Making Trouble (14 page)

So there was a human being in there, I thought, looking at the way she dropped her gaze to the table, her voice falling off a little at the end.

“It was an accident,” I reminded her. Had she really said all those awful things afterward? I tried to imagine it, holding Rob’s bleeding, broken head as he died in my lap. Would I have blamed the person who shot him, even if had been my own child? “Rob didn’t mean to pull the trigger.”

“Is that what he told you?”
Leanne frowned, eyes narrowing at me.

“Rob
didn’t mean to do it,” I assured her. “He was just afraid. He thought he was protecting you.”

“I know what the paper said.” She shook her head, tapping another cigarette out of the pack. “But Rob didn’t shoot
Joe. Tyler did.”

“Joe?” I said the name, remembering it from the article. Joseph
was the name of Rob’s father.

“And that
poor excuse for a man wasn’t their father,” she went on, pulling a small blue Bic lighter out of her robe pocket. “All three of my children were Dante’s.”

“I don’t… I don’t understand.”
Nothing made sense.

I felt like I was like trying to stumble through a labyrinth at midnight.
Rob had admitted to shooting his father. And Catherine—she had said so to the papers. I tried to remember what she’d said to me during our meeting. Certainly she’d implied that it was Rob, even if she hadn’t said it directly? I couldn’t remember, not for sure.

Rob didn’t shoot Joe, Tyler did.

Tyler. Tyler, who had overdosed after seeing the Enquirer headline. My God. Could it be?

“It was Catherine who started the whole thing.”
Leanne lit her cigarette, the tip glowing orange as she took a long drag.

“Catherine?” My head felt like it was going to explode.

“She was Joe’s favorite.” The smile that spread over her face was full of contempt. “He used her for all his parties. She was the perfect little whore. Young and tight—but far more clever than he gave her credit for. She looked innocent but she could manipulate a man off a cliff if she wanted to.”

“Are
you telling me… Catherine was… a prostitute?” I whispered.

Rob had told me his father “liked them young” and had a “stable of girls.” Had Catherine been one of those? Is that why she’d kept the secret for so long? And then a realization hit me like a bucket of ice water. If Catherine had been the one to finally break her silence and spill the story to the papers, it explained her suicide. She didn’t want to live with the knowledge of the whole world knowing that she’d been
a child prostitute, and if anyone dug deeply enough, they were bound to uncover that fact.

It was the first time, I think, I had any real sympathy for Catherine.

“She was fifteen by then,” Leanne told me, like she knew what I’d been thinking.

Fifteen, my God. Just fifteen years old. Had Rob known her then? Of course he had. Of course. Everything Celeste told me about Rob’s “puppy love” for Catherine made so much sense now. She’d been fifteen. He’d been just twelve. 

“Anyway, she told Joe she as out. She wasn’t going to do it anymore.” Leanne blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Said she was leaving, moving out of state with her boyfriend. So Joe, he decided to lay into me. Said he had a big drug party coming up, lots of new clients. She was a favorite. Truth was, she was
his
favorite.”

The woman sneered, a look of disgust on her face. If she had been so sickened by her husband’s proclivities, why hadn’t she stopped him? Reported it? But then I remembered what Rob had said about her addiction. That kind of a monkey wasn’t easy to kick for anyone, and for a woman in her position
, she must have felt trapped. Helpless, not only to her own addiction, but to her husband’s as well. Her husband’s addiction to young girls.

“
He wanted me to put pressure on her. But I refused.” Leanne leaned against the table, her gaze on it, not me. So this woman had stood up to him. She’d wanted Catherine to go, to get out of that life. Maybe, in the end, Rob’s mother had done the right thing.

“Is that what you and Joe were fighting about?”
I asked quietly.

Rob had said they’d been arguing. I wondered if he’d known they were fighting about Catherine. Had he kept that from me too? That cloak of betrayal was falling over me again. I’d come home to him, opened my heart again, and instead of telling me the truth, he’d lied. Again. He’d lied. And who had he been protecting?

Catherine?

“I should
have just done what he wanted.” She shrugged, tapping ash into the tray. “But Rob… he had such a crush on her. And God knows, if the girl had a way out, I wanted her to take it. I told her so. Instead of telling her stay, I told her to go.”

Rob had such a crush on her.

So it was Catherine after all, I realized, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Rob said he’d known her a long time. He’d known her then. Had he looked for her, too, when he took up the search for his brother and sister? Of course he had. And he’d been quite successful, because Rob always got what he wanted. He’d found her, and he’d married her.

