SEVENTEEN
Itiptoe, avoiding all the sections of floor that creek or rock when walked on, and reach for the golf-sized umbrella that nobody uses because it’s too damn heavy. I grip it at the top with two hands, like I’m holding a bat, and prop it over my shoulder with the thick handle sticking up in the air.
I ignore the throbbing protest of pain. If anything, I grip harder hoping to numb my burnt palms.
They’re in the living room. The boys press against the far wall. Dad has Mum pinned to the floor, face down with his hand wrapped in her hair, shoving her hard into the stained carpet. Her begging is a high-pitched drone of words only punctuated by sharp air-sucking sobs. They have their backs to me, but I notice that her skirt is bunched up around her waist and although her underwear is still on, he’s grinding against her in a way that suggests he’s planning on taking this to the next step.
In front of his sons? Is this another lesson on how to be a Feelan man? I can only hope that they don’t understand what Dad’s threatening to do.
The viciousness out of his mouth isn’t hard to understand, though.
“Fucking slut. Did he touch you? Did you fuck him? You’re mine, you stupid cunt. MY WIFE. I own you. I’ll be the last fuck you’ll ever know…I warned you, you stupid bitch. I fucking warned you what would happen!”
His free hand viciously punches her again and again, aiming for stomach ribs and kidneys. All the places that do the most damage. He likes it when we feel his punishments for weeks. Although this time I suspect he wants to make the damage permanent.
I’m almost right behind them when the boys notice me, but they are too afraid to make a sound and give me away.
I raise the umbrella, and swing it hard in a downward arc, right across Eric Feelan’s head.
He slumps over Mum, but I know better than to relax. He rolls off her faster than a man his size should be able to, and pulls himself backward, narrowly escaping my second swing. His eyes burn with promises of retribution. I risk a quick glance at Mum. She’s motionless. Her breaths are shallow hisses. Bruised or broken ribs, maybe? Despite her injuries, she needs to move. If she pulls herself toward the boys and out of his range, I can call in reinforcements.
“Oh, look, the prodigal mongrel returns.” Dad sneers despite his split lip and prods the spot on his head where I hit him. I catch the wince that crosses his face right before anger flares to replace it. “You’ve grown some balls, Juliet. Think your new friends will protect you, huh? Well, where are they now?”
“I don’t need friends to stand up to you, you fucking coward. Thought I proved that earlier?” I widen my stance and cross the umbrella over my body, readying to deflect or swing again.
He pulls himself to his feet. He’s steady despite how hard I hit him.
He glowers at me in a way that I’ve never seen before. Like he’s re-evaluating who he thinks I am. “I want to know how you have the head of Trevainne Industries running after your dirty little pussy. How did you manage to hook such a wealthy fish? You’re not smart enough or pretty enough for a catch like that.” I balk at the insinuation. Not just that he assumes I’m sleeping with Dax—that’s nothing new—but that he knows more about Dax than I do. Trevainne? Dax is the head of Trevainne Industries? I bookmark it for later. Distractions will only hurt me right now.
“Always so obsessed with what lies between a woman’s legs. Anyone would think you had mummy issues, or maybe you’re jealous? Have you always been a perverted bastard? Why do you assume a woman can only earn if it’s on her back? You’re a sicko…do you know that? And a fucking rapist, it seems. Nothing but SCUM.” I spit accusations at him, provoking him to attack or move toward me and away from them.
He huffs, unbothered. “It’s not rape if you own it, or you bought it.”
I fucking lose it. Sick of his twisted sense of ownership and entitlement. “It’s rape if she doesn’t want it. Its rape if she says no. It’s rape if you take something that wasn’t consensually given, you fucking piece of shit!”
Too late, I realise that I’ve swung the umbrella out to my side one-handed.
He moves fast—too fast. His hand wraps around my throat before I can stumble out of the way or move us further from Mum. We’re still too close. I throw the umbrella from my hand, getting it as far away from both of us as I can manage so he can’t make grab for it.
Thankfully, he’s far more interested in getting up in my face. I feel spittle hit my skin as he speaks.
“I’ll take what I want!” he declares, drawing his words out in a slow menacing way that has my gut turning. “And right now, I want my sons and I want money. Hanson’s men offered good money for you to work at their club, Juliet, but if your Mr Nagano is willing to offer more, then I could make a new deal.”
He made a deal with Hanson? The brothel owner? Why would Hanson offer Dad money for a girl that wasn’t on their radar? Had Dad kept his promise and sold me to one of the biggest pimps in the Vale? Wait…is that why those men were waiting outside at six freaking a.m.?
