Chapter 3
THREE
ALTERNATE UNIVERSE
It happened at the end of my shift on Monday.
I hadn’t exactly ridden the high of forcing my sister to take a break from working herself to the bone, then accomplishing a busy Saturday of keeping my life in order, then enjoying a cocktail (or two) with my girl, onward to a chill Sunday where Jacques got an extra-long walk, I got an at-home facial, and as my New Year’s Eve treat, I caught up on a binge of Slow Horses.
(As an aside, although by no means would I choose the reason why it happened, there was seriously something to be said about a quiet New Year’s.
No annoying drunk people, for one. No stress/pressure about outfit, hair, or someone to kiss at the stroke of midnight, two.
No having to figure out how to get home without an inebriated asshole plowing into your car and ending your new year way early, a very important three.)
The rest of my weekend was a mixed bag.
The pluses: The Tiffany’s collar that Raye did indeed put on my dog was easy to take off.
Cheyenne’s face didn’t pop up behind the last jar of Biscoff cookie butter at the grocery store because she was stalking me.
Mom and Dad asked me to dinner on Wednesday, and they weren’t vegan, just vegetarian, so cheese was a staple in their diet, and that cheese would be good, Mom was a great cook, and I didn’t have to worry about making something for myself at least one night that week.
And word filtered to me that Knox was being released from the hospital on Monday morning.
The minuses: It took massive amounts of willpower not to fashion a disguise and go check in on Knox at the hospital in a way Knox wouldn’t know I’d checked in on him at the hospital.
Also, Brady was trying to get in touch with me, I had my suspicions why (to discuss how what we’d done was neither of our finest hours), and I couldn’t go there. Thus, very unlike me, I avoided his texts and calls.
And I couldn’t seem to stop myself from opening my laptop and researching the dastardly deeds of the Tucson Family Chambers—Knox’s birth brood.
Primarily, his father’s ties with cartels and his bent toward helping them transport drugs over the border, along with his sister, Gypsy (yeah, that was her real name), hooking up with one of her father’s scarier protégés, a dude named Rocco.
I mean…Rocco.
Cool name, but if it didn’t destine you for a life of crime, a career as an MMA fighter, or the drummer of a thrash metal band, nothing did.
Granted, there wasn’t much to find about that lot, seeing as they moved around in the under-underworld of crime. As such, they didn’t exactly take selfies with their caches of fentanyl pills, throwing up devil’s horns and posting that shit to Insta.
In fact, they had no social media. And outside of a few minor run-ins with law enforcement that were side notes in articles in the Arizona Daily Star, they had no online presence at all.
I looked anyway.
The reason I knew anything about them was because Knox came clean (his words, not mine) about them during one of our late-night, post-sex (or pre-sex, depending on how you looked at it), getting-to-know-you sessions.
This came after an hour-long deep dive of my history with Dream, and me using him to verbally try to cypher what her problem was with me (Knox also had no solutions to this dilemma).
His problems with his blood relatives were a whole lot more terrifying.
We could just say his dad was a member of that very rare breed who wasn’t proud as all get-out his child enlisted in the United States military.
We could also say, when his time in the army was done, his dad’s pupil, who had since become the master, was hip on recruiting Knox and his skills for the family business, using his sister as go-between.
Oh yeah.
This was jacked right the hell up, thus it wasn’t a surprise when Rocco and Gypsy didn’t feel like taking no for an answer.
Knox took pains to stay out of their lives and keep them out of his, so I didn’t know what kicked off Thursday night. I just got the intel at the hospital it wasn’t NI&S biz that got his ass shot, it was family biz.
And I wasn’t researching them to gain info as a launching pad for some half-baked Angels scheme to get Knox’s blood family (and one of their boyfriends) to back off, or better yet, caged so they could stop ruining lives with their shenanigans.
I was researching them to find fodder to warn the Angels off.
Sadly, I didn’t have the computer skills to come up with much, which made me move to the very top on my to-do list the item of recruiting a local Angels computer guru we could go to for such tasks.
But I did put a request into our Angels’ benefactor, Arthur, for whatever intelligence he could glean.
Arthur was super quick with intel, but sometimes not. And we’d never met him so he wasn’t around for us to badger him to go faster.
Byron was sitting in his corner at The Surf Club every day. We could badger him to our hearts’ content.
Frighteningly, Arthur had replied, Request already received. Will have a full report in 72 hours.
