CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
AXEL
“Are you sure you’re good for tonight?” Ryker squeezes my shoulder, his face drawn with lines of distress.
All my brothers are cloaked in tuxedos and apprehension. It should probably comfort me to see how much they care, but their anxiety reads like my failure.
“This is our night. Our legacy. How could I be anything other than proud of what we’ve created? Of course I’m good.” I check the time on my watch, resisting the urge to spin my luck since it hardly seems relevant now. “We need to get started and call Rena to do our toast though.”
None of them argue with me because we are pushing it on time.
We started the Prohibition Ball seventeen years ago to cast a new vision on the La Lune Noire membership.
Our entire business is built on the same exclusivity in which the 1920s speakeasies thrived, and this takes it up a notch.
We plan for it all year, select a new pool of guests for each ball, strategically team them up for escape-room-esque challenges, and party until the sun comes up.
It’s puppeteering at its finest. And an homage to our mother that her death wasn’t in vain.
Our father staked his empire on a mound of skulls, garnered by lodging a knife in the back of anyone within reach. And while our soil is enriched with plenty of bones, under our regime, it burgeons connection and prosperity.
And yet I am bankrupt in every way that matters tonight.
“I’ll cue the music,” Maddox offers with a pat on my cheek, compassion strangling his traditional smart-ass bravado. “We’re here, Papa Axe.”
I dip my chin to him as Ryker volunteers to pour the cognac, and Cash casts me a conflicted gaze before he swaggers after him.
Jax lingers behind. “I would’ve never suggested you take the position if I’d—”
I raise my palm to cut him off because his regret over asking me to take the KORT seat years ago has no place here.
Neither of us could’ve anticipated this mess.
And even if the time constraints weren’t in place due to their bylaws, there’s no guarantee anything would be different for Zara and me. We are who we are.
“That has little to do with what’s happening here. You didn’t start the fire.” That’s less in reference to our parents and more a nod to the essence of Billy Joel’s insight.
“You didn’t either.” He glances toward the family. “She seemed like an extinguisher.”
Someone to douse the flames.
“Tonight, we dance in the blaze.” I wrap my hand around his neck with a silent command not to let this taint our joy. “Go set up the video call with Rena.”
This is my hell—hurting and lugging that affliction around so poorly that it weighs everyone else down.
Once he tromps away, I take a minute to center myself before I confront an evening that is traditionally my favorite night of the year.
A night when the guilt about my mother’s death is assuaged because her pride about what we’ve done would be so profound.
Heels clip-clop on the marble floor before Tessa emerges in the kitchen, donning a gorgeous black flapper gown and feathers in her silver hair. “It’s okay to break.”
“I know it is.” Lie. I don’t believe that.
But Tessa holds her own emotions close to the vest, and when Maddox was in peril, they all came tumbling out. I’d never want her to think her shattering was a sign of weakness.
She laughs in that sardonic lilt that is so very Tessa.
“No, you don’t. But you didn’t raise me, I’ve never worked in an area you oversee, and I haven’t been through anything horrific—apart from you all.
” She waves her hand around the penthouse, as if being in our family is synonymous with catastrophic, but her turquoise eyes rollick with mirth.
“There’s no reason for you to shoulder my existence.
So, if the time comes for you to fall apart and you need someone, I just want you to know that I’m here. ”
Tessa is one of those people who appears to be annoyed that humans exist, but would risk everything for those she cares about. Loyal to her core.
“Thank you.” I pull her in for a hug and kiss her hair. “But not now.”
“Agreed,” she whispers. “No need tonight.”
We stroll to the family room and join my brothers and Mercy.
Rena, Ty, and the three other couples that compose the rest of their family are waiting on the wall monitor as we begin our Prohibition Ball rituals.
It’s too late for the babies, but I’m aching for them to visit.
I’ve gone too long without having them bounce on my knee.
The first notes of “House of the Rising Sun” trill, and Zara is all I think about.
I’m still not sure what tomorrow will look like.
I left her alone after my impromptu proposal.
That wasn’t how I’d planned to ask her, but it also seemed contrived to get down on one knee when it was in part due to my allegiance to a secret cabal.
