Diamonds & Hearts Read online

  My father shook his head. “Tim,” he snapped. “You’ve been there for a year, and half the time you call him the wrong name.”

  I stared up at him, half incredulous. When did he start giving a damn?

  “I know things have been hard since your sister died,” he said. “It changed all of us, Ryan. We’ve all had to come to terms with losing someone so wonderful and so young.”

  “I don’t want to talk about her right now, OK?”

  He blew out, and a few strands of his perfect hair shifted. He looked toward my mother, I guess for support. Also, perfectly coiffed, her red hair was a bright, beaming reminder that she would have the advantage in looking young. Red hair never turns grey. I suspect that’s why my father dies his, so he can pretend he naturally looks as youthful as she does.

  “Son,” my mother says. “Your father has always liked to cut you slack, and truthfully, I haven’t cared as much, until— ”

  I glared at her, and she didn’t bother finishing her thought about Lily’s death. Though, we all knew it was there. Lily’s death had changed them. They weren’t the same parents who spoiled mercilessly, who bought anything they wanted, who never gave to charity. My mother actually seemed to give a damn about serving on charity boards now. Well, I’d rather have Lily back than a socially conscious mom.

  “We’ve indulged you enough, so we’re cutting you off. You’re fired from the company. You’ll get a month’s severance, and we’re not going to pay your rent at the loft anymore. You’re welcome to move back to your old room, here for a bit, but you’ll have to pay rent.”

  My eyes widened, and I stared. “What the hell?”

  “Son,” she said. “You’re floundering like a lost ship, and we’re trying to help you course correct.”

  I shook my head and turned to my father. My mother had never been my ally. Even in her most lavish state, she still seemed to value the idea of hard work. My father, who’d inherited plenty and lived lavishly off investments and growing the business he’d inherited, had always been my go-to guy. I leaned forward in the chair, and looked him in the eyes. “Dad, she’s wrong. This is not a course correction. It’s sinking the ship in the middle of the ocean.”

  My dad frowned and offered a sympathetic look. “I know this seems harsh, son,” he said.

  “Dad, come on, just another chance,” I pleaded. I could tell he was softening.

  But apparently, so could Mom. “This is our final decision, son,” she interjected. “You can make a second chance by finding yourself a job, working hard, living the way your sister did.”

  That was it. Wrong thing to say. I turned on her and pointed an accusatory finger as I spoke. “How the hell would you know? You barely spoke to her, to either of us. You were too busy with whatever the hell it is you do, and now that she’s gone, you feel some obligation to try to be her. To try act like you’re speaking for her. Well, don’t. You’re not even a tenth of the person she was.”

  With that, I stood up, making sure to knock the Eames chair over as I did, and then stalked to the door. I wouldn’t stay here for this. I walked out the door. I was so angry at them I could barely speak. They cut me off and said it was in Lily’s name. What a monstrous thing to do. Especially now, because I needed this money. I’d been reckless a bit too often in this year-and-a-half since Lily died. I owed the mafia a million dollars, and I needed to figure out what to do.

  Chapter 3 – Doctors and prognoses

  The doctor’s office wasn’t far from the subway. It was in a building that looked like every other high rise from the outside. When you entered the office, it was bright, homey, and warm. There were plush comfy chairs, rather than the hard plastic associated with the sterility of a doctor’s office. The people here weren’t coming because they had some horrific, contagious cough they couldn’t get rid of. It was an oncologist’s office, and I could go around and lick the fingers of every patient and not get what they had. Their diseases could kill them, but no one else. So, the staff made the offices homey and comfortable. There were faux potted plants (many patients became sensitive to mold spores and dirt from real plants during their treatments) and an array of magazines lined the tables. Most of the mags focused on healthy eating and healthy lifestyles, though there were some celebrity gossip rags, as well.

