32. Vince
32
VINCE
My chest felt like someone had taken a vise to it. It was hard to breathe. Part of that could have been the smoke inhalation, but I knew it was more than that. I kept walking down the stairs from Val’s apartment to the main entrance to the building near the security office. Wade stood there. I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me or if he was headed upstairs to his place.
He saw my face and spoke. “ Follow me to the pub. Let’s get a drink.”
That sounded like the only good idea I had right now. Plus , being in the pub meant I wouldn’t be far if something happened to Cat . Not that she would tell me if she did. Not after I put that look on her face as I left. I knew my words hurt her, but I couldn’t help myself.
Once I had gone to the hospital and saw for myself that Cat and Ruthie were safe and would be okay, my mind finally had time to fully take in what had happened earlier.
Oklahoma, the dumbass drug dealer was behind this.
I blindly followed Wade to the bar. There was hardly anyone in here, which was good. I walked to the far end, away from any people.
Wade sat down next to me and looked up at Tammy behind the bar. “ Tammy , give us two Johnnie Walker Blacks , neat.”
“You got it, boss.”
Wade didn’t say anything to me. He typed out a few things on his phone— I assumed it was to Ellie to let her know he would be late. Tammy brought the drinks and I took a good long drink.
Normally, that large of a gulp would burn a little going down, especially since my throat was still raw from inhaling the smoke and chemicals, but all I felt was the warming sensation of it coursing through my body.
“Alright, you’ve had your drink. Now spill,” Tammy said, leaning over the counter. “ I got the basics of what happened earlier tonight, but Wade said it involved some skip you brought in a few months ago?”
Tammy was a retired Army veteran, now in her mid-forties, who worked here mostly because she was bored and enjoyed talking to people. She was loyal and friendly but she could be feisty with a set of brass balls.
“I caught some drug dealer a while back, and since it was his third strike, he was going to prison for a good stint,” I described, my voice monotone and forced. “ Apparently , he was one of his gang’s best dealers so the boss wasn’t too happy I helped lock him up. He set out to make an example of me by coming after me, and Cat by association.”
“But how did he know it was her and not Val ?” Tammy asked.
He likely sensed I didn’t want to talk about this, so Wade responded. “ Unbeknownst to Vince , they had one of their guys follow Vince . He happened to be there the day Vince moved the girls in and assumed they were family. They decided to go after the girls instead as payback. Once their minion started following the girls around, he overheard them chatting and realized they weren’t his family, but in fact, his girlfriend and her sister. The boss instructed them to hold off so they could figure out which one was the girlfriend and then send a message.”
He was right. That message had been the chocolates, but since we moved Val into the apartment and I took Cat up to the mountains with me, they incorrectly assumed the girls took the threat seriously and left town.
Wade went on. “ They used their guy on the inside at the police department— Parker —to take a trip up to the cabin and kill them, but Parker realized there were too many cameras for him to get away with it. They regrouped and decided to send a package to the front desk of the loft a few days later to see if they had come back.”
“They got confused when Jack intercepted the package at my loft,” I added. “ Apparently , the man who had waited in the lobby was there to shoot me but freaked when another man, who didn’t match my description, picked up the package.”
“Then they got desperate,” Wade continued. “ They used Parker to find out Vince was going to his parents’ house for the holiday get-together. The plan was to kill Vince , but they saw an opportunity when Cat and Ruthie came out to their car alone.”
“I can’t believe they had a dirty cop giving them intel like that. Just makes me sick,” Tammy groaned.
“A cop I’ve known and worked with for years and went to school with my son,” my dad said from the side of the bar.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Was planning to drop by your place, but Wade told me you were here,” he responded, and I rolled my eyes that Wade told him my location.
Just as I looked up to tell my dad he didn’t need to check in on me and that he could go home, I noticed Archer walking toward the bar as well.
I turned and growled at Wade . “ Really , asshole?”
That must have been who he’d texted earlier. Why would he bring them here? I just wanted to drink alone, in peace.
“Tammy, would you grab two more for Frank and Archer and fill ours up as well?” Wade requested.
“Coming right up,” she replied.
“What did you do?” Archer asked.
“What?” I responded, not sure what he meant.
