Making Trouble (15 page)

“No, sir, w
e didn’t think you were kidding,” Tyler spoke up. “But we didn’t tell anyone.”

“Yes, I know.”
Dante gave him a cold, quelling look. “That little blonde bitch leaked the story. I already took care of her.”

Catherine.

Arnie’s words from earlier that morning came back to me.
I don’t know how you kill yourself in a place like that. Don’t they lock up all the dangerous things?

Catherine hadn’t killed herself. This man had killed her—or had her killed—and made it look like a suicide. Because cops could do that. My father had told us plenty of stories
after his retirement about good men gone bad, corruption from the inside out, and people too afraid to tell the truth for fear of the repercussions.

“Shame to waste such a beauty.” Dante shrugged.
“You, though…”

Dante took a step in Sarah’s direction and I felt Rob tense and grabbed onto the back of his shirt even harder, as if I could keep him from going after this man if he finally decided to.

“I could use you…” Dante lifted Sarah’s chin with the barrel of his gun, cocking his head as he studied her features. “You’re a little old, though.”

“Fuck you!” Sarah spat up at him. Her saliva didn’t make it to his face—clearly her intended target—but did splatter his tie.

“Is that any way to talk to your father?” Dante scowled, taking the handkerchief out of his suit coat pocket so he could wipe away the evidence.

His words hung there. The room was silent.
Rob and Tyler exchanged glances, frowning.

“Leanne never told you?” Dante chuckled, tucking soiled handkerchief back into his pocket.
“Good girl. They’re always so obedient.”

“You’re not my father,” Rob said, his eyes sending bullets into the man standing in front of us. I was so afraid he would tackle him and get shot, get us all killed.

“It’s true. He is.” I spoke up, my throat thick with fear, but I had to. I had to tell the truth. Someone had to. But my voice didn’t want to work. “Leanne… I talked to your mother, Sarah, while you were in the shower. She told me, it’s true.”

Rob turned to look at me, his expression perplexed, bewildered, hurt. But when he met my eyes, he knew what I was saying was true. I saw the reality sink in, like an anchor to the bottom of the ocean. I thought it might actually bring him to his knees.

“Jesus Christ.” Rob turned to look at the man who had come to visit his mother at their home, a man they’d all been afraid of.

“So I didn’t… Joe
wasn’t… our father…” Tyler’s voice was choked, hoarse. He was realizing for the first time that he hadn’t shot his father after all. The man they’d believed was their father had simply been their mother’s easiest point of access to drugs.

“Afraid not. But he was your uncle. My brother,
” Dante told him matter-of-factly. “It was his….proclivities, shall we say… that got me into the business in the first place.”

The business.
The business of underage prostitution. And Catherine had been just one of their many victims. I glanced over at Sarah and knew, if they’d stayed in that house, she would have been another. The thought made me sick to my stomach.

“No one knows about you.”
Rob spoke up, meeting Dante’s eyes. “You told us not to tell and we never did. We got the message.”

“I should hope so.” Dante smirked and the look on his face gave me goosebumps.

“You nearly burned her face off,” Tyler snapped. “She lost that eye. We got the fucking message, asshole.”

Oh my God. Leanne’s face, her horribly scarred face, that one blank eye.

“No one know who you were,” Rob assured him. “No one knows what you did.”

But it wasn’t in the past. This man hadn’t changed—he was still the same person and he was still doing the same things he’d always done. Although, I thought he was probably doing them on a much larger scale now. 

“Ah, but all it takes is one reporter who digs far enough, and all roads lead back to me, I’m afraid.” Dante shrugged helplessly, glancing at his lackeys. They were both quiet. “And it’s not just me. There are important people in the community I need to protect.”

“We won’t tell anyone,” Tyler assured him again. “
Why would we? We never have! We have people to protect too.”

“So you believe we can come to some sort of arrangement?”
Dante cocked his dark head, seemingly considering this, but I knew better. Everyone in this room knew he’d killed Catherine. He had no intention of letting any of us out of this alive.

“I’m
sure we can work something out,” Rob said.

