Vampire born, p.14
Vampire Born, page 14
FOURTEEN
ARIA
Haley had assured me Angie wasn’t upset with me about yesterday’s outcome, but that didn’t stop the butterflies in my stomach from dive-bombing in anticipation of seeing her.
I opened the door to the outreach center and walked in with my head bowed like I was heading into the principal’s office expecting to be expelled.
Not that I was scared Angie would punish me. She’d always stood by me through thick and thin, and she’d never been the type to get angry over missteps, choosing instead to find the teachable moment in any lesson.
It was her disappointment I feared.
“I’m sorry, Ang,” I said as soon as I saw her. “I should have listened to you. I shouldn’t have gone over there.”
Her eyes held no condemnation as they searched over me. “Are you okay? How’s your head?”
She lifted her fingers to trace over the small bump on my forehead, and I tried not to wince.
“See? It’s okay. It would take a lot more than that to crack this hard noggin.”
“You were lucky.” She hugged me, and I held tightly to her, needing her comfort and her love. She pulled back after a moment and trailed her fingers down my arms to take my hands in hers. “Cazzie had a friend bring her here to pick up her car yesterday afternoon. She was hysterical with worry about you. She said to tell you she’s sorry she couldn’t tell the truth.”
“I knew she was scared. I didn’t blame her; I just wished she didn’t have to deal with him. I swear he would have killed her if I hadn’t stopped him.”
“I have no doubt he would have.” She released my hands and crossed back over to the counter to retrieve her coffee. “He’s already proven what he’s capable of. I’m just glad neither you nor Cazzie was more seriously hurt.”
“I should have seen him sooner,” I said, finally admitting what had been eating at me. “I should have known he might show up, and I should have been watching. I was distracted, and it almost got Cazzie killed. Things could have been so much worse, and it would have been my fault. I don’t know how to forgive myself for that.”
“Well, first of all, Greg’s actions are not your fault. Or Cazzie’s. But you’re right that not taking the threat seriously put both of you in danger. I would say you’ll know better next time, but there can’t be a next time, Aria. There are reasons we have procedures and don’t get directly involved like that.”
“I know. I understand that I screwed up. It won’t happen again. Next time, I’ll listen to you.”
Angie gave me a smirk. “Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t. You’ve always been one who needed to learn a lesson for herself.”
“Yeah, and look how well that turns out for me!”
“As long as you can find a takeaway from the lesson, you haven’t left the experience empty-handed.”
I dropped my purse onto my desk. “Oh, I have takeaways aplenty. My first arrest—my parents would be so proud, wouldn’t they? God only knows how much the bill is going to be for having my Jeep towed, and I’ve got to hire a lawyer so I don’t end up in prison until after my daughter graduates from high school.”
The thought of serving time for my crime had been so terrifying that I hadn’t really allowed myself to think much about it, which had been pretty easy to do since I’d had so much else to obsess over. But saying out loud that I could possibly miss the rest of my daughter’s childhood and be incarcerated away from her and Nick sent a wave of nausea sweeping through me. Then, I clutched my stomach and braced my hand on my desk as an even worse thought gripped me.
If Nick was unhappy with me and I ended up going to jail long-term for this fiasco, would he still take care of Sage?
Surely, he wouldn’t turn his back on her. He loved her like she was his own!
“You’re not going to prison.” Angie came to stand across the desk from me. “I’ve already made some calls this morning, and I’m certain we can get an attorney to defend you at a reasonable cost.”
After making a few calls, I confirmed that the Jeep had indeed been towed, and my phone had been delivered to Bryce. I called the station and asked to get a message to him so I could figure out how to retrieve my phone, and within a half hour, he showed up at the outreach center with my phone in his hand.
“How are you?” he asked. “How’s the head?”
“It’s fine. A little tender, but nothing serious. Thanks for all you did yesterday to make my stay in jail a little easier to bear. I appreciated it.”
He looked away and tucked his thumbs into his belt. “I didn’t do much. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep him from arresting you.”
“You don’t have to apologize. Officer Daugherty was just doing his job. It’s unfortunate, and it sucked, but if I broke the law, then he had every right to arrest me. I just hope I can find an attorney who can keep me from going to jail.”
Bryce’s brow furrowed as he tilted his head. “You need me to ask around?”
“No, Angie already talked to some people. I’m good. Thanks.”
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do. I feel so bad that you’re even in this mess when you were just trying to help.”
“I hope Cazzie’s okay.”
“I offered to take her somewhere before we left, but she refused to go. Do you need a ride to pick up your Jeep?”
“No, thanks. One of my friends will drive me over to the tow yard at lunch.”
“All right. If you’re sure there’s nothing I can do, I’ll head out. But if you need anything at all, just call.”
“Thanks.”
We said goodbye, and the rest of the morning passed by quickly as I played catch-up with emails and messages from the day before. I’d texted Nick as soon as I charged my phone to let him know I had it again, and the texts we’d exchanged since then made it seem that all was back to normal.
Perhaps Haley had been right and I’d been overreacting after all.
