Beautifully Decadent

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016, L.A. Fiore

  All rights reserved

  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1530169672

  ISBN-10: 1530169674

  Cover design by Indie Solutions by Murphy Rae, www.murphyrae.net

  Rafe’s chapter heading sketch and title page sketch by Benjamin Cornelius

  Typeset graphics and paperback formatting by Melissa Stevens, The Illustrated Author, www.theillustratedauthor.net

  For Donna, from The Whispering Pages, the loudest cheerleader for the Beautifully series who also introduced me to the other half of the writing world—the bloggers and readers who read, absorb, share and promote all for the love of the book. This story is for you.

  For Michelle and Ana Kristina who have been asking for Rafe’s story since Beautifully Damaged released. Here’s your boy, I hope the wait was worth it.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Recipes

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The corridor was lit with fluorescent lights, several of which were flickering, the smell of urine and sweat permeated the air. Distant voices carried down the hall. Raised voices, though whether they were fueled by anger or just boredom, I didn’t know.

  It wasn’t a walk I was particularly familiar with; I had made it often in the beginning, but those visits dwindled as I grew older…hope giving way to bitterness. I had only been nine when the cops showed up at our door and took my dad away in handcuffs. I remembered that day, if not much else from my childhood. Remembered Dad had spent a good portion of the morning on the phone, growing more and more upset with each phone call. He tried to sit me down and talk and yet no words would come. My big, strong dad broke down as he held me close and then the cops came and everything I knew changed. Social Services came for me, a prim woman in a black suit and pinched expression. She took me from my home to a sterile-looking building where I was processed, like I had done a crime. I had been allowed to pack some of my things from home before being dropped off at another building that to me felt like a prison for kids. There I was told I’d be spending the foreseeable future. No one had explained to me what had happened, where my dad was, why I’d been taken from my home. I had been reduced to an item on a checklist to be dealt with accordingly. For weeks I lived in fear and confusion, missing my dad and not understanding why he wasn’t coming for me.

  Armed robbery, even now I still couldn’t equate that violent act with the man I knew. I’d been very young and had few memories of Dad, but what I remembered he’d been a good man. I had to wonder about that now, since he’d also been a man who had walked into a bank with a loaded gun. I never knew my mother, only that she gave me up and never pressed for visitation.

  The media circus that followed Dad’s arrest and conviction had been crazy. People swarmed; family services, lawyers, churchgoers looking to do a good deed for the poor little boy who now found himself an orphan because of his father’s criminal activities. There were the sympathizers that thought Dad’s sentence was too harsh, and the protesters who thought it wasn’t harsh enough. It didn’t take long for the buzz to die down, for the swarm to latch on to a newer story, leaving the nine-year-old I had been to fend for myself. There had been a few, after the story went cold, who continued to send letters; one who, even to this day, still stayed in touch. He or she only ever referred to himself or herself as ‘A Friend’. I got it; I was the kid of a felon.

  The guard led the group of visitors into a room with tables and chairs arranged for quiet conversations between loved ones. Taking a spot near the door, I waited for the one on the far side of the room to open.

  He was one of the first people out; even with the passing of a quarter of a century, he looked exactly the same. More startling, I looked just like him.

  He settled across from me. The man obviously took advantage of the gym because he was huge.

  “Rafe, how are you doing?”

  It was weird sitting across from my dad not as the kid I’d been but a man. I never really put much thought into it, all the time we missed. What was the point? It’s not like thinking about it was going to change anything. But there were moments when bitterness gnawed at my gut because life growing up had sucked, not all of it, but much of it. I suspected had Dad not acted so foolishly, life would have been a good deal better.

  He studied me in that way he had, direct and intense, as he waited for a reply. “I’m good, but what about you? You’re getting out.” After twenty-five years, the man was going to be free. How the hell must that feel?

  “Fucking can’t wait. To no longer be at the mercy of the guards, to do and say as I please, to eat what I want, to sleep when I want, to taste and smell a woman. Yeah, I am seriously ready to get out of here.”

  “Do you have a place to stay?”

  “Yeah, a buddy found something for me.”

  I’d offer the carriage house at my place, even had room in the main house, but being in close quarters with someone I really didn’t know any more, particularly being my father, I think it’d be awkward on both sides—as awkward as it was sitting across from him now and seeing a stranger.

  “Why did you do it? Walk into that bank with a gun? I don’t remember much, but I do remember we were doing okay.” A little late in asking that question, but I’d been too young at first and then too bitter.

  I wasn’t sure what fueled the expression on his face—irritation, shame, regret or a little of all three. He rubbed a hand over his head and leaned back in his chair. “Money was tight. I had lost my job. The money I was making at the gas station was minimum wage and not cutting it. Bills were piling up and I couldn’t get ends to meet. When I was approached, I was desperate, had convinced myself no one would get hurt and I could climb out from under the growing debt. It was stupid, so fucking stupid. I had never held a gun before that day.”

