Two Besties, Two Babies, Two Dangerous Daddies novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Two Pink Lines
Trixie and Lexie find out they're pregnant the same week from the same masked night, see their own faces on the news as the Seaview thieves, and Trixie sells everything she owns for two tickets to Nice; at the gate, both bosses text them by name.
Lexie and I walked out of two exam rooms at the same second, both reading a piece of paper.
We stopped in the middle of the hallway.
"Don't say it," she said.
"You say it first."
"Positive."
I turned my sheet around so she could see mine.
Positive. Six weeks.
Lexie looked at my paper, then at hers, then at me.
"We got pregnant at the same time," she said. "We do everything together, Trix. I didn't mean this."
A nurse squeezed past us with a cart and said congratulations to both of us.
I sat down on the plastic bench before my knees decided for me.
Lexie sat next to me in her lilac top with her big silver earrings swinging.
"Six weeks," she said. "Count back."
I didn't have to.
March 28. The Truce Ball at the Seaview.
I'd worked the early shift carrying champagne, then changed into a borrowed gold dress at midnight and gone back upstairs as a guest.
Lexie wore silver.
We had a rule for the night. No names, no numbers, no regrets.
"We broke the regrets one," Lexie said.
"We broke the condom one, apparently."
She laughed and then covered her mouth, because laughing in a hallway full of pregnant people felt like a crime.
My guy wore a black mask and made me laugh so hard I spilled a drink down his shirt.
Hers barely said ten words all night.
We both left before ours woke up.
And we both took one little thing on the way out, because a girl has rent.
Mine was a gold cufflink.
Hers was a silver lighter.
"So we're having babies," Lexie said, "with two men we can't name, and our plan was to pawn their stuff."
"We're not ashamed," I said. "We're organized."
That was our line. We'd been saying it since we were nineteen.
We were gold diggers, out loud, on purpose.
Nobody had ever bought us anything that didn't come with a man attached, so we planned to marry money and never ask anyone for anything again.
Mostly we dated men who drove leased cars and lied about it.
The waiting room had a TV bolted in the corner.
The local news was on with the sound low.
The words on the screen said SEAVIEW TRUCE BROKEN.
Lexie grabbed my wrist.
The picture changed to grainy hallway footage from the Seaview's penthouse floor.
Two women in masks walked toward the elevator, holding hands and laughing.
One in gold sequins.
One in silver.
The anchor said police wanted to identify two women "connected to a theft from the penthouse the night of the March masquerade."
"Trix," Lexie whispered. "That's my butt."
"That's my whole body."
Then they put up two photos, side by side.
Ciro Vaccaro. Head of the Vaccaro family, which ran the Seaview's floor.
Cillian Whalen. Head of the Whalen family, which ran the Seaview's security.
The anchor said the two families had shared that casino for thirty years without a war.
Now each one blamed the other for whatever was missing.
Then the anchor cut to a silver-haired man outside the casino, waving off a microphone with a big warm smile.
Rino Vaccaro. The uncle who ran the count room and called every waitress sweetheart.
He tipped me in hundred-dollar chips once and asked if I had a boyfriend.
I stared at Ciro Vaccaro's face.
Dark eyes. A scar through his left eyebrow.
I had kissed that eyebrow.
I dug in my purse and pulled out the cufflink.
There was a V engraved on the gold.
Lexie took the lighter out of her bag very slowly.
C.W.
"No," she said.
"Yes."
"We said rich," Lexie said. "We did not say indicted."
"We're having mob babies," I said. "Two of them. Rival ones."
A woman across the room looked up from her magazine.
I smiled at her until she looked down again.
Every family in Atlantic City knew somebody who owed the Vaccaros or the Whalens.
If either family found us, they'd want the thing we didn't steal.
And when they found out about the babies, they'd want those too.
I was not raising my kid to carry anybody's gun.
"Get up," I said.
"Where are we going?"
"Atlantic Avenue."
The pawnshop smelled like dust and old cologne.
I set the cufflink on the glass counter first, because gold is gold.
The pawnbroker picked it up, turned it over, and saw the V.
He put it down.
"Not in this town," he said. "I don't touch Vaccaro gold."
He slid it back to me with one finger.
Lexie and I looked at each other.
So that was how scared people were.
I went home and pulled the shoebox out from under my bed.
My retirement fund.
Six years of tennis bracelets from men who were sorry, earrings from men who were leaving, and a ring from a man who said he'd marry me and married a dental hygienist instead.
I'd never sold a single piece.
I used to open the box on bad nights just to look.
I drove it back to Atlantic Avenue and dumped all of it on the same counter.
"All of it?" the pawnbroker said.
"All of it."
He gave me eleven thousand four hundred dollars.
Lexie watched me count it in the car.
"Trix, that's your whole box."
"It's our whole box now."
I bought two one-way tickets to Nice on my phone in the Wawa parking lot.
"France?" Lexie said. "We don't speak French."
"Neither does the mob."
"That is not a real fact, Trixie."
"Rich men live in France, Lex. Nice ones. Without indictments."
She looked at the lighter in her hand for a long time.
Then she put it in her bag instead of the trash.
"Okay," she said. "Okay. Babies first."
"Besties always."
We packed in forty minutes and left both apartments with the lights on.
The Philadelphia airport was cold and smelled like pretzels.
Our gate was the last one at the end of the terminal.
They called our boarding group.
Lexie stood up.
Then both our phones buzzed at the same time.
Unknown number.
I opened mine.
"You took something of mine, Miss Plum."
Lexie turned her screen toward me with a shaking hand.
"Lexie. My lighter. We need to talk. C."
I read mine again.
At the ball I'd never told him my name.
Not my first name.
Not my last.
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