Chapter 14
Growing up with three brothers wasn’t easy.
For most of our childhoods, each of us struggled to understand our place in the world the second our mother took her own life right before my fourth birthday.
Our father was of little to no use, too busy drowning his grief in vodka, that he didn’t have the capacity to help us through those hard years.
If it hadn’t been for our Grand-mère swopping in and taking on a maternal role as best as she could, I had no doubt the four of us would have ended up separated from each other and thrown into foster homes.
My Grand-mère tried her best throughout our childhood, picking up the jagged pieces of our shattered family, but she took on too much.
Four broken boys, one of which hadn’t even celebrated his first birthday, three jobs to have enough money to feed us all, and a husk of a man who saw no point in living without his wife but was too much of a coward to end it.
Watching Grand-mère try to balance everything, it’s where my need for independence stemmed from.
I didn’t want to be another concern, another worry, another burden for her—for anyone.
With all that being said, sitting at the Garcia family table was the first time in my thirty-one years that I was thankful for my own dysfunctional family.
Livi’s family dynamics made my relationship with my brothers seem juvenile.
Meeting a girlfriend’s parents was a big deal. The thought of it was enough to strike fear into any man. I’d never done it before, with the only woman who came close to introducing me to her parents breaking it off with me when she saw the real me.
The fucked up, raw me.
Even though this whole thing with Livi was fake, I wanted her parents to believe our act.
But nothing prepared me for the Garcia family. Fucking hell, no one would be ready to meet people like this.
It was one thing that her ex-boyfriend cheated on someone as devastatingly beautiful and smart as her, but to cheat on her with her sister was something I refused to try to understand.
Not only did it go against every fucking moral and ethical code out there, but the fact that her mother accepted it boggled the mind.
Non, mind-boggling wasn’t enough. It was fucked up beyond belief.
A normal parent would have kicked Cowboy-Dan to the curb and told him to never darken their front door again. Instead, Sophia embraced the betrayal and forced her youngest daughter to swallow her feelings.
Who does that?
“So, Elliott,” Sophia purred, “Maya informs me that you are related to none other than diamond royalty.”
“It would certainly seem that way.”
“Looking at you, it’s quite obvious. All you Dade men have the most envious cheekbones. People pay good money for that kind of facial structure.”
“What can I say, lucky genes.” I took a long sip of water.
Sophia tapped her gold-pointed nails on her own glass, her feline eyes glued to me. “It’s a real shame that Jaxon stepped down.”
“I wouldn’t say it was a shame. He did what was best for him.”
“Still, to walk away from the family business and leave poor Frederic to run it all by himself, it’s an odd choice, don’t you think?”
“Frederic is managing fine.” It was the truth.
After the custody battle, Frederic learned the true lesson of what was most important: his daughter and soon-to-be wife.
Since he realized what in his life truly mattered, he had taken a more hands-off approach to his business and put all his time and energy into his family.
“And I wouldn’t call it the ‘family business’.
My brothers started it, sure, but they don’t expect myself or Olly to take it over. ”
“What is it you do anyway?” Maya asked from the other side of the table.
I almost forgot she was sitting there, having remained utterly silent since Cowboy-Dan disappeared to the bathroom too quickly after Livi left for it to be a coincidence.
The pair of them had been gone for nearly fifteen minutes.
The soulless house was almost the size of my entire apartment block, but I doubted the reason for their prolonged absence was that they’d gotten lost.
“I’m a doctor.”
“A doctor,” Sophia repeated slowly. “Do you have a specialty?”
“Not quite yet. Still figuring that one out, though I have found myself leaning toward general medicine.”
“You must at least own your own practice, right?”
“Nope.” I drained my glass. “Currently, I am a fifth-year resident at Pinevale Hospital.”
If it were possible, I reckoned Sophia would have been frowning rather than staring emotionless at me. But given how youthful Sophia looked, I think it was safe to say it wasn’t down to good genes.
It was strange to think how two people could look so alike and yet so different. Livi took after her mother in appearances; they were the cold, hard facts. However, where Sophia reminded me of a rose bush, pretty on top with a certainty to make you bleed the further you explored.
Livi was a lotus flower. Strong. Resilient. Thriving amongst the murkiness of her own family.
Sophia adjusted her napkin, smoothing it onto her lap. “I can only assume and pray for your sake that it is your future ambition to open your own practice here in New York.”
My spine stiffened. “Excuse me?”
“If you wish to provide a life for my Livi, working in some hospital won’t do,” she said bluntly. “She deserves the best, and the money you’d make owning your own practice would ensure that for her.”
Biting the inside of my own cheek, I tasted blood.
Sophia drawled on. “Otherwise, there are plenty of men, those in much better financial positions than yourself, who would be happy to give Livi the life I expect for her.”
“The life you expect for her?”
“She needs a man who will look after her and ensure she doesn’t have to worry about money. She deserves someone who will make her see that she doesn’t need to stress herself silly over that job of hers.”
Did this woman hear herself?
