Chapter 6
Chapter Six
DAD
Check in with me. I’m worried.
I’m fine.
Fine?
Yes.
Your mother is behaving?
Yes. Mostly.
I can have my plane ready in half an hour and be on the ground before that dinner party from hell ends.
Appreciate the offer but I’ve got it.
I’m here. If you need me.
You always are.
“Dafina.” I gently rubbed my sister’s shoulder as she sobbed on top of her pink comforter. “The shower is hot. You’ll feel better once you’re clean.”
“No, I won’t.” Her sobs were nearly hysterical now. She’d been mostly calm before that idiot Luka came to the door. Hearing his voice sent her into a spiral of tears and self-recrimination. “I’m such an idiot! I shouldn’t have been drinking at all. I deserved this.”
“You don’t deserve any of this.” Regardless of the nasty things we had said to each other earlier, she was still my sister, and I didn’t want to see her suffering. “You’re not the first bride-to-be who got nervous and drank too much, and you won’t be the last.”
She uncovered her face and stared up at me with bewilderment. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I’m your sister.” There was nothing else to be said.
“That’s it?”
I might have been imagining the hopefulness in her voice. Nevertheless, I admitted, “I love you, Dafina. Every catty, petty, bitchy, spoiled last bit of you.”
Her face softened, and she started to weep again. “I love you, too, but I’ve been so mean. I told him about the E Cup thing.”
“I know. I heard.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t right. But I didn’t tell him about the other thing.”
My stomach twisted. Images of Nikolai flashed before my eyes. Knowing that Luka and Nikolai were close meant it was only a matter of time before the truth was revealed. “He’ll find out eventually.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, and it’s not your secret to keep. Anyone who Googles me can find the breadcrumbs that lead right back to my mistake.” I knew that first-hand unfortunately. Usually, people were kind about it, pitying even, but sometimes, they were gross and accusatory.
If they only knew about the other, even worse secret I was hiding.
“I’m sorry for being so awful to you.”
“I’ve been awful, too.” I didn’t like admitting it, but I hadn’t exactly been the easiest person to love either.
The sound of our mother and grandfather fighting downstairs drifted up to her room. We both eyed the locked door separating us from them. Neither of us had to say what we were thinking.
We were emotionally and mentally fucked up because of that dysfunction. All that generational trauma had been distilled down into us, morphing and molding us into the anxious, hypercritical, emotionally fucked young women we currently were.
“I can’t stay here tonight.” Dafina clutched at my hand. Her clammy skin and trembling fingers worried me. This wasn’t simple drunkenness. There was something else going on with her.
“You can come to the hotel with me.” I glanced back at the door as the raised voices grew louder. “Get showered, and I’ll pack a bag for you if you tell me what you need and where to find it.”
She was a bit wobbly on her feet as she plucked clothing out of her drawers and the closet. She didn’t pack much into her overnight bag. I shadowed her to the bathroom, worried she might fall. She was unsteady, and I really didn’t want her to fall and spend the night in the emergency room.
“You need some help?” I lingered in the doorway of the bathroom after unzipping her dress. “I won’t look.”
She snorted. “You seeing my tits is the least of my worries tonight. I’m fine. It’s not the alcohol making me feel this way.”
I caught her terrified expression in the mirror’s reflection as I turned my back toward her. I leaned against the door frame and asked, “Are you sick?”
“Yes.”
I swallowed anxiously. “Like sick-sick?”
I couldn’t bring myself to say the word I feared—cancer.
“No, it’s nothing like that.” She was in the shower now, and her voice was muffled by the glass door and the water.
“You’re seeing a doctor?”
“Yes.”
I hesitated. “Does our mother know?”
She didn’t answer immediately, and I wondered if she had heard me. Eventually, she said, “Yes.”
If it wasn’t cancer serious, what was it? Diabetes? Something autoimmune? Neurological?
“What about Luka? Have you told him you’re sick?”
“No.” The answer came swift and harsh. “He can never find out.”
I wanted to point out that it was highly unlikely she could hide whatever this was from her husband, but I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t the time for that discussion. The fact that she had confided any of this to me was shocking. Her drunkenness explained her candor, and I wasn’t going to push it.
The whole time she showered, her phone vibrated nonstop with message alerts.
I didn’t invade her privacy to look at the screen even though I desperately wanted to know what secrets she might be hiding.
We had made a little progress on our relationship, but snooping through her phone would set us back.
When she was done showering, she changed into leggings and a shirt.
I grabbed her bag and then put my finger to my lips, urging her to be quiet.
We crept out of her bedroom and a few steps down the hall, both of us listening intently for our mother or grandfather.
Their voices carried from the formal living room where the dinner party had started.
I glanced back at Dafina, silently exchanging a look that I hoped she understood.
The staircase was a straight view from the open doors of the formal living room.
If we were quick and quiet, we might be able to sneak through to the kitchen where my purse and keys were waiting.
She nodded, and I slipped off my shoes, letting them dangle from my left hand.
I held my breath, terrified we would be discovered, and hating myself for being this scared of my mother. I was a grown woman with a college education, a career and a home of my own, but here I was tiptoeing through a house, terrified to be caught.
When we slipped through the swinging kitchen door, Mariana noticed us.
She waved her hand, urging us to grab what we needed and run.
