Heartless People |Book 2|

Chapter 29

"Defense is our best attack."

—Jay Weatherill

LISA

"How much is this one boy costing us?" My father sighed, smoking like a steam engine while leaning against my '69 Mustang.

I readjusted my gloves. "$58,378.23. But I paid a flat sixty just to get it over with."

God, I hate the cold. But what could I expect from a winter in Chicago? The past few months had gone by painfully slow, and now, here we were, standing outside and freezing our nuts off for a kid.

"I could think of ten different things to do with sixty grand, and none of them revolved around smuggling a boy over the border."

Sixty grand was like a grain of sand on a beach for us. He was just bored, so bored in fact, that the man had even taken up writing.

"You didn't have to come, Father."

"You are all out of brothers for the time being. I figured we could use the quality time now that you're weeks away from becoming a parent yourself."

The biggest shit storm that had fallen upon us in the last couple of months was Victoria, and I could hardly blame her. She'd had a hysterectomy, and each day she looked at an enlarged Jen, she broke down. It was finally too much, and Nickhun took her back to the castle in Thailand. She still had months of recovery to go through, on top of another round of chemo. I would give them as much time as they needed. Nickhun wasn't just my cousin, he was my brother, and Victoria was his heart. Bambam and Mina, on the other hand, were one step behind dropping off the face of the planet. After their exile, he and Mina only spoke to me when they had to while on the campaign trail. I did have to give them credit, they were finally good at something: being sock-puppets. They smiled for the cameras and made us all look good. In a few weeks, they would be home, and I would need to speak with Bambam, but for now, I needed to make sure that all the hatches were locked down.

That reason was exactly why we were currently parked right outside the city, waiting under the bridge for my package.

"Are you nervous?" my father asked, handing me his cigar. I waved him off; it wasn't worth the hassle Jen would give me if I came home smelling of smoke. She was more than sensitive to it now.

"Nervous about what?"

"About your son. I understood why you and Jen didn't want to talk about it while there was still a chance she could lose him. Your mother and I have tried to give you both some time to let it sink in, but, we're both kind of shocked you haven't had more worries. Neither of you have even mentioned a nursery, nor did Jen want a baby shower..."

"She didn't want a baby shower because we both knew she would have snapped and killed every last one us." I could just see her now, a baby rattle in her hand, hammering away at some poor schmuck's skull. And that poor schmuck would have probably been me.

Jen and I had spoken about the baby; we spent most of our evenings talking about him. What we would name him, how we would handle our work and parenting. Jen didn't open up well to people. It had taken two years of marriage for her to even truly be open with me. Going to my parents was not something I figured she could do just yet.

"I know you and Mom want to be included more," I said, "but Jen's just not good with being personal, you know this. She's working on it and I can't push her. We're thinking of naming him Ethan Antonio Manoban."

"Ethan?" He grinned, turning to face me.

"Yeah." I grinned in return. "I wanted something unique, and she told me to fuck off, that his last name was unique enough. She kept reading off baby names, I kept asking if it was a name of an appetizer or entrée. We went down a line of 'E' names and Ethan just popped out at us. Feel free to pass it on to Mother so she can start embroidering sweaters and monogramming silverware. Hopefully that will keep her off the baby shower thing."