I
heard Sarah going down the hall to her bedroom. I didn’t call out to her, even to say “hi” or let her know I was there. I couldn’t take my attention off Leanne. She was finally telling me the truth—the full truth, and nothing but—and I wanted to hear it all.

“She was there?” The realization
suddenly rocked me. Leanne’s words had finally reached through to my muddled brain. “When the shooting happened?
Catherine was there?
”

Leanne leveled her gaze at me, smoke rising in
a plume from the cigarette in her hand.

“She was the one who gave Tyler the gun.”

Lies. All lies. Again, Rob had lied, not telling me Catherine had been there, not telling me it was Tyler who had pulled the trigger. Even with me, Rob was still protecting the people he loved.

My God, did he still love Catherine?

“What happened?” I barely got the words out.

“Joe
waved his gun around, made all sorts of threats. Nothing new.” She shrugged. “He put it on the kitchen table. We were fighting. I was standing at the sink.”

“Catherine was sitting at the table. She grabbed the gun.
” Her eyes glazed with memory. “I saw it out of the corner of my eye.”

I heard Sarah’s
blow dryer, faint, like it was in another world.

“I was going to warn him, but by then
, he was choking me.” She smiled. She actually smiled. “He wouldn’t have killed me. We fought a lot. The boys were yelling at us to stop. Sarah was crying, hiding in the space between the fridge and the wall. That’s where she always went when we fought.”

I imagined it, little Sarah crouching in the corner out of fear, the turmoil of the boys fighting, and Catherine… what had she been doing?

“Catherine handed Tyler the gun.” Leanne answered my question. “He was ten years old. She handed Tyler the gun told him to shoot Joe in the head.”

“Just like that?” I choked. “
And he did it?”

“No.”
Another smile cut through her face like a knife, a twisted, scornful thing. “She screamed at him. ‘Shoot him, Tyler! He’s going to kill your mother! Shoot him now!’ So he did.”

Leanne’s voice rose, mimicking that of a young, panicked girl, inciting someone to action.
Catherine could manipulate a man off a cliff…

She had certainly manipulated ten-year-old Tyler right off
of one.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. “So
Tyler killed their father?”

“
I told you, Joe wasn’t their father.” She grimaced. “Joe liked them young, blonde and innocent-looking. Catherine was his thing, not me.”

“Wait… what? What are you saying?
” I knew she’d said it earlier, but it was too much information, too fast. I couldn’t contain and incorporate it all. “Rob, Tyler… Sarah?
None
of them were his?”

“Joe
knew it.” She shrugged. “Joe only married me for cover.”

“Cover?” I whispered.

“For his… appetites.” She looked at me like I was an idiot, and I felt like one. “It was a marriage made in heaven. He didn’t want to sleep with me and I didn’t want to sleep with him. And he had plenty of money and could take care of me and my children.”

“And he had the drugs,” I reminded her, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

“Yes, those too.” She didn’t look ashamed of it. In fact, she looked amused. “Like I said, a marriage made in heaven. And Joe didn’t care that I was sleeping with Dante.”

“Who was Dante?
” I remembered, she’d said the name before in our conversation. It felt like a million years ago.

“
Dante was their father.” Again, she gave me that look like I was dense. Maybe I was. I hadn’t put two and two together until then. “Dante Marotta.”

She waited, on purpose, watching my face. She waited for me to do the math in my head, but I didn’t have to. It was an election year. I’d just seen his name in the paper. Right next to Catherine’s, but it had been a different article.
I remembered the picture of a big, swarthy Italian wearing a suit and a smile.

“
Dante Marotta—the state prosecutor?” I asked, incredulous.

“He is now.”
She gave a short laugh. “Back then he was just a dealer and head of the prostitution ring Joe ran for him.”

I sat there in stunned silence, wa
tching her smoke her cigarette, remembering Rob telling me about a big, scary looking Italian, a man rumored to have mafia connections who used to come to their house. A man they were all afraid of. Everyone except his mother. In fact, Rob had said,
“I kind of think she was in love with him…”

Did her children know that Dante Marotta was their
real father? Is that why Rob had lied—was he afraid of the repercussions if the truth ever surfaced? I had a million questions running through my mind, but I didn’t ask her any of them. I couldn’t handle any more truth and I knew it. I think she knew it too, because she didn’t say anything else.

