10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Going back home felt like stepping into a completely different world.
After the stress and the noise of the morning, what surprised me the most about the Avery residence was how quiet it was.
The news about Daniel’s stroke must have hit everyone just as hard as it hit my wives and I.
The atmosphere wasn’t quite funereal, but it definitely hovered somewhere around melancholy.
Maria came out and met us at the car, hugging us both before leading Kiki and I inside.
She’d cleaned up the place while we were gone—either that, or she’d put the cheerleaders to the task.
Other than the three of them, everyone else was out—either at the hospital with Marcie or on Jessamyn Fawkes duty.
Tasha had texted me about a dozen times to make sure I was okay and that we didn’t need her to swing by—I’d promised to catch up with her as soon as we no longer needed her security expertise so badly.
While Maria took Yukiko upstairs to help her get into her pajamas (a thinly-veiled excuse to hear all about Morning Harbor from my princess’s own mouth), I plopped down on the couch.
The TV was tuned to a 24-hour news channel turned almost all the way down to mute, and I was pleased to see a bunch of nonsense about politics instead of my own face.
Inside Edition would absolutely be wall-to-wall Avery gossip tonight, though.
I wasn’t sure what I expected from Heather and Eva.
Probably to be dressed in identical puppy costumes with little leashes hanging around their neck, racing in on all fours and kneeling before me like I was Pavlov ringing a bell.
What I didn’t expect was for both of them to sidle in shortly after I sat down and gingerly take up spots on either side of me on the couch.
They stayed at arm’s length for a minute, like they were nervous to get closer.
With anyone else, it would’ve come off as supportive. From those two, it was damned unnerving.
“Are… are you two okay?” I asked.
Eva scooted over and put a hand on my shoulder. “We saw you on TV,” she whispered, sounding stricken. “You, like, almost fainted. That was real real.”
“You totally stuck it out like a champ,” Heather added on beat. “You… you saved Kiki’s butt today, boss. Usually she’s the one swooping in to save you.”
I was pretty sure I’d saved Yukiko more times than she’d saved me, but the question was academic.
“We were really worried about you,” Eva said, resting her head against my arm. “You scared us.”
“And with all the Daniel stuff—”
“—well, we know you’ve had a really hard day.”
“Like, epically bad day hard.”
I sighed. “I’m sure you two know just what I need, huh?”
Heather looked at me, her eyes going big and wide.
“Boss. Listen.” She swallowed hard, like she very much did not want to be saying what she was about to say, but had decided to rip the band-aid off a while ago. “If you don’t want to do the thing later… the supervising thing? It’s okay.”
“It’s totally fine,” Eva added.
“We get it.”
Huh?
“We don’t need you to fuck our brains out tonight,” Heather said, a tear appearing in her eye. “We just want you to be okay, boss.”
I… I was touched. Maybe most people wouldn’t have understood it, but this was Heather and Eva. The two horniest brats I’d ever met—the girls who prided themselves on being the filthiest, most no-limits girls in the entire harem.
For them to forgo sex they’d been chomping at the bit this hard for… hell.
That meant more than a whole bouquet of flowers.
And it meant that the love underneath of their ravenous hunger for my dick was real.
“I’ll tell you what’s happening tonight when I know what’s happening tonight,” I told the pair, pulling them close. “But… that means a lot to me. I know how hard that must be for you.” I paused, smiling. “I love both of you. Thank you for asking.”
“Of course,” Heather said. “But also if you do wanna fuck us tonight, we’re totally down.”
“We want to be fucked,” Eva added. “For the record.”
“However you wanna fuck us.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Even with loving hearts beating underneath it all, horny cheerleader brats would still be horny cheerleader brats.
“Good.” I said. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Heather glanced from me to the TV, then grabbed the remote. “You wanna just watch something stupid for a bit?” she asked.
I yawned explosively. “That… would be great, actually.”
I have no idea what they picked. I was out like a light by the time they settled on something mindless, the warmth of both girls draped over my sides as I finally let myself relax. (The adrenaline crash after a panic attack is realer than real, for the record).
Surrounded by my favorite cheerleaders, I snoozed until Lakshmi got back home with Samantha. At some point Yukiko had come back downstairs and was lying across the other couch in the living room, her legs up on a pillow and her Kindle held in front of her face.
