Post by Felicia Soler on May 15, 2012 8:41:15 GMT -5
She'd been dreading this particular conversation ever since she'd been blowing up his phone with texts for the better part of the evening. Who the fuck did he think he was bailing out on her like that without warning? He had some real fucking nerve. Jesus, it wasn't like she'd lit a sign over their house that said, "RSF: Come here, please." Their names weren't unlisted in the phone directory; anyone could have found them. It was just by sheer dumb luck that the Colonel had been able to get past their gate.
And at the same time, Alice and Claudia were moving out to go live with her mom. What the fuck. It was like her whole world was just disintegrating in a matter of minutes and she couldn't take it.
With Inaki not answering his phone, she was content to blow up her mother's phone with texts and angry conversation anyway while Inaki stormed about packing a bag and ignoring her. By the time he'd left minutes after he'd began the chore of packing, she was storming around the house in a frenzy looking for something to hurt. Finding nothing, she ran to the front door when she heard it close, she ran behind Inaki's car until her feet could no longer carry her.
That was when the first of the contractions hit. Thankfully, she had her phone on her and used it to call the only person she knew would help: her mother.
She didn't realise just how far she was from the house. Two miles, at least. She'd completely lost herself in her rage. Running back wasn't an option. Hell, walking back wasn't an option. Why did her body feel like it had a right to rebel against her?
Felicia fought through the contractions as they came and went, all the while on the phone with her mother as her mother fixed for a jet to pick her up at McLaren so that she could fly out and tend to her child.
"Don't fucking lecture me right now, Ma." Though she hadn't realised it at the time, she'd taken off out the door barefoot. The soles of her feet were bleeding and the loose gravel on the road made her wince as it drove up into her heels.
"I swear, it's like you've learned nothing over the past 700 years." Her mother sounded tired.
"Well, not all of us are as wise as you are." Her voice was bitter. Distant.
"It has nothing to do with being wise, Felicia. It has to do with thinking of the repercussions of your actions."
"Right, like you leading the Inquisition straight to our door."
Why did that always have to be brought up? It was like her child's own particular form of Godwinning. "You're really going to bring that up? For one thing, the two situations--totally not comparable. I couldn't help that they tracked me. Things are different now. You had a choice. Duty to your family comes first. You had no business involving the RSF in our lives."
Felicia cursed as she stepped on a particularly sharp stone. Though she wouldn't admit it--at least not right now--her mother had a point. She sighed. Looking up, she realised she still had a long walk ahead of her.
Deciding to change the subject, she asked, "How far apart are your contractions?"
"The first one hit about 20 minutes ago and I'm having another one right now," she winced, pausing along the side of the road to catch her breath. There was no way she was giving birth to their children like this. Not this early, and certainly not without Inaki around.
"As long as you're not having more than four of them an hour right now, you'll be fine. But the instant you get home, you get in bed. You understand?" She'd been through this before with several of her daughters. Angry pregnant women seemed to be quite prevalent in their lineage.
Felicia rolled her eyes.
"Don't roll your eyes at me, young lady."
"I wasn't."
"Yes, you were. I could hear it through the phone."
God, her mother was so full of shit.
"Where are you right now?"
"About a mile and a half from the house."
"Are you fucking serious?" She slammed her car door shut and revved the engine. She hadn't bothered packing anything other than what was already in her purse. Felicia heard her peeling down the drive and onto the main road that would take her to the freeway to her private hangar at the airport.
"Yes."
"What the fuck were you thinking?"
"I was thinking of chasing after my asshole of a husband and clobbering the shit out of him, if that's what you mean. Not my fault I couldn't catch up with his car in time to rip off the bumper."
"In other words, you weren't thinking."
"If that's how you want to put it."
"Listen. Get back home. Call me if you have any problems. I'll call Devon and have him pick you up on the side of the road. I'll be there in a few hours. And leave Inaki alone. He needs a few days by himself to sort this out by himself."
Several hundred angry text messages later which must have lit up his Blackberry like a Roman candle, Felicia was laying propped up in bed with a cup of red raspberry leaf tea. It was one of her mother's old recipes, and had helped ease the pain of a number of deliveries in the past.
