Page 23 of Careless Whisper (Modern Vintage Romances #11)

Reggie

I dropped my stuff at home, packed a suitcase in thirty minutes, and then headed to the airport to get on the first flight to New York.

I cried throughout the flight, sobbing uncontrollably. Thankfully, I was alone in the first-class row, and the flight attendants mostly left me alone. I probably wasn’t the first person in their care to have a nervous breakdown.

By the time I got to my grandmother’s place on the Upper East Side, without warning, I was doing better, but no one who looked at me would think I was at the pinnacle of my mental health.

The security guard was new, so he didn’t know I’d spent half my childhood in this brownstone. He looked at me with concern as he called up. “A Miss Reggie Sanchez here for Mrs. Faye Lancaster, and—” His eyes widened. “Sending her up now. ”

When I stepped out of the elevator, the front door was already open.

“Darling!” my grandmother called, sweeping me into a silk-and-Chanel-scented hug before I could say a word. “Tell me who to ruin. I’ve got three hours free and a grudge quota to hit.”

I sobbed out a laugh—one of those watery, body-shaking ones that you don’t know you need until they break out of you.

G’Mum pulled back and inspected my face like a Cartier diamond. “You’ve lost weight. That man must be trash.”

“Why do you think it’s a man?” I asked as I was led into the gorgeous, welcoming home that I loved and knew I required as soon as I walked out of Harper Memorial. Because sometimes, you just needed to be wrapped in love, coddled, and cocooned, made to feel safe.

“Because men are simple, and nurses are underpaid.” She made it sound like somehow those two things were connected—not sure how.

“Miss Reggie.” Kurt, Grandpa’s butler, greeted me.

“Hi, Mister Kurt.” I’d always called him Mister since he called everyone Miss, Mister, Missus, and so on.

“Can you get her suitcase and have her room set up, Kurt?” G’Mum took my hand in hers and looked at my face and added, “I was going to say tea, but I think we need wine, Kurt. ”

“Yes, Mrs. Lancaster.”

“Come on, Reggie, we’re going to the parlor where we’re going to plot our glorious revenge,” G’Mum announced. “Maybe some champagne, Kurt. I find the bubbles help me be creative.”

Kurt didn’t even bust a small smile. “Yes, Mrs. Lancaster,” he said in that prim British accent of his.

The Lancaster brownstone hadn’t changed in thirty years.

Bookcases lined nearly every wall, stuffed with art monographs, poetry collections, and old volumes with cracked spines and gold-embossed titles.

A full-size Steinway sat beneath the tall parlor windows, its black lacquered surface gleaming in the soft afternoon light. G’Mum and Mama both played it beautifully—sometimes together, sometimes separately—leaving behind echoes of Chopin, Debussy, and the occasional indulgent jazz standard.

The floors were original parquet, smoothed by time and footsteps, and softened in places by richly woven rugs collected from decades of travel.

Crystal decanters caught the light on a sideboard near the dining room, next to a silver tray that always had fresh-cut flowers.

Framed black-and-white photographs lined the hallway—portraits of ancestors with severe brows and enviable cheekbones.

And the smell of Earl Grey and citrus always seemed to linger, like the brownstone itself had a memory.

It wasn’t just elegant.

It was lived in.

Layered.

A place that held its stories close.

“Stephen,” G’Mum called out for my grandfather. “Reggie is here, and we need to kill someone.”

I hurried behind my grandma as she dragged me along, just happy to be —to let someone else take the reins of my life.

“I have been meaning to try out a new hitman,” Grandpa declared as he walked into the parlor. He opened his arms and I stepped in, soaking him in.

Dior Homme cologne, leather, and tobacco.

I sobbed, so horribly fatigued and sad with how my life had turned out. I’d tried so hard to live it well and meaningfully, but I’d failed time and again.

“There, there, now.” Grandpa stroked my hair and back. “Faye and I will kill whomever you need. There won’t even be a body, I promise.”

I chuckled even as I cried.

“Come on, sit down and tell us everything.”

Before I could say anything, Uncle Jason strolled in from the kitchen in gym clothes, holding a green juice.

“Hey, kid.” He kissed the top of my head. “I heard Dad say he wants to hire a hitman but it would be more cost-effective for me to beat up the dude who messed with you.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary?—”

“I’ve got a guy in Tribeca,” Grandpa said.

Faye waved him off. “I don’t like him. He’s too… blunt . No violence unless it’s poetic.”

“Maybe we should hear what happened first,” Uncle Jason suggested.

So, while I drank champagne, ate canapes of foie gras with pickled onions, and was coddled within an inch of my life, I spilled the tea .

I wasn’t surprised to find that my mother had already gossiped about what I’d told her and Papa in Mexico, so my story was about what had just happened at Harper Memorial, and I also told them everything about Elias, keeping the on-call room incident PG-13.

“I’m going to just buy fucking Harper Memorial, and you can run the whole damn place, the fuckers,” Uncle Jason bellowed.

G’Mum shook her head in disgust. “Kurt,” she called out, and when he appeared as if by magic, she declared, “We need tequila.”

“Yes, Mrs. Lancaster.”

“The Casa Azul,” Grandpa added.

“Maybe some more water before everyone gets alcohol poisoning,” I suggested.

“Yes, Miss Regina.” Kurt now looked amused.

“I’m going to take a shower, and we’re going to figure out next steps,” Uncle Jason ordered. “Dad, maybe we should ask Roy to join us.”

“We don’t need a lawyer,” I cried out .

Roy Channing was the Lancaster family lawyer and general fixer. Yeah, my grandparents were those people—the ones who had a legal fixer.

Uncle Jason just gave me a pat on the head and left.

“What’s he doing here?” I asked.

“He’s renovating,” G’Mum explained and then smiled widely at Kurt, who came back with a bottle of Casa Azul and four shot glasses, slices of lime, and sea salt.

Grandpa filled three of the glasses.

G’Mum raised hers. “To having our Reggie home.”

We drank the sipping tequila like a shot. After two of those, we were all mellow, and I’d eaten what felt like my own weight in foie gras.

“I trained your mother to recognize sharks in society, so she just danced around them,” G’Mum said thoughtfully. “But you, my darling, got that steel spine from your father. Ignacio would’ve walked into that OR and dragged that surgeon out by his stethoscope.”

I laughed. “He almost did. So did Mama.”

“You were right to leave,” she assured me, her voice sharp. “Don’t let them gaslight you into thinking otherwise.”

“I’m just so tired,” I admitted. “Of fighting. Of proving myself, of not having a seat at the table.”

“You don’t have to prove a thing, baby girl.” Grandpa wrapped an arm around me.

“You’re a Lancaster. You are the motherfucking table,” Uncle Jason added as he came into the parlor, freshly showered.

I blinked hard against the tears.

“Can you have someone put together a report on this Dr. Graham and Dr. Loring,” Grandpa ordered Uncle Jason, who assured him that he’d already got the ball rolling on that with his investigator.

My phone beeped again . It had been doing that a lot.

“Is that doctor trying to reach out to you?” G’Mum queried.

“I don’t think so. I blocked him.”

She looked pleased. “Excellent. Calling and texting now is cowardly. If he wanted to support you, he should’ve done it when it counted.”

Amen !

So, I turned my phone off without looking at who was sending me messages. I didn’t care. I was done .