10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Carys
I n twenty-four hours, Evander will be successful in breaking Finn out of jail or will have failed spectacularly. The tension in the house is so thick that Sofia has spent most of the time outside with the kids or at various parks. Lena has been baking as though she’s starting her own business. The freezer is stocked. She’s earned her nap.
As for Jay and me, we’ve been trying to focus our nervous energy on getting to the root of the explosion. When Finn gets here, he’ll be annoyed we didn’t start our search earlier or assume the police were incompetent or incapable. Sometimes it amazes me one person’s absence can be felt so deeply, but that’s how it’s been having him gone for months. I understand the routes he’d take and the things he’d want done, but doing any of them is a Herculean task. His moves don’t come naturally to me. Once he’s here, safe with us, life will be better.
The security radio at Jay’s hip comes alive with chatter. Jay frowns and turns up the volume, listening in. I pause my search through old paperwork related to the warehouse theft to eavesdrop. When I hear two names I recognize, I release a long breath. Charles and Opal Van de Berg.
“Why are they here?” I gather everything on the island and stuff the papers into an oversized envelope. “And why are they here together ?” They were on the cusp of divorce last time I talked to them.
“I’m guessing they finally caught wind of the explosion at the hotel.” Jay goes to the door. “Want me to get rid of them?”
My mother hasn’t done anything to incur my wrath, but my father’s meddling in both the family arms business after he retired and my personal life is part of the reason I’m in my current situation. Still, they are my parents. Even if I don’t need them for practical reasons anymore, I have a hard time turning them away.
“No. Let them in.” I go to the back of the house to dump the envelope on my bed. I double-check Lucas is still napping and return to the living room to find Jay getting them drinks.
I emerge from the hallway into the gray-and-white open kitchen and living room. “This is a surprise.”
My mother scans me from head to toe and lands at the cast. “Are you okay?”
I hold up my arm. “This was two weeks ago. I’m coping fine.”
“We just heard about the bomb.” My father grumbles from his seat on the couch while he nurses his whiskey. “You should have called us.”
“There’s probably a reason I didn’t.” Neither of them makes a situation less volatile. My mother is prone to anxiousness and my father to rash decisions.
“Carys,” my mother admonishes me. “No matter what mistakes we’ve made, we love you.”
“How’s my grandson?” My father searches the room and rises from his seat. “I’d like to see him.”
My heart kicks. So many emotions are tied to my father’s connection with Lucas. I wouldn’t have my son if my father hadn’t deceived me. I will never regret Lucas, but the way the situation played out with my ex-fiancé, Eric, and the Russian surrogacy behind my back, will never sit right with me. “He’s sleeping.”
“Maybe we’ll stay for a while,” my mother suggests. She has a glass of wine clutched in her hand. “I’d love to meet him.”
“He has long naps,” I say. “So, you came here to… check up on me?” If that’s true, I’m touched by the gesture, though it’s out of character for both of them. At forty-six, I’m not a kid anymore. My parents, who are both in their seventies, are still spry and look younger than they should thanks to cosmetic interventions. Not that I can fault them—I inherited a double dose of vanity.
“You were injured. You could have been killed. Of course we came.” My mother perches on the couch as far away from my father as possible. “We lost your brother. We don’t want to lose you too.”
All the times they haven’t shown up for me run in a loop. I’ve been in Cape Verde for months and neither has visited. Granted, I made it clear to my father he wasn’t welcome. He also didn’t visit me during my not-so-brief stint in prison. My mother could have come, but the last time I spoke to her, she was rattled by the confrontation with her daughter from her first marriage. She left her abusive husband to marry my father, leaving her very young daughter. She’s not the mother of the year.
“Well, as you can see, I’m fine.” I hover in the kitchen behind the island.
“Just you, Lucas, Jay, and his family?” My father peers over the back of the couch at me.
He’s unbelievable. Lena is here, which he knows because she told him she was finished as his mistress and done working at the house in Switzerland. I clench my jaw. “Just us.” Hopefully, Lena’s nap is a long one. My mother doesn’t enjoy being confronted with my father’s indiscretions. She must not realize Lena is here.
“How has everything been going on the island?” My mother’s voice is cheery and bright.
I frown. She’s not the cheery sort. “We’ve had setbacks, like a bomb going off, but we’re handling the issues.”
“Still flying to America every month to visit convicted felons?” The ice in my father’s glass clinks as he takes a drink.