With her phone by her side and her mother sitting beside the bed, reading Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. Goddamn her mother and her fucking games.
Felicia grabbed her phone the second she heard it ring with Inaki's characteristic ringtone.
"The fuck you want?"
She couldn't tell where he was. Probably already at his destination, wherever the hell that was. He hadn't said where he was going. But there was no postponing the inevitable.
"I wanted to fucking talk to you."
"Maybe I don't feel like talking right now."
If he didn't feel like talking, why hadn't he hung up the goddamn phone yet? "Ma flew out here last night since I was trying to reach you and you weren't picking up your fucking phone and I was having contractions." She paused. So now I'm on mandatory bedrest." Felicia glared at her mother who was scrolling through yet another page of her book, pretending not to be paying attention to the conversation currently unfolding over the speakerphone. "And I'm sitting here glaring at her right now since she's not leaving this room until you get back since she knows I'll go and do something stupid."
"Wouldn't be the first time." She 'flipped' the page on her screen and continued reading.
"Stupid is as stupid does."
Ouch.
She was too tired to come up with a haughty retort to that other than a crisp, resounding, "Fuck you."
There was dead silence on the other line for several seconds and she was certain that he'd hung up. "I'm pissed at you and everyone else right now. The whole world can go to hell for all I care."
She really wanted to tell him how absolutely full of shit he was, but before she could get a word out, her mother had to have her say.
"This is why couples shouldn't get married until after they've gone through a huge crisis."
Really? She was going to start talking about failing relationships now? "Shut up, Ma. No one asked you. You'll get over it," she added hastily to Inaki, brushing his comments aside.
Khalidah finished the chapter she'd been reading and powered off the Kindle Fire before laying her hands in her lap and looking at her daughter. "The only reason I'm here is to make sure you don't deliver early."
"They were Braxton-Hicks contractions, Ma." Normally painless, the contractions were difficult to tell apart from pre-term labour this far along in a pregnancy and she was going to take all the precautions necessary not to deliver early.
"I don't care what they were. I'm staying here until your husband decides to come back." Khalidah knew it would take much more than one little spat to make him leave. But Felicia sure seemed to be doing everything she could to push him away. It was probably a subconscious thing she was doing; not wanting to get close to him since she knew he'd eventually die. That was what it all boiled down to, right?
Inaki sighed. "That might be a few days."
"God, she overreacts to everything." She really didn't give a shit that her mother was listening in on the entire conversation. She'd said plenty of worse things to her face before. I'm not fucking dying, I'm pregnant."
Oh, really. She wanted to play that game. "You're also stressing yourself out and doing shit you know you shouldn't be doing. I've taken care of the security issue and the RSF shouldn't be able to come knocking here again unless they really want to have a problem." Deep down, she knew they'd be clamouring to move again, much to Felicia's chagrin. She couldn't blame Inaki for that. Unzipping the only carry on she'd brought with her, she took Tesla out of his laptop bag and fired it up, waiting for it to connect with the house's wireless internet.
Of course her mother always had to be on the goddamned internet during a crisis. That totally made sense. "Well, thanks for that, I guess."
Khalidah tapped a few keys on the keyboard and got on the internet. Depending on where Inaki chose to move, she probably had a house nearby. "You seem to forget that family takes care of its own, hon. High past time you started doing that again instead of just doing what you want to do."
"I don't need a fucking lecture from you."
"I'm your mother. I'll always lecture you especially when you run off and pull some bullshit stunt like this that puts our family in danger." She gave her daughter a matter-of-fact look from over the top of the laptop's screen.
"I'm too tired to even fight or argue right now. Simply put, I am still pissed with you, pissed with the world, and need time away from you so I don't do something dumb."
God, was he ever not melodramatic? Felicia looked at her mother and rolled her eyes.
"Don't you roll your eyes at me, young lady. You're in deep shit."
Excuse her? "Oh my fucking God, it's not like I called him up and went, 'Here, dude! This is our address!' I don't even have his fucking contact info. How is it my fucking fault he got past the gate? I mean, the hell was I supposed to do? Kill him the second I opened the door?" Ha, yes, that's probably exactly what Inaki had wanted her to do. Good thing she hadn't let him know who'd been at the door. "You're all acting like I had something to do with this when I fucking didn't, and you know it."