  In the corner of the room, sat my brother, Lynx. At 25, he’s two years younger than me. Everyone says we look alike. We’ve both got caramel skin, are slender and tall. Lynx is six feet even while I’m five feet, eight inches. We’ve both got brown eyes. His hair is thick and curly, and he tends to look more African-American to passersby. Naturally, my hair is wavy, but I tend to relax it so it’s straight, making people sometimes ask me if I’m Indian. Though, this happens most often when I go to the Indian market, and am speaking Hindi. My brother and I are technically mulatto, a black mother and an Indian father. Indian as in from India, as opposed to the horrible misnomer bestowed upon Natives by Christopher Columbus.

  I crossed the room and plopped into a comfy chair next to Lynx, who turned and smiled at me optimistically. “Dr. Colandrea has a plan,” he told me. While his voice was upbeat, his eyes had an air of desolation.

  I nodded, smiled, and lied big. “Of course, he does,” I said, trying to match his optimism. “He’s a fabulous doctor.” That part wasn’t the lie. Dr. Colandrea is fabulous, but I’ve read enough about recurring cancers to know that people usually die during the second bout. No matter how good the doctor’s plan was, the cancer returning was bad. But there was no way in hell I would show him what I was feeling. I learned that from my mother. Lynx first got cancer when he was 16, and they caught it early. The treatment had been chemotherapy, followed by a bone marrow transplant. That had killed the myeloma, and it had stayed gone for almost 10 years. These checkups had gotten to the point of feeling like just a pointless precaution. Lynx had even talked about skipping it. Damn this all to hell. I hated that this is happening. I hated that my mother was dead and not here to help, to be that rock-solid strength we’d come to count on when things got bad. The one that kept me from collapsing as all the insanity that was our lives at the time Lynx’s cancer unfolded and my father was carted off to jail. But a bullet in the chest, as she finished covering a neighborhood meeting took our mother from us. Akilah Neel, dead at 48. I was in college and if it hadn’t been for my friend, Lily, I would have fallen apart then, too.

  I guess it was my turn to keep people from falling apart now. I scooped Lynx’s hand into mine. “I know Dr. Colandrea will have a good plan,” I said, my voice as reassuring as I could make it.

  The nurse called us back shortly and we were ushered into Dr. Colandrea’s office. Lynx had texted me earlier to let me know that if I came straight over, the doctor would explain everything before he went home for the day. We were the last appointment. When we entered the office, we sat at a little table in the corner. There were four chairs at it. Lynx and I occupied two, and Dr. Colandrea sat across from us. The doctor, a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and olive skin, always appeared firm, yet at the same time, calming. He seemed the kind of fellow you could just tell your problems to, and he would fix them. For so many, it was true. Unfortunately, there too many he couldn’t help. You just always hoped you weren’t one of those.

  “Well, the good news is, you’re young and in good health other than the cancer.”

  If that was the good news — you’re fine except you have cancer — I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the “but” that was coming next.

  “Unfortunately, because you’ve had this cancer before, our treatment options are limited. Last time, they did chemo and a bone marrow transplant, which worked. We can’t do that again. The myeloma has seen that and will be ready to adapt. We need a new approach.”

  He’d spoken to Lynx about his plan earlier, so he spoke mainly to me now, which was nice. Dr. Colandrea’s voice was competent and he always gave simple, clear explanations. It was one of the reasons I liked him. It was one of the reasons
it was almost impossible to get in to see him. It had been fairly hard ten years ago, but my mom, no nonsense, indefatigable reporter that she was, dug around and found out the name of the booking nurse. She then called her and pleaded our case. We were in, and we’ve been in ever since.

  “How likely are the new approaches to work?” I asked.

  Dr. Colandrea eyed me squarely. “I think they all have a decent shot, but they have different benefits and drawbacks. The first option is good, but it’s got a major drawback. It’s a drug therapy, but it’s one that we prefer to do last, and usually if the person has had children already.”

  I stared at him with the unasked question.

  “It’s thalidomide,” he said.

  My mouth popped open. That caused malformed babies, a wave of them in the 1960s with flippers instead of hands or feet.

