January Whitehall
I stare at the laptop screen for a long time. I can tell because the numbers on the little clock keep ticking over. All my money is gone. Every dollar. I didn’t have much, just the fifteen thousand my daddy left me when he died and some birthday and Christmas gifts from my uncles, but my current bank balance is zero. My account was emptied two weeks ago. The contents transferred to Corinne Whitehall. My stepmother.
I burst into hot, furious tears. I’ve cried a lot since I was taken at my wedding, but this is different. The sadness pours from deep inside me and a howl comes ripping from my throat. Two weeks ago, I was in a cage under Velvet House. No one knew where I was, or if I was even alive and my stepmom used that moment to steal my money. I knew she sold me to Mr. Parker, but I thought that was to save our family. But taking my money wasn’t to save my family. It was because she hates me for being Daddy’s daughter. She always has. My whole life, she’s been mean and controlling, and now she’s stolen from me too.
I was going to use that money to rent an apartment while I looked for a job. I don’t have any qualifications, but I thought I could be a barista. Stand behind the counter at a nice café and laugh with customers. Now I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t get to a café from Velvet House. I can’t drive and I don’t have a car and as far as I can see, we’re surrounded by spooky forests.
“Everything is ruined,” I whisper.
For now, bella. But what will you do next?
Zia Teresa’s strong, scratchy voice is like latte warming my insides. I wipe my eyes. “Are you always going to be able to talk to me, Zia?”
I don’t see why not. Now, enough whining. How do we make this better?
I lie back on my bed. “I don’t know.”
My gaze falls on the Chanel bag Eli gave me last night. I could sell it and some of my nice clothes and then I’d have plenty of money. But that wouldn’t be right. The bag was a gift. Besides, if I sold the bag, I’d only have money because men want to be with me. Everything about my life has been about men wanting to be with me. I want to do something on my own.
And I want to live in a castle and have little piggies do the laundry, bella. What are you going to do?
I glance at the clock on the laptop. There’s only twenty minutes until I’m supposed to meet Bobby downstairs. “I don’t know. I’ll have to figure it out while I’m on my date.”
Zia Teresa laughs, a loud throaty chuckle that reminds me of Doc. Then go get ready, bella. Roberto is the boy I like best.
I think about that as I shower. If the Zia in my mind likes Bobby best, does that mean I like Bobby the best? The Zia who speaks to me when I need help feels so separate from me. Yet if she was still alive I’m sure she would like Bobby. He’s more well put-together and kinder than the others. But Zia doesn’t seem to know he might be married. I’ll have to ask him about that today.
I find a pair of jeans in the massive wardrobe and pair them with a pink T-shirt and sparkling white sneakers. As I pull my hair into a high ponytail, excitement bubbles in my stomach. I can’t help it. When Bobby was my math tutor, I used to fantasize about going on a date with him. Now it’s happening.
With a last glance at myself in the mirror, I grab my Chanel bag and head downstairs, loving the feel of my sneakered feet bouncing off the floor. My stepmom hated sneakers, so I wasn’t allowed to wear them. Well, I’m done doing what she wants. When I’m a barista, I’ll wear sneakers every day.
Only, even if I find some way to commute to a café, I don’t know if being a barista will pay enough for me to move out of Velvet House. I’ll need a job that pays well and doesn’t require a lot of experience.
I remember Dreams, the girls strutting around in lingerie, and my stomach flips. I could dance at Dreams. Then again, the Doc that offered me a job there isn’t the Doc who almost beat poor Archie to a pulp for hugging me. I can’t imagine he’d want me giving out lap dances.
As I approach the dining room, I overhear men’s voices.
“…you’re askin’ a lot, Mr. Morelli. Maybe too much.”
The voice is familiar, but I must be wrong. I was just thinking about Archie, he can’t actually be—
“That’s our price, Baskerville,” Eli says sharply. “You and your brother can take it or leave it.”
“And if we leave it?”
“That’s your choice. But you boys won’t be welcome here again.”
