Fight or Fall (36 page)

After what seemed like an hour or so, I spoke up, “When do you want to leave?”

She whispered, “As soon as we can.”

I nodded my head, “I’ll get everything ready. You get some rest.”

She pressed her forehead to my lips and in an anguished voice, she confessed, “I wasn’t allowed to see her anymore. The last time I saw her was a few hours before your final fight. He moved her to France and he had specific instructions to everyone that I was not to be in contact with her, in any way. He moved her away from everyone here. Away from me and Naomi. Far from everything familiar to her because I chose you.”

Who the fuck did that? Move your wife away from your own daughter because she can make up her own mind and not be a puppet to his demands?

Ava chose me?

As comprehension settled into me, I stated, “You shouldn’t have had to choose. Ever. No one in his right mind would do half the things he did.” With a deep-seated fury rising from my raging veins, I slowly breathed out, “That motherfucker is going to pay. I don’t care if he’s your father or the son of Satan, he’s going to pay.”

Aliana Troudeau’s funeral was a solemn event. Ten people attended the event, including Naomi, Brynn, and Kieran. I knew that Ava would need all the support that she could get right now so before I made the travel arrangements to France, I called my sister who was in Omaha with Kieran for the Olympic trials. The trials were in the last days so Brynn met up with us in France and Kieran arrived a day later.

Everywhere Ava went, I went with her. To the hospital where her mom’s body waited. To her family’s chateau where she talked to the butler and the lady who took care of her mom during her last days. To the garden where her mom spent most of her days. And at night, I went to bed with her where I let her use my body to give her comfort and disquiet the agony she was feeling.

Brynn had a lot of questions about Ava’s mom. My sister, like everyone else, thought that Ava’s mom retired in France, she didn’t even know about the accident. It was a cathartic experience for Ava to tell Brynn everything that went on. I’ve heard the story, but hearing it again made my blood burn with the need to inflict ungodly amounts of pain.

So I did.

Maxwell was already waiting for us at the chateau the morning before the funeral. He was sitting in the living room, holding a digital photo album, obviously scrolling through family pictures. His eyes looked tormented, his disposition far from the proud man I’ve seen, and when he stood up and stepped forward to say, “
Cherie
” to Ava, Ava raised her right hand to stop him, “No,” she said, and walked away.

Unlike Ava, I had no desire to walk away. Instead, I grabbed him by the lapels of the expensive suit he was wearing, my right fist swung, and his jaw absorbed the impact. Blood dripped from his arrogant mug and I kept swinging, each time harder than the last. I heard his ribs crack and one of his shoulder blades snap. I wasn’t going to stop until I realized that Maxwell wasn’t fighting back. The look on his face made me cease my assault.

It appeared as if he was encouraging me to end his sorry life.

His eyes were closed, but a well of tears fell from his face.

Too late for that motherfucker.

The back of his knees collapsed behind the large black sofa, and as he sat he said, “Take care of my daughter.”

Complete disgust engulfed me. “You had no right to take her mother away from her. You’re a sorry excuse for a father. All these years you’ve tried to control her life, to make her pay…for what? Her mother’s sins? If you had opened your eyes,” I indicated with my thumb and pointer finger, “just a tiny bit. One fucking bit. You’d have seen what an amazing, giving, wonderful woman your daughter is. Instead you wanted to control her, blackmail her for wanting to be with the woman, her own mother, who needed her the most, and you tried to reduce her into becoming like you – unfeeling, cruel, power-hungry. But my woman’s too strong for that. She’ll never be like you.”

Maxwell rubbed his hand under his jaw where a black bruise had started to form, his mouth opened, but he wisely kept his trap shut.

“From now on, it’s Ava’s call. If she doesn’t want anything to do with you, you’ll give her that. If she wants to do something, you won’t have any say in it. You won’t sabotage anything she starts and you will not have anything to do with her unless it’s what she wants. If she says she won’t talk to you for the next ten, thirty, fifty years, you’ll give her that. You know why you’ll give her that?”

He acknowledged my words by raising a brow. This was the only time I was wasting one more breath in his company and I wanted to make sure that my message was drilled into his sulfur-lined heart, if he had any heart at all.

“You’ll give Ava all those things because you deprived her of the chance to say goodbye to her mother. She will forever carry that emptiness inside her because she wasn’t able to say goodbye. And I hope you rot in hell for that.”

His face lost all color, his breathing became shoddy, and I swore his hands shook.

“You understand what I’m telling you, Maxwell?” I demanded, clutching my fists to my sides as I fought the urge to throw in more punches. Just the thought of Ava crying in her sleep made me want to cripple this sonuvabitch.

He didn’t say a word.

“Have I made myself clear?” I repeated.

With a slight nod, he steeled his jaw and replied, “Yes.”

It was the last time I was alone in a room with Maxwell.

The last time I saw him was at Ava’s mom’s funeral. He stood to the side apart from everyone else. His face bore the repercussions of my thrashing. Ava’s eyes widened when she saw how messed up her father’s face was, but she didn’t say a word.

