“Do you even know where my father is?” The last I’d heard, he was MIA.

“That’s what you’re going to tell us, darlin’,” Stick said. He looked at his watch again. “Just a few more minutes and Frank will be here.”

“Frank who?” I asked.

“Majestic,” Joel interjected from his place on the floor. “We’ve already been over this before you got here.”

“That’s the trucking guy my dad turned in—how many years ago?” I was incredulous.

Stick looked up at the ceiling as he calculated. “Um, that would make it twenty-five, twenty-six years. Something like that.”

“He’s taking a pretty big risk just to get back at my dad.”

“I’m sure he feels it’s worth it. Things got a little out of control out here on the peninsula, what with Drake getting killed and Candice going clean and Melissa hiding out. Frank feels like a personal visit to the area might just knock some people back into shape. And if he can haul in your dad while he’s at it, so much the better. He was pretty happy when he heard you turned up after all these years.”

I gritted my teeth. “Is that why those guys tried killing me at Mead Quarry tonight? It’d be pretty hard to get an address out of a corpse. Anyway, Frank Majestic is wasting his time if he thinks I can tell him where my father is.”

“He told me you’d say that. But no one’s stupid enough to believe Jacob Russo hasn’t had some contact with you over the years.”

Nothing like thrusting in the knife and giving it a good twist. I lowered my head at his mocking words. “You’re stupid if you believe he has.”

Sam put a hand on my back. “Come on, Tish. It’s alright. Your dad stayed away because he loved you so much. He never wanted you to have to bump into Bucko here.”

I nodded, feeling a little better at her words.

“Hey,” Stick looked up at the balcony, his voice bellowing through the house. “How long you gonna take up there?”

Skuzzbucket poked his head over the rail. “She’s dressing the kids. We’ll be right down.”

A few minutes later, Melissa headed down the staircase with Andrew on one hip and Hannah clinging to her leg. They picked their way through Gerard and Joel and camped out at the other end of the sofa. Samantha squeezed Missy’s hand as she settled in.

The room got quiet as we waited. Time crept along like a 5K race for inchworms. In Missy’s lap, Andrew played with the string on his pacifier, as if he knew to sit still. Hannah sighed and leaned into her mother.

My head jerked up as I fought sleep. On my shoulder, I felt a gentle thud. Samantha’s head tilted against me as if she was also catching some winks.

The sun was in full gear when the sound of a vehicle chimed in with the chirping of birds. The sleepy occupants of the great room rustled awake.

“Go see if that’s Frank,” Stick ordered.

Skuzzy got up and went in the kitchen. He came back a second later. “Yeah. It’s Frank.”

The back door opened and closed. A moment later a squat man wearing a forest-green polo over a potbelly and khaki slacks entered the great room. His thinning blondish hair was combed over the sparse area on the top of his head.

“Hey, Frank,” Stick said.

“Grampa!” Hannah shouted and ran toward the man.

Grampa? If that guy was Frank Majestic, and he was Hannah’s grandfather, that meant . . .

I turned my head in Melissa’s direction. She looked at me, then cast her eyes to the floor. A blush crept over her face.

I’d been betrayed.

42

“Hey, little pumpkin head,” Frank Majestic said, smiling. He lifted Hannah into his arms.

Safe in her grandfather’s grip, the girl pointed to Stick and Skuzz. “Those are bad guys. They want to hurt my mom. And they’re mean to Uncle Joel and Uncle Gerard.”

The fifty-plus man set Hannah on the ground. He walked toward Skuzzo and slapped him on the back of the head. “What’s wrong with you two, terrorizing my granddaughter? Put away those guns and be civilized.”

The two henchmen tucked their weapons into their waistbands.

“Sure, Frank. Sorry, man,” Stick said.

Melissa stood and walked with Andrew over to her father. “Dad, this is crazy.”

I could only shake my head, stunned by Melissa’s family connections.

“Get your stuff and get in the car,” Frank Majestic said to his daughter, while giving Andrew a little squeeze on the cheek.

Betrayed. Deceived. Used. Backstabbed. If I’d had a thesaurus handy, I’d add fifteen more words to the list. How could Melissa pretend to be some damsel in distress, pleading for my help to escape her abusive, drug-dealing husband, when all along her father was Frank Majestic, the man ultimately responsible for my mother’s death and my father’s exile? My grandfather must have been aware of the connection. That’s why he’d dragged his feet, looking at the situation from every angle before venturing to help Melissa. But then I’d gone and snatched her from the grocery store.

