41. Colson
FORTY-ONE
COLSON
My leg bounces a mile a minute, occasionally bumping into the steering wheel as I stare out the dash and take in my surroundings. This is where Finn grew up? Fuck. I always knew he had it bad, but this is worse than Mom’s place. Metal and junk litters the yard around the small home. One of the shutters on the front window is missing, another window broken with cardboard covering half of it. There’s a shed off to the side locked tight with not just one deadbolt but three. It doesn’t make sense that they run drugs for money yet live in a place this run down.
The car in the driveway has seen better days, too. It’s not the one Finn or Clyde drives around in. I wonder if maybe neither of them is here at all. The only reason I know this is where they live is from hearing about it back in middle school.
My thumb smooths over the worn leather of the steering wheel until it snags on a piece that I’ve spent the last few months picking at. My nail scratches into it and even though I don’t want my car to look worse than it already does, I also need to keep my hands busy, so I rip it off.
When Clyde showed up outside of Mom’s, demanding I leave the house, I skipped back in time. That familiar feeling of fighting that I haven’t felt since before Mom died came over me, and I went into solution mode, trying to figure out what I could do to keep it.
It’s not just that, though.
Mom’s never coming back, and I guess my question is, what do I have to show for that? How am I going to carry her with me in this life? How am I going to build upon and correct the shit legacy she left behind?
I don’t know what my future holds or where I’m going to be next week. I don’t have a college degree to fall back on, and it’s not like my job at Gulliver’s grants me the opportunity of climbing up the metaphorical ladder. I hit the glass ceiling the second Llewellyn hired me.
I don’t know if the house is the answer, but every time I think about handing it over to the Lincolns, my intuition sparks back to life, exiting hibernation.
He’s already taken so much from us. I won’t just hand over the house.
I can’t.
I have to fight for it.
I just don’t know what that looks like with a man who is greed-driven and doesn’t give a single shit about anyone around him. I can’t sit and think about what he’ll do with the place I grew up in—the only place that holds memories of Mom, good and bad.
So, I have to fucking think. I have to figure it out.
I crack my window to let in the cold air. My heater doesn’t work half bad and mingles with the coolness. Condensation builds on the glass, making it difficult to see across the street. I roll the window back up when the cold sinks under my jacket and threatens my skin.
My fingers waver on the door handle. I don’t want to walk up that porch, but I also know I have to if I want any of this to go the way I’d like it to.
The roar of an engine catches my attention as I push my shoe against the door and prepare to push it open. Clyde’s car comes into view, speeding down the quiet street and swerving toward the sidewalk to park. I watch as he steps out and slams the door shut. As he makes his way toward the front door, I look down the street, watching and waiting for his shadow—the guy with the red windbreaker—to follow. He never does. I take it as my sign to get this the hell over with.
I get out of my car and lock it before stuffing my hands in my pockets and damn near sprinting up to the door. I knock, pounding my fist against the splintering wood and wait. I suck in a lungful of air at the same time the door opens and a short, albeit attractive woman looks up at me. The shape of her face reminds me of Finn. He may look a lot like Clyde, but one look at this woman, and I know she’s his mother.
Her gaze flits behind me before she turns and looks back in the house. Before I’m able to get a word out, she starts closing the door while muttering, “We’re not interested.”
My foot darts out before it latches shut. “I’m here for Clyde.”
“I don’t recognize you,” is her reply. She has a voice that sounds as though it’s naturally quiet. Or maybe like she’s been told to shut up one too many times and now she’s gotten used to maintaining a hush-hush demeanor that doesn’t get any backlash.
“Who the fuck is at the door?” barks a loudmouth from inside. Concern flicks over her features, drawing her eyebrows close together. I catch the sight of a faint scar lining her jaw when she glances back into the home again. “Tell ‘em we’re not interested and shut the goddamn door. We’re not heating the fucking outdoors.”
She opens her mouth as if she’s about to say something but doesn’t know what. I wonder if Clyde has stripped her of who she is as a person simply because he likes having authority over people. Almost like their fear boosts his morale and increases his energy in some sick way.
My answer is directed at Clyde, but I keep my stare on her as I take a small step forward and shout into the house, “It’s me.”
A noise ricochets, sounding a lot like a refrigerator slamming shut. Footsteps thud through the house and then he’s standing behind the woman before she slips back into the house without a word and disappears. “You got balls showing up like this. Let me guess. You’re here to get down on your pansy ass hands and knees and beg like she did?”
The room is somber, the windows blocked off with dusty, sun-stained curtains that look like they’ve never been washed. The overhead light is on, but it barely does its job. Instead, it makes the area more daunting. I stand with my back facing the wall opposite the door.
I fucking hate this man .
I hate that conniving smirk quirking his lips to the water-stained ceiling, how he stands tall with confidence in a way that denotes this level of superiority he thinks he has—but unfortunately does possess—and I detest how easy it is for him to want to strip everything I’ve ever known away from me.
“I have no goddamn desire to entertain whatever you came here for,” he tells me, sinking down in the center of a sofa that has seen better days. He picks up a pack of smokes, plucks one out, and lights it. It reminds me so much of Finn it’s almost scary.
My jaw clenches on its own volition as I watch him toss his cigarettes on the table in front of him. “I’m not giving it up.”
“So you think.”
I’d love nothing but to glance away. It’d be better than staring him head on. Every second I stand and look at him twists my insides more. Turns the simple knot that’s there into an intricate constrictor’s knot only a percentage of the population would be able to unwind. I meet his gaze and don’t waver. I can’t when I need him to know how serious I am.
I don’t plan on giving up Mom’s house without a fight.
“What do you want from me?” I inquire, knowing that I might not have a thing he wants. I’m willing to try, anyway.