“The men on bikes, outside?” I ask; his fingers tighten, realising I still have the breath and capacity for speech.
“I’m surprised you sneaked past them.” His eyes narrow in suspicion, but I maintain my glare, daring him to question me. He shakes off whatever concerns flicker in his head and carries on running his mouth. He’s only seeing wads of cash in his mind now. “Seems you don’t know your place, girl. Some big people are looking for you, and I’m happy to hand you over for the right price. So, phone your new sugar daddy and see if he’ll improve on their offer. Maybe you’ll get out of this as one man’s slut instead of everyone’s.” He laughs.
I pull my phone from my pocket, keeping it out to my side and a full arm’s length from him. I dip my head into his hand in my best attempt at a nod and use my free hand to tap his fingers currently wringing my neck. If he wants me to make a call, he’ll have to let me speak.
He releases me with a hard shove. I rub my throat.
“Mum?” I try to get her attention. She winces as she turns her head to look at me. “Can you move?” She flutters one long blink. I take it as a yes. She’s exhausted. Beaten in every sense, but she’s responding. Good. “Go sit with the boys.” She begins to move, but Dad glowers at her and she stops.
He’s still in control of her, despite me standing here, despite charging in with a weapon, or offering myself as a distraction, or a punchbag, or a flesh sacrifice to Hanson’s. How can she watch me risk this and not trust me? Why is he the voice she listens to? She has the guts to have an affair with Carlo, but not to stand up to Dad? Why not? If not for us, then for herself? I don’t understand.
Still, I won’t allow him to win. Not even a battle this trivial. When you’ve lived the way we have, every battle is significant.
“You want money?” I threaten. “Then she sits with the boys.” I hover my finger over the call button and show him Dax’s name at the top of the screen.
“Fine. Move, bitch, but we’re not finished,” he sneers.
Mum hauls her arse across the room and sweeps the boys into her arms. Her face is a mess down the right side.
Slowly, I circle the room to stand between Dad and them. When I’m in place, I breathe a deep sigh of relief and hold my father’s stare. I drop the phone to my side and glower at him.
“You can come in now.”
I watch Dad’s reaction. There’s a flash of surprise and then, when Carlo launches himself through the door and straight for Dad, there’s horror and fear. I enjoy each expression and the speed at which they morph from one to the other. I love the fact that Carlo wipes his bravado from him in an instant. It’s retribution even if I’m not the one delivering it.
One punch has Dad on the floor. Carlo lands a kick to his gut too, causing him to slide across the floor and into the wall before I call out.
“Stop! Cue, enough!” Carlo turns to me, rage expanding his features until he’s almost unrecognisable as the man I know. He looks at me as though I’m betraying him. “The kids don’t need another violent father,” I warn him, nodding my head to the boys and their wide eyes. “He’s down,” I say softer. “Just keep him down for now.”
Dax and Aiden enter. Aiden carries Casey on his hip and keeps her back to the sight of Dad on the floor. She’s seen Mum in similar states before and doesn’t know how wrong this situation is. The boys do, though.
Aiden steps in front of the boys and smiles down at them. “Well done tonight, boys,” he says with faux cheer. “You were both brave to call Jules.”
“Daddy made us do it,” TJ admits. Aiden shares a glance with Dax, who nods in return.
“It was the right thing to do. Now we can stop your daddy from hurting anyone again.”
“Really?” AJ asks, his voice barely a whimper.
“Really. Okay, our part is over. Let’s go down to the car and let the grown-ups finish up. Attention Soldiers!”
The boys stand up, slowly, glancing to Mum and then me to be sure this is okay. Mum stares, jaw dropped and mouth lolling, at Carlo. So, I nod and give the kids a smile and a thumbs up. Aiden marches them outside and only when they are gone do we break the silence.
“Is he conscious?” Dax asks.
“He’s breathing,” Carlo grumbles, wholly unhappy about it.
“We need to get a few things straight,” Dax begins. “Jules, we heard everything.” He tells me. I want to be embarrassed about that, but there’s not much I can say or do about it now.
“They were here for me. Dad sold me out. I knew someone had. They knew me by name and told me they were here for me,” I confirm, assuming he’s talking about the bikers.
“We expected something like that. Not because of him though…” Dax cuts a glance at the lump that is my father. I wonder if he’s sizing up the threat level he represents, but Dad’s only really a threat to me and my family. I doubt he’s even got the balls to go against someone as mighty as the head of Trevainne. Blackmail, sure. Bribery, perhaps. Huh, maybe he is an issue?