"Your continued friendship with him lead to this."
Like it was just so easy for her to choose who her friends were. Felicia crossed her arms over her chest and sulked.
"Your stupid promises."
She made a disgruntled noise of severe disapproval. Of course! Why hadn't she thought of it before? She should have been totally unsympathetic and unfeeling and just let him sit there and wallow in his own misery and mourn the loss of his entire fucking family without any means for revenge. That made perfect sense! God, why hadn't she thought of that before?! Oh, right, because she believed in the military code of honour and knew what it was like to have one's family completely obliterated. No one had been there for her then. She'd vowed never to allow such a thing to go unpunished ever again.
"Promising to help him get revenge on the man who killed his entire family isn't a stupid promise."
"Unfortunately, Inaki, I do agree with her on that."
Well, thank fucking God for small miracles.
"Problem being you have your own family to worry about now and that always comes first. What the fuck were you thinking?"
She knew that moment of agreement wouldn't last long.
But since she brought it up . . . "Oh, don't act all innocent. It's not like you've never done it."
Khalidah looked down at her hands in her lap. Was she really going to bring up that particular issue again? " . . . that was different."
"Really? The hell it was. You led the Inquisition right to our fucking house that time."
Khalidah sighed. That much was true. She'd tried to get away and short of blowing them all up, she'd succeeded.
"Whose family were you caring about there?" Felicia heard the sounds of Inaki's laboured breathing on the other line. What the fuck? Had he really just fucking fallen asleep on her? She slammed the phone down several times on the nightstand next to her and yelled into the receiver. "GODDAMMIT, INAKI."
"Don't yell. You'll just put yourself in more stress."
"Right, like you fucking care," she spat out spitefully. If he fucking cared, he wouldn't have walked out on her. Asshole.
"If I didn't care, I wouldn't be looking for a new place for us to live," he countered.
"Felicia, hesht!" Now she was getting irritated with the two of them. They both really needed to shut up and just listen.
"A nuk të thashë që unë të hesht, nënën!" Felicia snapped back at her, seamlessly weaving from English into Albanian as she voiced her displeasure. "We don't need a new place to live."
Well, she'd give her daughter that much. If the RSF really wanted to find them, short of moving to the moon, they'd be found. "They'll find you wherever you are. That much is true."
"I don't need a repeat of last night's lecture or I might just take those pills this time."
"Don't you fucking dare."
Well, if they were going to be moving--again--she could help them in that department. She pulled up a few sites on Tesla and started searching. "Fine. Where are you looking? I can sell this property pretty quick. Just have to make a few calls." She could turn it for a good profit. Selling it on Sotheby's wouldn't be an issue.
"I fucking hate both of you." It didn't look like she was going to be able to have a say in the matter. Whatever.
"It's for your own good."
"Don't give me that bullshit."
"I am hanging up now."
Was that a threat? Fuck did he mean he was hanging up? "No." As much as she wasn't ready to give up the fight (when was she ever?) she could feel exhaustion setting in. Her eyelids were growing heavier by the second and if she hadn't known any better, she would have blamed the sudden onset of lethargy on her mother (though she knew that wasn't the case).
"Inaki, send me a text & let me know where you're wanting to move. Felicia, let it go." Khalidah reached over and stroked Felicia's forehead. It was clear that the night had taken a lot out of her.
"It's our problem, I'll fix it."
Jesus, both of her grandkids were going to inherit a double dose of stubbornness. Khalidah flicked through a few webpages, trying to find something suitable. "Which means it's my problem as well, so you're getting my help whether you want it or not. I take care of my own, even when they are being petulant little shits." She chuckled as Felicia lay there, lazily glaring at her. If she'd had the energy, she knew her daughter would have tried to punch her or throw a pillow at her at the very least.
"Fuck you, Ma," came Felicia's tired-sounding reply.
"Go back to sleep." She remembered then that Inaki had mentioned something about Dallas. Was he honestly considering moving there? Gross. Even Cleveland would have been a better choice. "Oh, please. You can do way better than Dallas."