  “How did you meet them, the ones you did the job with?”

  “Lucas Steele, I’ll never forget that fucker’s name. He was the one who recruited me. He and Jackson approached me at the neighborhood bar. Chatted me up for months. Over beer, we commiserated over the economy and losing our jobs. And then one night Lucas proposed his plan. It seemed so simple, in and out.”

  “Who shot the guard?”

  “Lucas. The plan had been to take money only from the tellers. I thought we were being smart about it, hitting the bank earl
y when there would be minimal people. The guns were for show. Flash it, get a stash, and out. They weren’t even loaded, or so I had been told. But the first thing Lucas did was head into the vault. We were there for money and yet he comes out with nothing. I mean what the fuck? Another fact I’ve come to accept, I’d been played. He’d done it before, robbed banks, I’ve no doubt about that.”

  “Any idea how they ended up dead?”

  “No. I’ve often wondered if I hadn’t turned myself in would I have shared their fate.”

  “Yeah. In light of the alternative, twenty-five years doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “My thoughts exactly. I wasn’t young, Rafe, but in a lot of ways I was. A single father trying to make ends meet and my desperation made me stupid.”

  “You’ve paid your debt and in three weeks you’ll be out.”

  “Yeah, to a world that’s significantly different than when I went in. But at this point, I don’t care. I just want a view that doesn’t have bars.”

  “What time are you being released?”

  “I can get a cab.”

  “Dad, what time?”

  “Ten in the morning.”

  “I’ll be out front.”

  Sapphire was packed, not that it mattered when you knew the owner. Trace and the others were already at his table. I settled on the chair across from him and signaled the waitress for another round. Scanning the dance floor, I didn’t see Ember or Darcy.

  “Where are your wives?”

  It was Trace who answered. “Girls night at my house.”

  Looking across the table at Trace, he was grinning into his beer. Probably thinking about his three-year-old, Faith, and her obsession with painting nails. She tried to paint mine during one of her visits. She has these doe-eyes that could tempt a person to do just about anything. I’d been spared, Ember took pity on me, but I suspected Trace didn’t dodge that bullet as often as he’d like.

  “Emily had a suitcase of nail polish, brushes and makeup. She’s three. I don’t understand why Darcy encourages that.” Lucien sounded disgusted, but he was grinning like an idiot. The man was completely besotted with both his wife and daughter. Enough that Emily often brushed and braided her dad’s hair. I don’t know that he knows I know this, but Darcy was very forthcoming one night after one too many glasses of wine.

  Taking a pull from my beer, my thoughts turned back to my dad. I never really talked about him. My friends knew; Trace and Lucien had both been around when I was in my teens and had started getting into fights, doing petty crimes. I was acting out. At thirty-four, I got it. At fourteen, I was just angry, really fucking angry.

  “My dad’s getting out soon.”

  All eyes turned to me. “I saw him today. It’s kind of a mind fuck that the next time I see him we’ll be standing outside Sing Sing and not in it. I asked him, for the first time ever, why he did it. The bills were piling up, he couldn’t see a way around it, he’d lost his job and the temporary one he had wasn’t paying enough. I can’t imagine I’d walk into a bank with a gun, but then I don’t have a kid to feed. I guess it’s different when you have others depending on you.”

  “You think you’ll reconnect with him now that he’s getting out?” Trace asked the question I’d been rolling around my head since seeing Dad earlier. There was a part of me that was okay with leaving our relationship as is, but I had missed him. Besides, he was likely going to feel off-balance and would need familiar faces to help him acclimate. And I had Sister Margaret, the nun who had helped raise me at St. Agnes, to thank for that annoying—always do the right thing—conscience.

  “I think so, if for no other reason than to help him adjust to life outside.”

  “And it will be an adjustment, shit, just technology alone has changed so drastically.”

  Lucien wasn’t wrong.

  “We talked about the case, how the two who did the job with him ended up dead. I wonder if the cops ever figured out what happened to them.”

  “You could always ask Josh to look into it, even Shawn since he’s a licensed PI now.” Trace suggested.

  “Oh yeah? Good for him.” Josh was Ember’s uncle and Shawn was her dad who had moved from Philly to the Bronx to be closer to his daughter and granddaughter. “Maybe I’ll give them a call. It might be nice to give Dad closure on what happened to those two. I’m not sure how much he was entitled to hear while in jail.”

  “Josh is working on a few things for me already. Do you want me to ask him the next time I talk to him?” Lucien asked.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Trace signaled to the waitress before changing the subject, “I’m interviewing for a new pastry chef at Clover.”

  That’s not something you hear every day. “How the hell do you interview for a chef?”

  “They have to feed me.”