After the funeral service, I could tell he wanted to share a few words with Ava, but I took off my sunglasses and glared at him. It was evident that Ava wanted nothing to do with him at this point. She had ignored him throughout the ceremony, and as her mom’s ashes were scattered in Lake Geneva as her mom had wished years before the accident, Ava almost passed out in despair. I caught her weightless body in my arms, she’d lost a lot of weight in a matter of days, she’s barely eaten and a few times, I had to force feed her so she could have something in her stomach. It will take time, a lot of time, to get through this, but one thing she’ll never have to worry about is me.

I’ll be here to catch her every time she falls and I’ll be standing with her to fight through every single thing that come our way.

“Milo how do you feel about going back to the pool?” Jillian Fredericks, sports correspondent for People’s Weekly and my closest friend in the press, asked Milo.

They were sitting on the couches of Studio 29 for the first ever live interview with Milo since he was banned from swimming. In a few months, he’d be making his return to the pool and everyone was excited about it, especially me.

“I’m feeling pretty good about it. I haven’t been training so it’s going to be a lot of work, but everything will work out the way it should.” He smiled to the camera while giving me a wink.

I was standing beside Cam, the cameraman, watching the interview. He wasn’t going to do one, but when I asked, he didn’t hesitate. I figured that this would be the best way to announce his return to the sport that he loved. Jillian was one of the nicest media personnel out there and I’ve known her for many years so it was a win-win. Numerous TV stations have offered money for the first ever interview with swimming’s bad boy, but money didn’t factor into Milo’s accepting Jillian’s offer. He was doing everything for free because I asked.

Neither one of us had seen Jillian’s questions, but I trusted my friend to give a great interview, without damaging my man’s reputation any further.

“Why did you do it?” Jillian’s brown eyes honed onto Milo. “Everyone wants to know, why did you frame Kieran Stone?”

Milo looked at Jillian for a second and responded, “I did it because of my own pure selfish reasons. Kieran had nothing to do with it. It’s all on me.” His green eyes flashed with remorse and he fixed the front of his navy multi-stripe modern day fit suit that I helped choose for him this morning.

I wanted him to wear a tie, but after three tries of trying to perfect a Windsor knot, I gave up. I gave up because when I brought the wide end up through the loop between the collar and the tie, Milo undid a button on my sheer lavender blouse. By the time I was halfway done with the tie, he had his hands filled with my breasts and we ended up in bed again.

“Some people say the punishment that FINA and the IOC gave you was unjustified, that it was too harsh and too long for an infraction like that. What do you say to this?”

“I believe that they did what they were supposed to do and I understand their decision,” he replied in a steady voice.

“It’s no secret that Kieran is now dating your sister. Do you have any comments about this?”

Jillian smiled, her dimples showing.

“Nah. It’s their business. As long as they’re happy, that’s all that matters.” Milo shook his head, his broad shoulders leaning against the back of the couch. He looked relaxed, composed, like a man who knew what he stood for and made no qualms in letting the world know about it. He wore his suit effortlessly. He could wear anything and he’d be a standout. It was inconceivable how indifferent he was of his appearance. This morning he shaved because he just felt like it. He didn’t shave because of the interview but because it’s been four days and he was feeling itchy about the hair growing on his face.

Jillian pressed a finger to her lips. “Now, Milo, I’m giving you this question as a freebie, meaning that you can choose to answer this or just say no.” He could always say no, but Jillian was actually letting the public know that it was okay for him to do so.

“Now that makes me scared.” Milo grinned, his green eyes finding me and giving me a look that told me he was having fun. “But go right ahead.”

“Is it true that you became a fighter in Vegas?” Jillian’s voice was filled with wonder.

Milo leaned forward, resting his elbows on his legs, and said, “Yes. I had to do something to occupy my time, you know?”

Jillian laughed at that and proceeded to ask questions about Milo’s future plans regarding his swimming career.

I pressed my right hand over my chest. If people only knew why he did it they would never question how good my man was. But as explosive as he was an athlete and as outspoken he was about anything related to swimming, he was tight-lipped about the organization that he built in honor of his family. Now that I was helping him, along with other charitable organizations, to gain more exposure to the public, I respected his decision on how much to let the public know of his involvement with it. When Brynn learned about what her brother did, she cried for days because she was so proud of him, and at the same time she wished she knew about it earlier so she could’ve have helped him with it. Milo put all his winnings towards the foundation, so there’s no doubt that it would continue to flourish.

Naomi, Daria, and I had started a PR company, Aliana Incorporated, in memory of my mom. We don’t know about the business, but I do have hundreds of contacts across the globe who I can call to help. Our company’s goal was to help charitable organizations gain more ground in the public’s eye with the use of social media so that they would get the funding and support that they needed for day-to-day and long-term operations. Naomi’s business degree was definitely going to be put to use. It had been tough, but we were learning every day.

As the one-on-one interview was coming to an end, Jillian inquired, “Oh, here’s something from the rumor mill. You have to answer this one. You have, after all, been voted as one of People Weekly’s sexiest athletes three years in a row. There’s just something about you that makes women weak in their knees. There’s actually a poll going on that since you’ve been banned from swimming, the female population’s attendance at the Worlds has decreased.”

Milo loudly chuckled. “I highly doubt that.” He was finding this tidbit hilarious. In a way it was, but I was one of the females who watched swimming because he was in it. So maybe there’s truth to what Jillian mentioned.