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I give her two days before she comes back around, desperate for whatever I’ll give. She’s smart, she’ll find a way.
I hope she’ll turn up at Orchid.
Still, I’m going to stack things in my favor.
I stab a phone number into my screen.
“It’s Malone. I’m moving things up.”
Shit’s about to hit the fan. My way.
My own special brand of chaos.
FOUR
scarlett
“What happened?” I demand the moment I storm into the living room at the family townhouse in Sugar Hill.
My heart’s still beating too fast from the run-in with this JM—Malone—so when I get the call from Amelia, I’m about ready to hit the ER from the stress overload.
Dad glowers at Uncle Grant who holds his hands up. And Amelia bites her lip as she slides a look at me.
“I called her, Uncle Dale,” she says.
“Honey—” Dad sags back on the leather recliner. There’s a bandage on his head and it’s stained red from where the blood’s seeped through. I’ve got the horrible urge to laugh hysterically at the almost cartoonish way it looks.
“Honey,” he says again to Amelia. “I’m not mad at you, I just…” Now he shifts his eyes to me. “It was an accident. I hope you didn’t cut your evening short.”
“I just met a friend for some dinner and drinks.” There’s a line of tension between the two brothers, and I know whatever happened definitely wasn’t an accident. “Did you go to the doctor, Dad?”
He waves me away and picks up his wine. “I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
Grant mutters something I don’t catch, but Dad sends him a hard look and my uncle swipes up his rum and stomps out. And next to me, skinny, pretty Amelia wraps her arms around herself for comfort.
“I’m fine,” Dad repeats, almost as if he’s trying to convince himself of it. “Head injuries always look worse than they are.”
But the wineglass shakes a little as he takes a sip.
“I bandaged it.” Amelia gives me a lost look. “Daddy said there was a mugger on the way home from their meeting.”
I spin to my father. “A mugging? Did you call the police?”
“No. Nothing was taken.” Then he struggles out of the recliner and walks over to the window, looking down at the treelined street before he pulls the shades shut. He turns back to us. “You should be home in bed, Amelia. Both of you need to go to bed.”
Opening my mouth to make a smart comment, I bite it back because the air’s heavy, and while I don’t think he’s injured badly, he’s shaken.
Amelia, if she had gum, would snap it right about now, or since she doesn’t, raise the ceiling with an eye roll. But all she manages is a tiny attitude-infused look at me. She’s still wearing her private school uniform—the dress because she says it shows off her legs—and she taps her polished shoe on the hardwood floor.
“Scarlett?” she whispers. “What’s going on?”
“Go up to your room,” I say.
She sighs loudly and twirls around to grab her backpack that’s open and crammed with the books she’d probably been reading when Dad and Uncle Grant returned from their meeting. “So I guess Dad and I are staying here instead of going home tonight.”
Dad and Grant grew up here, as did I, so there are plenty of rooms in the four-story townhouse for when Grant, Amelia, and I stay over since Dad is the only one who still lives here. The bottom floor is for business and entertaining.