  “Yes, the thalidomide babies,” he said, reacting to my face. While people associate the birth defects with the drug being given to the mother, defects can occur if either parent is taking the drug, as thalidomide carries through to semen.” He turned to Lynx. “As we discussed earlier, since you’re so young and want a family, that may not be the best first option. Though, some people who want to go that route do freeze their sperm for later use. That is somewhat of a workaround.”

  Lynx nodded.

  “Next up, are a couple of new drug therapies that are similar to chemotherapy, but in some bodies, they can be a little too similar and aren’t as effective. I don’t recommend them when we’ve already had chemo successfully eradicate the disease before. If that doesn’t work, thalidomide is the best option afterward. But again, the thalidomide has its drawbacks. And it’s not temporary. This is a long-term, maintenance drug. Once you start it, you continue to take it, because when people stop, the myeloma tends to come back.”

  Lynx grimaced at that.

  “The third option,” I asked, trying to look third-time-is-the-charm positive.

  “It’s a treatment that hasn’t been approved in the US, but is showing some success in Europe. It’s a monoclonal antibody therapy that works by inducing your immune system to pluck up and attack the cancer in new and effective ways. It essentially trains your body to defeat the cancer.”

  Well, that sounded perfect. I smiled. “Then let’s do that,” I said, not looking at Lynx. It was his health, so obviously his opinion mattered most. But, the books on being a patient advocate noted that sometimes patients could feel timid or overwhelmed in the process. I just wanted to make a positive stand for him. Back when this first happened, my mother had bought or checked out from the library tons of books on caregiving and cancer and stuck them on her shelf. When she was gone, I would read them, too. I wanted to know how to help, and having knowledge always made me feel more prepared.

  “Onyx,” Dr. Colandrea said to me, a touch of warning in his tone. “I want Lynx to think about what he wants to do. And there’s a drawback to the new procedure. First, you need to fly to France to get it done. Second, it won’t be covered by your insurance as it’s not approved here.”

  Fuck. That was just the kicker this day needed. I could see Lynx’s face fall. “I have some money saved up,” I lied smoothly. I had $2,000 as my rainy-day fund and a school-matched 401k with all of $472 in it.

  “It’s going to be around $125,000,” he said, the words rolling off his tongue as if he’d just said, “Eh, twenty bucks.”

  I felt hollow in the pit of my stomach as I realized what I was going to have to do. I’d sworn off those people and that life. My mother had sworn us all off it after she realized what dad did exactly. She was too busy investigating other people’s frauds to be concerned it might be happening in her own home. But it became hard to ignore when she found a few million in diamonds hidden in their home. He’d confessed his true occupation, and that had been the end.

  “Don’t worry about the money” I said, and Lynx stared at me. “Do you think that’s the best treatment?”

  Dr. Colandrea nodded.

  “Then tell us what we need to do to set it up,” I said.

  Chapter 4 – You Must Not Know About Me

  Lynx and I took the subway home. It was a silent train ride, as he seemed to be processing what Dr. Colandrea had said. I tried to process what my limits were going to be when I went back to Club Diamante. The last time I’d been there was when I was twenty-two. That was almost five years ago. I’d done a job as a favor to Pauly, but it had almost gotten me arrested. I’d known before then I shouldn’t be there, but that job had put what I thought had been the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with that club and those people.

  I remembered going to see my father in jail. I remembered the wreckage his prison stint caused for our family. I couldn’t live that life. I needed to live a better life. A life that gave back. A life like my mother’s.

  When we got off the train, we walked quietly toward the fourth-floor apartment we shared in a renovated building in Harlem. It had been where we lived with our mother and we’d been able to keep it after her murder. I swallowed, not wishing to think of her death like that, but that’s what it had been. She was still reporting, still trying to fight the good fight for people in bad neighborhoods. Trying to get back home, when a stray bullet pierced her heart. The intended target was hit, too, so ... I’ve never even been sure what to make of that. Was it good, because that meant at least somebody got what they wanted accomplished that night? Or was it bad, because if the shooter just been a better at their job, they wouldn’t have hit her at all.

