2. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Ava
Raul, my husband of almost six years, stands at the head of the oversized table and lightly tings his fork against the crystal glass he’s holding.
He’s got an announcement he wants my whole family to hear, and sometimes, his old-man ways are kind of charming.
Group text? Why bother. Throw a catered dinner and force everyone to be in your company for hours instead of merely reading or listening to a series of text messages.
Honestly, I’m not sure how many of them even listen to my voice notes anymore.
There are so many kids everywhere that no one has the time.
Of course, none of those offspring are here tonight.
Not even our son. My four siblings and their spouses all have their children with nannies or babysitters.
Raul didn’t want any distractions or little ears overhearing whatever he intends to say.
Probably some new business venture. He loves tooting his own horn as loudly and proudly as possible.
The absence of children doesn’t mean this dinner is without drama. My husband invited my parents. My father, sure. But my mother? He’s asking for trouble from my brothers and sisters. None of my siblings have even acknowledged that she’s in the house—awkward to the nth degree.
“Thank you all for coming,” Raul says once the buzz around the table quiets. “I know everyone is busy, and we appreciate you taking the time to be here.” He gestures toward me, and I smile. “As you may have heard, my company, The Nile, is experiencing some growing pains.”
“Growing pains?” Sawyer, one of my older sisters, says with a scoff. “Bellerive’s Nile employees want to unionize and you’re using some shady tactics to stop them.”
“Merely providing some incentives to help them reconsider the wisdom of their demands,” Raul says as though Sawyer’s tone wasn’t caustic.
“My point,” he says, directing his next comments to the group again, “is that some of the workers aren’t dealing well with the process.
We’ve received death threats, and we’ll be hiring private security until this matter is settled. ”
“What?” I say, sitting up at the other end of the long table. “We received a what?”
“Darling, you’ve been busy playing with your company. You’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m going to protect you and Landon, and I have people trying to get to the bottom of this.”
“You can’t stop your employees from forming a union,” Sawyer says, and Logan, her famous hockey player husband, eases a hand behind her seat and across her shoulders.
Probably in solidarity. Whenever she’s fighting for or against something, he’s right behind or beside her. They are sickeningly in sync.
Meanwhile, I don’t even know that we’ve had death threats. Plural. “When did these threats happen?” I ask.
“I’m only providing motivation for workers to consider all the options,” Raul says mildly to Sawyer, “letting them know a union isn’t necessary for our partnership.”
“Partnership?” Sawyer snorts. “They’re getting a fair share of your profits then?”
“But since we’re all Tuckers,” Raul says, ignoring Sawyer and focusing on the rest of us, “I wanted to make sure everyone was aware that there are some disgruntled people on the island. Be careful. Keep an eye out. The Santos and Tucker names are being targeted.”
“No,” Sawyer says, “you’re being targeted, and you’ve dragged my sister and my nephew into it.”
“How are you protecting my daughter and my grandson?” my mother asks, her tone icy.
Most of the time, she likes Raul. She was the one who encouraged me to marry him or lock him down or whatever she called it at the time.
Secure my future. My son’s future. I was…
I’d been… My stomach drops, and I lift my gaze to the ceiling to clear my mind a little.
There’s no point in thinking about how low I was back then.
I’m fine now. Totally fine. My choices have all worked out.
“I’ve hired Owen’s company. Asked for their best guy to be put in charge of our family’s safety. No expense will be spared. He’s guaranteed me someone who’ll know the island and who’ll protect my family at all costs.”
“I’ve hired Owen’s crew before,” Nathaniel, my oldest brother, says. His hand is linked with his wife, Hollyn’s, on top of the table. “They’re good. It’s a good choice.” He doesn’t address my mother but rather looks at Raul. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he looked after you personally.”
“Exactly,” Raul says with a grateful smile in Nathaniel’s direction. “That’s what family is for. Ava’s not always the best communicator, so I wanted to make sure everyone in the family was aware.” He makes a circling gesture around the table. “Since you’re all so close.”
Nathaniel catches my eye and raises his eyebrows. I know what he’s implying. In terms of communication, I’m the most communicative out of everyone in my family. Everyone knows what I’m thinking and feeling all the time.
“Ava’s excellent at telling us what’s going on,” Maren, my other sister, who’s married to royalty, says from her spot at the table closer to Raul, “if she knows what’s going on.”
It’s pretty safe to say that my siblings have struggled to warm up to my husband. If I loved him, if I’d ever loved him, that might bother me. Our marriage was never a love match.
“Everyone knows now,” Raul says breezily. “That’s why we’re all here.”
He sits down, and dessert starts to flow from the kitchen and to everyone’s spot at the table.
Nathaniel shoots me one more concerned look, and I’m sure he’ll be cornering me later to find out whether I’m okay.
He’s that brother. The one who probably cares too much most of the time, and when I was younger, I found it suffocating.
So annoying. Now, I don’t mind it so much.
All my siblings—even Sawyer—are pretty great people who married equally great people.
Then there’s me. The youngest and the only outlier in the family. Never quite getting anything right. It used to be me and Gage, who’s closest to me in age, who were the family outsiders, but then he met Ember and got a maturity transplant.
After dessert, we all take an after-dinner drink into the living room.
Raul gets called to his office to take an important phone call on his secure phone line, and my parents opt to leave the minute Raul is gone.