If she truly believed her daughter deserved the best, then why, oh why, was she allowing this whole circus to take place? Why did she not kick Cowboy-Dan to the fucking curb when the truth came out?
Sophia was as real a pair of fucking breast implants.
Livi had warned me about her mother and she wasn’t exaggerating. I knew tonight was going to be a challenge, and as much as I wanted to swallow a couple of Xanax to loosen me up, I resisted.
I wanted to be sharp, at the top of my game for the night.
And by fuck, I regretted that decision right now.
Where was Livi anyway? And more importantly, where the hell was her country bumpkin ex?
As if by magic, she walked back into the dining room, bottle of champagne in hand, and Daniel followed close behind her.
Taking the seat beside me, the first thing that grabbed my attention was the two red circles around her glassy eyes and the smudges of mascara on her cheeks.
She’d been crying.
Something hot and blinding burst into life.
My attention snapped to Daniel taking his seat directly opposite me.
That connard made her cry, because clearly, he hadn’t done enough to hurt her.
Either he was as stupid as he looked, or he was truly one cruel bastard, because he refused to take his eyes off her. Even when his fiancée slipped her hand into his, he kept his focus solely on Livi, whose head remained bowed to hide her tear-stained face.
He lost the right to look at her like that the second he put his cock in her sister.
My hands curled into white-knuckled fists. Let’s see how easy it was for him to keep gawking at her when I drove my fork into his eye.
Sophia and Maya started to drone on about flower arrangements, wedding dresses, all that crap I had no interest in listening to. The two of them were too wrapped up in wedding talk that they were completely oblivious to the fact that Livi had been crying.
“What happened?” I asked quietly, passing her my napkin.
Dabbing the corner of her eyes, she dared a glimpse in Daniel’s direction. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“It’s fine, Elliott.”
“We clearly have different definitions of the word fine.”
“They’ll be serving dinner any second now, and then we can leave.”
“Liv,” Daniel’s voice was a rusty nail down the fucking chalkboard of my patience, “can you pass me the champagne?”
I grabbed the bottle before she could and thrust it in his direction, delighting in how quickly his gaze narrowed at me. Hopefully, he’d do everyone a favor and choke on it.
I turned back to Livi. “Did he say something to you?”
A single tear escaped and ran down her cheek. “It doesn’t matter.”
The blood pumping through my body started to boil.
These people, her so-called family, made her believe that her own feelings didn’t matter.
“Wolf howl?” I whispered. “Give me the signal.”
“Elliott, it’s not that simple.”
“It is for me. Say the word and we are out of here.”
There was a moment, a fleeting second in time, when she scrunched the mascara-stained napkin in her fist that I thought she was about to say yes. However, as quick as the spark of defiance burst into existence, it disappeared.
Her shoulders sagged. “It’ll only make things worse if we leave. I’ll be fine.”
What could be worse than this?
She straightened her spine and blinked whatever tears lingered away. “Let’s do what we came here for and get through the meal.”
I couldn’t give two shits about the dinner or about any other person around the table, but for her sake, I shut my mouth and stayed put.
Thankfully, dinner appeared quickly after that. Plates of slow-cooked beef, bowls of roasted potatoes and vegetables, and a mixture of leafy salads lined the table.
Unsurprisingly, the evening had robbed me of my appetite.
Picking a few pieces of meat and vegetables for my plate, I found myself watching the rest of the table, peering through the looking glass at the outright dysfunctional family.
Maya and Daniel began openly discussing their wedding plans. Well, more Maya than Daniel, whose attention played a game of tennis jumping between the two Garcia sisters, that it was by some miracle he hadn’t given himself whiplash.
Sophia, on the other hand, kept her eyes locked on Livi.
Or rather her plate.
My molars collided together as Sophia purposely grabbed the plate of roasted beef away from Livi’s reach and replaced it with a salad bowl.
Flattening her lips into a thin line, Livi placed a couple salad leaves and three cherry tomatoes on her plate before slowly pushing them around with her fork.
And yet no one else seemed to notice.
What the hell was happening right now? Were they all really that oblivious? Or did they truly not give a single shit?
Resisting the urge to say something, I grabbed another glass of water and forced the words threatening to escape back down with each large gulp.
Watching Livi disappear into herself as the rest of her family took no notice was like nothing I’d ever witnessed before.
And I could safely say I hated every fucking second.
Without a second thought, I grabbed her plate and switched it with mine.
Conversation fell into a tense silence around the table.
Sophia opened her mouth, her eyes narrowing as I speared a tomato with my fork and met her lethal gaze.
Say something. I dare you. Give me an excuse to tell you exactly how I feel about you.
Thankfully, she had enough sense not to say a goddamn thing.
Reaching under the table, I placed my hand on Livi’s knee. Her leg trembled as she blinked down at her full plate several times.
It would be a lie to say seeing her like this didn’t affect me.
It would be enough to affect anyone, even the most heartless of bastards.
But when she popped a piece of meat into her mouth and grabbed my hand under the table, holding onto it like it was a lifeline, I knew when it came to not letting myself get attached to my fake girlfriend, I might be in serious trouble.