He’d offered to come and take me to lunch and to pick up the Jeep, but it made no sense for him to leave work and come to me when Cricket was much closer, so she and I picked up lunch on the way to the tow yard, and then I brought some back for Angie.
“You aren’t going to believe how much they charged me to tow the Jeep,” I said to Angie as I came back in the outreach center. “Let’s just say this is probably the last time I’ll be eating out for a while. Between this and whatever the lawyer’s gonna cost, I may have to quit teaching at the studio and get a second job that pays better.”
Angie turned then, and I stopped short at the look on her face. I couldn’t tell if it was fear or sadness clouding her eyes, but she looked as though she’d just gotten the worst news imaginable.
“Ang? You okay? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
She took the take-out bag I held and placed it on the desk behind her. “I think maybe you should sit down.”
“What? Why?” My own heart took off like a shot had been fired and it was the lead runner in the race. “Is it Sage? Is it Nick? Haley? What’s happened?”
Angie shook her head as she rubbed her hand on my arm and guided me to sit. “No, no. They’re all fine. All your loved ones are fine, and I wish I didn’t even have to share this news with you. I’ve contemplated keeping it to myself, but I have a feeling it’s going to rear its head no matter what.”
“You’re stressing me out. Just tell me what’s going on. Is it my parents? Did something happen to my parents?”
She shook her head again, twisting her lips to the side as she chewed on the inside of her cheek. “I got a call while you were out for lunch. It was Mike, Aria.”
My heart plummeted into my gut at the mention of his name, and I felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked from the room.
“Evidently, he’s gotten sober and made his way back home. He started asking around, trying to find out where you were, and someone told him you’d come up here with me. I don’t know how he tracked me down, but he did.”
My body had shut down and nothing seemed to work correctly. My tongue wouldn’t form words. My heart couldn’t seem to find its rhythm. My lungs burned from the lack of air since I’d been unable to take a breath, and my brain felt scrambled, shaken, and stirred.
“I didn’t tell him anything,” she said. “He asked if you were still with me, and I said no. That you hadn’t lived with me in years. He asked if I knew where you were, and I said no. Which was true since I had no idea where you and Cricket had gone for lunch. He gave me his number and asked me to have you call him if I hear from you.”
The world had started to go black around the edges, and I bent to put my head between my knees and managed to drag in a ragged breath. Angie squatted next to me and began to rub her hand slowly up and down my back.
“Aria, he knows you were pregnant. Someone told him.”
And there it was. My worst fear had come to pass.
I lifted my head and grabbed hold of Angie’s arm, my voice filled with anguished panic. “He can’t know about her. He can’t have her. He can’t take her away from me.”
“Shh,” Angie smoothed my hair back away from my face. “That’s not going to happen. You’re her mama, and he can’t do anything to change that. And the way he was fishing for information, I don’t think he knows anything about her. He asked if you’d carried the baby full-term and if you’d gone the adoption route. I’m thinking someone back home must have told him that was what your parents wished.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I let him do the talking. I didn’t answer one way or another if we’re still in touch. When he mentioned the pregnancy and asked what I knew, I told him I had no information to give him.”
“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe after seven years, he found me. I moved halfway across the nation, and he found me.”
“Well, technically, he found me. He hasn’t found you yet, and he may not. But I wanted you to be aware he’s looking. And that he thinks you may have had his child.”
“Sage is not his child.” I shook my head, not even willing to let that erroneous assumption settle for a second. “She is mine. She is Nick’s. Nick is her daddy. Not Mike. Mike was a sperm donor who threatened to kill both of us.”
Angie pressed her lips together with a wincing frown. “I agree with you, but let’s not kid ourselves by pretending the courts will see it the same way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that if Mike can prove she’s his, the courts may reason he has a right to visitation with her.”
“No! Absolutely not!” The adrenaline coursing through my body pushed me to stand and I paced, unable to remain still. “She doesn’t know him. She doesn’t need to know him. There’s no way I will ever let him be around her. No way in hell. Over my dead body will Mike Kelly ever have the opportunity to lay a hand on my child.”
“Calm down. Nothing has happened yet! Now is the time to get your ducks in order. You need to discuss this with Nick, and the two of you need to hire an attorney who’s well-versed in family law.”
At the thought of Nick, hope surged within me. “Wait! Nick’s name is on Sage’s birth certificate. He’s listed as her father legally. When she was born, I didn’t want to put Mike on there and give him rights to her, so I left it blank. Then Nick and I met. He planned to adopt her when we got married, but then we found out that since no father was listed on her birth certificate, he could claim her. We didn’t want her to get older and see that she had no father listed, so Nick declared she was his and he was added.”
“They didn’t do a blood test?”
I shook my head. “They don’t if no one contests it.”
Angie’s grimace dashed my hope. “Well, Mike is likely to do just that, and the DNA will prove he’s her father. Then, both you and Nick might be on the hook for falsifying her certificate.”
“This is insane.” I pulled my hair up and twisted it into a knot, suddenly hot all over. “After all he did, after the way he treated me, he has no right to come after me.”