His smirk pulls to one side of his face. He may not be the moody asshole that was yelling about who was at the door a few minutes ago, but in the snap of a finger it’s almost like that has changed.
He flicks his ash off onto the floor, too bothered to lean forward and make it into the ashtray. “You got nothing I want, boy.”
“I’m sure we can figure something out.”
The cigarette glows orange when he props it between his lips and inhales. He pulls it away, eyeballing me from head to toe. “How do I know you won’t try to fuck me over? Haul my ass right over the barrel top and pull my trousers down the second I agree?”
“Your DNA might be a part of me, but that’s where our similarities end. I’m not about purposely hurting people. All I want is the house.”
He squints at me. “And you’ll do anything to get it?”
“Just about.”
“Hmm,” he ponders, enjoying his smoke like we’re not mid-conversation. His gaze strays off and then he says, “I know about Tommy Lescaro. About your little fights.” My tongue finds my cheek. I don’t know why I’m surprised by this, but it rubs me the wrong way. How he knows so much about me, yet I know jack shit about his affairs. “That motherfucker robbed me blind eight years ago. Couldn’t do fuck all about it at the time because he was involved with too many people. Had fucking dreams about cutting his fingers off one by one and slicing his eyelids off with one of those miniature craft knives.”
My lips form into a frown. Christ, cutting his eyelids off? What kind of sick bastard would do such a thing?
“What’d he do?” I dare ask.
“Stole money right out of my goddamn hands by poaching my best dealer. Lured him over to The Battleground by telling him he’d make double the amount of money fighting than he was making with me by pushing drugs.”
I can see how that would be a betrayal for a man like Clyde.
“Killing him back then would’ve brought too much attention. Would’ve given me motive, so I hung back, always knowing the day would come that I’d get the chance to retaliate.”
Acid rolls in my gut. “You want me to kill him?” Because that’s where I draw the line. I’d do a lot to keep my childhood home, but murder is not on that list. I’m not risking the chance of going away for twenty plus for this man.
Clyde’s dark eyes find mine. “That would be the best-case scenario but no. You’re going to do what he did to me. You’re going to give him a taste of his own medicine and steal back from him what he took from me.”
I cross my arms over my chest, unsure how I feel about this. When I drove over here, I knew I’d have to do some shady shit in order to get Clyde to agree to give me the house, but betraying Tommy isn’t at all how I figured it’d happen. I thought, worst case, he’d have me do a drug run or collect money from some deadbeat who owes him some. Something similar to what I’ve always done for Mom, but this?
I think back to my first conversation with Tommy. How he harped on loyalty. How he has a hard-on for money just like the Lincolns do. How he warned me about the beast spitting me back out, but if it did, I wouldn’t be the same as when I went in.
Doing this would mean war but not necessarily between Tommy and Clyde.
“If Tommy finds out that I stole from him…” He’ll go ape shit. He’ll have a fucking field day, and it’ll be my head that’s on the chopping block if he gets a whiff of it.
“You saying you don’t have what it takes?” Clyde taunts. “No balls under that dick of yours?”
“I’m saying, is this the only way?”
“Once in a lifetime deal, boy. You want your dopehead mother’s house, it’s yours, but only after you replenish what Lescaro took from me.” He wipes his hands off each other, then around his cigarette says, “Easy as pie.”
“Not exactly. I have no fucking clue where Tommy lives. He’s always got a dude with him that drives him around and his fighters are always circling him.” I don’t think the guy has a weak spot.
“That’s the problem with idiots like you. Always think you need a weak point to infiltrate when the best way is always right through the front door.”
Did he not just hear me when I said I don’t know where he lives? Mom’s face materializes in my head, but when I reach for her memory, it falls away. Like sand through my fingers. Water through a colander.
Clyde didn’t need to go in through the back with her. He manipulated Mom and took advantage of her from where he stood directly in front of her. He might’ve used her weakness as a way in, but it wasn’t just that to her. It was her obsession.
And Tommy’s passion is his fighters.
I look at him, and once again I catch on to what he isn’t saying. “You want me to lose a fight.”
“That’d be the easy way of getting the job done, but if you got something else planned, clue your old man in.”
I grimace at his father-son innuendo, my expression morphing into disgust.
He snubs his cigarette out and comes to a stand. “It’ll be real simple. I’ll show up, place my bets. Everyone will think you’ll win because you’re one of Tommy’s guys, right? That prick always had to be one of the top dogs. His minions were always his fucking rottweilers.” He walks around the table and approaches me. “You’re going to play a little game of possum, except you’ll go one step further and take a dive.”
“You want me to pretend to be knocked out,” I conclude.
He tilts his head, so nonchalant. “I’ll win my bet, get what I’m owed, and you’ll live to see another day in that house. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Staying in Mom’s house is what I want, but is this the way to go about making sure that happens? Calling Aunt Bess and having her go through Stewart to work out a deal is probably best, but I’m still pissed over what she did.
Besides, I always handled Mom’s deals without issue—most of the time. What’s one more between me and the Lincolns if it means I’ll get what I want and never have to deal with them again?
I extend my palm, waiting for him to shake on it. “I’ll lose a fight so you earn big on the bets, but you’re not going to let me stay in the house longer, you’re going to sign it over to me.”
His brow raises like he’s impressed and clasps his hand in mine. His shake is firm and unyielding, on the brink of crushing my fingers if he squeezes any tighter. “You get me my money and the house is yours,” he agrees on the spot.
This agreement is straightforward and simple. By the end of it, we’ll both get what we want, except as I stand in front of the man that never wanted me and fed Mom’s addiction under the radar but also directly in the radar, my stomach coils with distrust because…
I just made a deal with the person who killed my mom.