I mouthed thank you and then rushed to my purse.
I shoved my shoes inside and ran to the patio door with Dafina hot on my bare heels.
We made it outside, but we didn’t breathe a sigh of relief yet.
We reached my car, locked both doors as soon as we were inside and burst into laughter. We were like two little kids sharing a secret. It felt so good to be silly with her. Before everything went bad, we had been as close as any two sisters could be.
Before I’d fucked everything up by believing I was special and mature and beautiful.
“We better go before she comes running out of the house to drag us back in there.” Dafina twisted in her seat to check that she wasn’t. “Like. Seriously. Go.”
I drove as fast as I dared down the driveway and out onto the street. Next to me, Dafina tapped furiously at her phone. Indulging in some nosiness, I asked, “Everything okay?”
“Not really.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“You can keep driving and get me to a hotel where I can sleep this off,” she said snippily.
“Okay.” Apparently, our sisterly affection had reached its limit tonight.
I drove in silence to the hotel, and she hopped out before I had even put the car into park.
While I dealt with the valet, she hurried inside to a private corner of the lobby and took a phone call from her mysterious messenger.
As much as I wanted to hear what was being said, I couldn’t do it without being obvious.
I went straight to the reception desk, checked in and received the keycards to the room.
I waited for Dafina near the elevators while the porter took our luggage up to the suite I had arranged.
All my plans for a long and relaxing soak evaporated when Dafina returned with tears in her eyes and a red nose.
We stepped into an elevator and rode up to our floor without a single word spoken. As I handed the porter a tip for bringing up the bags, Dafina pushed by me into the suite and went straight to the bedroom. She slammed and locked the door.
“Okay. Sure. I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said aloud to no one. “Guess I’ll pee in the bar sink,” I called out a little louder even though there was a half-bath right by the entrance. That didn’t get a word of response from Dafina. Typical.
Tired and worn out, I grabbed my pajamas from my luggage.
I used the small bathroom to scrub my face clean and loosely braid my hair so it wouldn’t get tangled while I slept.
When I stepped out of the bathroom in my oversized sleep shirt and loose shorts, I was taken aback to see a pillow and the comforter from the bed haphazardly tossed onto the couch.
“Thank you!” I shouted through the still closed bedroom door, but Dafina never answered.
I hesitated before nosily pressing my ear to the door to see if I could hear crying or talking, but I heard nothing.
For a second, I eyed the glasses at the minibar and imagined holding one up between my ear and the door.
Nope. I’m not stooping that low.
When she was ready to tell me what was wrong, she would. If she never did, that was her business even if it drove me crazy not to know.
I rearranged the comforter and plugged my phone charger into the port on the base of the table lamp.
I flopped down on the couch, tucked my legs over to the side and started scrolling through my notifications.
My stepdad had asked if everything was okay, so I sent him a quick message letting him know I was fine and safely at my hotel for the night.
I skipped the whole part about Dafina painting Luka with puke and any mention of my mother.
But when I messaged Cheyenne, I spilled all the details but invoked best friend privilege to make sure she wouldn’t repeat a word of it.
We exchanged a few back-and-forth messages before she had to help her stepmom with the boys.
Two of them had colds and were miserable, and her father was all but useless when it came to raising his ever-expanding brood.
I thought about what Mariana had told me about my mother’s troubles and hopped onto Google to see what I could find.
My mother’s real estate firm had a stellar reputation online, suspiciously so.
I assumed she paid a PR team keeping her online presence squeaky clean and her rating inflated with fake five-star reviews.
After sifting through the PR fluff pieces, I found a few articles about mixed use developments that had fallen through and some kind of AI data center deal she’d failed to secure. Local neighborhood groups had gotten wind of it and mass protested at a city council meeting.
Why didn’t she ask for my help?
That type of deal was my bread and butter.
My stepfather’s company had recently branched out into acquiring real estate with good infrastructure and friendly tax and utility rates and building spec data centers based on energy availability.
My focus was the logistics part of that package.
I arranged energy contracts to supply the centers with X amount of mega (and even giga) watts for a specific period of time at very precisely negotiated rates.
Brett had originally built his global empire on shipping and transport logistics, and there was still a lot of that happening at the company.
But, more and more, we were moving toward the energy space and flirting with AI and even crypto mining.
We might not like where the future was going, but we had to position ourselves to grow with it.
It wasn’t the most glamorous work, but it was interesting.
I had to ignore the ethical concerns, and I wasn’t sure I could do this forever.
At some point, I was certain the knowledge of all the water waste and skyrocketing energy rates would get to me.
Until then, though, I intended to indulge my dark little capitalist heart and make as much money as possible.
Thoughts of dark hearts had me curious about the Houston underworld. I searched and read through numerous pieces on crime around the city. The usual suspects appeared, but nothing that matched that man Mariana had described. Italian? Maybe a port wine stain?
Who was that mystery man? And what was he doing on my mother’s doorstep?
“What mess have you gotten tangled up in now?” I stared at my mother’s smiling face in a photo accompanying an article about her business.
My mother and Dafina were both keeping secrets, and I feared how dangerous they were to our family.
And what was that remark Dafina made to our mother about our father never finding out? Finding out about what?
That one chilled me to the bone. There was something treacherous about it. Something unsettling and foreboding.
What did Dafina know about our father that I didn’t?