“Hey, Sabrina.”
Sarah came into the kitchen, smiling at me.

“Hi, Sarah.
” I glanced up, feeling dazed, surprised I could still speak. “You ready?”

“Yep.” She slung her purse over her shoulder. “
I see you met Mom.”

“Yes, we were just chatting,”
Leanne said, giving me a grim smile. Did Sarah know what her mother had just told me? Did anyone else know it? Why had she told
me
? But I didn’t ask any of those questions. I was afraid of the answers.

“How’s Katie?”
Sarah asked, slipping on her shoes.

“She was on her way to see him when I le
ft,” I told her. I’d almost forgotten why I was there, that we were on our way to see Tyler at the hospital.

“Okay, let’s go.” Sarah announced, heading toward the door. I stood, following her, still not quite sure that I wasn’t dreaming.

“Bye, Mom!” Sarah called from the door. “Don’t forget, I left a casserole in the fridge for you.”

“Thanks.” Leanne smiled and waved at us, one hand, open and closing her fist like a child. “Hey… will you t
ell him…?”

Sarah hesitated, waiting, the door propped open, waiting for her to finish her sentence.

“Never mind,” Leanne replied, waving us out as she stabbed her cigarette violently into the ashtray. “Go on.”

“Bye, Mom,” Sarah said softly, closing the door behind us.

I looked at Sarah and realized she didn’t know. Rob had protected her from the truth, just like he’d been protecting me. He’d been protecting Tyler when he took the rap for killing Joe. He’d been protecting both of his siblings when he’d kept the truth from me. Even now, he was still trying to protect them. To protect me.

But I had a feeling he couldn’t protect any of us anymore.

Tyler was gone by the time we got to the hospital.
Sarah and I stood there, aghast, both of us dialing our phones at the same time, but I already had a text from Katie. I saw her name pop up when I took my phone out of my pocket. Her text made me gasp out loud.

Tyler checked out AMA. Going home to see if he’s there.

“He checked out AMA,” I whispered to Sarah as we got onto the elevator. The nurses were all staring at us and now I knew why they’d been so short when I asked for Tyler’s room number.

Sarah
nodded, but she was already listening to somebody talking to her on the phone.

“Okay. Got it. We’ll come to Tyler and Katie’s. Yes. We’re on our way.”

“Who was that?” I asked as I listened to Rob’s line go straight to voicemail.

“Rob.”

So she had gotten through to him.

“He says Tyler’s at home.”

“That’s good.”

“No.” She shook her head. “He’s got a call into his dealer already. He intends to go through with this. He did it on purpose.”

“He O.D.’d… on purpose?” I gaped at her. Then he hadn’t just relapsed—he had intended to kill himself. I felt a chill run through me.

We were quiet on the drive to Tyler and Katie’s, which took an
other twenty minutes in downtown traffic. By the time we got into the hills, my heart was somewhere in my throat, choking off my air supply. I felt like I couldn’t get enough oxygen. I felt Sarah’s hand on my arm.

“I’ve been through this before with him,” she said, sounding much calmer than I felt. “We’ll get through it again.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Terrified.”

I stopped at the front gate, reaching out to push the buzzer.

“Who is it?” Katie’s voice crackled through the speaker.

“Sabrina and Katie,” I called.

The iron gate swung inward and I inched the car forward. Their security system was
n’t as complex as ours, just an audio relay. Ours involved video cameras. Of course, ours hadn’t kept Catherine out. I’d read stories about fans scaling walls to try to break into a rock star’s house. If they wanted in, and they were crazy enough, nothing was going to keep them out.

“What is that noi
se?” I frowned as I pulled my Saturn up next to the Rolls. I was relieved to see it. Clearly Jesse had already brought Celeste and Rob over.

“Sounds like
Tyler.” Sarah got out of the car and I heard it more clearly—the guitar riff from Smoke on the Water. “That’s what he plays when he’s mad.”

The sound was so loud when Katie opened the front door
, we had to actually yell to hear each other.

“Ro
b called Dr. Marcus!” Katie yelled as she led us up the stairs. “We’re going to have an intervention.”

“Who’s Dr. Marcus?
” I yelled back.

“Substance abuse therapist,” Sarah yelled as we reached the to
p of the stairs. “He runs the Pacific Rehab.”

I nodded rather than responding verbally.

“Is he high?” Sarah asked loudly.

“He called the dealer.” Katie shook her head. “But he hasn’t shown up.”

