Page 210 of Made in Love and Blood

“Better than me, I think.”

Frankie gestured between them. “What am I missing?”

“They had a rough few years,” Carina eventually explained. “Your mother and father. It was...bad.”

Larkin scoffed. “More than a few.”

“How rough?” Frankie demanded.

Carina squinted into the view beyond the glass balcony where a blanket of snow glittered from the sunshine overhead. “Your mother stopped painting. Stopped eating. Slept her days away. I know he had her committed at least once. That was the second time she’d tried to kill herself.”

Frankie couldn’t breathe. “But...why?”

“Let Larkin finish his story and then maybe we’ll get back around to that.”

Carina looked to Larkin, who nodded.

“Anyway, on the spot, he wrote me a check. Four times what I’d asked for, and said it was the next four years of my life the moment I cashed it.”

“Huh.”

Larkin nodded like he understood her lack of suitable words. “What’s crazier is in the next breath, he wrote me a second check, twice the size of the first one. Told me it was spending money for the team and whatever else we needed to make his family and property safe. I didn’t get the full story about just who I had to protect him from until around the time you were born, but it didn’t matter. We’d become friends. Not saying I’d do it for free, but uh, I don’t spend a whole lot of money, either.”

No, he didn’t.

Frankie noticed that, too.

And even the security team’s house wasn’t very big or anything to scoff at on the Gallo property. She had never been inside it, and the men rotated their shifts, coming and going from the property. Except for Larkin. He lived there.

Carina made another face in her seat, eyes closing as if to wait out whatever feeling currently passing through her body. Frankie tried to take note of how long it had been since she did it the last time, but she didn’t even have a watch to keep time.

“True loyalty speaks for itself,” Larkin said, suddenly standing from the chair. “I’ll be right back, ladies.”

“Carina?” Frankie asked when her stepmother’s eyes stayed closed.

Blowing out a slow, steady breath, Carina eventually replied, “Yes?”

“I’m starting to think you’re not okay.”

“Right now, I’m fine.”

“Yeah, but—”

Carina’s eyes popped open without warning. “What did you take from that story of Larkin’s?”

“Um, I don’t know. A couple of things.”

“Like...?”

Frankie toyed with a strand of hair, wrapping it and unwrapping it around her finger. “My mother wasn’t doing okay for a long time. Neither was Daddy.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Are you going to tell me why?”

Carina nodded. “I am, and then I’m going to tell you something else as well.”

“Okay. Can I ask a question first?”