"I'm just staying here while I calm down. Under apparent supervision from my aunt." His aunt must have been a wise woman in her own right.
Time to change the subject now that Felicia had fallen asleep. "Well, where do you want to move? I'm a bit partial to deserts."
"I'm not moving to El Paso." Ugh, El Paso. She wouldn't even drive through that town. Something about it just seemed . . . horribly off. If the Apocalypse were to come, she knew it would come through El Paso first. "And unfortunately, I have to live in New York."
What was with the 'unfortunately'? New York was a wonderful state to live in. Upstate was beautiful, and you really couldn't go wrong with Manhattan or one of the outlying burroughs. You just had to know where to look for decent housing that wouldn't cost you your firstborn as a down payment. "Nonsense."
"I have obligations, oaths to fulfil."
Hmm. She did have a condo in Manhattan. At least she thought she did. "Well, I have a condo in Manhattan that's big enough for everyone. It's all been paid for already. I only use it when I'm there on business."
"Alice and Claudia have already left for wherever they are going to."
Hadn't she told them that they were moving in with her? At least temporarily. She really didn't mind how long they stayed with her in Vegas. It was always nice to have someone else in the house. "That's fine and understandable."
"Devon should return to your Vegas property."
"He won't." More like Felicia wouldn't let him. And she sure as hell wasn't going to take away her daughter's only friend--the first real friend she'd had in several decades.
And then came the question that she knew he'd have to ask eventually. She was hoping it could have waited until well after the twins were born, but Fate saw otherwise. "If the house and property are in your name . . . where did my million and a half go?"
Khalidah took a deep breath. "Into a trust for the twins." She'd had to twist several arms to make that happen without his knowledge. "I was going to surprise you with it when they were born." That much was true, at least.
After searching her condo listings in Manhattan for a few minutes, she noticed that the one she'd had in mind had been sold. What did that say about her when she forgot that one of her condos had sold? It meant she had too damn much money. Well, there was always the house up in Tuxedo Park. As far as she knew, it was still there. "My bad, it's not Manhattan. I forgot I sold that one. It's in Tuxedo Park--40 miles away, but whatever." She sent the website and other assorted information to her iPhone, then sent it along to Inaki.
She waited for Inaki to read through the listing, hoping that it would meet with his discerning tastes. He finally responded after several beats. "I thought you said it was a condo . . . not a fucking small kingdom."
Condo, manor house, whatever. They were all places to live and put down roots, right? "I lied."
"Your family does that a lot."
"Oh, har har." Mortals were so adorable when they didn't know anything about survival. "How do you think we've lived for so long without getting killed? Sometimes you have to." Khalidah grinned at the phone, satisfied that things were going to work out.
"I'm going to bed now, Ma." he deserved it. He'd been through an incredibly exhausting night.
"Are you sure?" Inaki was a grown man which totally meant that he was incapable of deciding such things like when he was tired and when he wanted to go to sleep.
"I'm tired."
She could hear the exhaustion in his voice. "I understand." Having passed along the housing information to Inaki, she had no use for Tesla any more and closed the lid, turning him off. "Felicia means well, but she hasn't quite learned just yet how to think past the moment into what might happen in the future."
The line went quiet for several moments and she could hear Inaki tapping away at the keyboard on his Blackberry. The chiming on Felicia's phone told her that she'd just received a text message. She opened the inbox and accessed the message.
New Text Message From Inaki:
I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the world and why things are the way they are. You know me enough by now to exactly what I mean and why I feel the way I do. I just need a few days to just forget about it. I love you.
Awwww, that was so sweet. "You do realise I'm using her phone, right?" Khalidah chuckled softly. "But I'll make sure she gets the message."
Inaki grumbled at her, clearly annoyed that she'd read the message that had been intended for her daughter's eyes only.
"Oh hush up and go to bed now . . . daddy." Once the twins came along, sleep would be a rare commodity. He should have gotten whatever sleep he could now. "I'll sort everything out on this end with Felicia and Devon, so don't you worry."
