62. Kai
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my esteemed honor to announce during this celebration that I will be running for governor for the great state of Massachusetts,” Fred says.
I keep a smile plastered on my face and my arm wrapped around my wife. He won’t do anything to us in front of all these people, but I’m silently punching myself repeatedly in the face for not seeing this move. Mom said it herself; she knew he wanted her because it looked good for the start of a campaign. It looks even better when he has his entire family and one of his son’s new wife standing behind him to run for governor. There’s no question that this will get him the votes he wants.
The anger flowing through me boils my blood, and I want to put a bullet in his head right now. He played this smart, though. We can’t come for him, and he can’t come for us. At least it keeps Cordi and Theo protected.
“After this, we will get Theo and disappear for a while. How does the beach house sound?” I whisper to her.
She looks up with a small smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Yeah, that sounds nice,” she says, her voice breaking.
I squeeze her hip and pray for this to end faster. My father rambles on and on while my patience is wearing thinner. He’s using us like we are his pawns, and we fell right into his trap. It feels like I’m twelve again, and if I don’t behave, we will all pay for it. If we all decided to walk away, our father would undoubtedly make us feel his wrath. We’ve been pushing back, but it’s possible we have pushed too far, only it’s not just my brothers and I caught in the crosshairs. He tried with Cordi and Mom and failed. I’m sure he and the Costas learned from it, and I don’t know that we would be enough to protect them.
I look out across the group of news reporters and the security he brought with him. They are a bunch of meatheads, but as I eye each of them, there are a few who don’t look like they are there for their brawn. I glance over at Liam and clear my throat to get his attention.
He glances at me, which draws Emerson’s attention.
I subtly turn my head to the two in suits who don’t look like third-party security and glance back at them. They each nod their heads with serious looks on their faces, shoulders back, chests out. I can feel it in the air. Something is about to change.
Liam leans forward, turning his head so cameras don’t pick up on what he’s saying. “I wonder how many ladies I can pick up in this suit. I hope Mom invited some options.”
I glare at Liam, and he shrugs like this is an everyday thing.
When I open my mouth to tell him to shut up, a gunshot rings out. I don’t think twice and throw myself onto Cordelia. She lands with a grunt, and a whimper as chaos ensues. While I shield my body with hers, I peek my head up, checking my surroundings.
Liam is on top of Mom, shielding her body, and Emerson has his gun out, looking for the shooter.
“Kai,” Cordi whimpers with fear, coating every letter. I look back at Cordelia and scan her face. I lift myself off her slightly, dragging my shaking hands over her body, checking her for bullet wounds. Please, God. Please, no. Please don’t take her from me.
There are spots of blood on her face, and I grab her cheeks. “Are you okay, baby? Gem, are you okay?”
She nods erratically as she looks fearfully around us.
I let the calm, cool focus fall over me. “Three!” I yell.
“Kai!” he yells back. It’s not his normal voice. It’s scared.
My head snaps up, and I get off of Cordelia, helping her up and taking a few steps down the stairs.
Liam lifts off Mom, and she looks at us with wide eyes as she cradles her side, blood covering her hand.
Cordelia screams at the sight, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard come out of her mouth. It’s soul-shaking.
I look around for Fred, but he’s nowhere to be found. The bastard disappeared.
“One!” I call for Emerson, and he runs back up the stairs.
“I can’t find them. I don’t know which direction it came from,” Emerson says, handing me the gun. He lifts Mom into his arms and runs down the stairs with Liam. I know Emerson’s screaming at the top of his lungs inside, but his body is acting on instinct.
“Hospital, now! Three, keep pressure on the wound,” I tell them as they pile into Mom’s Bugatti. “We’ll follow you. I have to get my son first.”
Emerson and I lock eyes for a moment, and then he jumps into the driver’s seat and speeds off.
I spin around, reaching for Cordelia’s hand, and pull her down the stairs.
“Kai, we can’t get Theo,” she says, squeezing my hand and looking up at me with tears in her eyes. “We can’t get him, we… it would…”
“But.”
She shakes her head. “No, if they are watching us, we could lead them right to him. They will use Theo against you. Dad took off. We—“ her voice breaks, and she takes a deep breath. “We don’t know what this is or who was meant to die today. We have to trust my dad to get him far away from here. We can’t give them a reason to look for him, Kai, we can’t.”
I nod and squeeze her hand back. “I know,” I say. My words feel like they are slicing my throat as they come out all bloody and sharp. “I know, baby.”
I hurry us to the Bentley we set up for Cordi and me to drive off in after the ceremony, only now we’re going to the hospital.
Cordi doesn’t say anything as we drive there as fast as physically possible. She just places her hand on my thigh while I force my mind to focus on the road ahead, not the thousand other potential outcomes of today. I will make him pay. We will make him pay.
***
After parking the car, we ran into the hospital, the same one Theodore was born in, towards the emergency room. Liam is sitting in the waiting room, entirely checked out, while Emerson is pacing back and forth like a caged lion. They both have blood all over them but don’t seem to notice or care.
Cordi sits beside Liam, gently resting her hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her with vacant eyes. I recognize that look. I’ve seen it when Dad would make us stand there and take his fists, and I see it when we’re in the basement. He’s preparing himself to do whatever he needs to do to find the one who did this. I step towards Emerson and grab his elbow. He wrenches himself out of my grasp and continues pacing, relaxing, and fisting his hands repeatedly.
“One, I need you to breathe,” I tell him carefully and sternly. He grunts like an angry bull and rubs his hand over his buzz cut. “Do we need to go outside?” I ask him, knowing he wants to punch something or someone right now.
