For the Love of Gina: The President's Girlfriend (14 page)

“No,
I don’t.
 
Don’t use that tone with me.”

“What
about DeAndre.
 
What did he get out of
the deal?”

“A
trust fund was set up for him.
 
Five
thousand dollars per month for life once he turned twenty-one.”

“Put
that trust fund in Brandy’s name.”

Dutch
frowned.
 
“Why would I want to do
that?
 
She’s an awful person, Gina.”

“Yes,
she’s awful.
 
In a lot of ways she rotten
to the core.
 
But she loved my
brother.
 
She was all he had.
 
I wasn’t there for him.
 
My deceased father birthed him, but that was
the extent of his involvement in his life.
 
But Brandy was there for him.
 
She
should get that money for that reason alone.”

Dutch
felt Gina’s pain.
 
And he nodded.
 
“All right,” he said.
 
“I’ll have it changed to her name.”

“With
her being able to collect right away.”

“With
those terms, yes.”

Gina
nodded.
 
“Okay,” she said.

Dutch
stared at her.
 
Studied her.
 
“What happened to DeAndre, Gina?” he asked
her.

Gina
closed her eyes and then opened them up again.
 
Her face looked as if she had seen too many ghosts.
 
Now nothing seemed real.
 
“He hung himself,” she said, rubbing her
arm.
 
“This morning, before I got there,
he hung himself.”

What
more, Dutch wondered, did she have to bear?
 
“I’m so sorry to hear that, Gina.
 
I truly am.
 
I didn’t expect---”

“You
never expect anything,” she shot back.
 
“That’s the problem.
 
You just lay
down the law.”

“I
was protecting you!”

“From
what, Dutch, from what?
 
An
eighteen-year-old honor student?
 
A good kid
who never been in trouble a day in his life?
 
Except for that one day?”
 
Gina
shook her head.
 
“I feel so responsible.”

“Don’t
blame yourself, Gina.”

“I
can’t help it.
 
If I would have been
there.
 
If we would have phoned and let
him know I was coming. If---”

Dutch
wanted desperately to hold her.
 
“Gina,
don’t do that.
 
You are not responsible
for what happened to that young man.”

Gina
looked at him.
 
“You should have told me,
Dutch.
 
As soon as you found out, you
should have told me.”

Pain
shot through Dutch.
 
If only he could
take that one decision back.
 
“I thought
I was doing the right thing,” he said.

“I
know what you thought.
 
But you thought
wrong.
 
Didn’t you consider him,
Dutch?
 
When you were deciding to ignore
his life, did you consider that life?
 
When you found out that you had a daughter, that Jade was your child,
the first thing you did was go and see about her.
 
And I stood beside you.”

“I
know you did.”

“I
would have never dreamed hiding her from you.”

“I
wasn’t hiding him from you, Gina.”

“Yes,
you was.
 
Don’t try to sugarcoat
this.
 
That’s exactly what you did.
 
You hid my brother from me because you didn’t
want me to love him the way I loved Marcus.”

“And
you see what your love for Marcus got you?
 
That man tried to kill you.”

“I
know what he tried to do.
 
But how could
you pass judgment on DeAndre based on what Marcus did?
 
They didn’t even know each other!
 
DeAndre was nothing like Marcus.”

She
didn’t know what DeAndre was like, but Dutch wasn’t about to point that
out.
 
She was stricken with grief, and
his decision not to tell her was the cause.
 

Then
Gina frowned.
 
“You know how I hate
secrets and lies.
 
You know how much I
hate it, Dutch.
 
But you didn’t care, did
you?
 
All you saw was this poor, black
kid who was nothing like what your Nantucket ass was used to.”

“That’s
not true, Gina, and you know it.”

“But
that’s how I feel and I can’t help how I feel!
 
He wasn’t a blueblood on the main line.
 
He was a hood rat in the poverty line.
 
So he didn’t matter to you.
 
How I
felt didn’t matter.”

“That’s
not fair.”

“I
don’t care if it’s fair or not!
 
This
hurts, Dutch.”
 
She was crying now.
 
Dutch reached out to hold her, but she
recoiled again.
 
But he grabbed her and
held her anyway.
 
She sobbed in his arms.

“This
hurts,” she said again, in his arms.
 
“Now I have to bury my brother, a brother who needed my help.
 
But my husband decided, without consulting
me, that he wouldn’t get it.
 
He’d throw
money at him, but not any love and affection.
 
Not any of his connections.
 
Not
any of his humanity!”

“Gina,
if I would have known---”

Gina
pulled away from him.
 
“You sent Bill
Bates there.”

Dutch
felt as if she was all over the place, which wasn’t like her at all.
 
She was usually the most focused human being
he knew.
 
“I told you I did.”

“Do
you know what he told DeAndre when he got there?”

Dutch
had gotten the report back.
 
“He reviewed
the evidence and determined that the young man was in trouble. He was at the
crime scene with those two brothers during the commission of the crime.
 
A woman and her unborn child were
murdered.
 
