The Maverick Pride Tales - Chapter 134: Chapter 134

“This is family business,” Sandra said in that same bored, annoyed voice that always grated on Annalia’s nerves.
“Well, good,” Anna said and put her hand in Lance’s, ridiculously glad when he squeezed tightly. “He’s my family too.”
“What?” Glenn barked.
“Oh no, you do not get to say that after knowing him for what? Half a day! Jesus Christ, you can’t go falling for the first guy to pay you a little attention, Annie!” Sandra screeched.
“Sandra, don’t you want me to be happy? Mom and Dad always talked about love at first sight, and I found that too. Why can’t you just accept it?” Anna asked her sister, eyes big and round, begging her to understand.
She looked so sad and earnest, Lance’s heart squeezed. His mate was so beautiful and kind-hearted, and her sister was just so damn cruel, determined to beat her down.
Fuck that. Not on his watch. He stood right behind his Anna, a steady hand on her lower back. This was not his fight, and he needed to allow her to take point. But she should know he was right there if she needed him to step in. He had her back and always would.
“Annie, no more nonsense. You need to come home with us. You haven’t even looked at the quarterly documents, much less signed them,” Sandra said and sniffed.
“You can’t even do the simple things we have asked of you. How many times did I tell you? Those documents are important. You can’t live up here on your own when you forget your obligations to your family. Now, you are coming back home,” Glenn whisper yelled. His voice was pinched and made the hair on the back of Lance’s neck stand up. he might not want to butt in on the sister when she spoke, but this male had best get the fuck away from his mate.
“Back off, Glenn,” Lance growled in a muffled voice.
The man looked like he was going to burst that vein in his forehead if he didn’t calm down.
“It’s fine,” Anna told him. “Glenn always was dramatic, right Glenn? And I don’t know if you or my sister noticed, but I am not your ward any longer. I am not a child. I do not need your permission to live where I want to live.”
“You spoiled brat. Have you no idea⁠—”
“Glenn, I would be really careful right now,” Lance interrupted.
Annalia’s heart was racing. This was beyond embarrassing, but here it was. The confrontation she had been dodging with her family for years now. Lance stood behind her, safe, warm, secure. She felt protected and loved with him in her corner, and damn, if she hadn’t already fallen for him hard, she would have right then.
Glenn was spitting mad, spouting hateful things at her. Anna was shocked. She had never seen him lose it like that. Lance uttered a warning, but she feared her brother-in-law was too dense to hear the growl in Lance’s voice. From what she had read in her fiction books about Shifters, they were possessive and old-fashioned in their treatment of women, especially their mates. Lance would not like her brother-in-law’s snipey attitude with her.
“Sandra? Are you going to let Glenn talk to me like that?” Anna looked to her sister for aid, but Sandra just nodded, agreeing with her husband.
Her red-nailed hands dug into her too skinny hips, and Annalia noted how unhealthy she looked. Like plastic.
The sweet sister she’d loved when she was a baby didn’t exist anymore. She hadn’t for a long time.
Sandra was different now. All edges and planes. She was Botox and war paint. There was nothing left underneath all that armor. Years of caring about money and keeping up with the Joneses had killed all her warmth. She didn’t know what love was. She certainly had none for her little sister.
“Did you ever love me?” Anna asked.
“What? Anna don’t be stupid. I took you in. Glenn did. We didn’t send you to foster care when we could have.”
“Hmm, you mean when we should have,” her husband added.
Pain gripped Annalia’s heart, followed by the rolling growl coming from Lance. His presence soothed her, but this was going to hurt no matter what. She’d hoped they cared even a little about her, about her happiness. But with those careless words, Sandra, and Glenn had destroyed every dream of family she’d ever had when she’d lived with them.
Just like they had with everything else she had tried to salvage after her parents had died. Like when she had dreamed of finding her true love, and they’d told her not to bother. What sad little people they were.
“True love is for princesses, Anna, not chubby little girls.” Sandra’s angry voice played in her mind.
“You know something, Sandra, I don’t think you ever loved me,” Anna confessed sadly.
“What? Have you have lost your mind! Thinking of you with this stranger making you think all these lies just makes me sick, Annie. It’s a good thing I packed your apartment up,” Sandra grabbed a cigarette from her pocket and lit. “We are going now.”
Annalia covered her mouth and nose and backed up a step. Her sister always smoked around her, uncaring of the fact it triggered many of her allergies and led to a severe difficulty in breathing.
“Put that out,” Lance growled, but Sandra just laughed.
“As if I would listen to you. What are you? Some money hungry gigolo, think my sister is loaded or something? It’s the only way a guy like you would want her fat ass,” Sandra said and looked him up and down.
Anna ignored the sting of her sister’s words and grabbed Lance’s arm when he would have defended her. He was sweet, but she needed to handle this.
“Fat jokes all you got, Sandra? You never were very imaginative,” she told her meaner, older sister. “Are you serious about emptying my apartment? You had no right.”
Anna glared at her sibling. She’d been pushed too far this time. Sandra might be her older sister, but Annalia had paid her debt long ago. These people did not have an affectionate bone in their bodies. They just stood and glared scathingly at her. Like she was dirt.
“Look, you owe us, pudge-bear,” her sister said, trying for playful by using the nickname she’d called her as a kid, which Anna hated by the way. “We paid for college and your first car⁠—”
“You gave me your old car, and I had to have the engine and transmission rebuilt. And I paid you back almost in full now for college. You know what here,” she looked in her purse and pulled out the envelope she had addressed to them, thrusting it at the sister she barely recognized.
“This is the last payment I owe you for my college loan. Don’t worry Glenn, I included the bank interest like I always do! Now, I want both of you to leave me alone. And don’t ever come back here.”