The guitar stopped and we stopped too, blinking at each other in surprise. Then our eyes widened when we heard a huge crash. Katie took off running down the hall and we followed. I stopped, nearly running to Sarah, who stood behind Katie in the doorway. The noise had stopped.

“Feel better, bruh?” I heard Rob ask.

“Fuck you,” Tyler snapped.

Sarah pushed her way into the room, past Katie who was frozen in the doorway. I looked over Katie’s shoulder to see Tyler standing in t
he middle of their bedroom, a Fender electric guitar, still plugged into an amp, hanging by a broken neck. The mirror over their dresser—brand new, I’d helped Katie pick it out—was shattered, the pieces scattered all over.

“Don’t walk over here, you’re barefoot,” Sarah warned Katie. She was
carefully picking up the biggest pieces off the carpet.

My eyes met Rob’s. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching his brother, still wielding the guitar, blood dripping from his fist.
The amp hummed loudly. Tyler was breathing hard, head down, eyes closed. My heart broke just looking at him, but I was more than a little scared, too.

“Ty?” Katie side-stepped the remnants of the mirror, going to stand by his side. He let her put an arm around him and take the guitar away. She was whispering in his ear as she led him to a chair in the corner.

“This is a disaster,” I whispered to Rob as I went over to sit on the bed beside him. I didn’t see Jesse or Celeste and wondered if Rob had driven the Rolls over himself.

“It’ll be okay,” Rob murmured, putting an arm around my waist and kissing my forehead.
I had to remind myself that he’d lied to me because he was still trying to protect me. Whatever we had to say to each other could wait, for now. We had to deal with this first. “The hardest part is getting him to go to rehab. This is the hardest part.”

“I’m not going!” Tyler snapped as Sarah approached with a first-aid kit from the bathroom. “You can’t make me go!”

I blinked in surprise at the petulance in his voice. He sounded like a ten-year-old.

“We’re not going to let you kill yourself, Ty,” Rob said softly, watching as Sarah handed the kit over to Katie, who knelt and began to bandage his hand.

“We love you, Tyler,” Sarah assured him, arms crossed as she leaned against the wall.

“Holy hell.”
Jesse gave a low whistle as he came into the room, seeing the guitar in pieces, the mirror broken. “Well, now I know what we heard.”

He was talking to Celeste, who came in behind him.

“You called?” Rob raised his eyebrows at Celeste and she nodded.

“I’m not going to rehab,” Tyler said flatly, wincing as Katie wrapped his bloody knuckles with gauze. I wondered if he’d punched the mirror.

“Would you prefer jail?” Celeste sat in the chair beside him. There was a lamp on a table between them. “Because if you don’t go to rehab, jail is where you’re headed, after the stunt you pulled last night.”

“I can only do so much,” Rob held out his hands, shrugging helplessly.

“You don’t need to do anything,” Tyler spat. “Quit trying to save me. I don’t need saving anymore.”

“I think you do.”

“You know what?” Tyler’s eyes blazed with fire. “Get the hell out of my house. Just… get out!”

“I invited them here, Ty,” Katie reminded him softly.

“You can get out too!” He turned to her with that same fire.

I knew he didn’t really mean it, but the
hurt look in Katie’s eyes was almost palpable.

“I want you all out!” Tyler pointed at the door.

“We’re not going anywhere.” Katie’s eyes flashed. “
I’m
not going anywhere.”

The intercom buzzed and we all jumped.

“Dr. Marcus,” Rob muttered, nodding at Katie.

She ran over to the intercom, pressing the button.

“Who is it?” she called.

“It’s Marcus
,” the voice crackled through the speaker. “Hey, there’s a—”

“Come on in!” Katie called, hitting another button and clicking off the speaker.

She nearly ran down the stairs to the door.

“Fuck this.”
Tyler stood, stalking toward the door.

“I can’t let you go, Ty.” Rob stood in the doorway, arms crossed.
Jesse stood beside him. They were both bigger than Tyler, but Tyler looked like he couldn’t have cared less. He faced them, hands clenched into fists. The air crackled with electricity. I felt goose bumps rise on my arms and knew there was going to be a fight, even before Tyler threw the first punch. Both Jesse and Rob wrestled him to the carpet, Tyler thrashing and yelling as they tried to keep him down.

I’m pretty sure
Jesse and Rob would have won, but we didn’t get the chance to find out.

“
Move it!” a gruff voice said from the hallway.