“Wade said you looked like someone killed your best friend,” he added. “ But you aren’t angry, which means nobody died, but you clearly did something else wrong,” he interpreted.
“I’m betting he did something stupid,” my dad added.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, assholes.” I rolled my eyes.
I didn’t want to talk about this. But I knew Archer . My cousin was stubborn, which meant he wouldn’t drop this until he got his answer.
I took a large swig of my new drink Tammy just dropped off and then laid it out. “ From the moment I brought Cat here to Georgia , she’s been a target. Not because of her connection to her parents’ murders, like we originally thought, but because of me.”
I thought back to how we had assumed the threats had been connected to either the robbery or her creepy neighbor. Nope , it was because of me.
“That flawed logic will only mess with your head,” my dad commented.
“How is it flawed, when Cat is sitting upstairs with a concussion after she was nearly killed?” I barked back at him. “ And what about Ruthie ? She was shot in the foot because she got in the way of them trying to take Cat . That’s two people who were nearly killed because of me.”
“No, that’s two people who were nearly killed because of a drug kingpin and his dealer,” my dad responded. “ You can’t put that on yourself.”
“Even if you were right,” I countered, “it could happen again. It’s not safe for her to be with me. I’m not saying I want to lose her, but I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to her because of my job.”
“Do you remember when your mom fell down the stairs carrying the laundry and ended up with a few broken bones when you were in elementary school?” my dad calmly asked.
“Yeah.” I did. She also had a bruised face from hitting the railing on the way down.
“She didn’t fall down the stairs,” he said, which caused me to turn and look at him. “ My car was in the shop that day, so she picked me up from court after I was done testifying about one of the skips I brought in. The man’s brother shot at me as we were walking to the car. He was a piss-poor shot, so he missed me, but got your mom in the arm. She fell awkwardly and hit her head and broke her arm as she hit the ground.”
Anger rose up in me at the thought of someone shooting at my mom, and also shock that my parents had kept this a secret for so long. A quick look to Archer revealed he had the same look on his face. He had come to visit that summer. My mom’s bruises were gone by then, but she still had the cast, which she had let us all decorate. I knew he remembered.
Tammy, likely having heard most of this story, slid another drink in front of me.
“Son, there are plenty of dangerous careers in this world, ones where crazy people can target your family,” Dad pointed out. “ Military , law enforcement, politicians, celebrities. Most of those people don’t let it stop them. Your mindset right now? I was right there with you when your mom was shot. I thought about leaving for her safety but didn’t want to leave her a single parent. Nor did I want to leave you kids either. She reamed my ass for even considering leaving.”
I smiled, picturing my mom yelling at him for that. She would definitely do that.
“You making that decision for her is taking away her choice,” my dad added.
“Which she did to you when we thought it was related to the Cross Street Kings ,” Wade spoke up. “ When she thought they were responsible for the chocolates, she wanted to go back with the Feds so that you didn’t get hurt in the process. Remember that?”
Shit. He was right. I had told her we were a team and one person couldn’t make decisions and cut the other one out.
“Man, if being overseas taught us anything, it’s that life is short,” Wade added. “ Don’t make it worse by losing one of the best things that ever happened to you.”
I understood what he was saying. I didn’t want to lose her, but if I was responsible for her getting hurt or even killed, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Archer, who had been more of the silent, supportive type so far, spoke up. “ Take it from someone who has loved and lost. If you find it, hold onto it.”
Wade and I both looked at him, a little shocked, because Archer had never spoken about his past openly before. Not regarding his ex-wife at least. Archer had been married briefly—as in, less than a month briefly. It was a whirlwind Vegas marriage to a woman he was madly in love with.
I still didn’t know what led to the divorce, but any time I tried to bring it up, he shut it down real fast. It occurred to me now after his comment that maybe it was because he was still hung up on her. At the time I thought he was crazy for marrying a woman he barely knew, but my cousin had never gone back to dating since his divorce.
Maybe I was wrong to cut her out. I certainly didn’t want to. I wanted to be with her more than anything, but her safety had been my priority. Now I began to rethink that.
Maybe I should go talk to her again.
“No!” all three men shouted at me.
It hurt my brain when they did that. Why did they all yell so loud?
“We’re not yelling. You’re just drunk,” Wade said, grinning at me.
How did he know what I was thinking?