This meant one of the other Angels asked, and I decided to take that as good. Arthur could provide the substantiation we needed to stay well away from this and let the professionals sort it out.
And by that I didn’t mean the Nightingale men (though, I also meant them, I just hoped they kept their distance).
I meant the cops.
Knox had been shot.
Knox did not want to live what was sure to be a short life if he lived it in the criminal under-underworld.
So I had no doubt, when one of his sister’s scary beau’s henchmen shot him, Knox pressed charges.
But this was one of the two things that happened at the end of my shift on Monday.
See, Raye was in the employee locker room with Jessie, whispering, which I took to be whispering about Knox.
I understood this play and was even grateful for it.
In my head it was all Knox the vast majority of the time.
I didn’t need that leaking to my work.
The thing was, it was all Knox most of the time with me, so when I overheard them whispering (and as such, I suspected they were talking about him), I hid in the kitchen and listened.
This was what I heard.
“Is he crazy?” (Jess.)
“Your definition of crazy and my definition of crazy is not the same as Lee Nightingale’s definition of crazy.” (Raye.)
Lee was the founding director of Nightingale Investigations & Security (it was all in the name).
I’d met Lee.
I had not met Rocco whatever-his-last-name-was, but I was pretty sure, even knowing what I knew about Rocco, Lee would scare me more.
“Knox needs to press charges.” (Jess.)
My back shot straight.
“He’s not pressing charges. They’re going after that whole outfit.” (Raye.)
I felt every inch of my skin get tingly, and not in a good way.
“I’m gonna have a word with Eric about this shit.” (Jess, sounding ticked…and scared, and I was right there with her.)
“You do you, sister, but I’ll tell you, I had more than one with Cap, and they are not budging on this.” (Raye.)
“Knox should have never pulled that lunatic stunt. Nancy told me that Stella told her that Mace is beside himself. Knox broke the numero uno rule. Whether it’s personal shit that’s iffy or work shit that’s iffy, you do not go in alone.” (Jess.)
I felt so much pressure in my head, I was pretty certain it was going to explode.
He went in alone?
I thought…
No, I assumed since they knew who shot Knox, it was because he’d had someone with him.
I had no idea he went into whatever this nightmare was alone.
Alone!
Even the Angels, who were self-taught at this avenging stuff, knew better than to pull a stunt like that.
“Fortunately, he’s sidelined for the next six to eight weeks while he recovers. His penance for doing something that boneheaded.” (Raye.)
“But…why would he do it in the first place?” (Jess.)
Good question! (Me.)
“He said he was protecting them. I get it, he doesn’t want them on these people’s radar. He doesn’t want any beefs. I could see he thought this was his deal and he had to handle it himself. It was still a faulty play.” (Raye.)
“You got that right, sister.” (Jess.)
And she did have it right! (Me.)
I felt eyes on me, turned and saw Lucia, our supremely talented chef, staring at me with brows raised.
Lucia was quiet, kept to herself and her world of herbs, spices, salt, fat, acid and heat, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t speak, and I didn’t need her narcing about my eavesdropping.
So I put a finger to my lips, retreated a few steps, then called loudly, “Later, Lucia,” as I resumed my stroll to the staff room.
She rolled her eyes.
“Yo, bitches,” I said when I entered, totes proud of myself it came out calm and easy and not like I felt.
Like finding a certain hot guy and ripping him a new asshole for being so damned stupid.
“Hey, Loon. You heading out?” Jess asked, all calm and easy too.
Damn, we were getting good at prevarication.
I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
I nodded. “Got a couple of hours to kill then I’m going over to Dream’s to babysit so she can go out and heal her chakras.”
I’d told them of my mission to sort things once and for all with my older sister.
The results of this sharing were as follows.
Raye: a huff and crossing her arms on her chest. No words. She let her actions share she thought I was wasting my time. This didn’t bode well seeing as she’d known Dream the longest and had spent a lot more time with her.
Harlow: a little clap with a bounce and “I think that’s really a good idea, Loon. I mean, she opened the door, I’m glad you’re not going to let her close it.”
Jess: “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Shanti: “Some psychologist needs to do a study on how hard we work to keep the family ties binding, even when it’s emotionally better to let them slip away. Oh wait. They have. And the buzzwords that came from that are avoiding toxicity.”
Hmph.
Willow: “I guess we all have our breaking point. You just haven’t reached yours yet.”