“I should have seen it coming. I should have known the bastard would pull something so…obvious. Mom even said she knew he wanted us back. I should have demanded that she tell me what he texted her. She knew he wanted to use us for something. Because that’s what he does; uses people until he’s done with them and then tosses them away like trash. We didn’t see it, and now—“ his voice catches, and he looks at me, allowing that one blink of fear for what could happen to our mother, our failure, to pierce my heart. Then it’s gone.
“We have to wait and see. We don’t do anything until we know she’s okay. And she will be okay. Got it, brother? It’s going to be alright.”
He winces and looks up from his feet again with a skeptical look on his face. I barely believe my own words, but we have to hope right now.
I look over at Cordi, and she’s rubbing Liam’s back as his blank stare looks out into the void. My heart twists and pulls with yet more tragedy. I have so many questions, but now is not the time to ask them, and ears are everywhere.
Emerson continues pacing back and forth while I sit down next to my wife. She smiles sadly at me and takes my hand. I stare at her beautiful dress that’s ripped in one place and has dots of red on one side. My eyes trail up her figure, and I lick my thumb, wiping off a couple of drops on her collarbone.
We remain silent as the rest of the hospital moves as if the world hasn’t completely come to a halt for us. Doctors, nurses, and patients pass us by to the point that I start to drown them out.
“Is this the Coldwell family?” A doctor asks.
Liam and I immediately get to our feet, and Emerson stands next to us. I feel Cordi’s hand on my back as we all wait for him to tell us what state our mother is in.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says. “Esmarie Coldwell came in with a gunshot wound on her right side and lodged into her rib. The shrapnel from the bone did puncture her lung, but we were able to stem the bleeding. She will be okay, but she needs to stay here for observation to see how the lung is healing. We can go from there with a treatment plan. She’s coming out of surgery. You’ll be able to see her in a couple of hours.”
My throat loosens, and I hold out my hand. “Thank you, doctor.”
He shakes it and leaves the room.
A collective sigh of relief fills the space, but then the questions I was trying not to think about come flooding back into my mind. Emerson grabs Liam’s shoulder and nods to the doors for us to step.
He leads us to a grassy garden area with a few benches, with no one else around to listen to us. “We need to know who that bullet was meant for,” he grunts out.
I nod in agreement while Cordi slides her fingers between mine.
“Is Theo okay?” Liam asks.
“Yeah, he’s with Reece.”
“I looked all over in the direction of the shot. I didn’t see any signs of a sniper, and no one in the crowd stuck out to me,” Emerson says.
“There were the two Kai picked out,” Liam offers.
“Yeah, but they went with Dad. I don’t think it was them, and I think that would be too obvious. Reporters would have caught that.”
“Is it possible the bullet was meant for Fred?” Cordelia asks.
We all look at her, and her hand squeezes mine tighter. We were all thinking about it, but no one wanted to verbalize it.
“It’s the only logical explanation, which could mean a very long list of people. Fred Coldwell has a bad habit of making enemies. He either pissed someone off enough they were willing to off a public official or, if we’re lucky, his own people are turning against him.”
“The Costas,” Liam grits out, looking away from us, his brain working overtime as he sifts through details.
“We need to get that bullet. It’s a lead,” I suggest.
“I agree,” Emerson says. “We will get some testing done on the bullet, then we’ll go from there,” Emerson says.
We’re all quiet for a moment, and then Liam looks up with a heavy look on his face. “Do you think…” he trails off like he’s trying to work up the nerve to say the words because they hurt. “Do you think he tried to have her killed?”
I look at Liam, and his eyes flick to mine before returning to his feet.
“You do, don’t you?” Liam says, his voice breaking at the thought.
It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing about Fred Coldwell does. But I think there is a part of Liam that hoped our father would change one day, especially when we left him. There is still a little boy in him who had to grow up too fast because he didn’t have a choice. After the long list of things Fred did to us and Mom, it broke all of us in different ways, but it broke something in Liam’s mind. It’s why he is the way he is. The possibility of our father killing Mom is higher than I’d like to admit, purely because it would make perfect sense for him to do it. Sob stories sell. There is a saying in politics; never let a good tragedy go to waste. It’s not only reprehensible, it’s something our father subscribes to wholeheartedly.
There was a gang war going on in his district when he was up for re-election in Congress. Of course, it was perpetrated by the people who work for him or he works for. When the news reported a major shooting of ten gang members killed at their stash house, you better believe he milked those poor souls’ deaths as much as he could. Congressman Coldwell was there to clean up the streets and end the violence. And people believed him. They never looked further.
In the aftermath of Mom getting us out from under his thumb, I learned something about people. They are selfish, and they are sheep. But there are those few, far and between, like my wife, her father, and my family, who see the forest through the trees. Cordi sees the good in people—in me when I can’t even see it myself. Maybe there is reason for Liam to hope, but for me, that hope died out a long time ago when he hit our mother for the last time. I don’t know that I’ll ever be what society considers a good man, but I don’t know that I want to be. Because a good man wouldn’t have done whatever it takes to end the enemies of his family. I will go to the ends of the Earth for them if I have to. That includes getting rid of the biggest threat to us all.
“I think we need to consider all options, Liam,” I suggest gently.
He blinks rapidly, and his jaw hardens.
“I understand. After we get the bullet, I’ll see if I can dig anything up. Whoever it was might have been hired again instead of an inside job.” I glance at Emerson, and he nods, knowing who I’m thinking about. Maybe they didn’t get rid of their hitman after all.