“Because you’re not thinking it, You’re saying it out loud,” my dad explained.
Ah, shit.
“I think it’s time for you to call it a night, son.”
“You good to drive them both home, or you need me to do it?” Wade asked my dad.
“I got ’em,” he replied.
Archer and I both climbed into my dad’s car. The ride back to my place was silent. When we pulled up to the front, Archer told my dad to just head home.
“I’m gonna crash at his place tonight. Thanks for the ride, Uncle Frank .”
“Don’t let him call that girl until he sobers up. Don’t need him making this even worse,” my dad told Archer .
We walked up to my unit in silence. When we finally got to my door, my key wasn’t working properly. Archer took it and had to have worked some weird voodoo magic, because he got it to work somehow.
“You want a drink?” I asked as we walked into my kitchen.
“Yeah, but I’ll get it. You go sit on the couch before you fall over.”
Whatever. I wasn’t that bad. Though the floor did seem to be uneven in a few spots that I hadn’t noticed before. I made it to the couch and fell back onto it. I propped my legs up in the ottoman and relaxed a bit.
Archer came in and handed me a bottle of water and some pills.
“Take those so you don’t feel like death in the morning.”
He sat next to me on the couch. I noticed he had a drink too, but not water. His glass looked suspiciously like whiskey.
We sat next to each other in silence for a few moments before Archer spoke in a soft muffled voice. “ Four days after I married Ace , a buddy of mine on the drug task force told me there was a hit out on her. A high-dollar hit.”
Shocked at what he’d said, I looked over at him to see he was staring into his glass. I had never actually met Ace . Archer met her, got married, then divorced, all while I was overseas. But he wrote about her in two of his emails he had sent me. He’d seemed to be happy about it, so I’d been happy for him.
“One of the cases I had worked on, I had to testify for several days in court. What I didn’t know was that the guy who was on trial had one of his soldiers follow me out of the courthouse and shadow me for a few days. The last night he shadowed me was the night I married Ace at that chapel.”
Oh, shit. I may have been drunk, but I knew where he was going with this.
“He reported back to his crew that I got married, so they chose to go after Ace as retaliation for testifying, and to send a message to me. I don’t know all the details, but I knew she had a rough time growing up. She had just graduated and was about to get her dream job. I didn’t want to be responsible for her losing that. I filed for an annulment, and I put on the paperwork that we had only just met and it was a drunk accident getting married. I wanted it noted so that if they went looking, they wouldn’t think she meant anything to me and they would leave her alone.”
I understood why he did it. And I now knew that he understood why I did what I had to do with Cat . I had to protect her like Archer had protected Ace . He got it. He never talked about the divorce though. I had always just assumed it was because he got too drunk, married her, and then realized he was an idiot and got it annulled.
“Biggest regret of my life,” he revealed. “ If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have divorced her. I would have found a way to make it work.”
I was sorry he felt that way, but I disagreed. “ Arch , they would have come after her. You did the right thing.”
“Man, I have never stopped thinking about her since the day we got divorced. Six months ago, I had a few drinks at the pub and went home with a woman. I called her Ace while I was having sex with her. Twice .”
I winced. Worst thing you could do when having sex with a woman was call her someone else’s name. “ Similar name?”
“Not even close. It was Natalie or something.”
“Shit.” I felt bad for both of them because that had to be awkward.
“I’m telling you all this because I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did.” He finally turned to look at me. “ Cat is your person. Don’t throw that away just because of a chance something may or may not happen.”
“But something did happen. She almost died tonight, Arch ,” I reminded him. “ That’s what worries me.”
“Yeah, and you heard your dad tonight. The same thing happened with your mom, but your dad saved her. Just like you saved Cat . Yeah , your job may put her in those bad situations, but your job will also save her. And just pointing out, if that asshole Parker hadn’t been in on it, they never would have pulled this off. She’s safer with you protecting her than she is without you. If someone came after her a couple months from now, she wouldn’t have you to keep her safe because you’re a dumbass and broke it off with her.”
I started to speak, but he held up his hands and cut me off.
“I’ve said my piece. Now I’m crashing in your spare bedroom. All I will say is think about it. Don’t make the same mistake I did and lose the one thing that means the most to you.”