  No, I know it was bad. Bad for anyone to get shot, but I can’t help feeling the horrific injustice done to my mother, the one who’d never done anything but try to help people, being taken so senselessly. My father’s death, I got. My mother’s...no. It just always felt like a betrayal by the universe. She had been doing the right thing, but she got the wrong outcome.

  After we stepped inside the apartment, I looked at Lynx, his caramel skin, the same shade as mine, his dark brown eyes brooding tonight. I shrugged my bag off my shoulder and set it on the beat-up chair near the door. Mom couldn’t get us to hang our stuff on hooks, so she’d set the chair there so we could toss our things in it, rather than random spots on the floor.

  Lynx gave me a scrutinizing look and bade me to sit on the sofa with him.

  Based on the look he was giving me, I didn’t want to have the talk I knew he wanted to have. The best way to avoid such a talk was deflection. I smiled big, not taking a seat, and asked, “How about I go grab us some takeout? Lamb Vindaloo and maybe some curry chicken?”

  He shook his head, as he patted the spot next to him on the old leather sofa.

  I took a deep breath, walked over and sat next to him.

  “Do you really have the money?” His voice was soft and nonjudgmental.

  I shook my head, then looked at him with optimism. “I can get it, though.”

  “How?”

  “Club Diamante,” I admitted.

  He shook his head. “Can that place be any more obvious Onyx? Diamante is the Italian word for Diamonds and they trade in illegal diamonds. So, your plan is to go steal and be in jail, while I have treatment alone in a foreign country?” His voice was sharper now, but he wasn’t yelling, which was good.

  “First of all, Club Diamante is not some lowlife place for mobsters,” I said. “It has many established legitimate businessmen who enjoy the fine atmosphere and legal business dealings. Plus, Pauly trades in legal things, too.” I wasn’t entirely sure this was true, but I figured you couldn’t be a brilliant illegal businessman without having some legitimate businesses. I just didn’t know what they were. Probably olive oil importing, if you believed the movies. “Besides, Pauly said I can do appraisal work for him anytime. I’m certified, and I bet I can get him to give me a loan.”

  He was shaking his head. “Pauly is not legit,” he said. “If he’s not already six feet under, killed by some rival boss, he’s still not a good guy to work for.”

  �
��Pauly and dad were close,” I said, trying to leave it hanging there with the implication that Pauly would protect me.

  “They were so close that Pauly let dad rot in jail and die.”

  “Close enough that he feels guilty enough about the shitty way he treated his friend that he’ll help me out.”

  He stared at me. Those big, trusting eyes, looking at me always made me feel nervous. Mama had said it was my job to take care of my little brother. I have always tried to do that. Granted, I left him alone while I went abroad to study, but I would’ve come home in a heartbeat if he needed me. And now that he did need me, now that he needed my protection, I wouldn’t leave him alone to figure out cancer on his own.

  “If Pauly is so great,” he said. “Then I’ll help. Two of us working for Pauly should get us there half as fast.”

  I was shaking my head already. ‘No,” I said. “One, you’re not certified to evaluate diamonds. Two, you have to focus on your treatment, Lynx. I got this.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to be mom,” he said. “You don’t have to take everything on yourself. You can let me help.”

  His words stung. Mom was wonderful, but too wonderful. I could never be as generous as her, but I could help him with his. “How about this? I’ll talk to Pauly tomorrow night, and if there’s something you can do to help, I’ll let you.”

  I smiled, as if it was the perfect solution. It was a complete lie. I wouldn’t let him help with anything. He needed to get things straightened out with his boss, talk to the doctor, prepare for this trip. If I let him think he could help, he wouldn’t worry about unnecessary things. He’d focus on getting better, not how to pay for his treatment or being a burden to me.

  He blew out and raised an eyebrow. “What does my name mean?”

  I frowned. He was baiting me. His name is also an animal, a stealth cat that some cultures believe can hear your thoughts and understand your true nature. You can’t hide anything from a lynx, or that’s what my father always said. I sighed and reluctantly asked, “What is it you think you’ve figured out?”