She heard Inaki's light snoring on the other line and knew that he'd fallen asleep without turning off his phone. Turning the volume up to a more audible level, she lay the phone on the pillow next to his sleeping wife, hoping that their phone plans both included unlimited long distance--or else they were going to have an incredibly expensive bill to pay.
And at the same time, Alice and Claudia were moving out to go live with her mom. What the fuck. It was like her whole world was just disintegrating in a matter of minutes and she couldn't take it.
With Inaki not answering his phone, she was content to blow up her mother's phone with texts and angry conversation anyway while Inaki stormed about packing a bag and ignoring her. By the time he'd left minutes after he'd began the chore of packing, she was storming around the house in a frenzy looking for something to hurt. Finding nothing, she ran to the front door when she heard it close, she ran behind Inaki's car until her feet could no longer carry her.
That was when the first of the contractions hit. Thankfully, she had her phone on her and used it to call the only person she knew would help: her mother.
She didn't realise just how far she was from the house. Two miles, at least. She'd completely lost herself in her rage. Running back wasn't an option. Hell, walking back wasn't an option. Why did her body feel like it had a right to rebel against her?
Felicia fought through the contractions as they came and went, all the while on the phone with her mother as her mother fixed for a jet to pick her up at McLaren so that she could fly out and tend to her child.
"Don't fucking lecture me right now, Ma." Though she hadn't realised it at the time, she'd taken off out the door barefoot. The soles of her feet were bleeding and the loose gravel on the road made her wince as it drove up into her heels.
"I swear, it's like you've learned nothing over the past 700 years." Her mother sounded tired.
"Well, not all of us are as wise as you are." Her voice was bitter. Distant.
"It has nothing to do with being wise, Felicia. It has to do with thinking of the repercussions of your actions."
"Right, like you leading the Inquisition straight to our door."
Why did that always have to be brought up? It was like her child's own particular form of Godwinning. "You're really going to bring that up? For one thing, the two situations--totally not comparable. I couldn't help that they tracked me. Things are different now. You had a choice. Duty to your family comes first. You had no business involving the RSF in our lives."
Felicia cursed as she stepped on a particularly sharp stone. Though she wouldn't admit it--at least not right now--her mother had a point. She sighed. Looking up, she realised she still had a long walk ahead of her.
Deciding to change the subject, she asked, "How far apart are your contractions?"
"The first one hit about 20 minutes ago and I'm having another one right now," she winced, pausing along the side of the road to catch her breath. There was no way she was giving birth to their children like this. Not this early, and certainly not without Inaki around.
"As long as you're not having more than four of them an hour right now, you'll be fine. But the instant you get home, you get in bed. You understand?" She'd been through this before with several of her daughters. Angry pregnant women seemed to be quite prevalent in their lineage.
Felicia rolled her eyes.
"Don't roll your eyes at me, young lady."
"I wasn't."
"Yes, you were. I could hear it through the phone."
God, her mother was so full of shit.
"Where are you right now?"
"About a mile and a half from the house."
"Are you fucking serious?" She slammed her car door shut and revved the engine. She hadn't bothered packing anything other than what was already in her purse. Felicia heard her peeling down the drive and onto the main road that would take her to the freeway to her private hangar at the airport.
"Yes."
"What the fuck were you thinking?"
"I was thinking of chasing after my asshole of a husband and clobbering the shit out of him, if that's what you mean. Not my fault I couldn't catch up with his car in time to rip off the bumper."
"In other words, you weren't thinking."
"If that's how you want to put it."
"Listen. Get back home. Call me if you have any problems. I'll call Devon and have him pick you up on the side of the road. I'll be there in a few hours. And leave Inaki alone. He needs a few days by himself to sort this out by himself."
-- Four hours later . . . --
Several hundred angry text messages later which must have lit up his Blackberry like a Roman candle, Felicia was laying propped up in bed with a cup of red raspberry leaf tea. It was one of her mother's old recipes, and had helped ease the pain of a number of deliveries in the past.
With her phone by her side and her mother sitting beside the bed, reading Arthas: Rise of the Lich King. Goddamn her mother and her fucking games.
Felicia grabbed her phone the second she heard it ring with Inaki's characteristic ringtone.
