Page 63 of All The Way Under
Dad looks at me, furrows his brow in frustration, then grabs Mom under the arm and hoists her over his shoulder. I grab Brody’s hand, and we run, in my sensible shoes, across the glass-littered marble toward the guards who are covering us as we run.
My mom is hysterical by the time my dad allows her to stand on her own two feet in the kitchen. The chef is terrified, and the wait staff is huddled in a corner, sobbing.
“Is everyone okay?” Brody asks, eyeing me like he’s an x-ray machine.
“I’m fine,” I assure him. “Fine in a way one can be after being shot at while fine dining.”
Mom is staring at the waitstaff, targeting her mire and hysteria on to someone else other than Dad.
“Just breathe. Just breathe through it,” she chides, trying to calm them down. “That’s what I did when I had my second rhinoplasty.”
“Darling, I don’t think that’s the same thing,” Dad says, waving at the waiters in apology.
One is on the phone with the police, and Dad directs them on what to say. Then to us, he says, “We need to get somewhere safe. We’re sitting ducks in a hotel room. The police are on the way now. This will all be taken care of soon.”
“The guards are in the dining room and outside the kitchen door,” Brody chimes in. “They are covering. We’re safe here.”
Brody scans the expanse of the industrial kitchen.
“Saylor, stay with your parents. I’m going to do a sweep.”
“Brody,” my father says, placing a palm on the center of his chest, then lowering it a moment later, on better thought. “Guys,” he addresses us, peeking around the wall that is my man. “This is my fault.”
Mom cries. “What do you mean?” she replies, in between sniffles and shock.
It took her a while to lose her humor and understand the gravity of the situation we are in, but she arrived eventually.
“What is going on, Roger?” She wipes her nose.
I don’t speak. Brody doesn’t speak. You can hear a pin drop.
My dad looks down at the floor, then crouches, putting his hands on his head.
“Jennings Vansickle has hired someone to kill me,” he says.
I hear him clearly, even though his words are muffled. Jennings is an attorney at the firm my dad has a close relationship with. While he’s not my dad’s attorney outright, he’s always wanted in on Wyndham’s business deals, but my dad hasn’t allowed it, seeing through him as corrupt and money-hungry. He has been after Dad for as long as I can remember. Friendly competition turned sour sometime in the last two decades, but kill? That’s crazy talk.
Shaking my head, I say, “No, Dad. Jennings isn’t capable of that. Why would you say that?”
“The laws are different in other countries. He’s hired someone local to Portugal who is going to disappear when the deed is done—if the deed gets done—and there’s no trace tying this back to him, but security figured it out quickly. This has been going on since you left, Saylor. This has nothing to do with you or Brody. There was a deal that I cut him out of. I changed law firms while you were being held hostage because we couldn’t agree on how your release and ransom money should be dealt with as a last straw. Jennings was irate at the termination meeting. He took the situation personally. The threats began rolling in after that, each one more menacing than the last. They should have known to cross me when it had to do with family.” He looks at me. “When it had to do withmybaby.”
Mom cries louder.
“The deed will not get done! Vansickle? Vansickle? Not even God’s PR team would touch that mess,” she cries. “Maura Vansickle is an ungrateful shrew. Wyndham is why she has anything at all! Her idea of refinement is putting truffle oil on everything!”
There she is.Bianca is back from her hysterical terror and ready to rip a new-money woman to shreds.
“Her husband made millions indirectly from your patent deals, Roger, and she still can’t figure out how to RSVP properly. The Vansickles throw money at things, hoping it’ll turn into class, but even the money is appalled. It just bounces off!”
I stare at my parents while they speak. Mostly it’s my father trying to calm my mom down, but he is also giving more details about the deal with Vansickle and the law firm, so I hone in. Brody is talking to the police, and for not the first time this week, I’m left trying to sort out the absolute shit show of the current state of my life.
I zone out, watching the chaos play out around me like a movie, blankly staring at a pot on the stove that has red sauce bubbling over. I walk over, dodging police and a waiter, and turn the knob to turn off the stove.
I spin on my heel just in time to see Brody enter the kitchen. He seeks me out and frowns. I slide down the stove and wrap my arms around my knees. This. This is the breaking point.
“I want to go home.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