“I want you and these two creeps out of here. Now.” Melissa’s voice shook as she gave orders to her drug lord father.

“Melissa. Sweetheart. It ain’t gonna happen. So just get in the car and I’ll be out when I got what I came for.” Frank’s voice was slithery like Skuzzwad’s.

Melissa latched onto Hannah and pulled her children back to the sofa. “We’re not leaving. If you’re going to hurt someone, you’ll have to do it in front of your grandchildren.”

“Honey, calm down. I’m not here to hurt anyone. I just need a little information, then we’ll break this party up.”

He walked toward me. I stiffened at his approach.

“Little Orphan Annie here is going to tell me where her daddy’s hiding out.” He put his hands on his hips and threw his shoulders back. I’m sure he meant to intimidate, but he ended up looking like the Jolly Green Giant.

“I’ll never tell.” I crossed my arms and clenched my teeth. It was none of his business that I had no clue where the man responsible for half my genetic makeup hung out. Some days I imagined that he was dead like my mother, buried in a grave with JOHN DOE on the headstone, and that’s why he couldn’t come for me. Other days, I imagined that he’d been wrongly imprisoned in some foreign country for speaking out against the persecution of Christians. But, on days when reality struck, I admitted he was probably a drug addict wandering homeless in the streets of some city. That’s why Frank Majestic could never track him down. How do you find a man that no longer exists?

Frank lunged toward me, sticking his steaming red face in mine. “Tell me where he is! Nobody messes with Frank Majestic and gets away with it.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

In the corner of my eye, Melissa dropped Andrew into Samantha’s lap, extracted Hannah from her leg, and stomped over to Frank. “Get out of here. Don’t you talk to my friends like that.”

“Melissa,” Frank seethed, “get in the car with the kids. Now.”

On the bright side, my father was not Frank Majestic, proof that things could always be worse. The thought tempered my anger.

Missy crossed her arms and got between us. “I’m staying here, you’re leaving,” she said to her father. “Nobody in this room did anything to you. Quit taking it out on them.”

“I’ll tell you what they did to me. They put ideas in my daughter’s head. Made her think she could do things she shouldn’t be doing. Then they broke down the line of trust between me and my associates. If I can’t make a living in trucking, who do you think is going to support your lifestyle?”

“You don’t make a living in trucking,” Melissa said, “you make a living in trafficking. I don’t want any part of it.”

“How do you think you’re going to survive? I can’t support you from prison.”

“I’ll figure out a way.”

“You? You never held a job in your life. You’ve got two kids with one on the way. Who do you think is going to hire you in that condition? And no man’s going to look at you, you’re all swelled up like a pig at auction. If you weren’t my own daughter, I couldn’t even stand the sight of you.”

Missy’s eyes watered at the cruel words. By the time Frank shut his mouth, she’d crumpled into a ball on the couch. Hannah ran her hands through her mother’s hair. Samantha wrapped her arms around Missy’s back, soothing her while she cried.

Frank watched his daughter’s breakdown, smug satisfaction written all over his face.

Something inside me snapped. “You bully. You creep. You don’t even deserve to have a daughter.” I crossed to him in the center of the room and peered with eyes of accusation at his bulging features. It was hard to tell if I’d surprised him or if his high blood pressure was acting up.

He bared his teeth in his plumped-up head. “Neither does Jacob Russo. And I’ll make sure he never sees you again, unless you feel like telling me where he is.”

“Even if I knew, I’d never tell you. You killed my mother and you tried to kill me.”

“I didn’t kill your mother. The guys were just trying to get her to pull over so they could ask where Jacob had been hanging out. I guess she’d rather have died than told on him.” Frank gave a chuckle. “How about you, toots? Are you going to die protecting a no-good son of a—” he looked at Hannah’s big eyes watching him “—gun, or are you going to tell me where your daddy is so you can live to be a mommy some day?”

Behind Frank, a shadow moved near the archway. Somewhere in the kitchen, a floorboard squeaked. I put my hands on my hips. “Oh, I plan on living. But I think your luck’s about to run out.”

“Ooo. I’m scared.” Frank looked around at his cohorts. “Aren’t you scared, boys?”