  I had never seen one so big and so perfectly formed. I was ruined for all others, nothing could compare to the perfection before me. My fingers itched to touch it, feel it. I wanted it in my mouth, wanted to feel the texture on my tongue, the burst of flavor sliding down my throat would surely have my eyes rolling into the back of my head.

  “Oh, Avery, your soufflé turned out perfectly.”

  Hunching down, getting eye level with the masterpiece, I couldn’t help the grin because Mom was right; I totally rocked this.

  “Is that what you’re preparing for the interview?”

  Interview, just thinking about it had my stomach quivering. Pastry chef, I was doing it, reaching for my dream, and even being deliriously excited, there was a healthy dose of fear too. After graduating high school, I’d worked at the local bakery and I enjoyed it. In the beginning, I liked the routine and the familiarity of what the customers wanted—vanilla and chocolate, cupcakes and birthday cakes, éclairs and donuts. After a while it got old. I wanted to do more, wanted to express myself through my desserts, so I made the move I’d wanted to but feared I wasn’t good enough for. At twenty-four, I enrolled in classes, four years studying baking and pastry arts at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. I did well in school, really well, picking up on the techniques with ease. I graduated with honors and still I was floored when I had a few interviews lined up before the ink had dried on my diploma. The interview I was preparing for now was pastry chef for Clover—a posh restaurant in Manhattan. The executive chef went by the name of Chef but his real name was Francois Moree. He was a legend, anyone who was anyone in the culinary world knew of him. He studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, most notable for his mastery in spice infusions. The fact that someone of his reputation would be sampling my desserts was surreal. In preparation for my interview, I did a bit of research on the owner of Clover, Trace Montgomery, since he too would be sitting in on the interview. I didn’t know anything about him—thank God for the Internet—and discovered he was a self-taught chef who owned a cooking school called Everything. And with the possibility that he was a hands-on boss, a fair assumption since he planned to be present at the interview, my sister and I were enrolled in one of his classes so I could see firsthand how the man worked. In the meantime, I practiced for the upcoming interview in my mom’s kitchen, reworking my recipes. I had to prepare three different desserts to wow their palettes.

  “I’m practicing technique, but the soufflé is a bit cliché.”

  “With the chilies and cardamom, it’s hardly cliché.”

  I could bake butter cookies and Mom would think they were the tastiest cookies ever made. The thought brought a smile. Looks were deceiving when it came to Anna Collins now Green. Petite and unassuming, she really was a force to be reckoned with. She was like the flour in a recipe, a staple. Mom and Dad divorced almost fifteen years ago and both had remarried. Dad to Dolly, her name now was Dolly Collins, no lie. Half my dad’s age, Dolly had the IQ of a twig and the personality of an enraged badger. Now she was like the powdered sugar on top, without it the dessert may not look as pretty, but you’d likely not miss it. For whatever reason, she didn’t like
my sister or me. My fifty-year-old father married a twenty-four year old—one year older than my sister—who had more hair than sense, but she didn’t like us. And it wasn’t insecurity or low self-esteem that fed her nastiness. She was just a bitch. Twelve years later, they now lived in Manhattan. That was the one downside if I got the job at Clover, I’d likely see Dolly more often. She’d insist on it so she could look down her nose at me. She didn’t work, and though Dad wasn’t crazy loaded, he was very well off, enough that Dolly could dress in designer clothes and get her hair and nails done every week…huge life ambitions that one.

  Mom married Harold Green, owner of one of the bigger car dealerships in our town. His job was his first marriage, had dedicated his life to it, and now he dedicated his retirement to my mom. They were getting ready for their big adventure: RVing across the country. Harold purchased the largest RV known to man, a small house on wheels. Mom decorated it and had spent the past few weeks stocking it with food.

  “You have your hotel room booked?” Mom asked as she dipped her finger in the bowl of chocolate I had melted.

  “Yes. You didn’t have to pay for it.”

  “We did. It’s just terrible that we aren’t going to be around for moral support, the least we can do is make sure you’ve got a roof over your head.”

  “You’ve had this trip planned for almost a year, I only learned of the interview a few weeks ago.”

  Mom waved off my comment, “Doesn’t matter. At least Nat will be around to be your cheering section.”

  Natalie was my sister; she was five years older than me but sometimes she acted about five years younger. She was scattered, flighty and to those who didn’t know her, an airhead but in truth she was a genius. Literally. A brain surgeon. Nat was like the baking powder in a recipe, lots of air bubbles.

  “What will you do about your living arrangements if you do get the job? I know staying with Nat is out. Has your Realtor found anything?”

  It was true; Nat had offered me her sofa, but her apartment was the size of a closet and the kitchen was nonexistent. These are things I could have learned to adapt to, however her place was a pigsty. I guess working in the field she did, when she got home she let it all hang out. I wasn’t going to change her, but I also knew I couldn’t live with her.