Chapter 6
Cristiano Baccay’s penis was worried about his marriage.
His penis had been so hard and so swollen that it woke him up before sunrise, like a yoke tugging at its bull. It throbbed
at him with full morning vigor, pointing in vain at the love of his life as she slept soundly next to him, a sleeping beauty
as untouchable as the fairy tale.
Cristiano agreed with his aching penis. It had been too long since he and April had made love; he couldn’t remember the last
time he had released himself into her wonderful warmth. But he faced the dilemma of every early-risen husband: “Do I let her
sleep while she still can?” He glanced at his phone for the time. This was the golden half hour, before their daughter, Meadow,
would barge into their room and dominate them for another day, reducing them to her sexless servants once again.
Cristiano Baccay had been in love with April Sun since he was nine years old.
Not long after he moved to Los Angeles, where his parents had gotten jobs at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, his new friend Wayward had invited him to his birthday party.
Already, young Cristiano had been enraptured by the wealth and privilege of this rarified family.
Then he met Wayward’s thirteen-year-old cousin April, with her shiny black hair in elvish braids, sporting a confident smile.
She was the Sunfang princess, and Cristiano felt like he was in a Disney movie.
To teenage April, Cristiano was just one of Wayward’s little friends, and she barely glanced at him that first day they met.
But as for young Cristiano looking over at her from afar, he gave himself a goal to marry that girl someday. And from playing
basketball on the national level to starting his own consulting firm, Cristiano Baccay always achieved his goals, no matter
what it took.
Except these days, when it came to making love to April. But on this otherwise uneventful Thursday morning, Cristiano was
going to change that.
Cristiano understood his place within the Sun Clan as a member by injection; he had survived as long as he had by adopting
the unthreatening persona of “innocent bystander” when it came to the intrigues of his in-laws. But Cristiano always knew
more than he let on. The conversation with Wayward yesterday had conflicted him, as his wife and his best friend were once
again being pitted against each other.
Wayward was his best friend, but Cristiano understood that his true allegiance was to his wife, April, their daughter, Meadow,
and their standing within the Suns. And whether April wanted it or not, he knew that all their problems had one simple, biological
solution.
Cristiano leaned over his slumbering wife, propping himself up over her with his thick biceps, and blew gently onto her naturally
long eyelashes. They fluttered under his breath and she stirred . . . then turned to her side away from him with a gentle
murmur. The crest of her tight but shapely butt peeked out at him from under her panties, and Cristiano was sure that if his
penis could talk, it would be screaming right now.
Egged on, Cristiano brought his lips to her shoulder and kissed his way down the slopes of her side, marveling at how perfectly liquid smooth her skin still was.
His palms on her hips, he rotated April onto her back.
With his teeth, Cristiano caught the band of her panties and pulled them down, exposing his favorite destination in the world.
While gently kneading her calves, he licked a slow, sticky trail up one inner thigh before attending to the other, back and forth . . . then paused.
Now only half-asleep, April bucked her hips toward him. Throwing subtlety out the door, he descended upon her glistening clitoris,
swirling his slick, eager tongue around her pleasure with steadily increasing pressure.
April’s supple breasts were already heaving when she stirred awake, as she felt her husband’s big hands make their way up
to her sensitive nipples, stroking them like a virtuoso musician with his most prized instrument.
“Oh, Cris,” she whispered, her eyes still closed but rolling upward in rapture.
Cristiano’s penis swelled even more at her hard-won approval, joyously dew-dropped in anticipation of finally reuniting with
its partner. “I love you, Ape,” he whispered back as he repositioned himself above her, their lips meeting hungrily, morning
breath be damned.
Finally opening her eyes to meet his, April arched her back to receive her husband’s love.
Together, they enjoyed these blissful movements for an entire four minutes . . .
Until a distant landline rang.
Cristiano was still mindlessly thrusting into heaven when April tapped him on the shoulder as the landline rang again. “Cris,”
she said, pushing him out of her. “Why is someone calling Mom this early?”
For fuck’s sake! His mother-in-law was the last person on earth that Cristiano wanted to think about at that moment. With
a disheartened grunt, he pulled away from April and sullenly stewed on his side of the bed, his defeated penis retreating
knowingly in worry.