A sigh of exasperation almost escapes, but I tamp it down. “So nice that you both came all this way. I hope you booked a hotel. Since we weren’t aware you were coming, we’ve got meetings and other things scheduled. Not much time to visit.”
My mother shoots my father a look loaded with meaning, but he takes another drink and only raises his eyebrows. Whatever they agreed to discuss with me, he’s not going along with it.
“Have you pinpointed who planted the bomb?” She picks at her skirt, her shoulders tense.
“Not yet,” Jay says from his position near the door. “Why?”
“Oh, well.” She glances in my direction. “I was at a fundraiser with Hagen Volkov’s latest mistress, and she mentioned your name.” She takes a deep breath. “And Finn. Your father”—she throws out a hand at him—“also heard something interesting the other day.”
He downs the last of his drink and rises from the couch, approaching the island where I’m standing. “I was at an arms meeting, and someone told me the PLA had developed an interest in acquiring Finn Donaghey.”
I laugh and hope it hides my thumping heart. “He’s in prison, so obtaining him would be difficult, to say the least.”
“For somebody who is supposed to be keeping out of trouble, those are big sharks circling you.” My father slides his tumbler on the island’s surface and makes eye contact with me. “I might not like Finn Donaghey, but if he was out of prison, he’d never stand for these threats against you. They are threats.” He half turns and stares at my mother on the couch. “Volkov’s girlfriend sought out Opal to name-drop. The company I was dealing with brought up you and the PLA without any plausible reason to discuss you or Finn.”
“We already had our concerns about the bomb,” Jay admits.
“Your mother and I think it’s time I step in and help you handle things here.”
My gaze flies to his. “No.” When he goes to speak again, I hold up my hand. “In the past, you haven’t made situations like this better for me. You’ve worsened them. So, no, you’re not welcome. I appreciate your concern, but I’m not having you insert yourself.” With Finn arriving tomorrow, having my father here is a recipe for disaster. The last person I’ll be telling about the jailbreak is the man in front of me.
“You said things haven’t been going that well,” my mother tries to reason from the couch. “It seems like the source of your problems could be any of these.”
“I love you, Mom. But the last time you came to me with a ‘threat,’ it turned out to be nothing. Finn and Jay wasted resources trying to track a lead that never needed to be pursued.”
She flushes and stares into her wineglass. “I’m not going to apologize for worrying about you.”
Her selective worry is the problem, not that it exists. “Jay and I are on top of this. I can assure you we’re taking the threat seriously.”
My mother tips up the rest of her wine and comes to the island to slide the glass on top. “I’m not pretending I can help with any of this or that I even understand it. But promise me you’ll call your dad if you get into trouble.”
If I’m calling my father, I’ve hit the bottom of the barrel. I’m not making that promise. “We’re handling the complications. You don’t need to worry.”
Jay shows them out the door and back to their waiting car. When he returns to the house, we stare at each other for a long moment. “I don’t know about you,” he says. “But I can’t wait for Finn to get his ass here.”
“I hope Hagen doesn’t get antsy and screw up our plan for tomorrow. If he’s sending messages through my mother, he’s trying to back Finn into a corner about something.”
“Agreed.”
“Do you think he had a hand in the bomb?” Most of the warehouse stock had never been found. Pieces of it, or all of it, could have ended up anywhere.
Jay takes a deep breath. “It’s possible. There’s so much unknown right now.”
The baby monitor lights up in front of me, and I pick it up, watching Lucas roll around in his crib. My heart swells when I realize our lives are going to change again. “Finn will be here tomorrow. I can hardly believe it. Part of me is jumping for joy and the other part of me is being eaten alive by fear.”
“There’s no one better than Evander. We have to trust the process. Keep ourselves busy until Finn arrives.”
“You’re not worried?”
“Worry won’t change the outcome. So, keep the focus on things we can manage or influence.”
He gave me the same speech earlier today, which is why we spent most of the day poring over old warehouse files. Today has been long; I can’t even imagine how tomorrow will feel.
When Lucas cries, I put down the monitor and head for the bedroom. He gives me a big, toothy grin when he catches me entering the room. I lift him into my arms, and he snuggles into the curve of my neck. As I rub his back, my mind drifts to Finn, to how happy we were as a family for a brief window in Switzerland.
“Your daddy is coming home, Lucas. I can’t wait to be a family again.”