At almost twelve in the morning, there wasn’t a word from Brenna with her whereabouts. Taylor called her about three or four times and even took my phone to see if she’d answer if she thought it was me. But there wasn't a response for either of us. A little past midnight, we all began to get a little groggy so I called off the watch team just wanting to go to sleep.
I crawled into Taylor’s bed losing nothing but my shoes. But as I tried sleeping, Taylor stood in the bathroom, with the light glaring into the bedroom. I would hear him dial her number, listen to it ring, then once it hit her voice answering machine he’d hang up in frustration. Time after time. At last, the bathroom light switched off and I thought I’d finally be able to sleep as I heard his feet shuffle over to the bed and the covers lift up.
Still, regardless of how sleepy I was I told him, “Babe, I’m going to sleep because I’m tired but if you want, you can stay up for her.”
“No,” He said without a second's hesitation, “I called her six times. If she wants to be stupid, let her be stupid. She’s always yelling about how she’s a responsible adult, but she can’t even return a damn phone call!”
“I’m thinking that maybe her flight just got delayed.”
“And you don’t think she could send me a message to let me know that?”
I shrug as I rolled over to face him, “I’m not arguing with you, Babe.”
“I know you’re not….I left her a message at the bottom of the stairs telling her to wake Pops up when she gets in. I doubt she’ll even do that.” I listened as his mouth shut, then heard as he sucked in the air to prepare going off again. Simply put, that meant I wouldn’t get any shut eye so my only option was to put out the fire.
I reached over and held him in a hug, “Babe, babe, calm down and let it all out when she actually gets here.”
"You're right," He sighed, resting his arm around me, "Sorry.”
I extended my neck just to peck his cheek,so grateful that at last I had the opportunity to sleep.

I jolted from my pillow in the middle of the night, in a sort of a panic. The problem was, once I was awake I couldn’t even recall a thing that happened in my dream. I took a quick glance around to discover that it was still dark outside and that he had fallen asleep with the TV on. I reached over him for the remote, checked the time to be almost three, clicked the TV off, then rolled back onto my other side to go back to sleep.
From my propped up ear, I could heard a slight noise. It sounded a lot like tapping. I tried to ignore it and fall back asleep but I couldn’t. It wasn’t rheumatic at all, it was completely sporadic and seriously annoying. I sat back up in bed to figure out where it was coming from so I could stop it, but then realized that the tapping was in fact knocking. My mind was too foggy for me to think to do anything until I realized the knocking was a lot more violent than normal knocking, and the doorbell began being continuously rang.

I jumped out of bed and hurried down the stairs to get the door for Brenna. I yanked it open and came to the realization of how tired I really was. I didn’t bother to check out the side windows, or even the peephole, I just went straight to opening the door to find a group of men congregating around it. Each was dressed a little differently. Some were wearing light denim jeans and a t-shirt, others were a little more fancily dressed in black slacks. But most importantly, the man in the middle of them all, was being carried by them while he bled out profusely.
“Where do we put him?!” They yell at me, since I only stood there with a gaping mouth.
“I don’t know," I stumbled "The couch!” Since I didn’t have the common sense to move out the way, they did so themselves. I regretted telling them the couch considering it was a white couch, and blood stained white. My eyes were still heavy, and it's an awful thing to be confused while tired. Somehow I found it in me to yell, “Taylor!”
It didn’t take much to wake Taylor up. I heard him bound down the hallway, sounding like an elephant stampede. But he didn’t come straight for me, as I thought he would, instead I heard him basically break down a door yelling, “Brenna, get up! Hurry up and get Dad!” Then at last he rushed down the stairs for me. He barely gave the bleeding man a second look before telling the guy's worried friends, “He’ll be down in a minute.” I watched him come towards me but then my eyes fell to his feet, which had to have stepped in some of the man’s blood since they were painted red. With my eyes I followed the trail of blood to the door, and came to the conclusion I was so cold all thanks to the door being left wide open. “Come on,” He didn't give me a second to consider it. He led me out back, not forcefully, but it wasn't as if I had much of a choice either. “Mia!” He called trying to get me to focus on him but I couldn’t. Mayhem was going on inside. “I need you to listen to me,” He continued anyways, “My dad’s not really a doctor.”
That woke me up quickly, “What? You said he was.”
“Not really, you said he was, I just went with it. I mean he’s a doctor to some... he’s just not a real doctor. He doesn’t have his M.D. or his Ph. D, it’s just to some people that doesn’t matter—!”
I wasn’t too stuck on the fact he had lied to me. At least he had come clean. “What are you getting at here?”
He nervously glanced over his shoulder, “I just need you to get in your car and drive.” He dug into his pockets frantically handing over the keys and his wallet, “Drive to the farthest hotel from here, and call me when you get there. Tell me where you are and I’ll come get you as soon as I can, alright?”
“What about our friends?”
“Take them with you!” He yelled as if I already knew the answer to that question, “Now go!” He urged me.

