Middle East and Russia. Somehow they discovered her true identity.”
“So they killed her.”
“Yes. It wasn’t pleasant, but I won’t give you more details than that.
” His head turns in my direction. “I never told you because, in theory, you were at risk. Just being our daughter, you were at risk. I kept you in the dark about so much throughout your life, thinking I was protecting you. Physically and emotionally. The lives your mother and I chose… well, you were just a little girl. So sweet and innocent. All you wanted to do was play music and make people happy. You’re an adult now, but what I told you, however vague it may seem to you, you should not go around repeating it. ”
“I won’t,” I promise.