Drug Lord: A Bad Boy Baby Romance

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I
stared
at the coat closet in shock. There were very loud moans coming out of it.

Normally, I’d just leave them to it, but the moans sounded very familiar.

“Oh, yes, right there,” someone panted.

That someone sounded an awful lot like my fiancé, the one who had put a ring on my finger just two weeks before our engagement party tonight.

Our parents were here. Literally dozens of our friends were here, and more importantly, our parents’ friends.

And Brayden was doing very loud things in a coat closet in my parents’ house while our engagement party was going on.

“Naelle, are you okay, sweetheart? Where have you been?”

My dad walked up behind me and slung an arm around my shoulders.

“Why are you staring at the coat closet?”

A loud moan answered his question.

“What the…”

He yanked open the closet door, which I hadn’t even thought about.

Two people came tumbling out of the closet.

“Jenny?”

She got to her feet, a little unsteady in her stilettos, her makeup an absolute mess. She had kissed off all of her lipstick…or Brayden had.

“Oh, Naelle…hi.”

She ran a hand through her long blonde hair, which was a wild mess. She had clearly been in there for a while.

Brayden had gotten to his feet and was zipping his pants. He had a scrap of lace in his hand, which I realized was Jenny’s tiny thong.

“Sorry about the disturbance, sir,” he said respectfully to my dad.

My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe that his first instinct was to apologize to my dad — not me.

I looked at the rock on my finger. I was about to take it off and throw it at him.

But my dad beat me to the punch.

Literally.

My dad slugged my fiancé in the face, knocking him to the ground.

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Brayden protested. “My dad has always kept a woman on the side. It’s just how families work.” But he was backing away slowly, his eyes on my dad’s furious face.

“It’s not how my family works,” my dad hissed. He looked like he was ready to pound Brayden into the ground. “Listen, I don’t care about the particulars of your family’s dirty laundry, but in mine, we don’t cheat. And we don’t cheat in coat closets with our fiancée’s best friends.”

Brayden held up his open palms. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“You’re not going to get the opportunity to ever get in this situation again,” I said, interrupting the conversation between my dad and Brayden.

I yanked off my ring, which never fit properly anyway, and tucked it into Brayden’s jacket pocket.

“We’re done.”

“Hey, babe, we can fix this. I can fix this. I’ll treat you like a princess. We can make it a real-life fairytale.” He smiled at me, as if a smile could magically fix everything, as if it could erase discovering him in a closet with my best friend.

“Wait a minute, what about me?” Jenny pouted, which was not as effective as it might have been if her lipstick weren’t smeared everywhere besides her lips, as if a toddler had decided to play with her mother’s lipstick and gone to town.

“And didn’t you tell me that you weren’t even attracted to Naelle because she’s so fat?”

I gasped.

My dad crouched, gripped Brayden’s arm, opened the door, and tossed him outside. Brayden didn’t say anything, probably because he’d gotten a good look at my father’s face.

“Brayden! Wait!” Jenny ran out after him.

My dad closed the front door and locked it.

I loved how protective he was of me, but I said, “We still have a house full of guests, Dad.”

“Right.”

He unlocked the door.

“I don’t think that Brayden will come back tonight, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Thanks for punching him, Dad. I know that it’ll make things sticky for you.”

“If I had known that he would cheat on you, I never would have encouraged you to say yes. I know that it took you two weeks to decide to accept his proposal. But I just want you to be happy, baby girl.”

My jaw was on the floor. “But I’ve been told my whole life that I have to marry Brayden and give your company to our children. It was supposed to be the perfect corporate merger between his dad and you. We were getting married right after we graduated from college and inherited both of our trust funds.”

“Fuck that asshole,” my dad said. His Chicago accent came out stronger when he was completely furious. My dad was from the South Side, but he’d been a business executive in corporate America for a long time. “I thought he was a different man. I’ll dissolve our partnership.”

“You’d do that for me? You’d end your partnership with Mr. Wilcox?”

“I’d do that for both of us, kiddo. I don’t want to be in business with someone who wants to keep a side bitch. If he lies about one big thing in his life, he’s likely to lie about more things.”

“Thanks, Daddy.”

He gave me a hug.

“I can break the news to your mother.”

“Maybe after the end of the party?”

Both of us looked at the noisy party with live jazz and an open bar — a celebration that my parents had paid for in order to show how happy they were that I was on the right path.

I was supposed to be a 22-24-26. Married at 22. First kid at 24. Second one at 26.

And I might’ve gone through with it, too, if Brayden hadn’t decided to cheat on me with my best friend.

