“You can’t tell your uncles.”
“You want me to say nothing?”
“What would telling the Kowalskis about this do for anyone?”
“They already know he’s dead,” one of her aunts said. “What would telling them about how he died change anything or make anything better?”
“So we let these full-humans get away with what they did to my father?”
“A father,” Great-Aunt Li-Li felt the intense need to remind her, “that you said you were disowning.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“We just don’t think you should upset things,” Joan said, stepping closer to Livy and running her hand softly down Livy’s arm. “Let’s just leave things as they are.”
“I don’t think—”
Her mother’s soft hand was now a fist, one forefinger pressing against Livy’s nose, pushing it hard. “You don’t have to think.” And her mother’s voice was low, dangerous. “Just keep your mouth shut and be smart. Understand me?”
Livy stared at her mother. Hard black eyes stared back. Eyes just like Livy’s.
Without saying a word, Livy turned and walked out.
The four women sat down in the kitchen table and stared at each other.
“She’s going to make this ugly,” Kew finally informed them.
As if Joan didn’t already know that.
Joan would be the first to admit she’d never really understood her daughter. Nor had she bothered to try. All that art talk that had nothing to do with what things cost, or how they could be taken, sold, and the cash received and split up equally among all those involved. That was what art meant to Joan and to Damon and to both sides of their families. Yet Livy believed herself to be an actual artist. She took pictures and expected people to pay to hang them in their homes. And some did. Joan clearly remembered that nosy bitch Jackie Jean-Louis coming to her house, more than once, to “discuss Livy’s future.”
Livy’s future? Joan had always thought her future would be the same as Joan’s and her sisters and her brothers and their mothers and aunts and uncles and on and on. But Jean-Louis and that ridiculous family of hers kept pushing the art thing again and again until Livy actually believed it. And she was as stubborn as . . . well, as stubborn as Joan. So Joan knew there was no point in fighting her. Instead, she’d let her go off and do whatever she wanted. Art school? Sure. Why not? Jobs taking pictures for fancy magazines? Whatever.
There was simply no point in getting a bug up her ass about it because Livy was going to be Livy.
“Well,” Joan snarled, “I’m not giving any of those Kowalskis the life insurance money. He was my husband.”
“Ex-husband,” Kew reminded her.
Joan scowled at her sister.
Li-Li tapped her long, manicured nails against the table. “Stop this. We need to know what that girl is going to do.”
Joan laughed. “I’ll tell you what she’s going to do.” She looked at each of her sisters and her aunt. “She’s going to tear this world apart to get at whoever did that to her father.”
Aunt Li-Li nodded her head. “Then we should cancel the job.” When her nieces just stared at her, thinking of all that money slipping through their fingers, she added, “If you want to keep some control of this situation, Chuntao, then we stay. It’s what a caring family would do . . . and we pretend, very well, to be a caring family.”
Joan looked at her sisters. “She’s right. We do very well at pretending to be a caring family.”
CHAPTER 9
Livy stepped off the plane and headed through the airport. She didn’t have any luggage. Just her trusty backpack and a whole lot of bitterness.
But the thought of going back to her apartment and facing whatever nightmare was there had Livy dropping into an empty seat in the middle of busy JFK.
She had no idea how long she sat there, staring at absolutely nothing. But, eventually, a text came in on her cell phone. At first, she was going to ignore it, assuming it was Vic again, who’d been trying to get in touch with her ever since she’d left him standing by that van. But then she decided to look anyway.
Hi. It’s Blayne. Can you come to a meeting about the wedding?
Although Livy knew this was probably a bad idea, she realized going to a meeting about a wedding she wanted nothing to do with was way better than going home.
Livy stood and headed toward the exit and, hopefully, a cab. But after less than a minute, she stopped and looked behind her. That was when she realized that airport security was following her.
She didn’t know why. She hadn’t done anything. Then again . . . Toni had mentioned that when she was in a bad mood, Livy had a tendency to growl under her breath and glare a lot.
If she was doing that at the moment, Livy didn’t know. Still, she did jerk her body toward the security team, smirking when they backed up and instinctively placed their hands on their weapons.
Livy turned and walked out of the airport and grabbed the first cab that could take her back to Manhattan.
Vic snapped awake as soon as Shen walked into his room.
“She got a plane back from Chicago,” Shen said. He’d been monitoring her movements as much as he could from his computer. But Livy, unlike the rest of the universe, wasn’t much for revealing her whereabouts through her cell phone or social media. So Shen had to use more unsavory means in order to locate her.
Vic was surprised that Livy had gone to Chicago. As far as he knew, she had no connections there. No family. But after a little digging, he found out that the Kowalskis and Yangs had safe houses all over the States and a lot of other countries. Where those safe houses were specifically located, though, Vic couldn’t find out.
Yet he still found it strange that Livy had sought out her family. For as long as he’d known her, she never went to her family for anything. If she needed help of any kind, she went to Toni or Toni’s parents. No one else seemed to be of use to her. Including Vic.
He’d tried calling her, texting her, e-mailing her . . . everything. And Livy never once called him back. He had no idea what she’d seen in that apartment or why she wasn’t talking to him. But hearing from Shen that she was back did make him feel a little better.
Vic got out of bed and headed to the bathroom for a quick shower.
“Do you even know where she’s going?” Shen asked.
Vic stopped and faced the panda. “I have no idea.”
“I checked your cabinets before I came up here . . . no Livy.”
Disappointed to hear that, Vic said, “I’ll try the Sports Center first.”
“Good plan. You also going to give Dee-Ann a heads-up about what’s going on?”
Vic thought on that a moment before deciding, “Probably not.”
“Probably also a good plan. That woman terrifies me.”
Livy walked into the private dining room of the Van Holtz Steak House in Midtown and dropped into one of the chairs around the big table.
There were already six people in attendance. Blayne, Gwen, two older felines, plus the future grooms, Lock MacRyrie and Bo Novikov, whom Livy knew through her work with the Carnivores hockey team.
Blayne waved at Livy from across the table but before she could speak, the wedding planner, a She-tiger whom Livy had heard was the mother of Cella Malone, leveled bright gold eyes on Livy.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the overpriced wedding photographer. Glad you could join us.”
“Barb,” Blayne said to the feline. “You promised to be nice.”
“I don’t like it when my clients are taken advantage of.”