Carlo huffs loudly, drawing our attention. “Can you discuss this later? I need to know what we are doing with him and get Mara to a fucking hospital or have you forgotten she’s injured? You okay, baby?” Carlo calls over to her.
Mum drops her head, letting her lank hair cover her injured cheek. “I’m okay. Just a bit sore.”
“Are you lying?” I reproach, concern riding me. We always hide the damage. “How long were you here before I arrived?” She glances across the room to Dad’s armchair, and I see two phones sitting on the cushion. I recognise the one I gave to TJ but the other I don’t know. Mum’s? Did she have a secret phone all this time? Wait…when did Dad take the phone from TJ?
“Did Dad make TJ call me?” I ask.
Mum bothers to lift her eyes to mine. I see hatred there. I’m harbouring similar feelings towards her.
“Yes,” she admits after a second’s contemplation. Her hesitancy bugs me.
“How did he know about the phone?” I fire back, suspecting there’s something she’s not saying.
“Because she fucking told me about it,” Dad grumbles from the floor. He grunts and pulls himself into a seated position. His eyes glare daggers at everyone in the room.
“Did you?” I ask her, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Your own mother sold you out, Mutt.” Dad’s laughter is loud and confident.
Mum finds her fire, but it’s not for me or even at Dad, it’s for Carlo. “He called me. He knew about the phone you gave me,” she cries to Carlo. “He said he’d burn us all in our beds. He knew your address.”
Dad snorts. “You always thought I was an idiot, but I knew. I knew every time you went to his house. Every time he snuck you in the back room at the bar…every time you took MY BOYS out for the afternoon with him.”
“You threatened your own sons?” Carlo asks.
“Better dead than with you,” Dad grunts. “I told her you could keep your mutts, but I keep my sons.”
“And you went running?” Carlo asks my mum. Betrayal written across his face. “You’d have given him those boys?” Carlo’s face whitens as Dad’s words really sink in. “Wait…mutt? You know?”
“You think I’d sire girls?” Dad spits. “That little bitch even has your eyes. I knew it the second she entered the world.”
“Casey’s Carlo’s?” I don’t know who to accuse. Carlo or Mum, but it’s Dad who sneers a response. “Not just Casey.”
I’d heard him before I just didn’t let it sink in, he’d said mutts not mutt, girls not girl, but I don’t want to know. It doesn’t make sense. I focus on one revelation at a time.
“You’ve been seeing Carlo all this time? You had a way of getting out, but you didn’t leave…I don’t…I don’t understand.”
“Jules,” Dax warns. He watches me but flicks his head toward my…towards Eric. He’s relaxed, leaning back, eyes full of wicked glee and a grin so wide it exposes missing teeth in the back of his mouth. He’s enjoying this way too much.
I refocus, ignoring the fucking herd of elephants parading around the room. I try to get the answer I know Dax needs. “Did Hanson’s men come to you, or did you already know to seek them out?”
Dad doesn’t respond, just grins at me and licks his lips.
“Fucking answer her!” Carlo slaps him across the face. The crack rebounds around the room.
“Gresh!” Dad hisses. “Fucking Gresh figured it out. They’ve been looking for a little bitch called Juliet, who saved some rich prick in the Vale. Gresh figured out it was you, not like there are many bitches called Juliet around here. He called me and I called them. Knew you’d come running if I threatened the little shits. Figured it might take a few hours for you to show up, but mummy dearest told me you gave Thomas Joseph a phone.”
“You really sold me out,” I whisper more to myself than Mum.
She shoots back defensively, “He threatened the kids…I had to protect them.”
“I might have believed that if you hadn’t already brought them back to him. Would you have left them here, with him?”
“He said he’d leave me and Carlo alone. He only wanted his boys back…I was protecting Casey…I was protecting the twins. He already said he’d kill them rather than lose them.”
“Did you ever think to protect me? No. Don’t fucking answer that. I already know the truth.”
Dax interrupts, his brow furrowed low over his eyes. “Did they ask for Juliet or Jules?”
“What does it fucking matter? They meant her.” Eric grumbles curses under his breath. I catch a few slurs and silently beg Carlo to shut him up again, but Dax doesn’t even seem to notice. He strides across the room, grabs Eric by the throat, in much the same way as Eric grabbed me earlier, and shoves him hard against the wall, smacking his head twice and cracking the plaster.
“Juliet or Jules?” he yells.