"The fuck you want?"
She couldn't tell where he was. Probably already at his destination, wherever the hell that was. He hadn't said where he was going. But there was no postponing the inevitable.
"I wanted to fucking talk to you."
"Maybe I don't feel like talking right now."
If he didn't feel like talking, why hadn't he hung up the goddamn phone yet? "Ma flew out here last night since I was trying to reach you and you weren't picking up your fucking phone and I was having contractions." She paused. So now I'm on mandatory bedrest." Felicia glared at her mother who was scrolling through yet another page of her book, pretending not to be paying attention to the conversation currently unfolding over the speakerphone. "And I'm sitting here glaring at her right now since she's not leaving this room until you get back since she knows I'll go and do something stupid."
"Wouldn't be the first time." She 'flipped' the page on her screen and continued reading.
"Stupid is as stupid does."
Ouch.
She was too tired to come up with a haughty retort to that other than a crisp, resounding, "Fuck you."
There was dead silence on the other line for several seconds and she was certain that he'd hung up. "I'm pissed at you and everyone else right now. The whole world can go to hell for all I care."
She really wanted to tell him how absolutely full of shit he was, but before she could get a word out, her mother had to have her say.
"This is why couples shouldn't get married until after they've gone through a huge crisis."
Really? She was going to start talking about failing relationships now? "Shut up, Ma. No one asked you. You'll get over it," she added hastily to Inaki, brushing his comments aside.
Khalidah finished the chapter she'd been reading and powered off the Kindle Fire before laying her hands in her lap and looking at her daughter. "The only reason I'm here is to make sure you don't deliver early."
"They were Braxton-Hicks contractions, Ma." Normally painless, the contractions were difficult to tell apart from pre-term labour this far along in a pregnancy and she was going to take all the precautions necessary not to deliver early.
"I don't care what they were. I'm staying here until your husband decides to come back." Khalidah knew it would take much more than one little spat to make him leave. But Felicia sure seemed to be doing everything she could to push him away. It was probably a subconscious thing she was doing; not wanting to get close to him since she knew he'd eventually die. That was what it all boiled down to, right?
Inaki sighed. "That might be a few days."
"God, she overreacts to everything." She really didn't give a shit that her mother was listening in on the entire conversation. She'd said plenty of worse things to her face before. I'm not fucking dying, I'm pregnant."
Oh, really. She wanted to play that game. "You're also stressing yourself out and doing shit you know you shouldn't be doing. I've taken care of the security issue and the RSF shouldn't be able to come knocking here again unless they really want to have a problem." Deep down, she knew they'd be clamouring to move again, much to Felicia's chagrin. She couldn't blame Inaki for that. Unzipping the only carry on she'd brought with her, she took Tesla out of his laptop bag and fired it up, waiting for it to connect with the house's wireless internet.
Of course her mother always had to be on the goddamned internet during a crisis. That totally made sense. "Well, thanks for that, I guess."
Khalidah tapped a few keys on the keyboard and got on the internet. Depending on where Inaki chose to move, she probably had a house nearby. "You seem to forget that family takes care of its own, hon. High past time you started doing that again instead of just doing what you want to do."
"I don't need a fucking lecture from you."
"I'm your mother. I'll always lecture you especially when you run off and pull some bullshit stunt like this that puts our family in danger." She gave her daughter a matter-of-fact look from over the top of the laptop's screen.
"I'm too tired to even fight or argue right now. Simply put, I am still pissed with you, pissed with the world, and need time away from you so I don't do something dumb."
God, was he ever not melodramatic? Felicia looked at her mother and rolled her eyes.
"Don't you roll your eyes at me, young lady. You're in deep shit."
Excuse her? "Oh my fucking God, it's not like I called him up and went, 'Here, dude! This is our address!' I don't even have his fucking contact info. How is it my fucking fault he got past the gate? I mean, the hell was I supposed to do? Kill him the second I opened the door?" Ha, yes, that's probably exactly what Inaki had wanted her to do. Good thing she hadn't let him know who'd been at the door. "You're all acting like I had something to do with this when I fucking didn't, and you know it."
"Your continued friendship with him lead to this."
