CHAPTER THIRTEEN ASHTON
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ASHTON
Two days later and I was walking back into Easter Lanes.
The guy worker, Pialto, shrieked when he saw me, and his hands flew up. The papers he’d been holding went everywhere.
The female worker rushed out of the back kitchen area, the door swishing behind her, and she also shrieked. Hers was more of a quacking sound as she jumped backward right through the doors. More shouts ensued. Clanging and shattering noises soon followed.
Curses.
Curses in Spanish.
I frowned, pretty sure I heard a German curse word as well, but then I felt her coming. Which was unsettling, but it happened, and she came out of her office, her hands already finding her hips. “What in the he—” She saw me. Her hands dropped; so did her tone. “Oh.”
I raised an eyebrow up. “Hello to you too.”
She turned, but I caught the quick flash of fear in her eyes right before she did. She was heading back to her office, and her door was closing as I got there. I caught it, pushing my way in, and I was the one who closed it. Locked it.
“Leave. You told me what to do. Now let me do it.”
I moved into her space.
Her eyes went wide, but I moved us both back against the wall. I placed an arm on one side of her, next to her head, and leaned in. “Your father is still in jail.”
She pursed her lips together, her throat moving up and down. “I’m aware.” She was focusing on my chest, and her hand started to reach out, to touch me.
Yes. I wanted that. I wasn’t questioning it. And if I was here, I was going to be touching her. I decided then and there. I leaned in even closer, but she pulled her hand back.
I frowned at that. “Why have you not bailed him out?”
She shrugged, biting her lip. “I mean, jail seems like the best option for him, don’t you think? He can sit there and rot, forever.”
“We have a deal.”
Her jaw clenched, and she tipped her head up now.
There. Right there. I liked having her eyes on me. “You’re being stubborn.”
Her chin lifted.
Madre de Dios. I tried again, moving my head down a little closer. “Your father can’t find out who killed Justin and Kelly if he is still in jail. Post his bail.”
Her eyes flashed at me, defiant. “He deserves to sit in there and his insides rot out of him and mold with his cell and—” Her hand went to my chest. She held it there. I didn’t know if she was aware that she was touching me.
I pressed harder against her hand. “Bail him out or you’re never getting Easter Lanes in your name.
I don’t get what you’re doing, or not doing.
I’m trying to find out who killed your friends.
I’m trying to do this for my best friend, for Jess, and then I have a whole war to handle.
Bail your father out of jail. Why are you waiting?
” My phone was buzzing, and I knew that was Trace or my cousin needing something.
I didn’t want to take it. I’d been annoyed that I needed to come back, find out what was going on in her head, but I couldn’t lie to myself.
I could’ve called. I could’ve issued a threat or a reminder, but seeing her in person had been what I needed.
I wanted to see her. I wanted ... I liked these interactions with her.
My phone kept buzzing. The world was pushing in. I had to go. I had to do my duties.
Feeling almost cold, I reached for the door and started to open it.
“I can’t.”
I turned back. “What do you mean?”
She had moved to her desk. She wasn’t looking at me, but her shoulders were down, and she was picking at the pen that she’d used for prodding her papers.
“I can’t. I just—if I see him right now, I will kill him.
You—he took away the good memories I had of her, and that’s just the latest he’s done to me, that I know of.
You can’t—I don’t know your grandfather or your father.
I know you had uncles, but I can’t stomach the idea of talking to him. Not yet. It’s too soon.”
Well. Fuck.
I shut the door behind me. “What do you need from me?”
Her eyes flickered, seeing me, and the ends of her mouth curved down. “What do you mean?”
“I need you to ask your father to do something. That means I need you to bail him out, first step. You are blocked from doing that. What can I do to help remove that block so you can stomach the idea of seeing your father?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Beat him up? I don’t know ...” She looked away.
I frowned, moving closer. “That’d make you feel better? If I beat him up?”
Her head folded down, and she was tapping her pen down onto her desk.
I looked her over, seeing the rigidness. The tension, so I took a moment, one moment, and put myself in her shoes. I considered what I’d told her, what she’d said. Her mother. The truth. Her father. His hand in how he helped to take away her mother.
My gut flickered. “I could have that done. Easily.”
She looked up, her eyes clouded over. The tension still visible on her face, tightening around her mouth.