Dad doesn’t care about these events, and my mother hates any reminders that all her children except me hate her.
Now that I’m a mom, there are sharp edges to our interactions too.
I never wanted to be a parent, but now that I am, it makes me question every choice my mother has ever made.
I’d do anything for Landon, and in some ways, I already have.
“He really didn’t tell you about the death threats?
” Ember, Gage’s wife, asks when we go to the kitchen area to get Logan a glass of water.
The elite hockey player doesn’t drink. Live a little, I say.
Old me would have put a dash of vodka in the water, just because.
The Ava who is married with a child does not.
There’s a good chance that I’ve become boring. Old, even. Like my husband.
“Nope,” I say, pretending that I don’t care as I get down a glass and press it against the automatic water dispenser.
“I’ve got other things to worry about. Landon’s first year of school.
My perfume company expanding to a new line of colognes.
What’s a couple death threats? Obviously, Raul has them handled. ”
Or he does now. Putting my life at risk is one thing, but if these threats were real and imminent and he put Landon at risk? He might just find that reckless Ava makes a reappearance. Burn his life to the ground.
The subdued version of me is the one he likes, the one he married, but I’d go full mama bear for anything that involves my son if I had to. I have that instinct, even if I’ve never had to use it.
“I know you keep saying that you and Raul are fine…” A frown puckers Ember’s forehead, and her eyes brim with worry. “You’re just so different from the person I met when I first got to the island, and I worry—”
“That version of me wasn’t a mom or a wife,” I say, matching Raul’s earlier breezy tone.
“People change. Grow up.” Become less reckless with their own feelings and other people’s feelings.
You can only blow up your life so many times before you stop playing with dynamite.
“I want this life. My company is doing really well. Landon is thriving. No complaints.”
“Your brother, Gage, is my best friend,” she says. “I tell him everything. He tells me everything. We’re a team. For Raul to say you don’t communicate when you send five hundred voice notes to the group chat per day is…” She widens her eyes at me like I should know exactly where she’s going.
I do. I know. I just can’t muster the will to care. Something inside me broke years ago, and I don’t think I even want to fix it. That part of me can remain in pieces, unusable.
“I’m okay, Ember,” I say as I head back into the sibling fray. “And if Nathaniel mentions anything, you can tell him I’m okay too.”
“That was embarrassing,” I say to Raul when he comes out of his office, a long time after my family has left.
Other people have told me that they find my husband commanding with his tall, thin frame, salt-and-pepper hair, and dark-brown eyes.
But it’s been years since I saw that version of him whenever he walks into a room. Honestly, I don’t know if I ever did.
“I had to take the call,” he says, gesturing beyond the open-plan living room and kitchen to the hallway with his office. “You know things are tense right now.”
“Do I?” I stand up from the couch where I’ve been sitting and drinking scotch—drinking way more than I should. Which is a problem whenever Landon’s not around. My kid is my sunshine, and when he’s gone too long, I wilt.
“What’s that mean?” He eyes my empty glass, and his lips tip into a hint of a smile. He grabs the bottle of scotch off the kitchen island, handing it to me. “Another drink? Landon’s gone for the night.”
Of course he wants me to have another drink. It’s the only time his wrinkly penis is more appealing than my deluxe vibrator collection. Not that either is, ultimately, particularly helpful. So much effort and so little result.
“Announcing that we’ve had death threats in front of my whole family when I don’t even know?
I bet every single one of my brothers and sisters felt bad for me.
Thought, ‘oh, poor Ava, she has such a shitty marriage,’ and in that moment, it felt pretty shitty to me too.
Can we just agree that you’re not dropping something so huge at a family event like that again?
” I set my tumbler on the island and top it up.
If it wasn’t for Landon, I’d probably be an alcoholic.
“You want to know what’s going on, you only need to ask.”
“No.” My drink sloshes over the side of my glass when I pick it up. “Who in their right mind asks their husband, ‘So, darling, have we had any death threats lately?’ That’s the kind of thing you tell your spouse without them having to ask.”
“I didn’t think you’d care.”
“You didn’t think I’d care that our son is being threatened?”
“Not him or you. Just me. But I’m not taking any risks.
Landon’s my heir to all this.” He gives a sweeping motion to the mansion we live in.
“My only child. A vital link between the Tucker and Santos families. You really think I’m going to put him at risk?
That’s why I’ve hired twenty-four-hour protection for you two.
There will be someone stationed here whether I’m in the country or out of it. ”
The Nile, the banner organization that leads Raul’s financial empire, is a multinational technology company mostly known for e-commerce. It’s also the platform that launched my perfume company by pushing it heavily in the algorithms. A win for me after so many losses.
“Play with your company,” he waves a dismissive hand. “Play with our son. You’ve got nothing to worry about.” His eyes take on a predatory gleam, and he pours himself a shot, tipping it back, but never breaking eye contact. “Are you ready to play with me tonight? Or do you need another drink?”
I drain my glass in a few gulps and slide it across the surface of the island for one of the maids to get later. A sigh rises to my lips, but I replace it with a coy smile.
Then I sashay toward our bedroom, glancing at him over my shoulder while I draw one strap of my dress down.
It’s a seduction that I really don’t need, but it helps me slip into the character I’ve become since I found out I was pregnant over five years ago.
Raul’s wife. Landon’s mother. Whoever Ava Tucker once was—well, she’s long gone.