“You can go upstairs, sweetheart. I know that it’s been a shock. Your mom and I will take care of things down here.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

I looked at the door again. Brayden wasn’t coming back tonight. Tomorrow, I’d have to pick up the pieces. I wasn’t looking forward to telling my mother to stop planning our wedding. She was a lot happier about it than I was, and she’d be outraged tomorrow.

W
hen I woke up
, it was totally dark. My mother loved to stay up late, and I couldn’t hear any noise coming from the party.

I looked at the glowing numbers of my clock.

Four o’clock.

There shouldn’t be two four o’clocks in one day.

Yesterday came back in a rush and I wished that I hadn’t woken up yet. I had to tell my mother that her vision for my future wasn’t going to happen. She wouldn’t have grandkids on the way in two years.

All I wanted to do was hide under my covers until the whole mess blew over.

I couldn’t bear the thought of the pity from my friends and my parents’ friends when they heard what went on.

And Jenny.

We were college roommates. We’d both spent a lot of time with Brayden.

I knew that she had a crush on him, but I had no idea that she would go so far as to cheat on me with him.

Her betrayal cut deeper than Brayden’s. I didn’t care about Brayden very much. Even if we had gotten married, we knew that we’d leave each other alone most of the time.

But Jenny…

We’d been best friends for so long that I could barely even remember when we met in preschool.

How had I missed the signs? Everything had been going on right in front of me.

I curled up in my blanket, but I knew that my mother wouldn’t let me stay there for too long.

I just needed a break from my life.

I didn’t even have a job yet. I was planning on staying home and having a full-time job on the boards of several different charities.

My mom had pushed me into volunteering everywhere my whole life. I was always working on her cause du jour.

I never enjoyed any of it, except for once.

I thought about the mission trip that I’d taken in high school down to Quito to work with the Timmy Foundation at an alternative school that specialized in autistic children.

It had been one of the most meaningful experiences of my entire life. I’d rubbed elbows not with the hoi aristoi of DC but with normal people, people who were happy with what little they had.

They lived on a few hundred dollars a month and were still happier than most of the Americans I knew.

I pulled up Google Flights to look for the next flights down there. I could either connect in Houston or Miami. It was dirt cheap, for some reason.

When I had graduated from college, I had fulfilled the terms of my trust fund. I had enough money to go anywhere in the world. I could party in Ibiza if I wanted.

But I didn’t want to hang out with the spoiled rich kids who didn’t have to work. I wanted to go somewhere where people were real.

So I threw a bunch of clothing into a suitcase, my guidebook to Ecuador that I bought a long time ago, and some shoes, and I was out the door before the sun rose.

Before I walked out of our tastefully decorated house, I pulled out a note.

“Gone to Ecuador. Be back later. Call me if you need me.”

I smiled at how succinct the note was. I wasn’t disappearing totally. The Internet in Quito was strangely faster than my Internet in DC, but at least I could get a day’s worth of peace while I disappeared for just a little while.

I
rolled
my suitcase down the sidewalk in La Mariscal, locally known as Gringolandia. The tourists stuck around that area, where all the bars, restaurants, and entertainment venues were.

My guidebook said that I should head for the Backpackers Inn. It looked like it was reasonably priced and centrally located.

I checked in. My Spanish was a little rusty, but it was good enough to negotiate a lower rate for prepaying for 7 days.

They finally gave me the keys — actual keys, not a key card like an American hotel would have — and I went upstairs to my private room with a window that looked out on the street. I was only a few blocks away from Plaza Foch, the center of La Mariscal.

I pulled out my laptop for the first time since I got on the plane at Reagan. I knew that my mom would be frantic, but I couldn’t help it. My dad might not approve, but at least he’d understand why I’d disappeared. He probably told Mom about it this morning, before they’d discovered that I left.

As I expected, my inbox was full because my mom had completely flipped out.

I sighed and turned on my phone. I had Project Fi, so my phone worked wherever it was in the world.

It buzzed as it registered my mother’s frantic texts.

I texted her back, “I’m fine, Mom.”

It would be enough for the moment.

At the bottom of my inbox, I saw an email that wasn’t from my mom. The subject line said
(no subject)
.

It was from Jenny.

I opened it, ready to read whatever she had to say for herself. How would she justify what she’d done to me?

All it said was: “I’m sorry.”

I archived it. It would take me a while to get over her betrayal.

If she wanted him, she could’ve just told me. I thought that we were close.

Apparently not.

I swallowed my tears. I needed a drink.

I closed my laptop and opened my guidebook. There was a pub not too far from me that was called Finn McCool’s. It was supposed to have a trivia night on Tuesdays.

All I’d had all day was some peanuts, pretzels, and Gatorade. My stomach reminded me that I needed to eat something more substantial.

It was a pub, so maybe I could find something to eat there.