Page 101 of Ship Happens
“Her last name is one she’s learned on this trip, for she shares it with two of our very own.” Jim looks at me with a genuine smile, pride gleaming in his eyes. “Frankie, your last name is Carter.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Maverick
Ezra’s head turns toward Frankie, but Bennett’s head swivels in my direction. I know what he’s going to say before the words leave his angry mouth.
“You’ve been fucking mysister?” He chases me around the table as everyone else tries to process the news. “When I get my hands on you?—”
Frankie steps into his path, stopping him. “Hey, I appreciate the familial backup, but I’m technically youroldersister, so I don’t need protecting.”
“God, how did we ever miss it before now?” Ezra says as he steps closer to them, and he’s right. The resemblance is uncanny, especially the eye shape and their noses—though I’m glad Frankie is decidedly still very feminine. If the resemblance were too spot on, I’d feel like I was fucking my guy friends.
The group crowds around, and congratulations are shared at Frankie finding family on the day she lost her mother. Speaking of the hag, she sits at the table with a sour expression on her face.She stands to make her escape while everyone is occupied, but I step into her path before she can reach the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I place a hand on her shoulder and spin her to face the mess she’s created. “Surely you didn’t think we’d just let you walk out of here. After what you’ve put my girl through, that isn’t an option.”
Frankie frowns as she looks at us. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice. King wouldn’t authorize the kill, so we have to let her walk.”
Bennett clucks his tongue and steps beside his sister, which is still weird to say. I don’t know how I’ll ever get used to it. He drapes his thick arm over her shoulder and looks at her mother, who I hold in place.
“You’re thinking of this the wrong way,” Bennett says. “Sure, you’d need clearance from a superior to take a government-sanctioned kill, but you have the benefit of walking between two worlds here. As a fed, you answer to King, but as a Carter, you answer to someone else.”
Realization dawns in Frankie’s eyes, and she shifts her gaze from her mother to the man standing off to the side. “Jim, permission to kill Monica Grant?”
Jim rocks on his heels with a wide smile on his face. “Permission granted.”
“What? No! You don’t have the power to do that!” Frankie’s mother drops to the floor, and I’m not sure if it was intentional or if her legs ceased to work. She scrambles for the door, crawling on her hands and knees. “She’s my daughter. She won’t kill me!”
She doesn’t believe her own words. That much is clear from the frantic way she struggles with the knob, which Jim must have locked—or had someone else lock—behind him. Like a pack of jackals, we descend, closing her in on all sides.
“Your daughter?” Frankie shakes her head as she looks down at the woman. “I think you can stop calling me that now. Though you gave birth to me, I have no attachments, so you can free yourself from yours as well.”
With a wild look in her eyes, Frankie’s mother spins to face us. “You’ll regret this. All of you. I’m not like your usual victims. I’m important!”
“I learned something on my trip,” Frankie says. “You have surrounded yourself with a whole lot of nothing. No friends. No lover. Now you don’t even have a daughter. No, I’d say you’re about as unimportant as it gets.”
I chuckle. “Damn, sweetheart. That’s cold.”
“Yes, well, I’m only giving her what she gave me for the entirety of my childhood. Ice. Distance. A complete lack of emotion.” Frankie shrugs and looks her mother up and down. “Experiencing a little warmth has a way of opening eyes.”
“He’ll leave you too,” her mother says. “Just like your father left me. You’re only perpetuating the cycle. They’re incapable of love!”
“No, mother. That’s you.”
Frankie raises a butter knife she’d kept hidden in her hand. She brings it down, ramming it deep into her mother’s chest. The woman clutches the inches of silver remaining outside her body and slumps against the door. With wide eyes, she crumples to the floor.
There are no parting words, no death-bed confessions. Her mother gasps a few times, and then she’s gone. She takes an oppressive air with her, but she leaves behind a final smell that could clear a cattle barn.
Bennett gags as we all take a step away from the body. “Jesus wept. What the fuck did this bitch eat for her last meal? It smells like she’s been dead for a week already.”
“I thought I was done puking,” Cat groans.
Frankie rubs her arms and looks down at the body. “I guess she couldn’t keep the rot inside anymore.” Her nose wrinkles, and she covers her mouth. “Fuck, that really is bad. Let’s get out of here.”
Jim unlocks the door, and we file out of the room, careful to step over the corpse. Once we’re in the hall and away from the smell, I grab Frankie’s arm and hold her back as the rest of the group leaves the manor restaurant in a flurry of excitement.
“I meant what I said,” I whisper. “I was wrong for lying to you about how I felt. Can you forgive me?”