“You mentioned money?”
Dante’s eyes brightened at the prospect of cash. Typical. It made me want to wrestle that gun out of his hand and shoot him myself. He was going to take the money and kill us all anyway. My stomach clenched at the thought and my limbs tingled. We were going to die here, today.

“Tyler has a safe. How much do you want?”
Rob asked him calmly.

I tugged at Rob’s shirt, shakin
g my head and frowning at him when he glanced back at me. How could he not realize what was going to happen? Why would he give this man any more than he was already going to take?

“How much do you have?”
Dante asked, licking his greedy lips.

“Ty?”
Rob cocked his head at his brother.

“
Not sure.” Tyler shrugged. “We can look in the safe. It’s over there, in the floor.”

“It’s loaded for love, bruh,
” Rob said, as Tyler went over to open the safe in the floor. It was hidden under a flap of carpet that blended in seamlessly.

“Okay, I’
m gonna let him have it,” Tyler replied, turning the dial on the safe.

I met Katie’s wide, frightened eyes. She sank down into the chair, looking pale, and Sarah leaned against her, still on the floor where she’d been helping bandage Tyler’s hand. His relapse and checking out of the hospital AMA felt far away, a thousand years ago.
I couldn’t puzzle out what Rob had said to Tyler. I understood the words—they were from one of the songs from their very first album, a song called Loaded for Love. They always closed the show with it.

Th
e lyrics ran through my head.

I’m loaded for love, loaded for your love.

Gonna let you have it, I’m your new outlaw.

Gonna let you have it, baby, let you have it all.

And that’s when I realized what Rob was communicating, and what Tyler understood.

It was loaded. The safe was loaded.

“What have you got for me, son?”

“Just this.”
Tyler turned.

The gun in the safe was loaded.

There was a flash and the gun went off, nearly deafening me.

It
all happened so fast. I think Dante’s lackeys thought he had shot Tyler, until a dark red stain bloomed on the back of Dante’s shirt and he stumbled. I did it without even thinking, hoping to give Rob and Jesse, who were edging closer to the two men with guns, a distraction, a little extra time. I reached down and turned up the amp to ten. The resulting squeal and squelch was so loud in the little room, they probably heard it all the way to the street.

“What the hell?”
The gold-bling lackey yelled, covering his ears. With both hands. Including the one holding the gun. His lemon-shirted partner did the same.

It was all the opportunity
the guys needed. Rob disarmed Mr. Bling so fast I barely saw it happen. Jesse picked up the solid end of Tyler’s ruined guitar and walloped Mr. Lemon Shirt over the head. He went down with a yelp, dropping his gun. It bounced on the carpet and went off, the report almost lost in the sound of feedback, the bullet hitting the wall between Tyler and Katie’s bed and their night table.

Jesse
grabbed the gun before Mr. Lemon Shirt could reach for it and kicked the bedroom door closed behind them, presumably so no one could escape and they wouldn’t have to give chase. I looked around in disbelief, my ears still ringing as I reached down to turn the amp to zero. The sudden lack of noise, aside from Dante’s groans, was startling. Dr. Marcus, who had been cowering in a corner, uncovered his ears and dared to come out from behind the chair where he was hiding. I’d completely forgotten about him.

“On your knees. Hands on your head,”
Jesse instructed and both Mr. Bling and Mr. Lemon Shirt did as he instructed. Jesse had a gun on one, and Rob had his leveled at the other.

“Is he dead?” Rob called to Tyler, who was still pointing the gun at
Dante, this time at his head. I edged closer to Rob, finding myself behind him again. Katie and Sarah clutched each other, both on the floor now.

“No.” Tyler didn’t take his eyes off the man. “I’m not killing our father twice.”

Dante went to his knees, then his side, gasping for breath. A lung, then. Blood spread quickly all over the white carpet.

“What now?” Celeste asked Rob. She
already had her phone in her hand. “911… or cleanup?”

“911.”
Rob grimaced, looking back at me. “Whatever happens, happens.”

“You sure?” she asked, her thumb hesitating over the call button on the screen.

