Chapter 28 #2
Hollis smirks, saying, “I suppose it’s a sibling thing. Nova and her pack finally have the opportunity to spend more time together, which is great, but?—”
“Life gets in the way at times?” Felix asks, finishing her thought. “I get that. It’s why we have a cabin, so we can tell the world to get fucked while fucking.”
I can’t help the giggle that comes out, and he just grins unrepentantly at me.
“Do you need to get away for the weekend? I can make sure the cabin is ready for you,” he says. “There’s plenty of space there, and you can get calls if you’re worried about your clients, Nova.”
“No one is set to give birth,” I muse. “I should be able to take off and unplug a bit.”
“The chief of staff is currently scared that Dr. Royal or I will sue the hospital, which means I am also free,” Tyde says.
Caleb and Lars catch up to us, brows raised as they catch the end of Tyde’s sentence.
“Are we going somewhere?” Caleb asks.
“Pack Ledger just offered us their cabin,” I explain.
“That’s nice,” Lars says slowly. “I guess I’m promoting someone to manager to see if she can manage for the weekend.”
They’re very nonchalant for being kidnapped, and I say as much as we split off toward our vehicles.
“You can kidnap me whenever you’d like,” Caleb purrs. “I may be into role reversal.”
Tyde snorts under his breath, and I begin to get excited. This will be fun, right?
HOLLIS
Gazing up at the house I grew up in, I wince as I see my parents waiting for me at the door. They aren’t typically doting people, I don’t know what’s come over them.
My guard is beside me and Briar drove us here. I’m glad Cian decided that they made better people than fertilizer. He’s a bit of a hot head which is no surprise, but he attempts to be fair as well.
The alpha in question gets out of his chauffeured vehicle, and I smile as I see that my grandparents drove with him. Evan has a careful eye on them both as he helps them out of the vehicle, while still giving them full autonomy. It’s clear that he is used to being around older people.
“Ready Hollis?” Briar asks, her gaze on the car next to us.
“As I’ll ever be,” I grumble.
As Briar gets out to open the door for me, Trevor glances at me.
“I know these are your parents, but do you want me to come with you?” he asks nervously.
“This visit should be more awkward than dangerous,” I sigh. “I’m fully armed just the same though. Even without my favorite blade.”
“Fucking Emilia,” he sighs sympathetically as I smirk.
My thoughts exactly. I spent some time when I got home hacking into the FBI’s computer network, and found that they’ll be arresting several omegas from the newly dismantled ROWS, including Alyssa Lauren.
They found very suspicious texts with a known motorcycle club president about a “human inventory” shipment that needed to go out soon. I’m somehow unsurprised that Gwen’s mother is involved in human and omega trafficking.
I just feel bad for Gwen, yet incredibly proud that she took the initiative to go through with her article. It’s supposed to be printed in Monday’s edition of the Minneapolis Herold, and I definitely plan to get my own copy. Fuck, I may even have it framed.
Revenge is sweet, even if Emilia got away. Trash has a way of floating back up. While I’m worried about what her next move is, I know it won’t be a legal one. No, Emilia is going to retreat into the underbelly of society.
That’s not scary at all.
Getting out of the car, I smooth out my pencil skirt of any wrinkles, real or imagined. While I hate being here and believe this visit will get ugly, my hands are free of tremors.
Leaving Briar and Trevor behind, I nod in greeting to the small group that I consider family, even if one isn’t blood related at all.
“Good morning, Hollis,” Cian says, pulling my arm through his to help me walk along the driveway up to the house.
“Good morning everyone,” I murmur. My hair is curled, and I have a headband that’s currently hiding a blade in its curve. I also have a gun at my thigh, and another knife hidden in my cleavage. It’s kind of sad that I’m loaded for bear to see my own parents.
“The children are being extra today, I see,” my grandfather muses, referring to my parents.
My lips twitch as I nod.
“Remember, Hollis, no matter what your mother says, you look lovely today,” my grandmother says quickly before we get into my mother’s ear shot.
I hate to say it, but I’ll probably need that reminder. Annabelle Edwards has been fat shaming me since I was a preteen. I have curves, but I am not at all what I’d consider “fat.”
“You have my anxiety spiking with your insistence for this visit,” my mother says coolly. “Please, come in.”
“Good morning, Annabelle,” Cian says congenially, helping me up the icy steps. I don’t know why my parents didn’t see fit to ensure they’d be safe. “Let me salt these before you try to help Aine up them, Kevin.”
