“What? Why?” Calli asked.
Dom stepped in front of her.
The officer looked toward the doors. Bennett Stockton with his now live-in girlfriend, Zoe, were standing by one of the benches.
Officer Washington said, “Mr. Stockton has filed charges against you for kidnapping.” The officer looked the nearly full-grown boys doubtfully up and down. “I’m sorry but just doing my job. According to the legal papers, you’re not allowed to take them across state lines without permission from their father.” He pulled out the cuffs.
Dom held out a hand. “I don’t think you’ll need those. We don’t need to make a scene.”
Calli said weakly, “Yeah, I’ll come.”
“Mom?” Kent threw his arms around her.
She hugged him back. “It’ll be all right,” she said and smoothed his hair. “You’re going to have to go with your dad though. Jax?” She held out her arm for him. When he hugged her, she whispered, “Please take care of him.”
Jax nodded.
Calli turned to Dom. “You should probably go. I think you were right to not want to be tangled up with me and this mess. It seems to be getting nastier and nastier. You move on. I’ll call you when I have some normalcy in my life, and maybe we can try again.” She ducked her head and went with the officer. It would only be three years or so, right?
Bennett passed her without meeting her eyes as he walked toward her sons. Fucking asshole, she thought. Zoe, on the other hand, met her gaze and smirked radiantly on Bennett’s behalf. It was all Calli could do to not lunge for the trollop, but she took a little satisfaction in knowing that she’d get a dose of her own medicine when Bennett turned the tables on her just as soon as things started to fall from their perky places. She was only eight years older than their son, for Christ’s sake. Maybe she’d have a kid too. The next one in Bennett’s long line would probably be even younger than Jax. Calli shook her head and walked through the sliding glass doors into the cold Minnesota air and allowed the officer to help her into the back of the car. Lights danced on the concrete pillars and walls as Officer Washington drove her away.
Dom
Dominic pulled out his phone and called his lawyer. “Joe, can you get me a defense attorney for Calli? Her ex is a real piece of work.”
Joe answered, “Yeah, I have a good friend. What are the charges?”
“He filed kidnapping charges against her for taking the boys out of state without his permission.”
“Wow, what a dick move.”
“Yeah, I think he’s just trying to make a show of her being arrested too. He had cops waiting at the airport.”
“Okay, I’ll call Karl.”
“Thanks.” Dom hung up the phone and took a long cleansing breath, blowing out deliberately.
Bennett Stockton approached wearing the most superior grin he’d ever seen. Narcissist, thought Dom as he stepped between the boys and their father. He probably shouldn’t, but that man needed a lesson in morality, or at the very least reality.
“What are you doing? How could you have their mother arrested in front of them? Don’t you think that might be a little damaging?”
Bennett looked at Dom from head to toe. “And you are?”
“That’s beside the point.”
“Well, since those are my sons behind you, you’d best step aside before I have you arrested as her accomplice. She knew not to take them out of state, and she took the opportunity while I was taking care of legal matters of my own.”
“Yeah, you drove drunk. With your children in the car. What’s the matter with you?”
“This is none of your business, and I wasn’t drunk.”
“Apparently the breathalyzer said you were.”
“Again, you are a perfect stranger, and this matter is none of your business.” Bennett looked around, presumably for another police officer.
Dom felt a nudge on his shoulder. Jax stepped forward. “No, Dad. This is insane. You know that Mom didn’t kidnap us, and you knew that she was bringing us back. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
“Jackson,” said Bennett.
Jax held up his hand. “I go by Jax. That is not changing no matter how much you want it to. I’m going to a school for arts. That, too, is not changing.”
Bennett moved around toward Kent. “Let’s discuss this at home.”
“That’s not our home.” Kent backed away and hid behind Jax.
Jax said, “You should know that Mom has been the biggest reason why we haven’t asked the judge to let us live with her full time. She’s defended you all the way while you hooked up with . . . with . . . her.” Jax pointed at the woman by the bench.
Bennett’s girlfriend was precisely the kind of woman who had always made Dom want to remain single. So different from Calli, this person, who could barely be called a woman at her young age, who wore too much makeup, and who strutted around in clothes a size too small, reminded him a little of Pauline.
Jax put an arm around his brother. “We’re not going with you. We’re going with Dom. We’re going to meet the lawyer he just called. We’re going to get our mother out of jail. And, we are going to petition the judge to have the custody order revoked. We are both over fifteen, and that’s the legal age.”
The carousel whirred to life, but the silence was otherwise thick as the crowd had stopped to stare.
Calli
Calli sat in the cold cell with only a scratchy blanket for warmth and cried. She kept trying to get her life on a happy path, but the results always ended up the same—her landing some form of disaster. This was the first time in her life she’d ever been arrested. The booking, strip search, observed shower, and dingy gray clothes were only the surface humiliation. Wait until she had to tell her mother what had happened. That would be the worst kind of torment she could imagine.
Thinking of her mother and father reminded her . . . she wondered how their trip home had been. She wondered how her father’s speech on the latest in orchid genetics had gone. Her stomach knotted with guilt. She should have gone to the speech rather than work that day. She wondered, not for the first time, what she was doing in financial services. The pay was decent, but it was nothing special. She was good at her job, but again, it was nothing special. She’d made friends, and they were dear to her, but it didn’t require she stay in the Cities. She missed the perfumed and humid greenhouses. She missed seeing her father’s face alight with pleasure when she learned something new about the orchids or when she brought a new plant into bloom. Why hadn’t she followed what she loved as a child?
Instead, she’d married a suave and charming man. Sure, they’d been happy during the first years, but what she predicted would happen to Zoe was exactly what had happened to her—she’d started to age. Bennett liked young and tight bodies. In relationships, that’s the only thing he really prized. She’d seen it time and time again in the second decade of their so-called marriage. He was dead set on climbing the corporate ladder, and he took his pleasure wherever he traveled and with whomever he pleased. When they were both in college, Bennett’s enthusiasm about the corporate life was contagious, and Calli had chosen to follow that thirst—had thought it was her own. But it wasn’t hers, and she knew that now.