D for Dylan - 12. Chapter Twelve

“No fucking way.” Elle gasped.

“Uh-huh. I know, right?”

“Wait…” she whistled, all flustered, eyes wide open, palms helicoptering in front of her reddening face. “Wait-wait-wait… Hold on-hold on… Are you saying that you’re in a love triangle with two sons of Boston’s most notorious crime lords?!”

I scratched my head for a second.

“What?!” I blurted out.

“Oh my God it’s so exciting!”

“Elle are you crazy? What the hell are you talking about?!”

“…I can’t believe this is happening, I must be dreaming, this is so fuckin’ hot...”

“You need an exorcist.”

I stood up from her ridiculously comfortable memory foam carpet and grabbed my phone from the commode.

“Elle, this isn’t funny,” I said in all seriousness, checking the time on the screen and pouring cold water over her inappropriate excitement.

“Alright, I’m sorry…” she murmured. “You know how I get, I mean, can you even blame me, this is-“

“Elle!” I gasped.

She pursed her lips and raised her hands in the air.

“Alright! I’m listening, please continue.” she assured.

I sat down on the edge of her bed and felt something sharp poking me in the asscheek.

“What is it?” I wondered, shifting to the side and pulling her bra from underneath my butt.

“Oops!”

“That’s disgusting.” I frowned, tossing it on the floor.

“Oh shut up, it’s better than dirty socks I pulled out of my purse the other night!”

“How did my socks even get there?!”

“That’s not the point, can we please continue?” she waved off with slight annoyance. “You said they’ve known each other for years?”

“Apparently.”

“So how come Jake and Liam never met then?”

“I don’t know! I guess it’s not the kind of friendship where you’d get your kids acquainted?”

“I mean, yeah, that makes sense...” she exhaled.

“Besides, I’m pretty sure they’ve actually met. I think they saw each other as kids, maybe? Not at first, but I think they recognized one another… Remember you told Jake his last name and he immediately asked if he was Hank’s son?”

“Yeah! I thought that was weird!”

“Yeah, me too.”

“And they acted like they knew each other at the party too…” she concluded. “We never found out why they had that fight to begin with, right?

“Well, I thought Liam told him something about our kiss at first. I tried to snoop something out of Jake, but he sorta just shifted the subject. Liam got him beaten pretty badly, I didn’t want to push him.”

“So we don’t know?”

“I mean, knowing Liam, he probably made a snarky comment about me, don’t you think?”

“I still can’t wrap my head around what’s wrong with that dude. He’s like that guy from Shutter Island. Do you think he has some psychiatric illness? Like a multiple personality disorder?”

“Who, Liam?”

“Yes. I mean, how else can you explain his wild mood swings? He’s friends with you, then he hates and tortures you, then he fucking loves you…” she explained, waving her hands in the air theatrically. “Men are so fucked up.”

“Not everyone. Pete is a nice guy.” I winked. “And dare I say, I’m quite a catch myself.”

“More like a magnet for mentally unstable jerks.”

“Not Jake though…” I said, looking down in a sudden anxiety. “Right?..”

We both gave our thoughts a little time to cook. I glanced at the wall next to Elle’s bed, it was plastered with disturbing, serial-killer-esque amounts of posters with her most favorite singer-songwriter.

“How could I be so stupid…” I said, grabbing my temples.

“About what?”

“Jake.” I said.

“How would you even know that something was off?” Elle reasoned. “He totally seemed like a regular guy!”

“A regular guy that got her to call you on your birthday.” I said, throwing my arm at the abused portrait of Taylor Swift.

“Oh… Well, yeah, you got a point…”

“Emma was right, I would never have guessed.”

“You’re talking about his folks?”

“Yeah. Elle, I’ve spent the entire weekend with their family at Cape Cod. They seemed like completely normal people and it surprised me - his dad is a fucking billionaire, they’re one of the richest families in east cost, and they all seemed so down to earth.”

“That’s what happens when a woman is in power,” she said with a smirk. “Shanice Williams is officially my new spirit animal.”

“Elle, there’s actually more…” I said, blanking into an empty space.

I wasn’t sure if telling Elle the whole truth was a good idea, but I needed us to be in the same headspace. Emma’s words still bogged me. I think I was mentally prepared to hear what she had to say about my boyfriend’s family, but it still left me puzzled. Their households have known yeah other for over 20 years, as it turned out. Reginald was a very talented man, he helped Hendersons amplify their wealth back in the day, when Liam’s great-grandfather Gerald was still alive. Reginald took care of their investments and stocks, brought several huge projects to fruition and used the leverage and commission provided by Gerald to invest into his own projects and ideas. Decades later, Reginald Williams was wealthier than everyone in the entire Henderson clan across the country, combined. Very well deserved, one could argue. A man of the most humble origins, without a favorable background or access to a proper education or nepotism, unprivileged and disadvantaged, managed to build an empire thanks to his brilliant mind.