My stomach swirls. It is the twins. They’ve come to Velvet House and I can finally thank them for rescuing me. I knock on the dining room door. “Hello, it’s um… me?”
“Come in, bella,” Eli says.
I enter and see Doc, Eli, and Bobby sitting at one end of the big table. At the other is Bill and Archie Baskerville. Their blond heads turn, identical smiles spreading across their faces.
“Hey, Kitten,” one of them says. “Ain’t you a sight for sore eyes?”
Doc barks something at them, but I don’t hear it. Suddenly I can smell the truck stop restroom again, feel Emilia’s clammy lips on mine, Mr. Parker is saying he and I’ll be married in Vegas by nightfall. He’s laughing at me…
Then I’m flat on my back, my brain ringing like a bell. Someone has a hand to my forehead.
“She’s okay,” Doc says. “It’s shock. Get her sugar. Soda or candy or something.”
“There’s orange juice in the kitchen,” Bobby says. “I’ll be back in a second.”
Doc’s fingers dig into my neck like he’s taking my pulse. Is he a real doctor? He said his nickname came from dealing pills, but he’s always doing medical stuff and when he does, the others listen to him.
The ringing in my head gets louder and I force my eyes open. Doc, Eli, and the Baskerville twins stare down at me. “Urgggghhhhh?”
“Everyone back off,” Eli says sharply. “Bill, Archie, come with me. Doc, you stay.”
Eli leads the twins out of the dining room as Doc removes his fingers from my throat. “Your heart’s going apeshit. You dizzy, Tits?”
I nod, glad he’s still calling me that gross name because it means he’s not scared I’ll die. “Did I pass out?”
“Sure did.”
“That’s so embarrassing.”
“You had, like, six traumatic experiences in a row. It’d be more surprising if there weren’t aftereffects.”
“It was seeing the twins. It reminded me of being in the limo with Mr. Parker.”
Doc’s jaw tightens. “I should just kill them for touching you and get it over with.”
“Don’t,” I say. “Be mad at me if you want, but don’t hurt the twins anymore.”
Doc’s nostrils flare. “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, Tits.”
His tone is so sharp I flinch. “Get away from me.”
“No.”
Then the way he’s staring down at me changes. Goes all soft. “Goddamn, you’re pretty.”
My head is spinning from my fall and this strange turn in the conversation. My mouth opens without my permission. “You’re pretty, too. Even though you’re rude.”
The corner of his mouth kicks up. “Let’s be pretty together.”
He’s lowering his lips to mine when the door bangs open. Bobby enters carrying a tall glass of orange juice.
“How’s everything going?” he says.
“Great,” I say, a little too quickly. “I wanted to say thank you to the Baskervilles. Are they staying for lunch?”
Doc snorts. “Only if it’s poison.”
“Valente,” Bobby warns, handing me the juice. He smiles at me. “The twins have business in Manhattan, JJ, but they know how grateful you are.”
“Do they?”
“That depends,” Doc says, a dangerous glint in his eye. “How grateful are you?”
“Valente,” Bobby repeats. “Shouldn’t you be leaving?”
Doc’s lip curls. “Yeah, typical. Get rid of me as soon as she’s conscious.”
Bobby ignores him. “We’re just gonna have a picnic, JJ. There’s no pressure.”
I sip my juice, willing the sugar to work quickly. “A picnic sounds nice.”
“Enjoy it,” Doc says. “There’s not gonna be nothing nice about our date.”
“I said no sex.”
“That didn’t stop Morelli from licking you senseless at a fine dining restaurant.”
I gape at him. “You know about that?”
Doc’s smile is pure evil. “Who doesn’t?”
I glance at Bobby, who winces. I press a hand over my mouth. “You know too! How do you all know?”
“We have a group chat,” Doc says. “It’s called ‘January Joy’s Tits and other natural wonders.’ Bobby can show you if you want.”
“Don’t listen to him.” Bobby takes my hand. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
“If she sucks your dick, I want video,” Doc calls after us, leaving me to wonder how he can get so jealous at the twins for looking at me but be fine with the idea of Bobby and I hooking up.
