Page 46 of Forbidden Girl

“Bye. Love you, too.”

Merrick clears his throat as if to remind us that he’s there. Rowan goes, “Hang up the phone, you ass,” and I giggle as he does. I have to admit I’m glad Rowan’s not alone. Strong as she is, this is too much for anyone to shoulder on their own. I have my mom.

Suddenly, I’m curious how Rowan would have turned out if her mom had been around to raise her. My dad was correct about one thing: She’d probably be softer. The lack of balance affected her—no one taught her that softness isn’t weakness. If she’d had a mother figure in her life, Callum wouldn’t have been able to refine her steeliness without intervention. He’s stone cold. It’s sort of a miracle she maintained any kindness at all. My mother planted that seed in me and watered it as best she could, violent surroundings be damned. It might have been Alistair’s doing for Rowan. I don’t know him well, but the few times he’s come around he was courteous. Rowan said she learned manners from him rather than her father. If he nurtured the bright spot in her heart, I’m thankful for him.

I toss my iPad onto my desk, slide my earphones into their case, then shimmy into a pair of joggers and the only Gonzaga t-shirt I own. It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m dressed like I’m ready for bed. I feel like I’m ready for bed, like I could sleep for days. That happens when I get anxious. My body isn’t used to the influx of adrenalin and eventually needs to crash hard. I’m inclined to let it, once I’ve had my tête-à-tête with my mother.

I pad down the hallway to my parents’ bedroom, noticing how cold the tile floor is against the soles of my bare feet. I hate being cold. I shouldn’t be, summertime in Boston is hot as Hades, but my dad likes the damn central air set to the temperature of Snow Miser’s lair, and gets pissed if I turn it up more than a degree. It’s just another little thing about him that annoys me. Little things like that used to be easy to overlook; as I’ve gotten older, they’ve added up. I finally see the whole of him—he’s the epitome of controlling.

I knock on the door. My mother answers, bedraggled. It’s unlike her. She is the picture of composure. It’s as if Italian women are preternaturally strong; there isn’t anything that catches them by surprise or breaks their spirits. Anything besides being shot at and/or watching people being shot.

“Mom?”

She rests her temple against the doorframe and flashes me a smile. It’s small and wounded, but all she can gather. “What a day, hmm?”

“Understatement of the century.”

She leads me inside, closes and locks the door behind me. Locked doors are not allowed in this house. My dad flipped out once when I was in high school and accidentally hit the push-button lock on my bedroom door. He damn-near broke it down, banging on it like a zombie who smelled brains. I couldn’t hear him because I had headphones on. He thought I had a boy in my room. He didn’t even apologize once I’d opened the door and he realized I’d made a simple mistake and was alone. “Never lock this door,” is all he said. Since that day, I haven’t. It makes uninterruptable privacy impossible. I never had any until I moved into my single room at school, but it quickly became my favorite thing about living so far away from my parents. God, I miss being able to masturbate without worrying about getting caught.

“Dad’s not going to be thrilled about that.” I gesture at the doorknob.

“Dad doesn’t have a leg to stand on with me, at present.”

Oof. Icy. I like it.

“I take it your father made his feelings about you and Rowan known.”

“Loud and clear. He’s not having it. I can’t be around her or talk to her. If he had his way, he’d keep me from thinking about her.”

“That’s no surprise.”

“No, but it’s infuriating. Especially because he told me what happened between you and your parents.”

“He thinks he has more power over you than they had over me.”

“Doesn’t he? The money. It all belongs to him. He pays for my education; I can’t go back to school without him. And the reach of his influence… That’s what scares me the most. What he knows and what he can find out and who will take his orders and who he can bribe. Imagine how much worse it would be if his operation was as prominent as Monaghan’s? He’d be untouchable.”

“The money isn’t all his.”

“What do you mean the money isn’t all his?” It must be. My mother doesn’t purchase groceries without running it past my dad first.

“Oh, topolina.” She motions me toward the bed, taps the mattress. “Sit.” She grabs her phone from her vanity, situates herself beside me, and unlocks it via Face ID. I watch her tap info and then toggle between the phone number everyone knows and one I don’t recognize. What… the actual fuck? Who is this woman and what is she hiding? How did she hide it?

She clicks on a thumbnail of a sky-blue and yellow lion with the letters RIBB below it. Another screen pops open. It’s a banking app. The Royal International Bank of the Bahamas. This app is advanced. She logs in using facial recognition. A few more taps and she’s on another screen that reads Allow Secondary Authorized User.

She holds up the phone to me. “Look at the camera.”

I’m so shocked that I look insane in the photo, eyes wide and mouth slack. A red warning flashes across the screen: USER NOT AUTHORIZED.

“Juliet Amelia Calloway, close your mouth and let’s try it again.”

My jaw snaps closed. The second picture grants me access to the account.

“One point six million dollars! Holy shit, Mom! You have an offshore account that Dad has no clue about?”

“Correct. I opened it a few days after I found out I was pregnant with you, and have been making weekly deposits ever since. Do you remember when I asked you a few years ago for a copy of your driver’s license?”

I think back. It was right around my eighteenth birthday. “Yes. You said it was for a life insurance policy or something.”

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