“W-what about, Rory?” Sandra asked.
Her sister looked doubtful for the first time in Annalia’s memory. She wondered why, but it was too little too late.
“My nephew can come see me anytime he likes,” she answered.
The little boy spent most of his life with nannies and tutors. Thank goodness. The result was that he was smart and sensitive. Nothing at all like his parents.
“Look, Annalia, let’s discuss this privately,” Glenn tried.
“No,” she said, grateful again for Lance’s strong and steady presence.
The big man’s warmth seeped through her clothes, chasing away the sudden chill Sandra and Glenn brought with them. There was something about the way he stood just there, behind her. Powerful, but quiet. Allowing her to take the lead, but ready to jump in should she need him. He seemed content to let her take care of things, and she loved him even more for that vote of confidence.
Anna had expected a more overbearing display of machismo. Something she didn’t think she could handle. This was her mess, and she needed to clean it up. Luckily for her, her mate gave her just what she needed.
“There is nothing else to say. Except goodbye,” she turned and looked up into Lance’s beautiful, clear eyes.
“I am going to live my life how I want, and that’s with you.”
She never thought blue could be so hot, and yet there was fire in his unwavering gaze. It was like nothing she’d ever seen. So much heat and desire, and if she wasn’t mistaken, affection too.
Burning blue lava rocks, the kind people placed in outdoor fire pits.
That was what his eyes reminded her of, and they pulled her in like a crystalline magnet. She smiled widely. Noting at first the shock, then the gratitude as he dipped down to brush his lips against hers.
“Should we go talk now?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Lance said. “I’d like that.”
“Wait!” Sandra interrupted them, pulling a snarl from the big man holding her.
Annalia grinned and patted his chest. Turning round, she faced her sister.
“What is it?”
“Well, you see. Annie, er, Anna, the truth is, I lied,” she gasped. “All those years ago when mother and father died, they didn’t leave us nothing. Daddy didn’t lose it all.”
“What?” Anna gasped. She’d never fully understood how her father, who’d been a successful real estate mogul could have lost his entire estate just before he and his wife died in a horrible car accident.
“The money, the house, everything they had was to be split evenly between the two of us. You were just a baby though. Still in school, and I was already out of high school. I had to take care of you. It wasn’t fair,” she sniffed.
“Wait, what? You always told me I had nothing. That you and Glenn gave me everything I had,” she said, disbelief ringing in her voice. “You made me write down everything I ever spent. You kept a running tally my whole life and made me pay it back.”
“You stole from your sister,” Lance echoed, sympathy for Anna, and anger at them filled his voice.
He was right. That was exactly what she did. Sandra and Glenn had stolen from her. Not just money, but her peace of mind. They’d done it for years. Horror and pain squeezed Anna’s chest.
“All those years, you were so mean to me,” she whispered aloud. “Told me I was too fat to find a man. Told me my job was unimportant and trivial. Said my art was nothing. I believed you. I thought I was worthless. I turned myself inside out trying to please you.”
Anger infused Annalia’s voice as she faced off with the one person who should have always loved and protected her. Sandra was her family. This kind of betrayal was beyond her scope of understanding.
Only Lance’s steady presence made it bearable. She sucked in a breath despite the tightening of her lungs. An unfortunate side effect whenever she became too angry.
She felt something being pushed in her palm and looked to see Lance had handed her the pump. Annalia nodded and took two puffs before answering her sister.
Sweat had started to bead on her forehead, and her stomach clutched in anger. She was positively nauseous. But Anna was far too angry to let this go.
“You lied to me. Stole from me. And made me feel like shit for the last time,” she told Sandra.
The pain was making her double over. Anna was sweating now. The pump was not helping, but thankfully, at some point, Lance had led them all to a small, private room so they were not being watched by an audience.
“Anna?” he asked, crouching next to her.
“I’m fine. But you two, I don’t want to see either of you again. At least not for a good, long while. I will have my lawyer in touch with yours, but you better get all the documents you have regarding my half of the inheritance from our parents,” she instructed them.
In all honesty, Anna did not care about the money, but this was her legacy from her parents. Sandra and Glenn had tried to rob her of that. They needed to make amends.
“You can’t do that. We have nothing left. We’ve been living off your half for years⁠—”
“Then I suggest you both get real jobs and figure out how you are going to move forward paying me back. And Sandra, have my things returned to the condo immediately. You can keep that check to get back home,” Anna told her sister coolly though she felt crippling pain inside. Something was wrong, but she was not about to show weakness to either of them.
“But wait,” her sister said. “That’s it? You’re going to just leave with that strange man?”
“He isn’t that strange,” she replied, and looked at Lance, her heart in her eyes. He smirked, kissing her hand, narrowing his eyes when she winced as another wave of cramps hit her.
“But yes, Sandra, I’m going to build a life with this man. It might sound ridiculous to you. I mean, we only just met, but I feel better about myself when I am with him than I ever had in an entire lifetime of being near you.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Sandra whimpered, Glenn patting her shoulder awkwardly.
“Is it? Then I suggest you leave before I really start sharing,” Anna growled, eyes widening at the feral sound.
Lance turned his head and glared at the pair of them, and Annalia stifled the nervous laugh that bubbled up inside as they ran out the door. She allowed Lance to take her hand and lift her in his arms.
“What are you doing?” she asked, whimpering as another wave of cramps hit her.
“Come on. Gotta get you out of here,” he growled.
She was about two seconds from hyperventilating. The pressure of his arms around her felt good as he carried her outside through the quickly increasing snowfall to his SUV. For some reason, she didn’t even feel the chill. In fact, she felt warm.
Like really, really warm.