“We can hope he’ll drop it and move on with his life, but it would be best for you and Nick to be prepared in case he doesn’t. He had to do quite a bit of looking to find me. I purposely don’t have any social media and as few public records as possible. If he found me, he can probably find you.”
FIFTEEN
NICK
After much groveling and a lengthy conversation about how common it is to not have any memories of an accident, I had secured another meeting with the CEO I’d accidentally blown off the day before.
The only problem was Shelia was flying out the next morning and could only meet in the evening, which would be hell for me to pull off. Sage needed to be dropped off and picked up from dance, and even if I asked one of the other moms to help with transport, she’d still need dinner and someone at home once she was done. It was Aria’s night to teach at the martial arts studio, and with the week she’d had, I knew she needed the release and the time spent engaging in her passion.
I also had to figure out when and how I could replenish my blood supply. Typically, a subscriber would receive a regular shipment of special insulated tumblers containing their custom cocktails, which was how I’d managed things before I’d started my mortal journey. But without a way to safely store the tumblers to avoid detection, I was stuck meeting up with my mother’s representatives for short-term solutions.
Once I’d gotten through the ravenous newborn phase, I’d need much less to keep me sated, and it would be easier to hide in smaller quantities. Of course, once I was able to become mortal again, I wouldn’t need it at all.
I’d been so preoccupied with playing catch-up at work that I hadn’t had much time to track down a shifter powerful enough and willing to replicate the transition I’d made. I dialed Mam to see if perhaps she’d had better luck, though I was certain she would have tried to reach me if she had.
“Nicky? Everything okay?”
The panic and worry in her voice tugged at my heart, and I wondered if she’d ever again be able to see my number calling and not feel like it was cause for alarm.
While I didn’t see any way to merge my two families and have them interact, I didn’t know that I’d have it in me to sever all ties with my mother again when I returned to mortality. Undoubtedly, we could find a way to stay in touch that wouldn’t compromise my life with Sage and Aria.
But even as I said it, I knew it was a pipe dream. Mam’s world and mine would not work well together, and any contact with her meant a risk of exposing my wife and daughter to the horrors of our kind.
“Everything’s fine. I was just wondering if you’d heard back from anyone and if there’d been any progress.”
“No, darling, but I’ll make some additional calls this afternoon. I’ve been dealing with Valentina’s tantrums all day.”
Any hope the two would make peace in their grief vanished. “Pray tell, what are you two ladies feuding about now? Let me guess, there’s some belonging of Papa’s you each feel entitled to.”
“If you consider the Gilde one of your father’s belongings.”
“The Gilde?” I sat back in my chair as I considered what that meant. “Well, I’ll be damned. Is Valentina making a power grab? On what grounds? She’s never even worked underneath the Gilde.”
“Oh, she’s not looking for a new role for her. She wants Matteo to be granted leadership roles within the Gilde and at VCBI. She’s requested an emergency meeting with the board to demand it. It’s ludicrous, really. The only thing that boy’s ever managed was a handful of night clubs, and he hasn’t exactly had a golden touch with those. How she thinks he could run a global conglomerate is beyond me! But it has nothing to do with Matteo’s abilities and everything to do with undermining me.”
“You really think that’s her goal? Maybe she’s just looking out for her son and wants to ensure he’s provided for with Papa gone.”
“Oh, please,” Mam scoffed. “You and I both know your father has always been more than generous with them both, and his will reflects that. Matteo can continue to play club owner for as long as he desires, and Valentina will never have to lift a finger, not that she’s ever lifted one from the moment she met Theodoor. No, this isn’t about money. She’s challenging my authority.”
“To what end? There’s no one above you anymore. With you poised to gain Dad’s shares through the plans of succession, you’ll have the largest controlling interest. Not that you weren’t already in charge. Papa spent all his time in the lab, and everyone’s always known you were the one running things.”
“Which is exactly why Valentina has a bee in her bonnet! It’s as if she wants to erase the fact that your father and I built the Gilde together from the ground up, long before she was in the picture. We worked side by side, day in and day out creating this empire. Valentina’s always felt threatened by our partnership, and she resented that he deferred to me on so many matters. For years, she’s been on him to give her a larger piece of the pie when it comes to our governing structure.”
“And he placated her with money.” I tapped my fingers on the desk as I mulled over the situation. “So, is she thinking she might be able to get the board to give her and Matteo what Papa never would? I can’t imagine she’d be able to convince them to vote against you. Especially since it clearly wasn’t what Papa wanted.”
My phone beeped with Aria’s number, and I said goodbye to Mam with another plea for her to help find a solution to my problem fast.
“Hi, Angel,” I said once the call flipped over to my wife. “Did you get the Jeep?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“What’s wrong?” The stress in her voice concerned me. “Was it a hassle? Was it damaged?”
“No. It’s just a ridiculous fee that we shouldn’t have had, plus we’ve got to replace the van, and I’ve got to get an attorney—which, by the way, Angie says she might know someone who’ll cut us a deal.”
