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“Or you could just front your way out of it. With the right PR?” she rests her chin on her hand and grins wickedly at me.
I sometimes forget that before she married my father, my mom was part of a well-established political family. Her father is Foster Carmichael, a prominent politician, and between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five, my mom worked his campaign trail every spare second she had. She is an actual PR wizard.
When one of Montoya Inc’s restaurants was shut down last year because a couple of gangs decided to have a shoot out during bottomless brunch, she managed to spin it somehow, so it became the new edgiest place to be in LA – like people were genuinely scared they were missing out on not being there. My father dealt with the gangs in his own special way, and there has been no trouble since. It has never been so busy.
“And how would you spin this?” I ask her.
She sucks on her bottom lip as she appears deep in thought. “We could make you the poster child for gynecological health?” she suggests. “Toni is your gynecologist and she was making a house call?”
That makes me giggle. “Mom!” I protest.
“Okay, if you don’t fancy that, how about you were bitten by a snake and she was sucking out the poison?”
“No!” I laugh out loud now. “That’s even worse. I’d rather people thought the truth than that.”
“See, I told you it could be worse,” she says with a wink.
“So, you’re not embarrassed by me then?”
“Embarrassed? Me? Your father threatened to gouge out one of the other kid’s father’s eyes at a birthday party last week because he thought he was looking at my boobs. The guy was there with his husband. He said it in front of most of the other parents too, but I still walked into that house with my arm linked in his,” she says with a shrug. “It takes a lot to embarrass me, sweetheart, and I don’t think anything you could do would ever do that.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
LUCIA
Despite everything that’s happened in the past twelve hours, we managed to have a nice family dinner. Jax and my father played with Matthias and the boys while they spoke to my mom and me in code about who they think might be behind this. We didn’t come to any conclusions, but Jax has paid the money and has done whatever technological wizardry he does to ensure that he will be able to track where it eventually winds up.
It’s almost midnight and we’ve been talking non-stop since the boys went to bed a few hours ago, but still, we have no answers. I try to suppress a yawn but fail miserably.
“Time for bed, angel,” Jax says, wrapping an arm around me and kissing my forehead.
“Us too, princess,” my father says to my mom.
A few moments later, we’re all standing at the top of the stairs. I hug my parents goodnight.
“Night, amigo,” my father says to Jax.
“Night,” he replies, and then with a wicked grin, he adds. “Just remember, if you hear Lucia shouting Daddy, she ain’t calling for you.”
It’s clearly a joke, but my father doesn’t see it that way.
At all.
His face turns a deep shade of purple and his hands ball into fists. He bounces on his toes, like a boxer ready to strike, but sensing he’s about to punch her son-in-law in the throat, my mom puts a hand on his chest.
“Let’s go to bed, Alex,” she purrs in his ear, working her magic on him in the way that no other person on this earth can.
He falters for a second as he glares at Jax. “You’re lucky my wife is here, Decker, because if she wasn’t, I would shoot you in the fucking head.”
“Papi!” I say.
But Jax simply chuckles beside me. “Night, amigo.”
He takes my hand and we walk to our room. “Why did you have to provoke him when he’s only just calmed down?” I ask him with a nudge to his ribs.
“I’m sorry, angel, I couldn’t help it,” he laughs harder.
We go into the bedroom and close the door.