It’s a miracle, I got my limbs to move and even more of a miracle I could get myself to run. I burst open Cassandra and Eli’s door yelling, “Wake up! We’ve gotta get out of here. You don’t have time to change or ask questions just grab your phone, wallet, and let’s go!” I hurried back out to the entryway to get a jacket. I didn’t care how fast I was moving, it was still cold out. After I had finished forcing an arm through my coat sleeve, the Forbes stumbled out of their room. I hurried them past the traumatizing scene, into the garage, and finally into my car.

I slammed my foot so hard on the pedal the whole travel down the hill, and an additional ten minutes past it. Although, I couldn’t see myself safely driving any further than that, I would start dozing off at the wheel.
The car stopped at a Sheraton Inn. It took a little to get them out of the car but not a lot to get them inside. I went straight to the check-in desk and handed over Taylor’s card to the concierge. “I need a room with two beds, please.”
Cassandra followed me up to the desk, “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
I barely paid her any mind, “Taylor will tell you when he gets here.”
Cassandra nodded and wanted to walk away but she simply couldn’t. Her nerves made her stay to explain, “Mia, I saw that man bleeding and--!”
“Do you really think now is the time to be talking about this?” I snapped, not because I was really grumpy with only two hours of sleep but mainly because the concierge was right there and watched her ears perk up.
Eli came up and pushed his wife behind him, “I get that, and so you need to get that my wife’s a little shaken up by tonight’s events and she has the right to be, doesn’t she?”
The concierge handed off our keys, I hand them each their own and stoically respond, “Yeah, we all do.”

I waited in that hotel room for Taylor, for what seemed like a lifetime. Especially with Cassandra's constant nervous talking which eventually became her cries. I had to move, I had to pace, I was absolutely restless. I would take a seat at the edge of the bed, or lean against the desk but just couldn’t stay there. An hour and a half of pure torture from Cassandra’s behalf, someone finally knocked on the door. I ran to it, checked out the peephole, and was so relieved to see Taylor standing out there. I rushed into his arms, burying my nose in his shirt crying, “Where have you been?”
“It’s alright, I’m here now,” He whispered into my ear while rubbing my back, he also threw in a few apologies before stepping in. After a good look at our friends he went straight to explaining, “My father’s friend lives up on the mountain near us. A freak accident happened at one of his parties. They knew the best place to come to was my dad." He looked to Cassandra, "Cassandra you don’t need to cry.” He paused for a little while then sighed before continuing on to say, “Everything is fine.” The last line came out as if he had to have said it over a thousand times.
Eli was skeptical. He crossed his arms while he asked, “If that’s the case, then why are we at a hotel right now?”
Stripped of all emotion, Taylor said “My father didn’t want anyone in the house.”
“Why’s that?! We were asleep,” Cassandra argued.
Taylor continuously tried to explain but the Forbes kept interrupting . My morning started out rough. I was running on two hours of sleep. They could all just count their blessings that I wasn’t holding a gun. “Shut up!” I shout after my last nerve had officially popped, “Just shut the hell up!” Everyone went quiet and turned to look at me, “Can we go back tonight?” I ask my husband in exasperation.
He fumbled to find the right words, he had rarely ever seen me go off. He shook his head and eventually said, “It’d be smarter if we just stayed here tonight, heaven knows when they’ll be done.”
When Cassandra and Eli came to terms, Taylor turned to me thinking I’d be calm, “You and I need to talk,” was all I really had to say.

I knew the roof was legally off limits but it was the best, recluse location I could think of at a hotel. The air was biting at my skin through the jacket, so I wanted to make it quick and get it over with. Taylor stuck a rock between the door and the frame so it wouldn’t lock shut on us.
“I know that wasn’t your father’s friend,” I let him know right off the bat.
“That lie wasn’t intended for you, it was for them.”
“So now you’re lying to our friends? What’s all that about?”
“We can’t trust everyone, Mia. I mean I know that in the world you came from you can but you can’t anymore. You shouldn’t even know what you know but you do because you’re my wife.”
“That’s funny, though, because I don’t know anything. Everything you’ve told me so far has gotten me nowhere.”
“Do you want to take a seat before I start explaining?” He asked,
“Yeah, let me just grab a chair,” I say sarcastically as I motion to the big, barren rooftop.
But then I noticed the way he was holding himself. Shoulders slumped over, as his hands rubbed up and down his arms. He wasn’t even wearing a jacket, “So you think we can talk in your car?”
“Sure,” I wouldn’t have had a heart had I said ‘no’.