Unmindful of her husband’s discontent, April got out of their bed, slipping into her robe to venture out of their bedroom. Cristiano watched her leave, and then turned to his side to stare motionlessly at the wall.
Her Uncle George had installed his company’s security cameras all over their Malibu compound as a Christmas present to Roses
last year, but as the resident closet stoner, April had secretly angled all of them in a way that she knew how to creep under
them whenever she was transporting her footlong bong. There was a camera right outside her bedroom door, and she ducked out
of its line of sight.
As she tiptoed up the stairs, April heard her mother’s own light footsteps flit across the floor above. The ringing stopped
and April could make out Roses’s muffled voice as the matriarch answered the phone.
April thought quickly. Her mother’s private landline was connected to only three phones in the entire house, all of them on
the third floor, which Roses shared with Teddy. April was positive that Roses had answered the phone in her personal bathroom,
where she spent most of her time these days anyway.
That meant there were two other phones connected to whatever mysterious conversation Roses was having. One was in Roses’s
home office next to the top of the stairs, and the other located perilously in Roses’s dressing room, adjacent to her bathroom
and only accessible through the bedroom.
April was already at Roses’s office door, so she wrapped her hand around the knob and pushed.
Dammit. It was locked. She rolled her eyes. Who locks a home office?
Roses’s distant voice was sounding more animated. April hesitated. Was she actually about to spy on her mother? She’d never
done something like this. If she was caught, there was absolutely no reason for her to be on the third floor. April wondered
if she should turn around.
Then she remembered her Aunt Iris’s words of war over their dim sum. Your mother takes you for granted, April. Weaponize that against her.
Here goes, April thought. She crept toward the dark bedroom and peeked in through the open door.
Her stepfather, Teddy, was curled up in a fetal position on the far corner of the bed, facing away from the door. His body
rose and fell with the unmistakable cadence of deep sleep. He was not waking up anytime soon.
Roses’s bathroom door was shut but lit around the edges, a rectangle of light that confirmed she was inside.
April got on her hands and knees and crawled as quietly as she could on the bamboo wood floor, past Roses’s bathroom and toward
the dressing room. As she rounded the corner of the massive California king bed, she suddenly found herself face to face with
Houyi.
The old pit bull stared back at April with bewildered blue eyes, surely wondering what the heck she was doing in there, and
why she too was on all fours. He let out a small whimper.
Above them, Teddy stirred.
Carefully, April reached over to pat him on the head. “Who’s a good boy?” she whispered. Then she kissed him on the nose,
and the dog obediently moved aside to silently watch her creep toward the dressing room.
This door was mercifully ajar. She poked at it until it opened enough for her to shuffle inside.
Roses’s dressing room was a massive walk-in closet filled with designer power suits, larger than April and Cristiano’s bedroom
downstairs. April stood up confidently, knowing that her mother had explicitly banned any security cameras from both her bathroom
and her dressing room. There was a fainting couch in the center of the room, and next to it was an elegant end table with
an old-school rotary phone perched atop.
Her hand trembling, April wrapped her fingers around the telephone and slowly, carefully brought it to her ear, covering the
mouthpiece.
. . . had gotten rid of her! It is humiliating and sinful!
Instantly April recognized the distinctly melodic voice of her youngest aunt, Hyacinth, speaking rapidly in Taiwanese. Having spent her early summers in Taipei with family friends, April might have been rusty in Taiwanese, but she knew enough to follow most of their conversation.
It is definitely not ideal, Roses responded, sounding tired, but perhaps it’s best to let it play out.
There’s a video online of them having sex in a public restroom! Hyacinth raged. Do you know how this is going to make me look at church?
Aha, April thought. Clearly the elders had caught wind of her cousin Sunbern’s scandalous reconciliation with that dashboard
bobble-boob Shannon Shoo. April herself had been alerted last night in real time by a barrage of notifications and texts about
#SunShooReunited, but as she scrolled through social media, she had reacted with eye-rolling amusement, as she always did
with Sunbern’s attention-seeking antics.
Besides, her Aunt Hyacinth was exaggerating, as that video did not capture them actually having sex; it had been filmed from