Killian: A West Bend Saints Romance (46 page)

"
C
ome on
, Elias!" I call. Noah is on my hip, because he's all about mama lately, which is just fine with me because he's the youngest of the three. I'm okay with keeping him a baby as long as I can, even if he's two years old now and no longer really a baby.

"Coming, coming! Ben, do you have pants on?" Elias yells. "Where's Mia?"

Our four-year-old stumbles out of his bedroom wearing a t-shirt, pausing in the doorway to shake his underwear-clad rear end at us. "See it? It's my
BUTT
!!"

"If you don't get in your room and put pants on your
butt
, you're not getting dessert tonight – and I stopped by the bakery for cupcakes, too," I tell him.

“No cupcakes? Bummer, dude," Elias comments. "Where is Mia?"

"I don't want to go to the play!" Mia wails. I set Noah down and he goes careening through the living room, followed by Elias. I find Mia sitting in a little reading nook that we put in under the stairway. We intended for the space to be for all three of the kids, but Ben and Noah don't seem to be wired to sit still for longer than two seconds, so Mia has claimed the spot as her own little hideaway.

"It's the kindergarten play, baby. You're one of the trees. It's a
very
important part." Mia is dressed the part of a tree– brown tights and a green long-sleeved tunic dress and felt leaves dangling from the ends of her arms and adorning the shirt. Sitting inside the reading nook in her homemade tree costume, she's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

"I know!" Mia squeals. "I'm not going to remember my dance."

The kindergarten is putting on their first performance of the year –
I Love The Seasons.
Mia is part of the 'spring' scene as one of four trees waving their tree limbs in the breeze.

"Adrianna and Caroline will be up there with you. Even if you forget your dance, they'll help you."

"But there will be so many people!" she wails.

"Come here." I extend my arms out and she crawls from the space and wraps her arms around my neck, just as Elias walks into the living room hand-in-hand with Noah.

"Is she okay?" he mouths.

I nod. "Stage fright," I whisper as he chases down Ben, who's undoubtedly getting into mischief in the five minutes he's been alone in his room putting on pants.

"Mommy, what if I'm shy when I go up there?"

"Everyone gets shy when they get on stage. You know, mommy used to get on stage all the time, and even after I did it a whole bunch of times, I still got butterflies in my stomach."

Mia sniffles her response. "You did?"

"Totally. But do you want to know what?”

"What?"

"Let's go in my room. I have something for you."

"Okay."

I pass Elias, who's carrying Noah in one hand and a washcloth covered in green paint in the other. "Ben painted his face."

"In the last two minutes?" I ask, incredulous. "Where did he get face paint?"

Elias shakes his head. "He went into the playroom and climbed up the shelf on the wall to pull them off the top."

"Ben! How many times have we told you not to climb the shelves?!" Thank goodness we bolted the wall shelf units to the wall when we got them, because apparently our son is part monkey.

"Five minutes, River," Elias reminds me. "If we don't leave soon, there won't be any parking."

"Got it." I rush off to our bedroom carrying Mia on my hip and deposit her in front of my vanity, which is pretty much guaranteed to stop her tears, since one of her favorite things to do is sit at my vanity and put on my makeup. Reaching into my jewelry box, I pull out one of my necklaces, a simple silver piece with a locket. "This is a
magic
necklace."

Mia cocks her head to the side and looks at me. "Really?"

"Promise. Mommy used to wear this when I went to auditions."

"What are auditions?"

"Before I got to act in movies, I'd have to go try out being in the movie first to see if the director liked me in the part."

"What's a director?"

"You know how Ms. Baker tells you guys where to go on stage and stuff?"

"Yeah."

"That's what a director does."

Mia sniffles her response.

"This necklace gives you bravery," I tell her, slipping it around her neck. "That's why I'm giving it to you to wear tonight."

"Trees don't wear necklaces."

"Let's tuck it into your costume. That way no one sees it. If you get nervous during the play, your dad and I will be right there in the audience and I'll be right there next to your heart."

"Okay."

I wrap my arms around her. "Now, in the car, I want you to show us all how you're going to shake your arms in the play."

"They're tree branches, mommy."

"Excuse me – shake your tree branches." I wrap my arms around her. "You're going to do great."

During the play, Elias reaches for my hand, his face beaming. "She's doing awesome,” he whispers.

"I knew she would."

He squeezes my hand. "I love you."

I squeeze his hand back, my silent version of 'I love you', watching as Mia sways back and forth on the stage with her best friends in rhythm with the song the class is singing.

Sitting here with Elias and our three children, watching my kindergartener perform in a class play, is a place I never in a million years would have thought I'd end up, if you'd have asked me years ago. Ten years ago, I was a spoiled (I'll admit it) Hollywood movie star who didn't think I could ever have stability or happiness… or love.

When I left Hollywood, I was running away from my life. The thing is, I didn't realize that it was the exact opposite – I ended up running straight toward it.

This life, the one that I've created with Elias and our children, is full of chaos and imperfection. And it's the most beautiful thing imaginable.

* * *

T
onight
, I'm going to steal half a million dollars.