My grandfather hisses as my heel slips, but I manage to make it up. I raise my brow at my father, and he sighs as he walks back inside. My mother drags me inside the house while my dad makes the steps safe for my grandparents, while I hold in a sigh.
“Miss,” the butler says, and I smile at Reggie as I take off my coat and hand it to him. “It’s nice to see you.”
“It’s nice to see you as well,” I say. While I hate this house, he’s been working for my parents since I was ten. Before that, his father worked for them.
“Hollis, what are you wearing?” my mother asks, aghast as her gaze scathingly glares at my outfit.
Truthfully, there’s nothing wrong with it. Along with the lavender checkered skirt and flesh colored fleece tights, I’m wearing a long sleeved scooped neck lavender sweater and earrings. My pack wanted to drag me back to my nest to play secretary, so maybe it’s a little sexy?
Or it could be that my pack just can’t get enough of me. That could be it.
“I’m wearing clothing, Mother,” I say, my heels clicking along the marble floor as I walk toward the sitting room.
“If I were you, I’d wear something that didn’t accentuate my hips, Hollis. Your ass is also unseemingly large in that skirt. You should burn it immediately,” she hisses.
“If I burned it immediately, I’d be even more unsuitably dressed,” I remind.
My mother is willowy and tall, and wears dresses that accentuate her delicate appearance. She doesn’t have much cleavage to speak of, or curves. In her mind, that’s what I should look like as well, and she’s never been able to let me live down the fact that I don’t.
“Very cute,” she mutters. “All of that fancy education, and you use it to turn on me.”
While I had tutors, I don’t think they’re the reason for my scathing access to sarcasm. After I left home, I didn’t see a reason to continue higher education.
“Let’s not do this,” I say, finding a spot on the couch that I like. The heavy perfume my mother insists on wearing seems to be less prominent here.
Sitting across from me, she shakes her head, her blond hair not moving from its elegant chignon. “I heard you have a pack now. Your choice is less than acceptable, Hollis.”
“They’re my scent matches, Mother. I highly doubt that my ‘choice’ had much to do with that,” I say drolly.
While biology has a part in this, I did still choose Pack Ledger. Anything else would have been unacceptable to them or myself.
“If you hadn’t left home, you’d never have met them and?—”
“And that direction of conversation is depressing,” I add. “There’s not a single alternate reality where I wouldn’t leave home, Mother.”
Cian and my grandparents join us at this point, with Reggie following behind my father who is rounding out the group.
“Can I get anyone anything? Tea?” he asks.
“I suppose tea will be necessary,” my mother says, watching as everyone takes their seat. “What’s going on?”
“Annabelle, calm down,” my grandmother grumbles, making my lips twitch. I love her so much. “We are here for Hollis. You tend to fly off the handle about things.”
“Are you telling me that I’m hysterical, Aine?”
“If the broom fits, fly it,” Grandma says, shrugging.
I can tell my mother is about to lose her shit, so it’s time to get this conversation back on track.
“I don’t know if you know this or not, but I’ve been looking for my sister,” I begin.
“You don’t have a sister,” my father says. “Why are you looking for a ghost? This type of behavior can’t be healthy. Maybe you should see someone about this.”
“Paul, are you telling my granddaughter that she needs to see a quack who will tell her what you want him to?” Grandpa asks. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Enough,” Cian grunts. “I also have believed for some time that Maree could be alive. Gaslighting Hollis in front of me will simply prove that you’re what I believe you to be: a fool.”
“Cian is correct. Hollis is right to continue to look, why both you and Annabelle have stuck your heads in the sand under the belief that your daughter is dead, is beyond me” Grandpa says.
“She is dead,” my mother wheezes. “We looked for several years until an investigator brought us a photo of our dead baby. She was found in a trash can in Minneapolis. You can say that it could be any child, but it broke my heart. I couldn’t look anymore after that.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” I accuse, head tilted to look for any chance that she’s lying to me.
“It’s true, though,” my father says. “When were we supposed to tell you this? When we found out when you were three? The investigator found the files in a Jane Doe folder at the police station. We all know what shit the police force is in Minneapolis.”
“That may be true, but there had to have been a time you could have told her,” my grandmother says. “You’d have been wrong in this assumption that your daughter is dead, but it’s still something that my granddaughter should have been told.”
