III - part two
“Miss Harlow, do you have a moment?”
I turned my head towards the waiter that approached me, eyeing the house phone in his hand and making a mental note to have that line disconnected. I shook my head as I started moving again.
“Sorry, not now Robert. Someone’s waiting for me.”
“It’s the funeral parlor, miss. They said they couldn’t reach you on your personal number. Apparently there was a valuable necklace that has gone missing from the cas—”
“Yeah, yeah. A necklace. I’ll get it sorted and will call them back. Tell them they can just bury her without it.”
I waved my hand with as much casualty as I could muster. Robert’s eyebrows shot up for a moment, but then he seemed to recall who was paying him today, his expression bland again when he nodded.
“Of course, miss. I’ll just tell them to expect your phone call, then, and to please not bother you further for the rest of the day.”
“That sounds great. Thanks Robert.”
I smiled at him a moment before I started walking again, taking care to keep my trembling hands out of people’s view by pushing them in the pockets of my jumpsuit. The golden chain wrapped around my fingers as if on its own accord.
Well shit. I hadn’t thought about any of that.
I didn’t know if what I’d done could be classified as stealing, necessarily, but I was pretty sure a person dying didn’t mean all their possessions were suddenly fair game. At least not until the will had been declared to be fought over by the remaining family members. Meaning being honest probably wouldn’t do.
I simply shouldn’t have done it at all.
I mean, obviously it was poor form to rob a dead woman of the jewelry she’d intended to bring with her to her grave, but what made it worse was that I didn’t even know what made it so special – had no clue why the necklace was as valuable to her as it had been.
All I knew was it was somehow connected to her falling out with her daughters, and my father and mother falling out with my father’s sisters. That seemed like more of a reason to leave it than it did an explanation for yanking it off her cold, sagged neck. I wasn’t even sure why I had taken it to begin with. To ensure I would at least have that piece of her, maybe? To keep the feud alive, when no one else but me was on our side to do it for her?
Christ, Cal was right, I was depressing today. Perhaps my grandmother’s wake-turned-happy-hour wasn’t the best place or time for self-reflection.
I stopped in front of the study, taking a moment to dunk my thoughts to the back of my mind.
Part of me considered turning back around and demanding Ian sought me out instead, but that thought stemmed entirely from cowardice, and it wasn’t going to happen in a hundred years anyway. Not with his father at his side. Who, mind you, I very much was not looking forward to seeing again.
Inwardly I muttered a small prayer for Chante’s mood today, but that effort proofed futile the second I opened the doors.
“You really want to do this, here?”
The big man himself lounged against a book case in the corner, looking fifty shades of pissed off at the scene before him. Ian and a guy I had never seen before stood in the middle of the study. They were going at it chest to chest, the unspoken insult going both ways.
The stranger simply laughed in Ian’s face, some actual droplets of saliva flying through the air.
“Excuse you”, Ian snapped back, wiping his face dramatically before he raked a hand through his blonde curls. “What, you want me to believe you came here for anything else?”
A low hiss echoed through the space. “I came to get what is mine.”
My eyes flew back to Ian’s father, but Chante simply shook his head ‘no’, dark blue eyes rooting me to the spot as I stared back dumbfounded.
Ian didn’t seem to notice as he laughed too. “Well that’s just too bad, because it isn’t actually yours anymore. That’s what happens when you give stuff away. It ends up in other people’s hands.”
An involuntary squeal left my lips as I watched the unfamiliar man step forward, bridging what little distance there was between the two. I could swear the lights inside the study were getting dimmer.
“So you admit that you have it?” The stranger’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“I admit to knowing where it is.” Ian responded haughtily. “Does that make you uncomfortable? To know you are too late, again?”
“Do something”, I hissed towards Ian’s father. And was being completely ignored.
“I am only going to say this once, Picard. Hand it over now, or prepare to have it removed from your cold, lifeless body.”
The temperature in the room was dropping by the second. The guy towered over Ian, and there was not a single doubt in my mind that he intended to make true on his words. I shivered in my fiancé’s place.
“Get fucked, Aides. Even you wouldn’t be stupid enough to commit deicide.” Ian let out an angry scoff, and I watched the stranger’s jaw clench.