“Rob?” I looked up at him, touching his forearm, feeling the tension there, the gun still trained on one of Dante’s lackeys. Right now all the press had was rumors. If we called 911, it was bound to come out. Every single sordid detail.

“Yeah.” Rob nodded, meeting my eyes. “
I can’t keep doing this. It’s time the truth came out.”

I rested my cheek against his arm, closing my eyes in relief.

In that moment, I’d never been more proud of him and I’d never loved him more.

When I was a little girl, I always wanted siblings. As an only child, I was lonely. I wanted someone to play with, someone to talk to, besides my mother, who did stay at home with me and was always there, and my father, who came home from work in his uniform, hung his hat, put away his gun, and ate dinner with us every night. When I met Katie, I finally had the sister I always wanted. But her parents were divorced and she was jealous of my intact nuclear family unit. I guess the grass was always greener on the other side.

But as I stood on the balcony and looked
down at everyone playing in our infinity pool, eating Daisy’s food, I realized I finally had what I had always wanted. It had taken falling in love with and marrying a rock star to attain it, strangely enough, in a place I never would have thought possible, but here it was. We were all together, all safe, all as happy as life would let us be.

“Ready for this?” Rob came up behind me, arms around my waist. He nuzzled my ear and neck, making me smile and lean back against him.

“No,” I answered honestly, turning in his arms and putting mine around his neck. “I’d rather stay up here in bed.”

“
I’m down with that.” He grinned, sliding his hands down over my hips. I was just wearing a ripped old pair jeans and a t-shirt. It was just family down there, after all. Well, family, and the band, and Arnie, and some of the other record execs. We were supposed to be celebrating the release of Trouble’s new album—the single, Never the Night, had already been the number one download on iTunes for two weeks—but we were really celebrating something else.

We were all so relieved that it was over.

“Damn, you feel so good,” he murmured, fitting my body to his. He’d buttoned up his shirt for the occasion, although he was still barefoot. His mouth found mine and I breathed him in, my lover, my husband, the man my heart beat for, every minute of the day. My fingers sifted through his hair, so soft, as our mouths met and melded.

“Bed is so tempting right now,” I whispered as we parted.

“We can’t.” He groaned, lowering his mouth to my throat. I tilted my head to give him better access, feeling goose bumps rising on my arms, my nipples hardening under my t-shirt. “But I want to. I always want you. Jesus, is it going to be like this for the rest of our lives? Am I going to want you like this forever?”

“I hope so.” I smiled
, touching my forehead to his. “I know I’m going to want you forever.”

“I can’t fathom why.”

“Because you’re Rob Burns.”

“And you, my beautiful wife, are Sabrina Burns.”

I couldn’t help smiling. We had kept that secret, he and I.

Just like Rob had kept his secret, protecting his brother and sister as best he could, even at the age of twelve.
Catherine had been the one to call Dante. She told them all he would help them “clean things up.” He helped all right. He had held Leanne’s face to the stove and told all of the children if they ever told anyone about him or that he’d ever been there, he would do far worse to them.

So when the police were finally called, in order to protect his younger brother, Rob had
told the authorities he was the one who had pulled the trigger. His mother, Leanne, was in so much pain from what Dante had done to her, she didn’t counter this, and when questioned, everyone agreed that it had been Rob. He made sure even little Sarah, just six years old, would tell the same story. Rob had grilled everyone, making sure they all would say the same thing.

Sarah said she didn’t remember any of this. Thank God for small favors.

But it had worked. Rob had spent some time in juvenile detention, and was then moved to foster care. By then, his brother and sister had been taken to separate foster homes, and his mother was in prison for drug possession. No one knew where Catherine had disappeared to. Rob had searched for and found his siblings, but Catherine had searched for and found him. It was just a year after Trouble had hit it big that she reconnected with him and Rob had let her back into his life—against Tyler’s vehement protests.

