Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CALLAN
In the middle of lunch with Sakura, someone jiggled the doorknob.
Sakura sucked in a breath and glanced over at it. “Are you … expecting someone?” she asked when the knob jiggled again, followed by a bang.
“Open the fuck up,” someone said from outside the door, his voice gruff and angry.
I’d asked Jo?o Rocha, the leader of Poison, to meet me after lunch. I needed information, information that I couldn’t get by myself.
But he was here early.
“One moment, Sakura.”
I walked over to the door and unlocked it. Sure enough, Jo?o stood in the hall with his arms crossed over his chest and his lips curled into an ugly snarl.
“Heard you were asking for me. What the fuck do you want?” he asked.
After peering over my shoulder at Sakura, who wiped a napkin across her lips, I stepped out of the room and closed the door behind me. I didn’t want her to hear. I was doing this for her.
Once the door clicked, I sucked in a deep breath. I couldn’t believe I was asking the leader of fucking Poison to do my dirty work for me. But nobody could find out that I had anything to do with this.
Especially Jett.
“I need a personal phone number,” I said. “And you can’t tell anyone about it.”
“For who?” Jo?o asked.
“Diego Fernandez.”
Jo?o stared at me for a few moments, then laughed. “The fuck you want his number for? He’s the holiest fucking cop in Redwood, would do anything to see any of these corrupt motherfuckers behind bars. You a snitch?”
“No, I’m not a fucking snitch, Jo?o. Can you do it?”
“I don’t work for free,” Jo?o said.
“I’ll pay you a thousand for it.”
Jo?o scowled. “A thousand fucking dollars? Fuck that. Make it two, and you have a deal.”
“You want two thousand for a phone number?” I asked.
“You’re lucky I don’t ask for two million,” he said. “Already had one sucker pay that for info.” He leaned against the lockers and cocked his head, as if he was trying to intimidate me. “You know, Poison does the best work in Redwood.”
“Fine,” I said between gritted teeth. “Two thousand.”
“Make it three, and we’ll keep quiet about it too.”
I growled and hardened my glare. This fucking kid. If anyone else had asked for three thousand to find a damn phone number, I would’ve laughed in their face. But Poison got the job done right on the first try. And I knew he would keep quiet if I paid him.
“Half now,” I started. “Half once you give it to me.”
“Deal.”
“Wait here,” I said to him.
I sucked in a deep breath and walked back into the classroom, where Sakura finished off the lunch I’d bought her. I didn’t want her to know my plans. She couldn’t get involved with this shit.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at Jo?o, who stood at the open door with his tattooed arms crossed over his chest and a brow arched at her. She quickly averted her gaze.
Unlocking the bottom drawer of my desk, I pulled out a yellow envelope that I had filled with money before I stopped at Stop and Shop. There were seventeen hundred-dollar bills inside. It was more than half, but I didn’t have time to take out the extra two hundred with Sakura here.
After walking back out the door, I yanked Jo?o out with me and shut it so we stood in private in the empty hallway. As soon as I handed him the cash, he tucked it away in his jacket and turned around to walk back down the hallway. But I grabbed him by his shoulder and spun him back around.
“I need the information by the end of tomorrow.”
“You’ll get it when I give it to you,” Jo?o said.
That punk was about to walk away from me again, but I grabbed the back of his collar and slammed him against the lockers. “You’ll get it to me by the end of the day tomorrow.”
He shoved me away and straightened himself out. “Get your hands the fuck off me.”
Once he walked down the hall, I blew out a breath and stepped back into my classroom. Sakura stood from my desk and grabbed both her and my empty containers of food, bringing them to the small trash in the corner of the room.
“I should be getting to my next class,” she said, grabbing her backpack and averting eye contact with me suddenly. “I don’t want anyone to see me walking out of your classroom, especially when the hallways are flooded with curious eyes.”
But lunch didn’t end for another five minutes.
Five minutes.
And she wanted to leave early.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked to my desk, spotting my phone buzzing on my stack of Literature books. Sakura glanced down at it, then up at me, grimacing at the name glowing on the screen.
Georgina.
“You don’t have to go,” I said to her.
“But I should,” she said, swallowing hard, but not moving toward the door.
My phone buzzed again, and I wanted to hurl it across the room. Georgina stopped calling me and was now suddenly texting me in the middle of my workday, as if she didn’t care that I was at school.
Georgina: You’re fucking terrible.
Georgina: I hate you.
Georgina: You’re the worst husband ever.
Georgina: You can’t even come on a simple vacation with me. This is what you get.
After her final message, a string of images appeared on my phone. Dick pics of whoever the hell she was fucking in Paris. And even a fucking video that I suspected she wanted me to watch.
I gritted my teeth. Saturday couldn’t come soon enough. I would fucking destroy her and her father. Her entire fucking family. I hated them all, except Blaise. He loathed his family just as much as I did.
And once everyone was taken care of, I would have Sakura all to myself.
While I read the messages from my wife, Sakura had turned around and walked to the door with her hands wrapped around her backpack straps. She had pulled her hair into a high, straight ponytail today that bounced against her shoulders.
“Come over tonight,” I said to Sakura before she slipped out of my class.
I shouldn’t have asked her until Jett and Georgina were dead, but I did anyway.
“Come over? Like, to your house?” she asked, eyes widening.
“Yes, to my house. Eight o’clock. Please.”
God, now, I sound desperate.
But I didn’t want to spend another night alone in that empty house.
She paused for a long time, then nodded, a small smile creeping onto her face. “I’ll see you at eight then.”