The warm ties and mutual sense of gratitude and respect have kept their families drifting close throughout the years, but competitive nature of Liam’s great-grandfather never allowed him to settle on the side and watch his former employee surpass his wildest expectations. He conspired to frame him and used his connections with corrupt prosecutors to help fabricate felony charges on money laundering and federal tax evasion against Reginald. Seized assets would’ve been auctioned off and Gerald always had his ways of getting them dirt cheap.

“He was a ruthless man, Dylan.” Emma said, nervously rubbing her hands. “He couldn’t stand being in his shadow.”

Shanice Williams never rang an alarm in the eyes of Henderson-senior. Shrouded comfortably behind her husband’s smash success, she was a run of the mill African-American housewife, a good listener with a soft heart and gentle voice, always very quiet and obedient. Pursuing her medical career, she never allowed comfort to get in a way of following her ambitions. Growing up in an abusive household in rural Louisiana made her appreciate her privilege with gratitude and her allegiances were always to her family.

“I think he respected her, in a way.” Emma remembered. “Gerald always had this very strict idea about what a woman should be. Shanice was humble and virtuous, but very intelligent. She never allowed her ambitions overshadow the wellbeing of her husband and kids.”

Gerald’s patience snapped on the day he decided to send a hitman knocking on the door of Williams’ residence. Somehow, his plans on overtaking Reginald’s fortune have crashed and burned, and the old man was never keen on dealing with humiliation and failure in more civilized ways. One could expect him to have a sleepless night, but on the star-crossed day of the mass family murder he planned, Gerald Henderson was calm as a dove on a pond.

That is, until someone unexpected paid him a late night visit.

Henderson senior could count the number of times he’d ever been surprised in his life, on four crooked, arthritis-ridden digits of his left hand, discounting for an amputated pinky. There was one time during his military service in marine corps, when their brigade was ambushed by Vietnamese in Saigon. He couldn’t shake off one moment from his early twenties, when he walked in on his younger brother’s dead body, hanging off the rope from chandelier. A third time was around Christmas in late 1990s, when Gerald heard news about the death of his oldest son.

Shanice Williams, unexpectedly, provided Gerald with his fourth biggest surprise, when she casually showed up at his doorstep at 3 in the morning, using a Belgian cloth to wipe her smooth hands from blood of the hitman Gerald sent their way. She was smiling, polite as ever, and asked to be invited - a composure worthy of a true southern lady.

Emma could only imagine how thought-provoking their conversation was that night. Gerald peacefully died in his sleep one month later and the reins of carrying on his empire befell upon the shoulders of his young grandson Hank.

“She totally killed him.” Elle whimpered, biting on her nails.

“I don’t know. I have no idea...” I replied quietly.

I did know one thing. Reginald Williams wasn’t the person sailing the ship of their family’s enterprise. Emma told me how these days, years later, she’d be sitting with him in the kitchen, sipping hot tea and chatting gossip, while Hank and Shanice dealt business drinking wine by the fireplace in the parlor. Shanice was still extremely sweet, very kind and suave, never forgetting to ask Emma about her parents and young Liam.

“I believe there’s some sort of an agreement between her and my husband. Otherwise, there’s no way for them to coexist.” Emma said in the end. “Whatever you do, just promise me you’ll be very careful around her. If there is a person that ever truly terrified my husband… it’s her.”

Her last words were still echoing in my mind.

Elle and I spent a few silent moments trying to digest what it all meant.

“Dude, this is heavy.”

“You’re telling me?” I asked, raising my brow. “I don’t even know if I actually got into Harvard.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if Jake had something to do with it? What if they pulled their strings to get me accepted?”

I could see Elle contemplating what I just said.

“You don’t seriously think they…” she asked.

“I don’t know.” I uttered.

I wanted to talk to her about my conversation with Jessica from the other day, but the thought of getting Elle involved in the dealings of that crazy psycho gave me chills. What if what she said about Jake was true? What if he actually killed someone? After my conversation with Emma, I felt like the seed Jessica planted in my brain that day had started to sprout. She was right – I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I didn’t know anything about their inner circle, I always knew they were rotten and spoiled, but what if it was just the tip of the iceberg?

“Try not to overthink.” Elle said.

“I can’t. Elle, I think I’m getting myself into a mess...”

“You don’t know that.”

“It feels that way.” I whispered, quietly.

She gave me a warm hug and ruffled hair on my head.

“Let’s get some sleep.” she uttered softly. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”