Just like my date with Eli, there’s a car waiting for us in the driveway. This time a shiny red truck—big and American like the man beside me. Bobby opens the passenger door for me. “I kinda can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“Me neither,” I admit. “Run away before someone stops us?”
He grins. “Definitely.”
I slide inside the truck. It smells nice, like winter fire and peppercorns. It’s also intensely familiar. The same scent that used to waft across the library table whenever Bobby tutored me. That, along with his big brown eyes and cuddly good looks, made me wish he was my boyfriend.
“Did you used to drive this car to Trinity Grammar?” I ask as he hops behind the wheel.
“Ah, no. It would have looked weird for a tutor to have a Benz.”
“Oh.”
There’s a beat and I’m sure we’re both thinking about when I first arrived at Velvet House and discovered my mild-mannered math tutor was actually a criminal bad boy. I still kind of can’t believe it, but so many things have happened, I guess Bobby seems more normal. Except for the fact he killed Kurt, my bodyguard. I thought doing that made him evil, but seeing what Mr. Parker is capable of, I don’t know what to think.
“What’s on your mind?” Bobby asks, as we drive down the gravel path to the front gate.
“My old bodyguards… were they bad men?”
He gives me a sidelong glance. “You’re already having a hard day. Maybe now isn’t the right time, JJ.”
The nickname makes me smile. Bobby always calls me ‘JJ’—like Margot and my brothers. But then there’s always been something homey about him. It’s probably why Zia likes him best. “I guess I just want to know if there was a reason why you killed Kurt?”
The corners of Bobby’s mouth turns down. “I appreciate you trying to make excuses for me, but I’m done justifying my behavior. I think it’s more important you know I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Sorry for what?”
“For the way we met. For the things I’ve done since we met. For the things I did before we met. For the fact you’ll never look at me and see the guy who tutored you in math anymore. That I’m not the good guy you wanted me to be.”
“You are what I wanted you to be!” The words come out involuntarily, but they’re true. Back at Dreams, Bobby wrapped his arms around me and even though I’d made a mistake and got Adriano hurt, he still treated me like I was precious. He bought me dinner and Pop-Tarts and he just brought me juice. The other guys all look after me in their own way but Bobby takes proper care of me.
I touch a hand to my burning cheek and see Bobby’s blushing too. It’s so cute, my face gets even hotter. Then I remember Doc telling me he’s married. ‘Actually, I don’t know if he’s divorced. I don’t think the papers’ve come through.’
I lick my lips. “I kinda need to ask you something.”
He grins at me. “Go ahead.”
“Are you… married?”
The truck brakes hard. I grip the door handle as Bobby stares at me in horror. “What the fuck? No!”
“Oh,” I say, releasing the door. “That’s good. Are you, um, divorced?”
“No! I’ve never been married! Who told you I was?”
“Um…”
“Valente,” Bobby grinds out. “That fucking swine.”
For a moment he looks murderous, then he makes a conscious effort to calm his furious expression. “I’ve never been married, JJ. I’ve never even come close.”
“Okay,” I say carefully. “Although, I was almost married, so it’s fine. I know life is complicated.”
“It’s not.” Bobby takes my hand. “I like you. I want you to trust me. No matter what happens with Eli or any of the others, I want you to see yourself as mine.”
My insides give a squiggle. It’s not the first time he’s said it, but it’s lovely to know he still feels that way.
“Thank you, Bobby.” I say, before taking a big breath. “But, are you really okay sharing me with the others?”
He gives me a soft smile. “If it means I get to be with you, then I don’t see it as an issue.”
My stomach contracts. I want to make some kind of joke, but my brain has snagged on the idea that Bobby, sweet sensitive Bobby, also likes the idea of sharing me.
Like a wife to all of us, Eli said.
Bobby clears his throat. “While we’re getting things out in the open, JJ, I want to tell you the story of what happened with Parker.”
I blink. Since I was abducted, no one at Velvet House has ever willingly given me any information about Mr. Parker. In fact, everyone implied it was impossible, something I would never get to find out. “Won’t Eli and the others be mad?”