Rob had done it all to protect his younger brother, had kept the secret for years, even hiding the fact that they were siblings for fear someone would start to i
nvestigate. Juvenile records were sealed, so in theory, no one could access them, but Rob knew, and so did I, now that I’d experienced the power of money, that if enough cash was offered, anything was for sale. He didn’t want Tyler to carry the stigma of having murdered a man they all believed was their father. A man who, granted, had abused them and others beyond words, but was still the man they had called father.

What Rob hadn’t realized was that Tyler carried that guilt with him anyway. The horrible weight of having pulled the trigger—even if he truly believed he was saving his mother by doing so—stayed with him, always. It came out in his rages, the mood swings, his addiction. I think Katie had really helped him somehow. In Katie, Tyler had an anchor, something to hold onto, to count on. But when it had all come out, when the press ran with the headline that Rob killed his father, Tyler’s guilt had returned tenfold.

Not only did he feel horrible about the pulling the trigger—then he felt awful that Rob was being blamed for something that he didn’t do. It was no wonder Tyler had relapsed, no wonder he had tried to end his own life. I couldn’t even imagine that kind of pain. I couldn’t imagine what Rob and Tyler and Sarah had been through, even though Rob had told me most of it now.

This time, when I’d found
out that Rob had once again kept something from me—not telling me that it was Tyler who had pulled the trigger, not telling me about Catherine being there that day, about Dante—I hadn’t run away. I had followed Jimmy Voss’s advice. I had turned to my husband, put my arms around him, and asked him, why? And he’d told me. Like a fountain, a geyser, he had finally spilled it all, lying in my arms, talking until his voice was hoarse and there were no more words.

I couldn’t imagine t
he pain, the abuse, the hunger, the constant threat they’d lived under, all three of them, every single day until the day Tyler pulled the trigger. Now, knowing the man they called “Dad,” wasn’t, in fact, even related to them, had changed everything. Leanne had kept her own secrets, and maybe in some way, she believed she was protecting her children from an even bigger evil than Joe had been.

Given what had come out after Dante
was arrested, she was probably right. If Rob had known the man was his father, I have no doubt he would have gone after him. And if he had, he probably would have ended up in prison himself. Dante had made a full recovery, handcuffed to a hospital bed, and had been prosecuted—by the brand new interim state prosecutor—for running the largest child prostitution ring ever uncovered. More and more powerful people in L.A. were being implicated every day.

“Are you ready to announce to the world
that you’re my wife?” Rob asked, smiling down at me. He was so different now. He was still Rob, of course, but he was more relaxed, more open. He smiled more easily. He laughed louder. He said things instead of keeping them inside. He wasn’t hiding anything, not anymore. He was lighter—and he shined.

“Yes.”

I was more than ready. The papers had covered Catherine’s suicide, painting her out, once again, to be the victim of Rob’s selfish infidelity with me. We’d weathered that storm and thankfully, it had died down quickly. We’d been photographed several times together at events, me on Rob’s arm, and the press had started to be kinder. Maybe it was because I looked more “Hollywood” now—or maybe it was due to Arnie’s magic press-machine. The man had the Midas touch, it seemed. Whatever it was, the world seemed ready for Rob and Sabrina to officially be together—and we’d even been dubbed “Robalina” by TMZ.

I guess we’d officially arrived.

And I’d managed to put aside any of my own petty jealousies and insecurities about Catherine. I was even able to put my arms around Rob and tell him I knew he was sad about her death. Of course he was. She’d been his first love, and her life had been a tragedy, from one moment to the next. Rob had been the only good thing she’d had to hold into in the world, and in the end, she’d lost him because of her own insecurities. I wasn’t about to do the same.

Rob
slipped an arm around my waist, leading me out of our room, and I smiled to myself as we descended the stairs. I was ready to tell our secret to the world—but I had one more secret of my own.

“Katie! Tyler!” I hugged Katie as we came into the kitchen. Tyler was getting a soda out of the fridge and he tipped it at me with a wink. I went over and hugged him too, murmuring how good it was to see him, and it was. We’
d almost lost him, after all. And we’d worried, for a while, even after he went to rehab, that he might do it again. But looking at him now, at the way he smiled at Katie across the room, alleviated those fears.