It didn’t much matter whether
he knew they were going to commit the crime or not.
 
He was there.
 
In the eyes of the law, he was guilty.
 
He told him that.”

“He
told him his only hope was to plead guilty and prepare to spend the rest of his
life in prison, without the possibility of parole.”
 
Gina was getting angry just thinking about
those words.
 
“He told that to an
eighteen-year-old kid who’d never seen the inside of a jail before.
 
He told an emotional teenager that it was too
bad because he would never see the light of day again.”

“He
was giving him his advice, Gina!”

“He
was stealing that boy’s hope, Dutch!”

“
What
?”

“You
heard me!
 
He stole that boy’s hope just
as sure as if he was picking his pocket!
 
Because hope was all he had left.
 
And your man, at your direction, took it from him.
 
Just like you took my choices from me!
 
What else don’t I know, Dutch?
 
How many secrets and lies are still out there
that you haven’t told me about?”

Dutch
shook his head.
 
She was losing her trust
in him, and it scared him.
 
“It’s nothing
like that, Gina, and you know it.
 
I
wouldn’t do that to you.”

“This
morning, when I was lying in our bed and you were holding me, I would have
believed you.
 
I would have never dreamed
that you would have even considered keeping my own brother away from me.
 
But you did.
 
You already did that to me, Dutch.
 
You already did it.”

And
suddenly, Dutch didn’t know what to say.
 
He just stood there.
 
He wanted to
hold her again, but he couldn’t.
 
He
wanted to beg her forgiveness, but he knew that would only ring hollow
now.
 
Her brother was dead.
 
He would forever be memorialized in her mind
as the perfect, harmless sibling he kept secret from her.
 
She’d believe her brother’s version of events
despite what the evidence showed, and Dutch would be the villain, the ruthless
control freak who was out of control.
 
It
would be the beginning of their end.

But
not if Dutch could help it.

“How
can I make this right, Gina?” he asked her.
 
“I did it, I regret with all my heart doing it, but it’s done now.
 
I can’t change that.
 
But I want my family back.
 
What do I need to do to get my family back?”

But
Gina shook her head.
 
“You still don’t
get it, do you?
 
You still think it’s in
your hands, under your control.
 
You took
it out of your hands when you decided not to tell me.
 
Now it’s in my hands. Now it’s under my
control.
 
And I don’t know what I’m going
to do about it.
 
To me, right now, what
you did was . . .”

She
was so crushed, that she couldn’t complete her sentence.
 
Dutch, however, completed for her.
 
“What I did was what, Gina?
 
Unforgiveable?
 
Is that what you wanted to say?
 
That what I did to you is unforgiveable?”

“Right
now, the way I feel, yes.”
 
She swiftly
wiped away a tear as it escaped down her cheek.
 
“So what I’m telling you is that I need time.
 
You might not like it, but that’s too
bad.
 
I need time.”

Dutch
nodded.
 
At least she wasn’t making any
decisions yet.
 
“Okay,” he said.
 
“I accept that.
 
But you’ve got to return home.”

Gina
started shaking her head before he could finish his sentence.
 
But he kept talking.
 
“You have to, Gina.
 
It’s only fair that Little Walt sleep in his
own bed every night, and you sleep in yours.
 
My wrongdoing is not going to displace the two of you.
 
I’ll move out.”

Gina
looked at him.

“I’ll
move here or in a hotel or, if you will permit it, in one of our guest houses
in back of the estate.”

“No,
Dutch.”

“Yes,
Gina.
 
Think about it.
 
I’ll still be there every morning to have
breakfast with our son and, hopefully, dinner with him every night.
 
With both of you.
 
I’ll give you your space.
 
I won’t stay the night with you.
 
But you’ve got to think about Walter in this
too.
 
He deserves as much normalcy as
possible while we work out our issues.
 
If I’m nearby and will be there if he needs me, that’s the best
solution.”

“I’d
rather stay here.
 
At a separate
location.
 
Walter will adjust.”

“Okay,
now that’s enough,” Dutch said bluntly.
 
“I’m not debating this point with you, I don’t care how angry you are
with me.
 
My son will not be adjusting to
staying anywhere but in his own home.
 
You and Walter are staying at the estate.
 
I’m not asking you this, I’m telling you
this.
 
If you don’t want me in any of the
guest houses then fine, I’ll get a hotel room.
 
But my son and my wife will sleep in their own beds every night.
 
If anybody’s going to be displaced during
this time in our lives, it’s going to be me.”

Gina
wanted to fight back, but Dutch was in that zone where any fight from her would
only make it worse.
 

“You
stay here tonight since the baby’s already sleep,” Dutch continued, “but in the
morning I want you to pack those bags right back up and take your ass and my
son back home.
 
Do I make myself clear,
Regina?”

Gina
just stood there.
 
The nerve of this man.
 
But he was right about Walt.
 
She’d never be so angry that she couldn’t
look out for her son’s best interest.
 
“It’s clear,” she finally said.