She didn’t agree, but she didn’t disagree either.
I took another moment, just one, before I said, “I would not judge you if you wanted physical violence against your father. He hurt you. He has continued to hurt you. There’s nothing wrong with wanting some vengeance.”
Her eyes closed, and she flinched.
“I would think there would be something more wrong if you didn’t, if nothing ever happened to someone who took away the kindness of your mother. Her love. Because he tainted that, along with my family.”
Her eyes opened, and there was agony there, briefly, before she snuffed it out.
My voice went flat. I did not like seeing that look there. “One might even insist on it, could be a sort of payment from my family to you. If that’s what you were asking?”
She continued to study me. I let her see there was no judgment from my end. There would never be judgment from me.
She bit her lip and lifted a shoulder. “Or had someone beat him up. Maybe not you, personally, because yeah ... but someone else.”
I gave a small nod, but still felt I needed to tread with care here. “After you posted his bail or before?”
“What do you mean?”
“How soon would you want that done, if you did?”
Her eyes got big, and she stopped picking at her pen. “You mean—”
I stifled a sigh. “This is what I do. I’m in the Mafia.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she jerked her head in a nod. “Right. Right. That’s kinda the foundation of what you do.” She looked away again, biting down on her lip once more. “I could handle seeing him when I posted his bail, if he was beaten up. Yes. That would help me. Before I posted his bail.”
A ball of tension unwound inside of me. “Done.” I began reaching for the door again .
“But, like—”
I stopped and turned back. Her eyes were still clouded over.
“Like—how beat up are we talking about? Still walking? Face all swollen up? Jaw broken? At least both his eyes swollen shut so he can’t see?”
She wasn’t hiding now. I liked this side of her. I cocked my head to the side. “We need him to be physically able to do what we need him to do.”
She waved that off, a sound of disgust coming out from her mouth. “Put him unconscious in the hospital and he’d still be able to be a rat on the street. Trust me. His abilities of rat-hood know no bounds.”
“Rat-hood?”
“You know what I mean. Slime of the earth. A weasel.” She was getting heated, throwing down her pen.
It bounced back up, hitting her on the chin.
“Agh!” One of her hands flailed for it, but the pen was gone.
It eluded her grasp, rolling to the edge of the desk and falling to the carpet.
It ended near her foot, and if I was starting to get to know Molly Easter, she was going to somehow kick it forward.
It would careen off her desk and end up impaling itself in her leg.
I went forward and bent to pick it up. “I’ll have someone take care of him. When can you bail him out?”
She sighed, shoving her hands in her pockets. “Tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” I put her pen back into the cup with the others. I went to leave again, and I got halfway to the door, when—
“Do you—do you think I need to worry about the police coming again? You mentioned they might try to see my books or something.”
I tilted my chin down. “I don’t think so. The showdown that was going to happen already happened. Worthing gave me a heads-up that you called for them to come and question you on Sunday.”
“You knew that?” She went still.
“I did, but I don’t know why he did that. I know why he said he did, but I don’t believe it. At the end of the day, I’m still in a war against his family, so I need to use all my resources right now to find out who killed Justin and Kelly. That’s job number one.”
“Why are you being honest right now?”
“Because I made the decision at Pedro’s to be honest, thinking that would motivate you to help me better. Was I wrong?”
She shook her head, just slightly. “You were right. I wouldn’t have trusted you, and I wouldn’t have done anything you wanted.”
My mom. Her mom. It was a tangled shit show that I’d known about all my life, but she hadn’t. She was still processing.
I reached for the door. “I’ll have your father handled tonight, so bail him out tomorrow, sooner than later.
And for what it’s worth, don’t think about what your father’s done to you when you see him.
Think about Kelly. Justin. I’m aware that last Sunday would’ve been the night they used to come here.
” She sucked in a breath. That was the emotion I needed her to utilize.
“Use that . What you’re feeling right there, remember that feeling when you talk to him, and you’ll get him to do anything you want. Con him this time.”
My phone was ringing once more. I really needed to go, but I couldn’t deny there was a feeling inside of me. An itch to stay. An itch—she was the itch. She’d become my itch.
I left, answering my phone as I did. “Yes?”
I didn’t need to scratch that itch, at least not yet.
Trace was on the other end. “I need you at Katya.”