“Jules…They said Jules!” He cries out. Dax leans in and whispers something in his ear. I don’t hear it, but Dad’s eyes flick to me and widen. The first thing I see there is fear, but I know my dad well enough to see that spark, too. The spark he gets when he’s figured out a new way to hurt me.
I don’t plan on letting him hurt me or those kids ever again. I turn to Dax. “What now?”
“Your father goes to jail.”
“That’s it?” Carlo shouts.
“He might fall down every flight of stairs between here and the lobby.” Dax shrugs. “It all depends on how helpful he is.”
“Fuck you!” Dad spits. “Fucking cocksucking—”
Carlo stomps on his leg, pressing down until he screams.
“Stairs it is then.” Dax pulls out his phone. “Have you got this for a moment?” he asks Carlo. Cue nods. Dax walks towards the front door to make his call. I stand there. Useless. I’m numb.
“Is she mine?” Carlo asks. Eric laughs again, it is a hard, pained sound and entirely mirthless.
“She didn’t tell you?” he grunts. “Fuck me, this is gold. You knocked the bitch up and vanished, Big Shot. Just fucked off and joined the Foreign Legion or what-the-fuck-ever. She had no one until I picked her up off the street. They’d be dead without me. I was the father you never were. Mind you, your fucking mutts deserved putting down. I should have drowned them both in the Esk River.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” I mutter, but Dad—Eric’s—so well attuned to my voice that he hears me.
He chuckles evilly. “Don’t like it, Juliet? Don’t rate your runaway daddy? Personally, I think it’s ironic. Your real father was paying me for the pleasure of making you work in his bar. Best part is your whore mother couldn’t sneak in and out of the bar with you there. Two cunts, one cockblock.”
Carlo reaches breaking point. He lifts his leg and kicks Dad across the face. I hear something crack as Dad smacks off the floor and is out cold.
“I didn’t know,” he tells me after a minute of pacing. “Fuck, kid. I didn’t know.”
“Neither did I,” I mumble, looking at Mum who fluctuates between curling in on herself and throwing me defiant looks. “Is that it then?” I ask her. “The reason you hate me so much?”
Carlo reaches out a hand as if to touch my face, but I take a step back. “Your mum doesn’t hate you J—”
Mum’s bitter voice is so sharp it cuts through Carlo’s misplaced concern and straight into the heart of me. “If you’d never been born, I wouldn’t have needed to rely on him. I’d have never married him, if not for you. So yes, I fucking hate you. He hurt me because of you and the constant reminder that I belonged to someone else first. If he wasn’t threatening you and using you against me, he was beating me for any minor mistake you made.”
Silence hangs thickly between us all, but Mum isn’t done. Her focus shifts. Her cruel, frosty glare softening to regret as she turns to eye Carlo.
“I thought he was decent. A good man. I couldn’t wait for you to come back, and I didn’t know how to contact you. We…You…” She frowns at him. “…You said we were done.”
“You were lying to me. If there’s no trust, there’s no relationship,” he mumbles, but it sounds like something he might have said a long time ago, rather than something he believes.
“You left. I had her alone. I struggled on my own for months with a premature baby and no money.”
Premature? Since when? Is she bullshitting to get Cue’s sympathy, or was this just another thing I was never told?
Mum continues without a shred of explanation for me. “When Eric said we’d pretend she was his, and he’d raise her, I thought it was my only lifeline. A kindness.”
“How could you leave me in the dark? I’d understand if we didn’t get back together, but after we reconnected…and Casey…God! You should have told me. I don’t know anything about my own daughter. What she likes, hates, what classes she takes? Does she have a middle name? Fuck, I don’t even know her birthday.”
“Marie, after my grandmother,” I answer, swallowing the word grandmother thickly. Turns out she was never mine. I stumble over my date of birth, trying to distract myself from the deluge of consequences and questions piling up in my head. “August 30th”
“November 28th.” Mum says at the same time. I stare at her in stunned silence until she explains. “You were premature at 33 weeks. You spent months in hospital because of complications with your lungs. I met Eric while I worked part time at the Feelan factory. He was kind to me, letting me take hours off to be with you at the hospital. It was his idea to change your date of birth. We pretended you were his, so his family would accept our rushed marriage. You were so small it was easy to say you were younger than you really were. He got you a new birth certificate made up…I didn’t ask how. I was just grateful to be able to afford to feed and clothe you.”
“N…no.” I stutter. “I’m twenty next week.”
She shakes her head and for the first time, I see regret in her eyes. “I named you Joslyn Elanor Girard. Elanor, after Carlo’s mother. You’ll be twenty-one in November,” she says like she hasn’t just flipped everything on its head. “I thought changing everything was for the best. The more Eric’s you were, the more of a father he’d be to you.”
