Page 6 of My Ex’s Dad (Scandalous Billionaires #1)

Chapter three

Amalphia

A fter I got back from Pittsburgh, I met up with my parents.

They were almost out of gas, and none of us even had so much as couch change to scrape together.

My mom was losing her cool. She’d seen the inside of far too many public toilets with Granny, her crab needed its regular habitat, she needed to check on her fish, and poor Booty Sue had her really wide eyes on.

If you’ve ever met an anxious German Shepherd before, you just know .

Finally, my parents made the hard call to head back home. There was no way they were letting Granny or me go back to our homes. We were better off sticking together. Power in numbers. A pack is harder to defeat and the rule of many.

We went back home and locked and barricaded the door.

My mom saw to the fish, got her crab situated, got Booty Sue to calm down with a bowl of food and her familiar bed and half-chewed, crispy stuffies, gave Granny all the time she needed with the bathroom, made mugs of tea for everyone, which didn’t help the frequent peeing issue for any of us, and started to make a game plan.

At this point, we’ve been brainstorming for an hour, and while we throw ideas out there, my mom writes them down on a pad of paper that I’m pretty sure she’s had in the junk drawer in the kitchen for the past twenty years. It’s the never-ending magical lined paper.

Granny grips the edges of the yellow Formica table. She shifts in her seat uncomfortably, muttering under her breath about the tear in the floral cushion that her left butt cheek keeps sticking to through her polyester pants.

She got the worst of the four. We offered her the unmatched, softer plaid with the fuzzy seat and weirdly modern frame, but she declined on the grounds that it was unnatural. Her chair might have a tear in it, but it’s the most structurally sound of all of them.

“We could find out who they are and torch their house!’

“Granny!” I gasp. “Don’t write that down, Mom.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on it,” Mom replies.

“What?” Granny huffs, sipping the last of her mint tea. Her dentures clank against the glass. “Why not? It seems like a viable option. If they’re busy worrying about that, then they might forget about us.”

“That’s arson,” Mom points out helpfully. “We can’t do that, Flora Jane. None of us want to go to jail.”

“I could do it. They wouldn’t leave an old lady to rot in jail. I’d be out in a few months on compassionate grounds, or whatever they call it.”

“Mom, we’re not burning anything down,” Dad says patiently to her. He takes my hand in his. “Even if we have to start over, that’s what we’ll do. I can get a second job or talk to the bank about remortgaging the house.”

I bow my head and struggle against the tears burning my eyes.

I’ve never been prouder of my family. They should be cursing me out, but aside from my granny’s wild threats that she doesn’t, hopefully, intend to follow up on, they’ve done nothing but try and think of a way out of this and be supportive.

“I could rizz ‘em with my Granny ‘tism.”

“What?” Mom gasps. “What does that even mean?”

Granny shakes her chest, her…erm… low-hanging fruit jiggling this way and that dramatically. “Just give them a little cha, cha, cha, and bam! Problem solved.”

Dad shakes his head and lowers it into his hands.

“I’m sorry, Granny. I don’t think those thugs are going to take flirting as currency,” I tell her.

A sharp pounding on the door has us immediately stiffening in unison.

From her bed in the corner, Booty Sue picks up her head, her eyes unusually wide, even for her. She starts hoooo, hoooo, hooing as another meaty fist launches itself at the door. At least, in my head, it’s meaty. A hand like a battering ram, ready to break, break, break bones.

“Oh my god, it’s them!” Mom scoots back from the table and rushes around the corner of the kitchen into the living room. I get up and follow, setting my hand on her shoulder as she peeks through the blinds. “There are three this time. They’re all dressed in black, and they’re huge!”

Whelp. Gulp. For the love of beef jerky, this is all my fault.

I mean, not really, but mostly. I didn’t have to date Reginald.

I could have exercised good judgment and broken up with him months ago when I realized things weren’t going to work.

At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we’re not all made into jerky.

“It’s okay, Booty Sue. That’s a good girl.” Dad’s voice drifts from the kitchen.

Granny sneaks up behind us, whispers, “Don’t panic, Sharon. Get the pepper spray,” and causes both Mom and me to nearly leap out of our skin.

“I don’t have pepper spray,” Mom hisses.

“The mace then.”

“Why would I have a mace if I don’t have pepper spray?” Mom says exasperatedly.

“Tasers?”

“No!”