Well, let me qualify that. I won't take
possession
of the money tonight - but tonight is when the magic happens. It's when I seal the deal. And
steal
isn't really the right word for it. The man standing beside me, the one who's trying to impress me with every fiber of his scummy little being, is going to
give
it to me. He's going to
insist
I take it from him.

He's going to
thank me
for the privilege of taking his money.

And then I'm going to walk away.

My crew will take a cut from the proceeds - split four ways - and the rest goes to the person who actually deserves it - this scumbag's victim. Then we'll get the hell out of Vegas - separately, of course. I've been here for a month anyway. That's long enough, in my book. I get restless. I've always been a wanderer.

You have to be when you do what I do, when you were raised the way I was raised.

I'm a grifter. A con artist.

A hustler. A thief.

It sounds worse than it is.

People think they know what being a grifter means. They think that grifters con little old ladies out of their life savings and take hard-working folks' retirements away from them. They think I'm some kind of gold digger or black widow, marrying rich men for money and then waiting until they die to collect.

People couldn't be more wrong about me.

They don't know my story. Not at all.

I'm not the bad guy here. Or
bad girl
, rather. The real bad guys - the actual cons - are the bankers, the dirty hedge fund managers, the fat cat CEOs who play with their employees like they're chess pieces. Don't even get me started on the politicians, the leaders of countries, the ones who make decisions that affect good people based on whose lobby has the most money and the greatest influence.

They
make what I do look like child's play.

Me? I'm one of the good girls.

I'm like Robin Hood. I take from the assholes, the people who deserve to be cheated - and I redistribute to the people who deserve it, the ones who have been victimized.

I believe in karma - retribution for past misdeeds.

But, sometimes, karma needs an extra nudge in the right direction.

I give it that nudge.

And nudging karma is exactly why I'm standing here now.

S
ometimes time itself slows down
, comes to a standstill, like someone pushed a giant pause button on the entire universe. It usually happens at the important times: births, deaths, things like that.

And times like now.

I sat in the back room, on a half-rusted metal chair, staring at the concrete floor splotched with who knows how many years' worth of grime, the surface wearing away in irregularly shaped patches. Everything faded into the background - the men in the room talking around me, the noise from the gathering crowd outside, the ones who were bloodthirsty, waiting for a fight.

I'd always been good at blocking shit out, detaching myself from everything around me and just zoning.

It's how I survived my childhood.

That, and I fought. Even when I was a kid.
It's in your nature,
my mother used to say.
You kicked your way out of the womb.

This fight, though...this was different. This was fucking
personal
.

"Yo, Saint." The voice shook me out of my thoughts. "Saint. Are you listening?"

Trigg squatted down in front of me, his expression dark. He was one of the fighters I'd known when I was on the circuit here in Vegas, before I'd gone back to West Bend. "Where's your fucking head?" he asked.

Trigg thought I was distracted by what had happened with Abel. But that’s not what was on my mind.

I wasn't supposed to fight tonight. Abel was. He'd called me when I was out in Hollywood with Elias and River, and asked a favor. It was an easy favor; it should have been no big deal. He wanted me to come down and be in his corner at his fight. I had been outside the circuit for the past few months and he trusted me. After the stuff that had gone down with me and Coker, the shit that sent me back to West Bend a few months back, he knew I'd be there in a heartbeat.

I was supposed to be in Abel’s position tonight, in his corner, supporting
him
. Instead, Abel was in the hospital, after being mowed down in a hit and run.

The bullshit part of it was that I knew who had done it. Hell, we all knew who was responsible. We might not know who the driver himself was, but we damn well knew who had hired him. It was Roy Coker, my ex-promoter. Everyone knew what kind of guy he was, the lengths he would go to in order to make sure his fighters won.

Or lost, depending on what bets were being run and what the odds were.

Coker had tried to get me to take a dive before, so I knew firsthand what would happen when you were in his way, when you didn’t do what you were told.

In my case, the outcome hadn’t been great.

Of course, I’d never been good at doing what I was told, either.

"Yeah, man," I said. "My head is right where it needs to be."

Trigg squatted down low and made eye contact with me, his gaze intense. "You’ve got this," he said. "Rush is a fucking beast. But you're better."

I
was
better, I almost said. Then I put that thought out of my head. I hadn't fought, not in a real fight anyway, since Coker sabotaged me months ago.

When I'd gotten beaten so badly I nearly died.

I wasn't in good shape when I went back to West Bend, even though by then I was out of the hospital and relatively healed, at least on the outside. My mother had assumed I was drinking, but it was just the fact that I was still recovering from the beating I'd taken. I'd told Elias I'd come back to West Bend because I'd torn my ACL - he didn't need to be involved in the clusterfuck that was my life. Especially not when there was so much stuff going on in West Bend already. I was going to take care of everything myself.

But after I'd recovered, I'd gone back to training.

The problem was that I knew enough to know that all the training in the world didn't matter if you weren't fighting. And the last fight I'd been in had been a bloodbath - mine.

So I'd had the nagging fear that I'd lost my mojo.

Then there was the small matter of the fact that the doctor had told me specifically,
no more fighting
. He’d warned me that another good blow to the head could kill me.

I nodded at Trigg. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m better than Rush.”

But the words rang hollow, especially to me.