He got up and walked away, leaving me there to think about what he had just said. I fell asleep on the couch to the notion that I had screwed up and needed to fix it.
* * *
I woke to the sun shining brightly in my face and the smell of coffee. I realized I was on my couch and the blinding light source was from my giant window in the living room. I turned my head to see the source of the smell was from Archer standing in my kitchen brewing a fresh pot.
“God, I could use a cup of that,” I announced as I lifted myself up into a sitting position, immediately regretting it as the world spun a little around me.
Ever so slowly as to not make my head hurt worse, I made my way into the kitchen to get a cup, and a few ibuprofens as well.
“Here,” Archer said, handing me a filled cup. “ I’m taking a travel mug because I have to go home and shower and get over to Ruthie’s place to see how she and Jack fared. I’m guessing the two of them either killed each other or finally gave in and played tonsil hockey like teenagers.”
I laughed at his extremely accurate assessment. I vaguely remembered Archer or Wade saying Jack was staying over at her place last night to make sure she didn’t injure herself even more with her cast on. She would also need help with her dog, since she clearly couldn’t walk him with crutches.
“Let me know how it goes,” I said to his back as he waved and exited my loft.
I made my way to my shower. I hoped the hot water would help my brain come back to life and help me figure out what to say to Cat . After sleeping on it, I realized the guys were all right. My job may be dangerous, but I couldn’t live without her. I was a selfish bastard, and I wanted to keep her.
After I showered and dressed, my plan was to grab something to eat and then head over to the apartment and see if Cat would talk to me. As I walked toward the fridge, I heard the front door open. Only so many people had keys to my place. Assuming it was more likely to be Archer than Cat , I waited in the kitchen to hear if someone called out. A moment later, Cat and Val both walked into the kitchen and stopped when they saw me standing there.
“We’re just here to get her clothes. We’ll be gone in a few minutes,” Val said, glaring at me the whole time.
I knew I deserved that. I also knew I needed to talk with Cat before she left. This talk would likely involve a lot of groveling.
“Cat, can I talk to you for a minute?” I spoke directly to her, but she stared at the floor.
“No, you may not,” Val barked back, grabbing Cat’s hand and guiding her toward the back hall to my room, where she could get her things.
“I’m sorry.” I went straight to the point as I stepped in front of them. “ Seeing you hurt in the hospital yesterday broke something in me. Knowing you were hurt because of me, because of my job…” I sighed, trying to think of how to put what I felt into words.
They stopped, Val still glaring at me, while Cat finally looked up at me, and I could see her eyes were wet, but also filled with anger. I hated that I had done that to her.
“I know my words might not be enough, but I need you to hear this,” I began to convey. “ I thought I was protecting you by leaving. My job is dangerous, and the idea of you getting hurt because of it was something I couldn’t live with. But I hurt you anyway by not talking to you. You deserved a chance to decide what you could handle. I see that now, and I’m sorry.”
I knew this would be make or break for me, so I went for it. I just hoped it worked.
“I can’t promise you that I won’t be an idiot again and say something stupid, but I can promise you this…” I paused, taking a chance by walking up closer to her to cup her face in my hands. “ I won’t make decisions for the both of us again. Not without talking to you first. I don’t want to lose you. I love you, Cat . I’ll spend every day proving that to you if you’re still willing to be with me. I’m so sorry for the pain I caused. Can you forgive me?”
After getting everything off my chest, I waited. Waited for her to either give me another chance or tell me to get lost. She said nothing. She stood there staring at me, and I felt a hollow, sinking feeling right beneath my sternum.
“I’ve dealt with loss before Vince but this hurt was different,” she spoke quietly. “ Don’t shut me out again.”
“I won’t, baby. I swear.”
“I get it. I tried to do the same thing to you when we thought it was related to my parents’ murders. From now on, we both agree to talk it through with each other before we make decisions.”
Joy ripped through me at the realization that my woman was back. She forgave me. I kissed her hard, hoping to convey my appreciation for this second chance through my kiss.
A loud cough interrupted us, and I remembered Val was still there.
“You good, sis?” she asked Cat .
“Yeah,” Cat said to Val before she turned back to me. “ Really good.”
This time, she kissed me . It felt good to have her back in my arms.
“I’ll just let myself out,” Val yelled from a distance. “ Have fun, kids!”