“Things have changed. You’re not our prisoner and the contract releasing you from Parker is being drawn up as we speak. If there’s any future for me and you, for you and any of us, I think you need to know the truth.”
“Will you tell me anything I want to know?”
“Of my story, yes. But I can’t talk about things that belong to Doc or Eli or… Adriano.”
A weight drops into my stomach. Adriano. The Baskerville twins aren’t the only people I haven’t thanked. I need to go to Adriano’s wing and tell him how grateful I am he took me to see my Zia, but I’m scared the others will be angry. And if I’m being honest, that he might attack me. That the wounded minotaur who confessed his feelings for me in his bed is even more dangerous than the one who roamed around Velvet House openly threatening to kill me.
“How… is Adriano?”
“He’s fine. Would you like to hear my story?”
I sit up straighter. “Of course.”
“Okay. When I was fifteen, my mom died.”
I manage not to make a noise. My birth mom died when I was little, and I always felt awkward when people gushed over how sad that was. Sure enough, Bobby shoots me a grateful smile. “It was an accident. She was heading home and a drunk driver T-boned her.”
This time it’s harder not to make a shocked noise. Poor Mrs. Bassilotta. Poor Bobby. I put my free hand over our joined ones. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, it sucked. But my dad got a life insurance payout Enough to send me to Pembroke Prep.”
“That’s where my brothers went.”
“It’s where Eli and I went. I applied for a scholarship in middle school, but it wasn’t enough to cover the fees. I felt guilty as hell about profiting off my mom’s death, but I knew it was my shot at being able to get into a good college.”
“Bobby! I’m sure your mom would’ve wanted something good to come out of her accident.”
He gives me a wry smile. “You didn’t know my mom. Anyway, I had a rough time in New York at first. I wasn’t rich like the other kids. My dad was a farmer, and I didn’t have a fancy phone or a car… it was hard.”
He says it lightly, but looking at his face, I can see the sweet, lonely teenager he must have been, and my heart aches. “That sounds awful.”
“It was okay. In my second semester, I made the baseball team and I sat next to Eli in bio. Everything got better.”
I picture the two of them, Bobby all shy in his blue sweaters and Eli in some fitted T-shirt and designer jeans. “What was Eli like?”
“Exactly the same. Everyone liked him. All the girls. All the guys. He seemed older than us in a lot of ways. He knew things about wine and clothes and he’d lived in Europe…” Bobby shoves a hand through his short hair. “I’m dancing around what you need to know, but it’s hard to talk about this stuff.”
“That’s okay.”
His face softens. “Do you like baseball?”
“I don’t know a lot about it.”
“It was my dad’s thing. He was first generation Italian, and he wanted to prove he was a good immigrant.”
I smile. “Zia Teresa was the kind of immigrant who makes everyone feel bad for not being Italian, but I get what you mean.”
Bobby laughs. “My dad and I went to baseball games together, threw the ball whenever he had time. I missed him a lot when I went away to school but watching games on TV gave us something to talk about on the phone.”
“That’s really nice.”
We hold hands in silence as more pretty country scenery rushes past. It’s peaceful. The most peaceful I’ve felt in… I’m not sure how long. Bobby lets go of my hand and I feel a flash of nerves. I know him well enough to know he doesn’t want to be touching me while he says whatever’s coming next. That he’s ashamed.
“At the end of our senior year, Eli looped me into this deal he had going,” Bobby says. “Some local guy and his muscle invented a pill that was selling like crazy.”
“Doc and Adriano,” I say. “And Orchard.”
“Yup.” Bobby pulls in a deep breath. “Eli was putting up cash for them to expand and he asked me to make a secure website so they could set up drops. I wanted money, so I helped out.”
He glances across at me. “This might be hard to understand, but I never saw it as a long-term thing. I had a full ride to play ball at UCLA. I was gonna help Eli out, send most of the cash home to my dad, and head to California.”
“So… what happened?”