Katie, eyes so wide and face so pale she could have been a ghost, stumbled into the room, pushed by someone behind her. She was followed by an older, bespectacled man in a white button-down shirt who tripped in behind her, looking even more scared than she did. Then I saw the reason they both looked so terrified—the huge, dark-haired man wielding a gun now filling the doorway. He was flanked on either side by two men also carrying guns.
The one on the right, a tall white boy who clearly thought he was Eminem, was wearing more gold than Lil Wayne. He even had a gold grill on his teeth. The one on the left was dressed in an expensive suit, like the man in the middle, but the lackey was wearing a lemon-yellow shirt that was so bright it was almost fluorescent. Still, neither of these distracted from the imposing man in the middle.

I knew the man in the middle. Not personally, but I’d just seen his face in the papers. The sight of him made my mouth go dry and a small moan escaped my lips, but no one seemed to notice.

“What in the hell?” Tyler stood, opening his arms to Katie, who fell into them, her whole body shaking. I was shaking too, all of a sudden, my body instantly reacting to the sight of three big men carrying guns, one of which just happened to be Dante Marotta.

Rob stiffened beside me but he didn’t move. I saw
Jesse take a step forward, but one of the guys—the one flanking right—pointed a gun in his direction and that stopped him.

“Hello boys.” The tall, broad-shouldered man in the middle leveled his gaze on Rob, then Tyler, who had pushed Katie protectively behind him. Rob had moved to block my view as well, doing the same. I had to peek over his shoulder to see what was happening, and I did, although I was afraid to.

“You dial that phone and I shoot you in the head.” Dante sneered at Celeste, gun swinging in her direction, and she gasped in surprise. “Phones. Now. Everyone put your phone on that dresser. Jesus, what happened in here?”

He was looking at all the broken glass, the ruined guitar.

“Move!” he snapped when no one did.

Celeste quickly tossed her phone onto the dresser and
Jesse did the same. The tall, thin bespectacled man—I assumed he was Dr. Marcus—was the closest to the dresser and slid his phone into the surface. I handed mine to Rob and he put ours, along with Sarah, Tyler and Katie’s—Tyler handed them over—on the dresser, still littered with broken glass. I felt my heart sink at the sight of them all sitting there, our only connection to help. I wondered if there was a way to call security here, like there was at our place. But Katie and Tyler hadn’t moved in that long ago—they probably didn’t have anything like that set up yet.

“What do you want?” Rob asked quietly, coming back so he could stand in front of me. I had to peek around him and I did, clutching the back of his t-shirt. “We have plenty of money. How much?”

“Do you know who I am?” the man asked, his eyes on Rob. They glittered black and the look in them made me shiver.

“Some asshole looking for money?” Rob guessed. There was more steel in his voice than I thought possible. I swallowed, praying for a way out of this.

“Do you remember me?” He turned those black eyes to Tyler. And I saw a slow, dawning horror of recognition pass over Tyler’s face.

“
Dante?”

Rob’s spine straightened at Tyler’s words.
So he remembered him too. Maybe just as the guy who came around to visit their mother. I could see confusion on Sarah’s face, so she clearly didn’t remember. But none of them knew what I now knew. This man was their father, a secret held by their mother for years. Clearly she had been protecting him, even from her prison cell. Or maybe she’d been protecting herself.

“What do you want?” Tyler asked the question this time. “What are you doing here?”

“You called me.” Dante gave him a cold, calculating smile. “Well, you called my associate. I thought I’d take the opportunity to come myself.”

The dealer. Tyler had called his dealer—who had called his supplier. Dante Marotta. Was he still so heavily involved then? Even as state prosecutor? And then it occurred to me—it would be the perfect cover. My father always said, he could have broken any number of laws and no one would have known, because he was a cop.
That made my whole body go cold, remembering what Leanne had told me. If she’d been telling the truth, this man had been in charge of a huge underage prostitution ring. And if he was still running it…

“I thought we’d take a ride, boys. Get reacquainted. You and your sister.”
Dante smiled at his daughter. The man had the perfect politician’s smile, but he still reminded me of a shark. Too many teeth. “Didn’t know we’d be walking in on a party. That’s unfortunate. We’ll have to do a bit more cleanup than I hoped.”

“Over my dead body,” Rob growled.

“That was the idea, son.” Dante leveled both his eyes and his gun at Rob. “Did you think I was kidding when I told you I’d kill you all if you ever told anyone?”