He glanced out the driver’s window a few times as the car began to heat up. After he defrosted a little he told me, “I don’t know where to start.”
“Always start from the beginning,”
“But that’s not where the story started for me,” He said looking over at me with sad eyes,
I was getting agitated, “Honestly, Taylor! I’m sick of how you keep stalling and using all that mysterious language. Just cut the bull, I want answers like now or I’m calling the cops.”
He lunged across the car, throwing his hand over my mouth. He was acting as if he was prescribed anti-anxiety medication and chose not to take it. “Promise me that you won’t ever say anything like that again.”
I didn’t say anything until he removed his hand. And even though I did agree it was just to back him off of me. He was acting too crazy and getting too close.
He got very emotional as he said, “Those words can get you killed.”
My heart began to stutter, “Are you threatening to kill me?”
“No!” He shook his head so slowly as if it were becoming heavy on his neck, “I can’t even believe you’d ask me that!”
“I’m sorry, it’s just what it sounded like!” I yelled to my defense.
“God, no!” He tried to bring down his voice as he looked over at me again, “Look, I love you and I will fight for you and protect you for as long as I’ll live but if you bring the cops into this…I won’t be able to protect either of us.”
I cup his face in my hands so he wouldn’t feel as if I were afraid of him, “Baby, won’t you just tell me what’s going on?” He looked hesitant, “Please?”
“You know how you love the riches…and how you love the house we live in…? Well everything my family owns isn’t technically ours.”
“What are you saying?” I ask, trying to be as understanding as possible.
He swallowed, “It’s borrowed. Everything is borrowed.”
“So who does it belong to?”
He didn’t even look at me, “The mob,” he let out a big sigh as he sat back in his seat.
“My God!” My hand flew over my mouth as I tried to refrain from hyperventilating. "My God, my God, my God...."

Chapter 3
I paced the bathroom floor, with every possibly thought running through my mind especially figuring out where in my life I went wrong, and how I ended up in this big of a mess. “Mia, will you at least say something?”
I shrug, “I don’t know what to say. What is there to say?” I felt like I wanted to cry, but my sockets didn’t think I needed to. I nibbled away at my bottom lip until I let it all just flow out of me, “You know what really bugs me is you started talking to me about kids and starting a family!”
“And?”
“And Taylor I don’t want to be raising my kids into this kind of life!” I snapped,
“Hey, my dad has protected me and my family just fine!”
“I don’t even want this life for myself, do you get that?!” It took everything in me to not pull my hair out. “Can I just ask you a question? Why didn’t you warn me?”
“I didn’t want to scare you away,” He mumbled, gaze lowered to the floor.
I couldn’t get too loud since the Forbes were just outside the bathroom, so I screamed through my teeth, “So you make my life changing decisions for me?!”
“It’s not too late, ya know?”
“Oh hell, don’t doubt for a second that I’d still be here if I wasn’t afraid you’d have a hit out on me!”
He threw his head back, I expected a sarcastic laugh to come from him but it didn’t. He only said, “You think I’m going to send a hit out on you? Seriously?! Get over yourself, Mia! If you want to go, go now! No one’s stopping you and I most definitely won’t have a--" He used air quotations "Hit out on you.” To be honest, I thought about it, considered it for quite some time, but didn’t even budge. My arms staid folded across my chest, and my back against the wall. “So you’re staying?” He concluded from my unwillingness to go, I only looked up at him in response. “Alright then, we should go out there before they start to think something’s wrong.”
“Well they wouldn’t be that far off, now would they?” I mumbled on my way out.

Cassandra looked to me as if for a sign whether she should get out of there or that everything was alright. For her sake, I could smile. In no way was her life about to be put in harm’s way. She tittered in response. I let them both know, “So yeah, as you already know we're spending the night here and then we're heading back to the family home in the morning. Is that alright?"
Eli nodded, “We need to go back for our stuff then we’ll be on the road and return back up to San Fran later that day.”
A dull aching pain started inside. I felt as if Taylor had managed to successfully scare off our newfound friends. “Well goodnight,” was all I managed to say in response.
Once my head hit the pillow, Taylor took his manual position by gripping me up into his arms. And even though his dark secret had finally been revealed, it didn’t feel any different laying next to him. I mean, I knew somewhere in my subconscious I had a few judgmental thoughts towards him but I didn’t see myself loving him any less because of his father’s decision, or his decision for my life. As I took in his scent, I realized he smelled like two of my most favorite things: warm milk and cookies.