Like it was just so easy for her to choose who her friends were. Felicia crossed her arms over her chest and sulked.
"Your stupid promises."
She made a disgruntled noise of severe disapproval. Of course! Why hadn't she thought of it before? She should have been totally unsympathetic and unfeeling and just let him sit there and wallow in his own misery and mourn the loss of his entire fucking family without any means for revenge. That made perfect sense! God, why hadn't she thought of that before?! Oh, right, because she believed in the military code of honour and knew what it was like to have one's family completely obliterated. No one had been there for her then. She'd vowed never to allow such a thing to go unpunished ever again.
"Promising to help him get revenge on the man who killed his entire family isn't a stupid promise."
"Unfortunately, Inaki, I do agree with her on that."
Well, thank fucking God for small miracles.
"Problem being you have your own family to worry about now and that always comes first. What the fuck were you thinking?"
She knew that moment of agreement wouldn't last long.
But since she brought it up . . . "Oh, don't act all innocent. It's not like you've never done it."
Khalidah looked down at her hands in her lap. Was she really going to bring up that particular issue again? " . . . that was different."
"Really? The hell it was. You led the Inquisition right to our fucking house that time."
Khalidah sighed. That much was true. She'd tried to get away and short of blowing them all up, she'd succeeded.
"Whose family were you caring about there?" Felicia heard the sounds of Inaki's laboured breathing on the other line. What the fuck? Had he really just fucking fallen asleep on her? She slammed the phone down several times on the nightstand next to her and yelled into the receiver. "GODDAMMIT, INAKI."
"Don't yell. You'll just put yourself in more stress."
"Right, like you fucking care," she spat out spitefully. If he fucking cared, he wouldn't have walked out on her. Asshole.
"If I didn't care, I wouldn't be looking for a new place for us to live," he countered.
"Felicia, hesht!" Now she was getting irritated with the two of them. They both really needed to shut up and just listen.
"A nuk të thashë që unë të hesht, nënën!" Felicia snapped back at her, seamlessly weaving from English into Albanian as she voiced her displeasure. "We don't need a new place to live."
Well, she'd give her daughter that much. If the RSF really wanted to find them, short of moving to the moon, they'd be found. "They'll find you wherever you are. That much is true."
"I don't need a repeat of last night's lecture or I might just take those pills this time."
"Don't you fucking dare."
Well, if they were going to be moving--again--she could help them in that department. She pulled up a few sites on Tesla and started searching. "Fine. Where are you looking? I can sell this property pretty quick. Just have to make a few calls." She could turn it for a good profit. Selling it on Sotheby's wouldn't be an issue.
"I fucking hate both of you." It didn't look like she was going to be able to have a say in the matter. Whatever.
"It's for your own good."
"Don't give me that bullshit."
"I am hanging up now."
Was that a threat? Fuck did he mean he was hanging up? "No." As much as she wasn't ready to give up the fight (when was she ever?) she could feel exhaustion setting in. Her eyelids were growing heavier by the second and if she hadn't known any better, she would have blamed the sudden onset of lethargy on her mother (though she knew that wasn't the case).
"Inaki, send me a text & let me know where you're wanting to move. Felicia, let it go." Khalidah reached over and stroked Felicia's forehead. It was clear that the night had taken a lot out of her.
"It's our problem, I'll fix it."
Jesus, both of her grandkids were going to inherit a double dose of stubbornness. Khalidah flicked through a few webpages, trying to find something suitable. "Which means it's my problem as well, so you're getting my help whether you want it or not. I take care of my own, even when they are being petulant little shits." She chuckled as Felicia lay there, lazily glaring at her. If she'd had the energy, she knew her daughter would have tried to punch her or throw a pillow at her at the very least.
"Fuck you, Ma," came Felicia's tired-sounding reply.
"Go back to sleep." She remembered then that Inaki had mentioned something about Dallas. Was he honestly considering moving there? Gross. Even Cleveland would have been a better choice. "Oh, please. You can do way better than Dallas."
"I'm just staying here while I calm down. Under apparent supervision from my aunt." His aunt must have been a wise woman in her own right.