“At first everything was great. I liked the guys, Doc and Adriano. We got along well. Like we’d known each other our whole lives.”
All these years later, he still sounds surprised.
“…Soon we had big plans. We were making street money, but Eli was setting up meetings with Provalite and Osember, these huge drug companies. He kept saying we had the female Viagra and if we could take Orchard mainstream, we could make millions, maybe billions. I didn’t know about that, but I figured I didn’t need to know. I was getting ready for UCLA and Adriano was talking about the Marines and Doc was thinking about going back to school and getting his GED and everything looked good…”
I so badly want to believe everything worked out. That Doc went back to school and Adriano joined the military and Bobby played baseball in California.
“…then Parker showed up.”
My mouth dries over.
“Has anyone told you his dad was a drug boss?” Bobby asks.
I nod, my throat clacking.
“Parker was getting out of the game at that stage, trying to break into tech, but he heard about Orchard and set up a meeting with Doc. He wanted the formula. Offered a lot of money for it.”
“And Doc didn’t want to sell?”
“We’re getting to parts of the story that aren’t mine to tell, but no. Doc didn’t want to sell.”
“Wasn’t he offering enough?”
“He was offering a ton.”
“Then why—”
Bobby’s brow pinches. “I can’t, JJ.”
I’m disappointed but I don’t want to be a brat. “Okay.”
Bobby slows the car, and we turn off the main road. I see something in the distance. “Is that a football field?”
“Baseball.”
“Of course.” I smile. “Are we going to watch a game?”
“I thought maybe we’d play. I’ve got a bat and a couple of gloves in the back.”
My smile grows wider. “That sounds fun. As long as you don’t mind I’ll probably be terrible.”
“I don’t mind.”
We pull into a dirt track behind the stadium. There are no other cars around, but that doesn’t surprise me. Bobby would have figured all this out, tried to make it as romantic as possible. He parks the truck and undoes his seat belt. “Ready for our first date?”
I shift in my seat. “Your story… Isn’t there more?”
“There is, but we’ve had a lot of heavy stuff. How about we go outside and have some fun?”
Part of me wants to say yes but I know I’ll be distracted if I don’t hear the rest. “I think I’d like to know now, if that’s okay?”
Bobby exhales. “Alright.”
He stares into nothing for a moment and then closes his eyes. “For me, it was my dad. Parker sent guys to our farm and shot him through the head while he was on his tractor.”
My heart sinks, and all at once I can smell that rest stop bathroom smell again. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Why would he do that? How did he think you’d sell him Orchard after he killed your family?”
A humorless smile curves Bobby’s mouth. “Parker wants compensation for any inconvenience he goes through. Even when it doesn’t make sense.”
I think of Zia Teresa lying unconscious in her hospital bed. “I know. Do you… Do you miss your dad?”
It’s a stupid question but it gets Bobby to open his eyes. “I do. He was a great guy. Quiet and smart and nice.”
“Like you.”
“I don’t know about that. But thanks.”
Something about the conversation snags something in my mind. “You said you didn’t give Mr. Parker Orchard, but he gave me some when I was fifteen. Did he steal it from you?”
Bobby gives me his stern tutor look. “That’s one of the things we can’t talk about.”
As far as I’m concerned, that’s a ‘yes.’ “Does he have more? Has he given it to anyone else?”
“Enough, JJ.”
“But you said I could ask questions!”
“And now I’m saying we should return to here and now.” He reaches beneath his seat and hands me something. A baseball. “Let’s go outside and play.”
I open my mouth to tell him I want to know about Mr. Parker and Orchard but then I see his smile. Bobby has a great smile. All the guys do, but his is exceptional, crinkled eyes and little boy dimples. He looks so cute, I want to squeeze him. “Okay…”
“Great. Wait here,” Bobby practically dashes out of the truck to open my door for me and as I emerge into the morning sun, I think about Mr. Parker’s tree safe. The one he mentioned on the phone when he thought I was just some naïve girl. I don’t know if he still has Orchard, but if he does, I bet it’s in there.