When I returned two hours later, it was as if none of it had happened. We spent that night and the last two together—watching movies, swimming in the rooftop pool, reading to each other, and having the best sex of my life. And even though we’d been doing that, every second was enlightening.
She cries at inspirational sports flicks, no matter the sport. She howls to the point of tears if I evoke character voices when I’m reading aloud, which only encourages me. She lets me hold her all night and can’t fall asleep until I do.
Yesterday, I opened Great Expectations to chapter forty-four, highlighting, You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, and laid it next to her pillow before she awoke.
Later, she left a slip of paper on my desk with a quote written on it. In case you ever foolishly forget: I’m never not thinking of you. She included that it was a line that had been misattributed to Virginia Woolf.
My sweet, clever girl.
And yet it’s not enough.
She hasn’t reciprocated those three life-altering words.
And more importantly, she never accepted my proposal.
She requested to be at the Prohibition Ball for her mission, so I assigned her to the employee team that runs the escape rooms—an activity that kicks off the night to add another obstacle for members to gain admittance.
That should get her close enough. Since I believe she’s KORT’s asset—it’s the only thing that makes sense, with them leaving her here once I had suspicions, like she mentioned—helping her succeed serves everyone.
She thanked me for always taking care of her, but even though she knew tonight was our expiration date unless she could give me forever, she said nothing more.
I am gutted and at a loss for how to proceed. I want to lock her up, refuse to let her go, but that’s the one thing I promised myself I’d never do. Why would I cage someone who wants to fly away from me?
For her own safety and mine, tomorrow morning, I’ll be stashing her somewhere while I try to discreetly bridge things with her father.
We’ll concoct a story that explains that her escaping my clutches was part of his plan to properly complete their mission.
If all goes well, she’ll eventually be free to go home to him—if he is indeed safe and in her corner.
I’ll make that decision after I speak with him.
And maybe someday, there will be a chance for Zara and me to reunite under less dire circumstances.
That’s the plan. I’ve spent the better part of today convincing myself I can carry it out. It’s either that or I cuff her to my bed and tell everyone else she disappeared. Decisions.
Dismissing both outcomes for now, I tune back in to the song by The Animals, which was one of my mother’s favorites. It always kicks off our evening and is accompanied by the many vices we all have—Ryker’s rattling dice, Maddox’s snicking knife, Cash’s fluttering cards, and Jax’s whooshing matches.
I click my watch and survey the ceramic ball’s journey, hoping for green. It’s rare that I have an itch, urging me to root for zero.
The last time was the day Zara strutted into my resort.
The ball hops from pocket to pocket, and as the final soulful note resounds, it chooses to park in a sanctuary similar to the eyes that feel like home.
Maybe this time, it means that she’ll decide to stay.
Just the thought is enough to bolster me to be the man, brother, father figure, and leader my family needs. Ryker passes out the snifters of Louis XIII de Rémy Martin Black Pearl Grande Champagne Cognac.
“We’re ready for your brilliant toast, Papaw Axe,” Rena warbles. She is always the voice to break our silence after the song—the pretty spark of pink and spunk that my mother prayed for and was afforded so little time to enjoy.
Playing into her moniker that renders me both honored and ancient, I lift my glass to the screen. “The brilliance lies with an old timer’s refusal to change his ways. Same music, same toast, same remembrance.”
“Same phenomenal family. Same beautiful people,” she counters, and something cracks in my chest. “No sense in fixing perfect.”
“And that you are, sweet girl.” I clear my throat, grateful she’ll assume the huskiness in my tenor is a reflection of my sentimentality, not my internal breakdown.
Then I tip my drink to a wall housing our nostalgia and my mother’s favorite artist, Picasso, as I deliver his last words.
“ ‘Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore.’ ”
“To Mom,” the room croons in unison, and we all swill our cognac.
We say our goodbyes to Rena, who pouts about not being here, and to the rest of her family. It’s been years since this event has been considered safe for them, and it never gets easier.
Ryker and Mercy check once more on Remy and their sitter. Then we meander as one unit, like a winding river rushing toward an estuary—our fresh take melding with our salty past to create the fertile ground of the future.