“It’s not deicide if I am quick enough”, he shot back with a raised eyebrow, “and I plan to get this over with as quickly as possible. Try me, malakas. That pretty little fiancée of yours will find herself alone in her bed before long.”
My brain had stopped working at the mention of cold bodies, but when I heard the word ‘fiancée’ it grinded into action again, the fact that he was talking as if I wasn’t there a major red flag. I couldn’t even find it in myself to care that the threat was aimed at Ian. For a short moment, all I could do was gape at the audacity, and then I snapped myself out of it.
This had gone on long enough.
“Stop it.” I snarled as I lunged from my spot, grasping Ian’s wrist and slamming it down before he could reach for the stranger’s collar. I had to forcibly push him to the side. “Both of you. Knock it off, right now!”
All three heads turned to me at once, their expressions varying from burning rage to cold annoyance.
I wasn’t even sure Ian and the stranger had noticed me when I’d come in, but I sure as hell had their attention now, the fury of not one but two assholes burning down on me in the quiet that ensued. I forced myself to keep still as I shot an accusatory glance towards Chante. He was supposed to at least back me up here.
Ian was the only one to speak up.
“Finley, sugar, stay the fuck out of this. Just close the doors and wait outside.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked dangerously as he moved his head to look at me. I bristled underneath that gaze, the icy blue of his eyes conveying what he hadn’t added out loud. How dare you undermine me like that in front of my father.
“Oh no…”
I dragged the word out slowly, my eyebrows feeling like they’d risen to a point well above my hairline. How dare I? How dare he?
“Nah-ah”, I repeated. “I have no fucking clue what is happening here, and I don’t care. No one is threatening to kill anyone under this roof. This is a wake, for fuck’s sake.”
There was enough venom in my tone to make a lesser – or wiser – man tremble. My own hands shook at my side. Glaring them down one by one, I took a step back, waiting with a hand extended to the door.
My eyes moved to the stranger in invitation.
“She’s right”, he spoke between clenched teeth, still glaring at Ian with enough warning that I wondered if intervening had been a mistake. “You’re right”, he repeated when that gray gaze locked onto me. “I didn’t mean to disrupt anything. My apologies, miss…”
“-Harlow”, I supplemented automatically. “Finley.”
“Right, well, my apologies miss Harlow. I’ll leave. My condolences to you and your family.”
There was nothing sincere or cordial about his tone, but I nodded anyway, grasping the moment to really take the man in now that I had a full frontal view.
He was about Ian’s age – maybe a few years older – and I had been right to guess I had never seen him before in my life. The first thing I noticed was the scar that ran along his left brow. It was a flaw that somehow only seemed to enhance his features, a rugged and angular face looking back at me from below hair so dark it bordered on black.
He would’ve been handsome had my mind not instantly picked up on the murderous intent in that frown.
“Agreed. We are done here”, promised Ian from my side, the hand he’d wrapped around mine also still shaking but with anger. His jaw was locked so tight I wondered if it hurt. “Mark my words, Aides. You come to mine or my fiancée’s house again, and I’ll make sure to tell everyone you’ve broken the accords. They won’t let it slip a second time.”
The silent promise behind those words seemed to linger in the air around us. The meaning went entirely over my head, but the stranger’s – Aides, apparently – muscles in his neck tensed, and he pulled his lips back to reveal a sneer. There was not a single hint of humor to his laughter.
“Do that, and you remove the only protection that you have, Picard. Like I said, try me.”
With a sardonic grin he turned around on his heels, and we watched as he disappeared through the double doors, somehow making the room feel lighter with the lack of his presence alone. A loud sigh left my lips. Chante muttered something beneath his breath.
“Finley...”
Ian looked down at me with a pleading expression, but I rose a single finger, cutting him off without so much as a glance.
“My apologies”, I sneered, the adrenaline of the situation finally leaving my body now that it seemed the most immediate danger was over, “but I am going to need a moment. I am going to ask Cal and Dan to send everyone home, and when I get back, I’d like to hear an explanation. Do you think you can manage to stay out of another fight that long?”