“Something trashy,” my princess answered with a small smile when I asked her what she was reading. “It’s about this guy who has to conquer the universe with a whole bunch of hot women by his side. Totally unrealistic.”
“Welcome home,” I told Lakshmi and Samantha as they entered. “How’d everything go at the hospital? Is Marcie getting along…?”
I trailed off when I saw the look on my babygirl’s face.
I nearly shot off the couch, startling Heather and Eva. “What happened?” I demanded.
For something certainly must’ve. Samantha wouldn’t have worn a look like that unless something had really upset her. Next to her, Lakshmi looked just as rattled but was doing a better job of hiding it.
Samantha’s nostrils flared. “Show Daddy, Laks,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts.
“Um.” For once, Lakshmi looked thrown off of her game. “We checked the mail when we got home.”
“I already got the mail,” Maria said, entering from the kitchen.
“We figured,” Lakshmi said, her tone sepulchral. “Because the only thing in there was this.”
It was a small, cream-colored envelope. The name Jackson Avery was written across the top in an elegant script—there was no address, no stamp, no return address.
Which meant it wasn’t mailed. Someone had dropped it off personally.
A finger of ice traveled down my spine. The list of people I knew who would do a thing like that had one name at the top, written in 72-point font.
Victoria.
“Give it to me,” I growled, reaching for it.
Lakshmi handed it over. I tore open a corner, then ran my finger along the inside to rip the back seam. Only belatedly did I worry that there might be anthrax or something inside.
There was no poison. Just a card.
A card with lilies on the front, a butterfly, and the words With Deepest Sympathy printed across the top.
I went very, very still as I opened it. I didn’t trust myself not to tear it into tiny pieces.
A simple message had been inscribed inside in impeccable handwriting:
When I heard the news, I thought of you immediately. I am so sorry to hear about your mentor. Moments like these remind us how quickly life can change. Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you in this difficult time.
~Victoria Ruocchio
(P.S. My offer is still open)
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I muttered.
Samantha and Lakshmi leaned in, reading the card at an angle. As they gasped, their faces filling with shock, I thought about Victoria Ruocchio in that courthouse hallway. About the offer she’d made me.
Do not make me do the things I will have to do to you if you turn me down.
She’d meant it. The scariest thing about Victoria was that, at some level, she didn’t want to hurt my family.
The line about being sorry to hear about Daniel—as bland as it was, it was probably true.
From her perspective, she’d given me the exit—and by not taking it, everything that came next was my fault.
The leaked stroke. The ambushed interview. Whatever she had teed up next.
She was reducing my options, methodically, until there was only one door left for me and mine.
She wasn’t enjoying this. She mentioned the offer because she wanted me to take it. To end this.
We could ceasefire right now and nobody gets hurt.
She wasn’t a sadist like Elizabeth Baines. And honestly, that made it so much worse.
“Holy fuck,” Samantha whispered, her eyes as wide as saucers. “Daddy, the audacity of that bitch…!”
“Let me see it,” Yukiko said.
I hadn’t even noticed her getting off the couch. I handed her the card, watching as she read it. I saw her face cycle through emotions: shock first, then anger, then a kind of grim understanding.
“She’s not going to stop, is she?” she asked.
No one dared answer that.
A little tremor shot through Yukiko. “Someone take this thing to the back yard and burn it,” she said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want it in my house.”
“Don’t burn it,” Mona chimed in. “It’s evidence.”
I hadn’t said a word since I read the card. I was pretty sure that if I opened my mouth, every single one of these women was going to run from the room in fear from what came out.
Of all people, it was Heather and Eva who noticed first. “Are you okay, boss?” Heather asked.
Everyone looked.
“Jesus,” Samantha whispered, realizing. “Now I really wish you had just let me go at Jessamyn with that baseball bat, Daddy.”
“I wish I’d had it when I met Victoria,” Yukiko said, sounding colder than I’d ever heard her. “‘Thought of us immediately’. ‘The offer is still open’.”
“We need to talk,” Mona said.
Yukiko whirled on her, looking for a moment like the least pragmatic woman who’d ever lived. “We are not taking that fucking offer—!”
“Not about that,” Mona said quickly, holding up her hands. “What we’re going to do about this. And what we do with Jessamyn.” She glanced at me. “We can’t keep her sequestered in a hotel room forever.”
“In the kitchen, then,” Maria said, already on her way to the door. “I’ll make some more coffee.”