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My tears are hot, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I try to turn everything else off and, to my surprise… I do. For a glorious few minutes, I’m actually excited, and I can hear my dad’s happy tears over the phone and it seems, just for that short time, like I have a real, happy family.
By the time we hang up, I can’t believe how much better I feel. Yes, things are terrifying. Any day now I expect some kind of retribution from Jake or his father. Who knows when this story is going to blow up, or what people will say about it. But I have a baby on the way.
It finally hits me.
I’m going to be a mother.
I sit down at my computer, looking over the list of contacts that have received invites to the launch party. Most of them are form letters.
With shaky fingers, I add Jake Ferry to that list, and type out an email to him—professional, but warm. It’s merely an olive branch, that’s all. Not a promise. Not a request for clemency.
Just Simply an open hand. Hopefully that’s enough to get the ball rolling.
Chapter 72
Jake
I’ve managed to go almost two full days without coming under Reginald’s scrutiny, and it hasn’t been easy. He hates it when I turn down his requests to go to this or that event—a strip club where he assures me the girls give head in the champagne room is the most recent invitation—but doing it gives me a high that I can’t get anywhere else.
It also distracts me from the near-constant anger that’s been boiling under my skin since I found out Janie was pregnant and didn’t even bother to send me a text about it. Then again, why would she after what I did?
It’s all so mixed up that I can’t easily separate my anger at her from my anger at myself, and the net result is that I’m furious with the whole goddamn world and there’s nothing I can do about it. I hit the gym, I drink, I defy Reginald just because it feels good to do it, I even leaked a rumor to a few blogs that Reginald and Toia might be on the verge of divorce from his infidelity. Getting a picture of him with another woman at a gentleman’s club wasn’t even difficult—I can’t believe it doesn’t get more media attention.
Reginald suspects I had something to do with it, but I have an alibi for that night and after all, it’s not like he doesn’t have enemies, right?
After he was done rampaging and screaming at Toia like she had anything to do with it, he brings in his team of PR people to sort it out and it becomes the focus of his life for what I hope will be a few precious days without any of his bullshit weighing me down.
And then I let myself fall into a depression. I drive past the beach house, and rent a place up the coast. It’s basically a shack, but I don’t care, and I start thinking about what life would be like if I just turned my back on the Ferry family fortune altogether and lived like a bum on the beach.
Except, whether she likes it or not I’m a father now. I have to start thinking about how I’m going to provide a life for my child. Janie may not want my help. She made it pretty clear she doesn’t give a fuck about my money, but I’m not going to let my kid grow up without a father.
So I crawl halfway out of that hole, and start making plans. I can move a little money here and there. Reginald expects me to spend, but once the money is out of an account all he knows is that I spent it somewhere. He can’t tell when I turn around and get cash reimbursements from some of my own contacts. I handle their transaction fees so they don’t get fucked in the deal, and bit by bit I start to build a nest egg. I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner.
And then the email comes.
I’m at the beach still, sitting on the sand and wishing I could go back in time when my phone dings. I almost don’t check it, but I’ve got
twenty grand out right now being effectively laundered for me so Reginald won’t know where it actually went, and I check the message.
At first glance, it looks like one of those email blasts, inviting everyone to come to the Red Hall Hot Sauce Launch Event this Saturday night, almost a week from now. Except it’s addressed to me personally, and there’s no CC or BCC. It’s from Janie’s personal email.
Dear Jake, it reads. I’d like to personally invite you to the Red Hall launch party this Saturday at 8 p.m. I realize there has been a great deal of tension between us lately, but I believe we can set that aside in light of such an important event.
I stop reading for a moment. This isn’t an invitation to the launch party. Not really. One more face like mine won’t make a difference. My heart pounds, and the ache that’s been there for weeks now is suddenly acute again. I stare at the screen, not actually reading anymore, just wishing it said the things I most want her to say.
But I get it. The email is in code. There’s no telling whether I might forward it straight to the press, or if someone will intercept it. God knows I’ve worried my father has my email accounts hacked. If he did, he’d never say so—he’d just wait until the right moment, well after some critical intel comes across his lap. It could be years before I learn Reginald knew about my squirreling away money the whole time. There’s just no telling with that man.
If he is getting my emails, and if he does see this, it’ll tip him off that things are not going as smoothly between me and Janie as I’ve led him to believe. There’ll be consequences.
Then again, so what if there are?
I read over the rest of the email, but it’s more of the same and only confirms that what she’s really doing here is opening the door for me. And she’s doing it without my needing to introduce lawyers to the situation—which has crossed my mind.
That door is a chance for us. A chance for me to make all of this up to her. And I intend to take it.
For the first time in my life, I feel free.
Chapter 73
