Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
fawn
Our shopping trip was a success! I tapped my shiny black credit card with casual wealth still foreign to my fingertips while Sir tried on suits and ties and watched—dare I say, enjoyed himself. Maybe even, had fun.
The next morning I linger in the doorway to the kitchen, watching HJ coax dark coffee from the percolator.
My rat.
Butler.
Driver.
Friend.
His absence yesterday cut an odd hole in the day, a negative space I hadn't expected to notice. Strange how his silent presence has become so familiar and certain. A shadow at my back. Hands steady on the wheel. Shoulders squared against the wall. I open my mouth to speak to him sometimes without ever actually seeing him, just knowing he’s within earshot.
So, while Clay Butcher is the beating heart, the soul, the salvation of my world, HJ is the quiet architecture.
He was the first person I met in this life. The first to feed me, to make me laugh with ease. In the Cosa Nostra mansion, my days have unfolded under his dutiful watch and within his protective shadow.
Look at him—he’s so cute. My forty-something year-old dapper dude in his black suit, sturdy figure, little microphone and earpiece thingy. At first sight, I recall comparing him to a butler on steroids. Still fits.
I wonder what he thought when he first saw me? A skinny girl with long ratty hair and a bump in her belly. I joked about ‘malnourished being the new sexy’ because I was so used to teasing myself—everyone else did. I just joined them.
He didn’t like that.
A plume of steam curls from his cup, which he cradles with both hands. At his feet, Luna rubs against his legs, leaving white fur on his hem. The house is smothered in her fur at the moment.
“What did you think of me the first time we met?” I ask. “I thought you looked like a butler on steroids.”
“I thought you’d been through it,” he says without looking up. “People get a certain look when their past haunts them. I saw it in your eyes. I thought, run, girl. Run now.”
“Run?” I echo.
He smiles, a memory in his gaze. “I knew who your father was, what this house represents. You were in danger. But things turned out fine, didn’t they?”
Yes, they did.
I exhale hard, a silent message moving between us. Sir said HJ was fine—that he'd been praised and given a raise—but I sensed more beneath the surface. I knew Sir was mad at me, but I wasn’t sure whether that mood spread to HJ.
“What did Sir say to you? You had the day off yesterday—you're alive, so that’s good.”
“Joke all you want, but it’s no laughing matter,” HJ counters, lifting his cup. “A raise and death threats—that’s the new Employee of the Month. I read it in a Cosmopolitan.”
I smile and then frown. “Death threats?”
He sets the cup down and taps the rim twice. “He warned me I might die a slow, painful death if I touch you.”
“You already knew that,” I say, gripping the doorframe. Luna skids across my feet, tumbling in an earnest cat fit. I scoop her up, tucking her against my chest.
“He spelled out my final resting place—Stormy River,” HJ continues. “I wonder if I can pick the location,” he says. “He disapproves of… our friendship, our casual familiarity.”
“Will you distance yourself?” I stride across the kitchen, set Luna down, and lift his cup.
I pretend to sip.
Make a point.
We are friends.
Friends share coffee.
He snatches it back. “Mine.” Then sets it down gently. “No, Miss Harlow. I told him I wouldn’t pull away.”
I force a smile. “He was just—”
“Warning me.” His eyes, warm and unwavering, meet mine. “He said that your safety and happiness come first. I’m to put you above everything. I sensed he meant himself, too.”
“He won’t hurt you. If he does, he hurts me.”
He nods. “And that,” he murmurs, “is something he would never do.” He presses a slender white envelope into my hand. “Another letter. No threats required for this one, I hope.”
I look at it. Stare. Pearl stationery, my name—Fawn Harlow—scrawled in looping ink. My pulse flutters. I recognize the handwriting before I lift the flap.
Eleanor—my foster mother.
Hands trembling, I break the seal. Inside: a silver-foiled champagne glass and the word Congratulations. I unfold the card:
To the only daughter I ever had, the one I let down,
Congratulations on your wedding. I should have said this when we saw each other. Know that I’m cheering for you, always.
With love, Eleanor.
With love?
My chest tightens.
The one I let down?
I lean against the island, pressing my palm to my sternum as if to soothe the ache that finds my heart.
My fingers crease the edge of the card as I think…
I thought I’d left her, left the shame behind.
The dread. The guilt. Feeling worthless.
She was so mean—I think. Wasn’t she? I remember her being so fucking cruel…
Yet she fed me, clothed me, gave me a bed and mostly clean sheets.
I ran from her and that house, with the patches of dead grass littered with car wrecks, at eighteen, terrified and pregnant, determined to find my father. Give him the baby so it wouldn’t be… worthless like me. No—I correct myself—like I used to be, or at least, like I used to believe I was.
Now, I’m nearly twenty, about to marry the most impressive man in the city, with two twin boys. That chapter and those feelings are slithering back—eerie as a snake. Some snakes are poisonous.
But so is the Monarch.
I touch the necklace around my throat, the one with the diamond Monarch butterfly. I am different. I am special now. I could prove it to her. Show her how I’ve grown.
Should I invite her to the wedding?
Will she see the Cosa Nostra for what it is or just another wealthy Sicilian family? I feel small and afraid, guilt coiling around my thoughts.
What if she’s changed?
What if I was the problem?
“Who is it from?” HJ’s question pulls me from my spiral, from getting stuck in past Fawn’s trauma and neglect.
“My foster mother.” I stand the card upright on the counter.
“It’s an engagement card. Congratulations.
” Pitiful hope suddenly fills my chest. “Do you think…” I start, knowing the words will sound as pathetic and desperate as they feel.
“Do you think maybe she might actually want to know me? Now that I am an adult? I can be funny—”
My voice breaks.
Ugh. My lower lip wobbles.
Why didn’t she like me?
I cast my eyes to the tiles.
“Now you listen to me.” HJ ducks to catch my line of sight as I blink tears away to the floor. “You are funny. You’re kind. You hear me? Self-deprecation is not the new sexy. Got it? Anyone would be lucky to know you.”
I lift my teary gaze.
He smiles. “I know I am.”
"Thank you," I whisper, my cadence catching on each word. Really. Thank you. For everything…
HJ nods once, as if he heard that.
Firmly, he returns to his coffee.
A high-pitched cry suddenly cascades through the mansion. Luca's sleepy screams crash from the nursery, probably rousing the entire house.
“I’ve got him,” I call out, because during the day, this house is alive.
Maids. Gardeners. Cooks. And I so often go to the nursery to find two maids, two henchmen, a hawk, a rabbit, and the X-Men waiting outside the room, hovering, just in case no one comes to Luca’s beck and call.
Basically, all the Cosa Nostra servants, beauty and brawn, young and old, female and male, ready to fuss over the little heirs.
Just like that, the past recedes.
This is my present. My sons. My life.