Chapter Two
Offspring
The leering red mouths looked bloated with blood. The whites of their eyes were pale yellow like rotten eggs left too long on the kitchen counter. Regina never saw the appeal of clowns. They were terrifying nightmare fuel and no one could convince her otherwise.
Bradley Hudson, the brat of the hour, was jumping with his fellow creatures in the giant bouncing castle. Regina didn’t mind children as long as they remained in their habitats and didn’t intrude in her personal space.
She clung to the adults table and watched Leo dive in to the ball pit with Alisson, Mia and Rick Hudson’s youngest daughter. It surprised her no end how much the man loved children. She wondered, if Zoya was still alive, would Leo have loved her child just as much?
Regina had first met Leo in police custody when she had gone to defend him against charges of murdering his pregnant wife. There had been no forced entry, no distress call from the home and somebody had carved her up with a carving knife.
Her investigation had later revealed that Zoya and Leo had in fact been separated for quite some time and that the baby was Dimitri, Leo’s brother, who had hoped to inherit Leo’s share of the business once Leo was in jail sentenced for a murder Dimitri had committed.
She knew they made an odd couple. Her curves, the natural state of her hair, the blatant blackness of her was offensive to some and unpalatable to most but when she had walked arm in arm with Leo Belitrov to the Mayweather v. Cotto fight back in 2012 there had been uproar.
Leo Belitrov, CEO of Belitrov Shipping Conglomerate, was tall, handsome and the center of every woman’s wet dream. That he would choose someone like Regina, big and buxom over the many tall, ethereal models that hung around him was a mystery everyone was still trying to solve three years later.
“He looks so adorable with Alisson!” Mia squealed. Mia was a petite woman with corkscrew curls. She had skin the color of wheat and eyes that were a cornflower blue. “I’m so glad you two decided to have children.”
“What?” Regina was so shocked she dropped the bacon wrapped shrimp she was about to bite in to. “Who told you that?”
“This,” Mia rubbed Regina’s belly then stopped when she saw the murderous look in Regina’s eyes. “I’m not trying to make fun,” Mia said suddenly serious, “but I can tell when someone is pregnant. I’d say you’re about a month or so.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Regina scoffed. “Leo and I have no plans for children.”
“Well,” Mia said, “plans or no plans this one is coming.”
“I’m. Not. Pregnant,” Regina felt her face suffuse with anger.
“Whatever you say,” Mia said annoying Regina further.
Regina wanted to stab Mia in the eye with the bamboo skewer she held in her fingers. She scowled at the children who ran past her, at their mothers if they even dared suggest that she hold their bundle of joy because it somehow transmitted the parent disease and the sudden desire to acquire one.
Regina saw the tiny hands, the toddling fat legs and she thought of the Simpson children, their throats violet blue from the ligature marks, Jason Simpson, his neck severed in two. She shook her head to get the image out of her head. She felt a sudden need to cry.
“Hey,” Leo hugged her from behind, “You okay there?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just concerned about this new case I’m handling.”
“The Simpson one,” Leo said fetching two large glasses of lemonade and taking her to a quiet corner of the grounds. “It’s harrowing.”
“It’s more than that,” she said. “It’s the way Dakota talks about her children. She made no effort to hide the fact that she didn’t want her children. They have it on record; she said it during bloody questioning: I never wanted my children.”
“That makes it tough for you,” Leo nodded.
“Fuck that,” Regina shrugged. “It makes it tough on those kids! I really want to ask Frank what he was thinking when he forced Dakota to have children when she clearly never wanted them.”
“He wanted children,” Leo shrugged and it rubbed Regina the wrong way.