Anyone who knew us would say Georgia wouldn’t hesitate. She’d dive in and drag Vincent Shade to safety.
But I knew there was a fifty percent chance she’d grab hold of me.
And this was why she lost it with Mom, not because she was loyal to Dad and Mom was saying ugly things about him.
Because when Mom got fed up with Father making her life a misery, she took off.
And she left her girls behind.
But she fought tooth and nail for alimony.
Georgia knew I bore the brunt of Mom’s leaving. She knew I continued to bear the brunt of our father’s disposition.
She knew Mom knew it too and did nothing about it, not then, not ever.
So now they didn’t talk. I suggested opportunities to both of them to heal the breach, but three years had passed and I suspected thirty more would before Georgia would show at Mom’s grave and spit on it.
“No. I. Would. Not,” Mom answered my question.
Obviously, she felt the same way.
I sighed.
“Would you like me to have my driver come to get you?” Mom asked frostily.
Her driver was also her “driver” seeing as he or she too would likely be replaced in a few months (or weeks).
“I can get there myself, Mom. Thanks,” I replied.
“Good. Then see you at seven o’clock Wednesday at the restaurant. Good-bye, Olivia.”
There was no, “In the meantime, how are you?” Or, “What’s my girl doing for fun these days?” Or, “Are you, by chance, seeing someone?” Or, “My darling girl, I’m worried about you. You’re thirty-one years old and you haven’t had a steady boyfriend since your father tortured that handsome blonde man and did what he did to you when you were twenty-five. I’m aware you can be alone, but I don’t want my daughter to be lonely.”
No, none of that.
Mom just disconnected.
I felt no loss that my mother didn’t care even a little bit about me, taking me to dinner because it was her duty, something she’d tell her friends about, woe-is-me’ing about my weight, my hairstyle, my manicure or whatever she found fault in.
I was just grateful the call was over.
I was in the kitchen looking into the refrigerator and considering calling Bistro Vendôme to see if they had a table for one open when my phone rang again.
I moved to the counter to look at it.
The screen said Georgie Calling.
Normally, I did not avoid my sister’s calls.
That day, however, my father had shot Green. Green had then been transported to Dr. Baldwin who took care of his wound for ten thousand dollars in cash. After that, Green had either disappeared or begun to make overtures to Marcus Sloan or Benito Valenzuela.
None of this would please my sister Georgie.
“Hey,” I greeted quietly.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she replied.
I leaned into a hand on the counter. “I walked in, Dad shot him. There was nothing I could do.”
Even with my life as it was from the minute I could cogitate, it still was not lost on me how completely insane it was that anyone would utter those two sentences, including me.
“Your boys get an order from Dad, they tell you. They don’t just show up at Dad’s office and tell him shit he already knows, pissing him off enough to grab his fucking gun and take a shot at one of his own men.”
“They have that instruction, Georgie, but I talked to Tommy after he got back from dealing with Green and Dr. Baldwin. Tommy told me that Gill picked up Green. He took his phone. Dad still has it. And I’ve no doubt he did that because he wants money coming in and he knows I’ve given that instruction to my boys. So he’s not getting straight answers because they come to their meets with me in tow and we feed him information everyone knows is bogus so he won’t lose his mind and, say, shoot one of his own men.”
“Fuck,” she hissed.
I said nothing. I wasn’t the kind of woman who rubbed it in when I was right.
“Green is gonna bail,” she declared.
I said nothing to that either because this time, she was right (except about the “gonna” part) and I wasn’t about to confirm that just in case she was in a seriously bad mood and decided to do something about it. If Green intended to disappear, I wanted him to have as big a head start as he could get.
“He sniffs around Sloan or Benito, Liv…” She made the statement and trailed off so she didn’t have to make her threat verbal.
“You need to have a word with Gill,” I advised. “He can’t do that again. He has to work with us to keep Dad from tying our hands.”
“I’ll talk with him,” Georgia muttered.
She would. She’d do this before and/or after she fucked him.
Gill would come to heel.
I wondered if I should monitor the rats in the warehouse since, if they abandoned a sinking ship, perhaps, even in a warehouse, they’d do the same and this would provide forewarning when the house that Clive Shade built was going to come crashing down.
I again knew it served no purpose to say what I was next going to say considering I’d mentioned this to my sister repeatedly and she’d ignored it repeatedly.
I didn’t give up.
“We need to focus on the legitimate businesses, Georgia.”
“Facilitating the export of dart guns is not going to keep you in your house, Olivia,” she retorted.
“Perhaps not, but that’s not all we have and we don’t pay enough attention to any of it, including the man Dad has handling it.”