“Well, fudge finklestinks,” Granny curses under her breath.

“We’d better improvise. Quick! You put the kettle on.

Samual, find the vinegar and load it into a spray bottle.

I’ll go out there and talk to them, and then bam!

You hit them first in the eyes with the caustic spray, and then double wham, you throw the boiling water at them. ”

“Oh my god! Where do you get these ideas from? Should I be worried?”

“Every night is true crime night at the nursing home. The more violent, the better!” Granny’s salacious smile is too much, but not nearly as bad as the continued hammering at the door.

“Are you watching true crime or slashers?” I have to ask. It’s a valid question.

“What’s the difference?”

The banging gets louder.

“Start feeding those goldfish ground beef. Maybe they’ll get a taste for flesh and can be useful in disposing a body.”

“Mother! They’re not piranhas.”

Granny rolls her eyes like all of those are perfectly reasonable solutions, and we’re the ones being difficult. “Unless you have a better plan, get the vinegar and water! Now!”

With that said and something clearly decided in her mind, Granny makes for the door at lightning speed. Granny lightning speed , I should clarify. She shuffles her feet in the most adorable way, her pink loafers and bright floral dress from another era shuffling in tune with her cane.

My mom and I are still too frozen to move until Granny does the most unthinkable thing and throws the front door wide open. We stare at each other, sharing a few seconds of terror and disbelief, then rush to get it shut.

Yeah, nope.

There really are three thugs there, all muscly and clad in black, the exact token kind of thuggish exterior, grimaces, and square jaws that you’d expect from men sent to collect money by any means possible.

Their leader has his booted foot out and is braced to stop us from shutting the door.

Honestly, if we did, I’m pretty sure he’d just break it down anyway.

My dad scoots up behind us and places a hand on my mom’s shoulder and one on mine. Behind him, Booty Sue pants and whimpers. She’s not the intimidating German Shepherd variety by any means.

My plan is to try to reason with these guys. What else can we do? If we sass them like I can tell Granny’s getting ready to do, it will likely only increase their rage by ten thousand percent, and they already look like they’re rocking a combined rager of a rage fest all on their own.

My plan goes directly to shit when Granny whips out her cane and smacks Thug One straight on the shin.

“Ouch!” He leaps back, rubbing the sore spot. “You old hag! What was that for?”

“You’re standing on our doorstep, ready to grind our bones to dust to pay a debt that isn’t even ours, and you’re asking me what that little tap was for? My goodness, son, do you think I’m senile? Try respecting your elders next time and ring the doorbell like your mother taught you some manners.”

“I don’t have a mother,” he snaps back.

That softens Granny a little. “That would explain a lot. If you’d like to learn, it’s never too late. Come on down to the nursing home. There are a ton of lonely old people there in need of some family. I think you’d be good for each other.”

Ugh, that’s Granny. Forever the bleeding soul, even for thugs who want to kill us.

“Never mind that, you old biddy,” the jerkus snaps, clearly not one to be converted with the whole kindness deal.

“You’re going to let us in, or we’re going to burn down your house,” Thug Two declares, pushing Thug One aside. He’s sucking in air so hard that all the veins in his forehead are bulging.

“Whoa, Nate, we didn’t talk about that,” Thug One protests, setting a hand on Thug Two’s arm as though he can restrain him, but Thug Two is clearly a rabid raccoon, frothing at the mouth.

“Yeah, that wasn’t in the instructions. I think that would call too much attention to the boss, and he wouldn’t like that,” Thug Three says, shuffling his feet at the back.

“Don’t use my real name, fucktard!”

“Don’t swear in front of old ladies!” Thug One shouts back.

I have to do something before this gets even more out of control than it already is. I step up beside Granny and slip my arm around her waist. I’m like Thug One, trying to hold her back. “We don’t have the money to pay. I don’t care what was promised to you, but we’re not the ones responsible.”

“This is a misunderstanding,” Granny adds reasonably. And then, not so reasonably, she continues, “So you need to go practice your thugging thuggery somewhere else.”

“What’s she saying? I don’t speak old people.”

She pops out her dentures, and there’s definitely less of a lisp when she repeats herself. I forget that I’m so used to Granny’s way of speaking that other people often can’t understand her.

“Not today, Satan!” Granny screams, waving her dentures in one hand and her cane in the other. She really does look like a vengeful hex thrower, but it’s her battle cry that takes it up a notch.