“Look at you!” Katie raised her eyebrows at my casual outfit. No more
Versace or Ralph Lauren or Vera Wang. They were still in my closet, but I was ten pounds too heavy for most of them. Besides, I was far more comfortable in my old clothes. Arnie had wanted to throw them away, but I’d packed them in boxes and stored them. “You’re glowing!”

“I’m happy.” I smiled, taking a swipe at the frosting on the cake Daisy had made for the occasion, sitting temptingly on a pedestal

“Hey!” Daisy protested, smacking my hand, as usual. I just laughed.

“Where’s Sarah?” I asked, shaking my head at the glass of wine Rob had poured
for me. “Just a bottled water. Or milk, if we’re eating cake! Can we eat cake yet?”

“You haven’t
eaten your dinner,” Daisy admonished.

“What am I, six?” I snorted. “Besides, life’s too short.

“Sarah’s out in the pool with Anne,” Celeste said and I saw her sitting at the table next to Jesse. Jesse had moved into Celeste’s house and they drove in to work every day together. Today they both had the day off though—they were just here for the party.

I glanced out the French doors and saw people
swimming in the pool. The rest of Trouble was out there splashing around, goofing off. Nick, Kenny and Jon had all been handpicked by Arnie for the band, way back at the beginning. Rob hadn’t even known their names before Arnie had tossed them together like a salad and said, “Work.” But they had—and it had worked. Rob said Arnie had an incredible eye for talent, and if Trouble was any indication, he was right.

I saw Sara
h swimming with her roommate. Anne had her arms around Sarah’s neck. Sarah had come out after the shooting. She’d come out to me first, then to Rob and Tyler, then to her mother, admitting that she was not only a lesbian, but she was in love with Anne.

Leanne was out on the patio, sitting at the table. Sarah had been insistent about trying to get her to reconnect with the boys. At first, Sarah took Leanne to visit Tyler in rehab. By the time he was out, they were talking regularly again and I think it had actually helped Tyler in his recovery to connect with his mother again. Rob, on the other hand, was a tougher sell. He permitted her to come around, because Sarah and Tyler insisted, but he didn’t do much more than nod to acknowledge her presence.

You would have thought it would be Tyler who would have the harder time getting past it, given that he was the one who had killed Joe—and he was the one who had taken the brunt of her anger, fear and pain at the moment of her husband’s death. Rob hadn’t made up all those awful things his mother had said after Joe was killed—but it was Tyler, her ten-year-old son, who had heard those words directed at him. But Tyler had forgiven her. Maybe it was the result of being in a program and the twelve-steps, I didn’t know. But Rob was the one who held onto his anger, his utter contempt for her. I knew, some day, he’d have to deal with it.

“Okay, I give up,” Daisy sighed when I snitched another finger full of frosting off the cake. “Eat dessert first.”

“Cake!” I squealed as she cut me a big piece and put it on a plate.

Of course, then everyone wanted cake. I sat at the table next to Celeste and Rob got me a big glass of milk. Daisy’s chocolate cake was heaven on earth and I’d been looking forward to it for a week. It was rich, moist, and the trick was it was four layers, with chocolate ganache between each.

“Daisy, if you don’t quit cooking like this, I’m going to gain all my weight back.” I groaned, sitting back in my chair and pushing away a plate with just a smidge of cake left.

“You’re starting to look healthy again.” She stuck her tongue out at me and winked at Rob, who was standing at the kitchen island,
eating his own slice of cake.

“Keep eating.” Rob came over, holding his fork out to me. I sighe
d but took a decadent bite of his. “You’ve got ten more pounds to go at least.”

“Oh no,” Katie complained. “Daisy, don’t change anything.
If they don’t want you, we’ll steal you away.”

“Nuh-uh,” I protested. “She’s
not going anywhere—she’s ours! If you want to eat her cooking, move back in with us.”

“No way.” Katie shook her head. “We just
finished getting the house fully furnished.”

“And the bedroom floor
redone,” Tyler piped up.

“
We went with hardwood,” Katie said.