The Last Matriarch -recumbentibus

Recumbentibus: n middle English: a knockout punch or a blow of particular force which knocks your opponent down

This is the last installment of the series Faliure's Legacy. After nine novels it was time to turn the light off on this fictional version of Charlotte NC.

This story brings Amanda's mental health into focus. Powerful people with immense political influence are working to destroy the empire Hannah Monroe entrusted to her daughter Maddison and granddaughter Amanda. Their mulitpronged attack includes using men of violence as well as Congressional pressure to crumble the empire. Amanda's deteriorating mental health leads to poor decisions that cause harm and death to those around her.

Hannah Monroe's unpublished memoir is leaked online with her graphic descriptions of her killings and crimes catching the attention of law enforcement as well as changing public opinion of the once iconic singer. The city of Charlotte is no longer as welcoming to the family as it had been in the past. Forcing Amanda to turn to the small mountain town that had shunned Jennifer after her marriage to Hamnah for refuge.

The scene below begins with Amanda reliving Jennifer's death in a vivid dream before waking up to help Maddison deal with a problem involving estranged family overseas. It showcases the differences in how each woman wear the mantle of leadership, Maddison being tepid while Amanda having a two fisted approach. Her confiding that her cancer has returned is critical to the plot as her passing has an accelerating effect on the story.

Wally and Nick bring their bull in a china shop antics to the story.Henry recruits his band of computer misfits from Florida, The Technotwats. Staci and her father are reunited when he is released from prison bringing issues of its own. The full extent of Earl's sadistic killings are brought to light, threatening to entangled Staci as well.

This story ends the only way possible at this point, with a hail of bullets raining down as a family fights to survive.

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The plaintive wail resonated through the entire farmhouse. Her grandmother’s wailing had awoken Amanda. She sat up in bed and threw the heavy quilts off. Barefoot, she sprinted down the bare oak stairs and across the tile floor of the kitchen. She slowed as she reached the door to her grandmother’s bedroom. The door was open, and she could see the home nurse and the housekeeper already at her gram’s bedside.

  It took very little time for Amanda to realize what was happening. Her grandmother’s face was twisted in a mask of grief as Hannah cradled her wife’s head and rocked back and forth. Amanda was devastated. Not simply because she had just lost one of the two women who had raised her, but Amanda also hurt because she did not know how to comfort her grandmother.

  Amanda sat up in bed, her body wet with sweat. She had relived this moment in her dreams before. This time it was more vivid, more realistic. She struggled to catch her breath in the darkness, feeling one of the many cats she shared the house with rubbing against her and purring. She absentmindedly began rubbing the cat behind the ears while she reached for her phone on the nightstand. 2:17 am. She sighed as she saw a notification for a new text message.

 I screwed up got ripped off by mercs hired to rescue Cindy from Somalie pirates sent pdf file on mercs they got me for 6 mil what to do?

 She can kiss that money goodbye, Amanda thought as she stared at the phone while shaking her head. She looked at the pdf file and saw the attached picture of their commander, Blake Livengood from North Carolina. Blake, you won’t live to see home again, she thought.

 She got out of bed and walked down the hallway, cursing herself for walking barefoot on the cold,
hardwood floor. She entered the small office her grandmothers had called the mudroom and turned on her laptop. She signed into the Greyman network and found what she needed, a list of commanders close to Somalia. She sent the file to a unit in Yemen.

“High priority, recover stolen cash, eliminate thieves,” she typed. She stared at the time on her phone. It was 7:30 p.m. in Yemen. She wasn’t sure what kind of duty this group was on, so she didn’t wait for a response. Shutting the computer off, she replied to her sister.

Sending people after them we can’t look weak.

 She looked around the makeshift office space. A wave of nostalgia washed over her seeing the old
memorabilia from her grandmother’s heyday as a singer. The paintings her other grandmother had painted lined the walls as well. Amanda smiled warmly at the old computer her grams had once used to build her business empire and play simple games with her. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she turned off the light to the room and the memories it held. Amanda walked on the balls of her feet back down the cold floor, pausing in the kitchen just long enough to grab a package or Oreos intending to return to her warm bed with them. Her ringing phone startled her.

“Maddi, what are you doing awake? It’s half past dark thirty,” Amanda said.

“I was going to ask you the same,” she replied.

“A CEO’s work is never done,” Amanda lamented.

“Look, yes, it’s a lot of money, but I wrote it off when I shipped it over there to pay Cindy’s ransom. We don’t need to send people after them,” Maddison said sternly.

“If we let this assclown rip us off, everybody will rip us off. You know this,” Amanda said.

Maddison sighed. She knows I’m right. Grams raised both of us, Amanda thought as she waited for her aunt to reply.

“Jesus, how can you look so much like Momma and sound just like Mom?” Maddison asked.

“Aunt Maddi, I’m still trying to figure out why you hired outside people instead of telling me. What good is having this company and these men if we don’t use them? It sends weird signals, and this is really a bad time to look weak. I’ve handled it. I would have handled it if someone had told me,” Amanda said, becoming irritated.

“Wally and Nicky felt it wouldn’t be in your best interest to be seen as using your company for personal interests…” Amanda cut her off.

“You brought the Combs brothers’ shit show into this? We’re lucky the Somalian government hasn’t declared war on us… or have they?” Amanda said angrily.

“Wally and Nicky are the only reason Cindy is free right now and in Frankfurt with Kenneth instead of God knows where being forced to do God knows what. They’re family Mandy, and family is all we really got.” Amanda felt the sting of having her grandmother’s words about family being used to rebuke her.

“Why is Kenneth there in Frankfurt?” Amanda asked.

“Getting Cindy’s husband Rick out of jail,” Maddison said.

“Jesus. This gets better and better. Cindy wrote the family off when Nick and Wally… after the accident, why are we getting her husband out of jail in Germany?” Amanda no longer tried to hide her anger.

“He’s my doctor… Mandy… it’s back, it’s no longer in remission,” Maddison said, her voice barely above a whisper. “The cancer came back.”

“Shit, Maddi, I didn’t know. Whatever you need, just tell me, don’t say please, just tell me,” Amanda said, her tone softening.