She leans back just enough to give me a sheepish grin. “My legs were tired. At least with the piano you get to sit down.”
Miss Juliet’s schoolmarm voice barks in my mind. Back straight. Spine aligned. Head up. Violin begins with good posture, always. Most parents want their children to grow up. Cam and I should have spent more time coaxing Beatrix to grow down.
I drop a kiss on her nose. “You are my hero, do you know that? What you did this afternoon was so brave, and I am so unbelievably proud to be your mother.”
She wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes, her curls tickling my ear. “Did Daddy really do that to the bad man’s daughter?”
My mind stutters back to Cam’s coerced confession, the heartlessness and money problems Sebastian dragged into the daylight, offenses that sometime in the past ten minutes I’ve already forgiven. There’s nothing like watching your firstborn daughter wielding a gun to illuminate the things that matter. Cam. The Bees. I can get past anything but losing one of them.
“I don’t know, baby. Maybe. But none of it matters without Bax. Let’s get him back first, and then we’ll think about how we fix our family.”
And I will fix this family. No matter what happens next, Cam and I will claw back the power Sebastian took from us when he stepped out of the shadows and forced his way into our home. Some things are impossible to put behind you, but this will not be one of them. If it’s the last thing I do, I will fix us.
Suddenly, there’s commotion at the front door. A cluster of bodies emerging, big and small. Tanya’s kids, the Montgomery twins from down the street, Cam with a Baxter-sized body balanced on an arm. My heart stops, and I squint into the darkness, unable to move.
And then a small voice, soft and scratchy and as familiar as my own pulse, the most beautiful sound in the world: “Whoa. How come there are so many cops?”
S E B A S T I A N
Ten Minutes Earlier
No money. A bullet in my shoulder. The whole house shaking from the cops busting in downstairs. This wasn’t exactly how I planned for things to go.
And all because of that sneaky little Beatrix, wriggling out of her bindings not once, but two times. She looked so cute when I fixed them a snack. An adorable little Houdini in a pink polka-dot shirt. It’s why I underestimated her, because she reminded me so much of my Gigi.
I shove my aching body to a stand, wincing at the sharp stab in my shoulder. Beatrix’s bullet ripped through muscles and tendons, I can tell, maybe nipped at a bone, but at least it missed my heart, and it shot all the way through. I know from the heavy wetness on the back of my shirt, the red smear I leave on the wall. The drips that fall from my elbow to the fancy carpet as I limp to the side table and my phone.
The screen is lit up with a million messages—no surprise there. Tanya and my sister, Hannah, blowing up my phone, the back-to-back calls and messages practically vibrating it off the table where I dumped it next to the gun. I ignore their messages and fire off a text to Hannah.
Send the link to tonight’s video to Juanita Moore, her card is on the fridge. Do it now, quick, before the cops arrive. People are either going to hate me for what I did, or they’ll understand. I’m counting on you to make sure enough fall in the second category to help Gigi. Love on her for me, sis. Take care of my baby girl. I love you.
I turn the phone off and toss it to the floor.
Dethroning Atlanta’s Steak King. I can’t deny it is sweet, sweet revenge. With any luck the whole world will see how their favorite celebrity chef screwed a poor, single father out of the money he needed for his dying daughter. Now everybody will know that’s the kind of person Cam is, a man who values money and power above all else. Talk about going out in a blaze of glory.
It’s funny. When Tanya called to say that none other than Cam Lasky had moved in across the street, I couldn’t believe my stupid luck. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, isn’t that what they say? I told her to play dumb. I told her to ingratiate herself with his pretty wife, to make herself necessary in their lives, to keep her mouth closed while my brain stitched together this plan.
The other big surprise? That Cam was strapped for cash. He didn’t tell me that part when he pulled out of our deal, just that he had “other business matters that needed his full attention.” I didn’t find out he was dead broke until I sued him for damages, for funds his attorneys told mine he didn’t have. By then my money was long gone, cash I’d set aside for Gigi’s care but Cam assured me was a safe investment in him.