Time to change the subject now that Felicia had fallen asleep. "Well, where do you want to move? I'm a bit partial to deserts."
"I'm not moving to El Paso." Ugh, El Paso. She wouldn't even drive through that town. Something about it just seemed . . . horribly off. If the Apocalypse were to come, she knew it would come through El Paso first. "And unfortunately, I have to live in New York."
What was with the 'unfortunately'? New York was a wonderful state to live in. Upstate was beautiful, and you really couldn't go wrong with Manhattan or one of the outlying burroughs. You just had to know where to look for decent housing that wouldn't cost you your firstborn as a down payment. "Nonsense."
"I have obligations, oaths to fulfil."
Hmm. She did have a condo in Manhattan. At least she thought she did. "Well, I have a condo in Manhattan that's big enough for everyone. It's all been paid for already. I only use it when I'm there on business."
"Alice and Claudia have already left for wherever they are going to."
Hadn't she told them that they were moving in with her? At least temporarily. She really didn't mind how long they stayed with her in Vegas. It was always nice to have someone else in the house. "That's fine and understandable."
"Devon should return to your Vegas property."
"He won't." More like Felicia wouldn't let him. And she sure as hell wasn't going to take away her daughter's only friend--the first real friend she'd had in several decades.
And then came the question that she knew he'd have to ask eventually. She was hoping it could have waited until well after the twins were born, but Fate saw otherwise. "If the house and property are in your name . . . where did my million and a half go?"
Khalidah took a deep breath. "Into a trust for the twins." She'd had to twist several arms to make that happen without his knowledge. "I was going to surprise you with it when they were born." That much was true, at least.
After searching her condo listings in Manhattan for a few minutes, she noticed that the one she'd had in mind had been sold. What did that say about her when she forgot that one of her condos had sold? It meant she had too damn much money. Well, there was always the house up in Tuxedo Park. As far as she knew, it was still there. "My bad, it's not Manhattan. I forgot I sold that one. It's in Tuxedo Park--40 miles away, but whatever." She sent the website and other assorted information to her iPhone, then sent it along to Inaki.
She waited for Inaki to read through the listing, hoping that it would meet with his discerning tastes. He finally responded after several beats. "I thought you said it was a condo . . . not a fucking small kingdom."
Condo, manor house, whatever. They were all places to live and put down roots, right? "I lied."
"Your family does that a lot."
"Oh, har har." Mortals were so adorable when they didn't know anything about survival. "How do you think we've lived for so long without getting killed? Sometimes you have to." Khalidah grinned at the phone, satisfied that things were going to work out.
"I'm going to bed now, Ma." he deserved it. He'd been through an incredibly exhausting night.
"Are you sure?" Inaki was a grown man which totally meant that he was incapable of deciding such things like when he was tired and when he wanted to go to sleep.
"I'm tired."
She could hear the exhaustion in his voice. "I understand." Having passed along the housing information to Inaki, she had no use for Tesla any more and closed the lid, turning him off. "Felicia means well, but she hasn't quite learned just yet how to think past the moment into what might happen in the future."
The line went quiet for several moments and she could hear Inaki tapping away at the keyboard on his Blackberry. The chiming on Felicia's phone told her that she'd just received a text message. She opened the inbox and accessed the message.
New Text Message From Inaki:
I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the world and why things are the way they are. You know me enough by now to exactly what I mean and why I feel the way I do. I just need a few days to just forget about it. I love you.
Awwww, that was so sweet. "You do realise I'm using her phone, right?" Khalidah chuckled softly. "But I'll make sure she gets the message."
Inaki grumbled at her, clearly annoyed that she'd read the message that had been intended for her daughter's eyes only.
"Oh hush up and go to bed now . . . daddy." Once the twins came along, sleep would be a rare commodity. He should have gotten whatever sleep he could now. "I'll sort everything out on this end with Felicia and Devon, so don't you worry."
She heard Inaki's light snoring on the other line and knew that he'd fallen asleep without turning off his phone. Turning the volume up to a more audible level, she lay the phone on the pillow next to his sleeping wife, hoping that their phone plans both included unlimited long distance--or else they were going to have an incredibly expensive bill to pay.