“You were wrong.”
“I know that now.”
I shake my head. “No, Mum. You say you hate me? Blame me? But it was YOU. You were wrong. You opened your legs and got pregnant. You met Eric. He was a choice you made. You lied to everyone. YOU. None of that was on me. None of this was ever on me.” I swipe the snot from under my nose. Fuck, I’m crying. I don’t want to cry. She doesn’t deserve my tears. I stomp across to the chair, as I pretend to listen to Mum’s excuses, and pick up my first phone. It belongs to Dax; I’m not leaving it here. While I’m there, I grab hers too.
“…I wanted to leave, but he used you against me. Then the boys. When Carlo came back…”
“You should have told me!” Carlo bellows.
His anger tips her over the edge. I don’t know if she expected sympathy, but she isn’t getting it. She goes from poor me to screw you in the time it takes for her expression to twist viciously.
“Fuck you. Fuck both of you! You have no idea what he put me through,” she wails. After everything he’s done, after everything she’s confessed tonight, she thinks she can say that? To me? My hands are a throbbing mess of burns and bandages and yet she thinks she’s the only one he tortured?
I see red. I’m shrieking words before my thoughts even solidify in my head.
“YES, I FUCKING DO! HE PUT ME THROUGH IT TOO!” I don’t think, I just react and I’m all anger and bitterness. I throw her phone. It bounces off the wall beside her arm. The loud thunk snaps me back to myself. I’m instantly ashamed. I don’t want to be him. I don’t want to emulate my father, and then I remember he’s not my father. Not my genes. I’m not even the person I thought I was walking in here tonight.
I’m angry all over again.
I suck in a rattling breath and try to regain my calm. Nothing matters. They don’t matter. I don’t matter. The kids are downstairs waiting with strangers.
“You two can sort this shit out. I’m done.”
I put myself in the line of fire for her and those kids every single day to protect the woman I watched suffer to raise us. Sure, he hit her, shouted at her, demeaned her, controlled her, but he never went as far with her as he did with me. I always thought it was because I spoke back or fought to deflect his anger from them to me, but now I know it was because I was never his. She raised me in a house where her husband hated my existence and then she has the cheek to blame me for the shit life she received from the man she chose? Her words, if you’d never been born, slam behind my eyes, pounding for me to see the truth. Well, I see it now and if they think I’m taking on any more of their shit, then they can think again.
“Jules, you can’t just walk away!” Carlo calls out.
“Watch me.”
Dax and two of his men wait outside. The suits enter as soon as I’m clear and Dax follows me in silence, suggesting he heard most what they said. I appreciate the space, but I need a distraction. I need to get out of my head. As soon as we’re enclosed in the elevator, I round on him.
“What do you want from me?”
“Jules…” he begins, trying to—what? Talk me down? Stupid. He’s not even calling me by my real name. An ugly sound falls from my mouth. I look away, unable to face my own sorry reflection in his eyes.
“It’s been a complete fuck up of a day and it’s not even nine a.m,” I tell him. There’s that ugly sound again. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a laugh. Only someone who really knows would hear the pain I’ve hidden within it.
“Little gem,” he tries again. This time, I hold his gaze. His expression is beseeching, but his eyes are a riot of emotion; pity, anxiety, determination, fear, molten rage, concern, heat…
It’s the last one I pay attention to. It’s the last one that I leap upon because it offers escape. There’s no permanence, no safety, no assurances, but there is escape.
And right now, I don’t want to be here.
I’m unpractised and inelegant, but I throw myself at Dax, shoving us both into the metal wall. His body offers no resistance, no question or judgement. I grab his tie and pull him down, our heads and lips smashing together painfully. I kiss him brutally. Salty tears contrast with his sweet minty taste. It’s a one-sided assault until it’s not.
I don’t know if it’s pity that wins out, or passion, but Dax matches my ferocity, swapping our positions so that I’m the one trapped against the wall. Only when he senses my fire waver does he softens the kiss. His hands grip my face, pulling my filthy hair from my skin. His thumbs sweep again, and again, to clear my tears. His tongue pulls back until only his lips work mine, and then he withdraws entirely.
His blown pupils flick back and forth, concern written in their depths and in the creases of his skin. He eyes me like I’m dangerous. Perhaps I am.
No, I’m worse than dangerous. I’m utterly stupid.
The doors ping open to an empty lobby.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I just…I…” A sob wrenches from deep in my gut. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”