Page 50 of Fierce Love (Tucker Billionaires)

Chapter Forty-One

Hollyn

Fourteen years ago

W hen I turned eighteen, my aunt made me her emergency contact. At the time, I was honored to be given the responsibility, honored that in at least one area, I was a better option than my mother. In a crisis, I could come through.

But the reality of that decision doesn’t fully hit my head and my heart until the night the police call to say they’ve arrested my aunt.

On the way to the station, I just know my mom has something to do with this. Somehow, she’s pinned her crimes on my aunt, or my aunt’s taken the fall for another mistake Mickie’s made. Everything in me hums with anxiety. The timing couldn’t be worse.

Tomorrow, I’m supposed to be on a flight to New York, but I can’t leave if my aunt’s in trouble. I also can’t afford to change my flight or miss any of the transportation I’ve already paid for to get me onto campus from the airport. Everything was prebooked and prepaid.

At the station, the police direct me to a waiting area. In the chair beside me is a tall, hulking guy whom I vaguely recognize. Maybe from school? Though I think he’s already graduated.

“You get picked up?” he asks.

“No.” I shake my head. “My aunt.”

“Who’s that?”

“Verna Davis.”

“Verna Davis?” he asks, seemingly surprised. “Heard them talking. Something about money laundering—does that make sense?”

Not even a little. “You were here when they brought her in?”

“Didn’t see her. Just heard them all talking,” he says. “I’m supposed to have a ride-along. Thinking about becoming a cop.”

As far as I’m concerned, the cops in Bellerive are all crooked. None of them has ever been useful to me. Not one stopped my mom from hurting me or put her in jail long enough to keep her from ruining my life over and over. Now she’s ruining my aunt’s life too.

“You’re going to need a lawyer.”

“We don’t have any money for a lawyer.” I run my hands along my thighs and try to think about how I can fix this. There has to be a way. There has to be something.

A crushing weight is pressing down on my shoulders. My aunt can’t go to jail. Then I remember I was supposed to see Nate after my shift. My heart aches, and I consider calling him. But he told me he had some important things to do today. I glance at the clock on the wall.

Maybe this is all a terrible misunderstanding and I’ll still be able to meet Nate at the campground later tonight. We’ll get to see each other one last time. My heart thumps in my chest.

No part of me believes that.

The piece of toast I ate earlier sloshes around in my stomach. I’m supposed to be going to work in an hour for my final shift. I text Franny to tell her I’m not going to make it in. It feels like the one thing I can do, something I have some control over.

Stupid. Silly. The last thing that matters is my last shift.

What if tonight isn’t my last? If I need to pay for a lawyer for my aunt, I can’t go away to college tomorrow. I likely can’t go at all. All the plans I had to get off this island, get out from under the crushing pressure of poverty, are going up in smoke, burned down by my mother—just like always.

I put my head in my hands, and I try to keep myself from losing the tenuous control I have over my emotions. Crying isn’t an option, but I can feel panic creeping in.

A thwack sounds from the front door, and then a clatter of other noises followed by excessive swearing. I’d know that tone anywhere. My pulse jumps, a reflex where Mickie Davis is concerned. Fight-or-flight activated, though if I’m honest, I’m much more likely to freeze.

Whenever I’ve been faced with my mother’s viciousness, I’ve never been able to fight back in any convincing way.

“Get your fucking hands off me,” she screams. “I wasn’t washing anyone’s money! I’m innocent. Someone else did this.”

“Let my wife go,” my father yells from behind. “You can’t manhandle a pregnant woman like that. It’s not right.”

Pregnant?

A chill runs through me at his words, and as the two of them round the corner, in handcuffs, bracketed by police, the bump in my mother’s midriff is outlined—small but distinct.

“No,” I whisper. My father would be the type to lie about her condition to get sympathy or better treatment, but the last time I saw my mom, she was rail thin.

The two officers at the front desk shake their heads in my mom’s direction. “You just know,” the one says, “that Mickie will sell Verna out for whatever has happened. Shame, really.”

“True,” the other officer says with a laugh. “Mickie’s Teflon. Shit slides off her. It would take an act of God to make something stick.”

Fear has me gripped so hard I can’t move.

“How sure are you that your aunt’s innocent?” the guy beside me asks.

I’m not. Not really. She’s done so many things for my mother that I can’t be certain she wouldn’t cross a few more lines if she thought it would keep Mickie safe, even if it put my aunt’s life in danger. And if Mickie’s pregnant… I close my eyes, overwhelmed by the implications.

“Can women have babies in prison?”

“Sure,” the guy beside me says.

“But they wouldn’t be able to keep them if they get out?”

“I don’t see why not, as long as their crime wasn’t tied to children. But I’m not a lawyer or a cop—yet.”

I shake my head, and I can’t stop shaking it. The idea of my mother and father being in charge of another human being is enough to make me want to scream. They cannot have that baby, and they cannot drag my aunt to jail with them. I won’t let them.

“If I was you,” the guy beside me says, “I’d be thinking of how I could get that money for the lawyer. I can’t see Mickie Davis taking the fall if there’s anyone else to pin it on.”

“I don’t have any money.” The answer is a dazed reflex. I have some—a little. I’d intended to use it to help me at school until I could find a job on or off campus to keep myself completely afloat. There’s no way it’s enough for a decent lawyer.

“There’s always a way to get money. A loan, maybe?”

I can’t ask Nate. Besides, his mom keeps him on a tight financial leash. She holds him accountable for every dollar he spends, which Nate says she didn’t used to do. He never adds, “before we got together,” but it lies between us, unspoken. Asserting her control over Nate is the point.

Celia.

My brain has just clicked on a solution that’s so terrible, I almost can’t stomach it. The conversation we had on the back porch the first night I met her rises to the surface.

The Davis family have always had a price. When you’ve got yours, you know where to find me.

My chest is tight with the implications, and I can barely breathe. Rising from my chair, I go to the counter. Someone. Anyone. There must be another option.

“Excuse me,” I call out.

“What can I do for you?” An officer ambles over.

“I need to see Verna Davis.”

“No can do. Lawyers only.”

“There’s free ones, right?”

“Legal aid?” He raises his eyebrows. “If I can give you one piece of advice, sweetheart, it’s this.

Those charges against your aunt are serious.

Real serious. If you’ve got the money for a better lawyer, I’d spend it.

Mickie will have a good one, which’ll make it even harder for Verna to get out from underneath this without legal aid. ”

Money. I need it, and I need it now. Nate would help me if he could, but I know there’s really only one option.

I can’t let Mickie raise another child, doomed to suffer the same abuse as me. I can’t let Verna rot in jail for whatever Mickie and Niall have done. There’d be no relief for my brother or sister without Verna around, no one to temper Mickie’s emotional swings.

Since I met Nate, my deepest desire has been him. Just him. But I can’t let that life be what I desire now. It’ll come at the expense of too many others. Turns out my deepest desire, the one Celia warned me would have a price, is to keep my sibling safe, to keep Aunt Verna out of jail.

I stand at the desk, numb. The kind of numb that used to take over whenever my mother sliced into me one time too many is settling across my consciousness. Bile rises in my throat at what I know I have to do, the only choice that guarantees the outcomes I can live with. I can’t save us all.

I swallow down the idea of Nate, the future we hoped for, the one I’d almost started to think we could have, and I take out my phone to name my price to the one person I know who can pay it.