Reeling, I think about what my mother said. If this is true, it does explain why she may have shut down about my sister’s existence. However, it doesn’t excuse her from being such a shit mother to me.
“I found Maree,” I say, ripping off the bandaid. “Caleb and Lars actually did, and they recognized her by her eyes.”
“The Edwards eyes don’t lie,” my grandmother murmurs. “We’ve seen her too. Kevin took me to breakfast, and we ran into her. It was quite the shock.”
“No,” my father growls. “You can’t come into my home and tell me that my lost daughter has just been traipsing around Minneapolis, doing normal fucking things like going to breakfast.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” I say, swallowing hard. “I even killed the people who took her.”
“Who?” My mother is white as a sheet, but it’s a steady draining until her healthy glow leaves nothing but a ghost behind.
“Turbis and Louisa Franco,” I say. “Mr. Roberto Domino hired them to kidnap her, and then allowed them to raise her. They did a terrible job of it, and she ran away when she was sixteen.”
My father blinks slowly, looking as if he’s trying to process my words.
“Domino,” he says. “He’s a Michigan man, why would he want something of mine?”
“You’re not very invested in the families outside of accumulating money, which means that Domino felt that you’d be easier to fuck over,” Cian says. “A loss to one family is felt by us all, Paul. Your security also has been shit. Louisa was hired to be one of your maids.”
“We allowed her into our home,” my mother whispers. “I always felt that it had to be one of the employees, but the police told me that it couldn’t have been. They said it was an outside job.”
“Technically, it was,” I admit. “However, they replaced people in your staff to make my sister’s kidnapping happen. She also no longer goes by Maree. That name doesn’t mean anything to her, and she’s choosing to embrace the one that she grew up with.”
“That seems odd,” my father says. “Wouldn’t she want one that doesn’t remind her of everything that’s happened to her?”
“Not necessarily,” I say. “‘Maree’ doesn’t fit her at all. The name she has, Nova, fits who she is perfectly. She’s not someone you can use, she’s bonded to her scent matches, and she doesn’t want to meet you at this time. I know that’s harsh, but it should be her decision.”
“We’re telling you this because the mafia community grapevine works quickly. She’s decided to stay in Minneapolis for now, but something tells me that my granddaughter is a flight risk,” Grandma says. “She’s been doing an awful lot of running.”
“What does that mean? The running part?” my mother asks.
“Her kidnappers have been looking for her since she ran away. Turbis kidnapped me right off the street a month ago,” I say. “It was the day before my birthday in fact. I chose not to explain their error until I was killing them.”
“Being friends with the Finnegan boys ruined you,” my mother sighs. It’s not done in the same way that she shames me for my body or clothes, though. Instead, it’s begrudging respect because I can take care of myself and others. “Did you make them scream?”
“For hours,” I say with a smirk. “The Francos sold Nova to Mr. Domino when she turned eighteen, so they felt that she needed to return home to fulfil their promise. Since you know how I feel about forced?—”
“An arranged marriage is not the same as sex trafficking,” my mother explodes. “I swear, you’re impossible to speak to, Hollis.”
“Which is why you’re not going to anymore,” Cian says. “You’ll direct your words to me. Please, let’s see you treat me with the same level of disrespect that you treat your daughter and see what happens.”
My mother squeezes her hands together as she shakes her head quickly in refusal.
“Good,” he mutters. “This is an informational visit to explain what’s been going on.
Did you know that Hollis has been in the hospital twice with broken bones and terrible injuries?
If not, you need to think about why you don’t.
You gave birth to your daughters, Annabelle, but I’ve seen cats be better mothers to their children than you are. ”
My mother scoffs, glaring at him.
“Don’t pretend to be offended,” Grandma says. “You and Paul are self absorbed and ignore the outside world. So please, continue to do that so that Hollis and Nova can enjoy their lives. Don’t happen to show up somewhere where either of them will be either. That’s just classless and stupid.”
My grandfather stands as Reggie brings in tea, smiling apologetically at him.
“I’m sorry to have put you out, Reggie. It seems we have other plans, and this was just a quick visit. Please accept our apologies.”
Reggie inclines his head as my grandmother, Cian, and I stand.
“You just imploded my life, and you’re flitting out of it again,” my mother grumbles. “The self absorbed one is you, daughter.”
“If we had any kind of relationship, I’d feel bad,” I mutter, leading the group out of the room to collect our things.
While that could have gone a lot better, I’m simply glad that I’m getting out of here without bloodshed.