Chapter 12
Mia
EVERYONE LEFT … ABANDONING ME with Jameson Knight.
With the boss I never wanted.
With the man who meticulously sewed people back together in his basement while dissecting me piece by piece. He didn’t look at all concerned or flustered by the fact that a man had been bleeding on his basement floor.
Rather, he looked only irritated with me in the lower level of his home that seemed to essentially be a small hospital. A place he practiced medicine on men who obviously were hiding their dealings.
And not one person who’d come down here with me acted at all disturbed. Instead, they were comfortable with him. This was a man in his element, perched on his throne, confident in his power with people he trusted by his side.
I might have watched Jameson charm people at the clubhouse yesterday, and they might personify the wealth and luxury of this exclusive enclave, but this Jameson was the king of Paradise Grove. A man of power and precision.
Calculated and commanding.
In control.
I’d known he was part of something sinister all along, but his confidence told me he ruled it. He managed it. He structured it. I’d been a fool to think otherwise.
And not even his daughter appeared surprised.
Instead, she’d looked hurt he’d left her out.
Which was a whole other issue. Their relationship was strained.
She loved her daddy, but I saw her little glances and pouts over the last week when he didn’t stop by the study to say hi, when he didn’t include her in whatever he was working on.
Something had changed between them, and she didn’t understand it. She was seven. How could she?
“Mia Darling, time to lay more ground rules, it seems.”
Oh, please. I wasn’t about to carve out more stipulations and rules on the imaginary wall between us when the secret waters would just seep through the cracks and flood it. “Or we have a real conversation,” I blurted out, but my body shook with adrenaline at confronting him.
Who was I? A teacher he could get rid of in an instant.
Not many would really miss me. My parents would probably sigh and finally speak of me just so they could put on my tombstone, “She got what she deserved.” My mom always believed it was better to stay quiet, and my dying for speaking up would have proved her right.
She’d thought that with my coach. But I spoke up. She thought that with my job, but I spoke up, and then with my sister too. Silence could be perceived as acceptance more often than it should. But I wouldn’t allow it anymore when I needed to be heard.
“What is a real conversation to you?” he asked as if I were dense.
Fine. He probably thought being a teacher made me somehow inferior to him, and I could see it in his judgmental eyes.
But I could be judgmental too. “Same as there are dirty cops, I guess there are dirty surgeons too … Are you ‘helping’ criminals down here daily?” I whispered.
“God, I knew it would be bad, but he’s a part of a motorcycle gang.
That wasn’t just a scrape. I saw the blood.
He was stabbed. And no one—not even your daughter—cares. ”
“Well, let’s be clear. Franny thinks it’s a bike accident. And everyone else is used to it, Mia.” Jameson leaned casually against the table Jacques had been sitting on while I paced back and forth.
I combed my hands through my hair, feeling the bile swirl in my stomach. “Am I aiding and abetting? I’m just as bad if I stay here being your stupid freaking nanny! I’m teaching her math while you … what? Sew up felons?”
He didn’t deny it. He just let me pace back and forth, back and forth.
“And the motorcycle gang will keep seeing my face, and you told them my name, so I’m practically in now.”
“You’re not in a motorcycle gang.” Did he sound freaking bored? “It’s not a gang. It’s a club.”
“Same thing! Next thing I know, I’ll hear you’re selling drugs.”
He blinked slowly, no denial leaving his lips.
“Oh my God. You’re a drug dealer in a motorcycle club, and I’m helping you. I’m trying to get out of one mess and stepping into another.” How could I save my sister if I couldn’t even save myself?
“What mess?” His blue eyes were laser focused on me now. Jameson Knight thought he knew everything about me, but he didn’t know what drove me to take that summer school job in the first place.
I’d known it wasn’t stable, wasn’t smart, was too good to be true. I’d dealt with all those things before. That’s exactly what Felix was in our lives. “Not your concern. Your salary offer will fix my problems.”
“You don’t have debt.” His eyes narrowed on me, searching for answers I wasn’t going to give him.
“Well, we all have secrets, Jameson.” I crossed my arms over my chest, and his eyes flicked down. Oh great. Now we were dealing with my attraction to him too.
“You say my first name only in anger, Mia.”
I scoffed. “I really shouldn’t be saying your first name at all.”
He rubbed a hand across his jaw, a tell I was starting to learn was him trying to wipe away an emotion. “True, and yet I continue to find myself interested in what it will sound like coming from your mouth in a different tone.”
Trying to squelch the heat I felt at him staring at my lips, I murmured, “Maybe try not being in a gang then.”
There was that half smile of his, like I was ridiculous. “Mia, I’m not in the Heathens motorcycle club.”
“You have a bike.” I pointed toward the door, getting angrier at the secrets because I knew I shouldn’t care about him, but I was finding that I did.
I told myself it was just that he’d saved my life at the school, or that he was Franny’s dad and I wanted what was best for her.
I’d have to focus on that. “Your daughter said you ride when she’s not around. It’s dangerous.”
“Yes, a Ducati can be dangerous, and when she’s not around, I’m on it.”
“Right. And you helped Jacques, who is—”
“In a motorcycle club.” He sighed like he didn’t want me to put two and two together. “And I’m there when the club needs me, but I’m not a part of it. Don’t make assumptions.”
“So, you just help anyone who pays?” That wasn’t it. It couldn’t be. He held too much authority, and even if he didn’t want me to, I could put two and two together.
“It’s complicated.”
“Or it’s not. You’re secretly in a gang and probably are the head of that gang because they all listen to you. To lead a gang like that … it’s not complicated. It’s dangerous.” I couldn’t help but take a shaky breath as I paced over to the sink and then turned to him to lean against it.
“If that was the case, Mia, that I was in a sort of gang, would you be nervous for me?”
Was he for real?
“For Franny,” I corrected him fast, “and myself.”
He took a step toward me, and I leaned back. “It would be no more danger than you were already in when you took the academy job. Less, actually, with me and my men here.”
“It’s true then? You lead them?”
“Are you asking even when I told you it’s best you not know?”
The room was probably holding its breath waiting for my answer as I looked into his blue eyes. “I’m asking what was in that envelope you took at the country club, what club you’re in exactly, and what you do for a living, Jameson. Yes, I’m asking.”
“A lot of questions.”
“And I want all the answers.”
He nodded. “I lead something with a few others, yes.”
“And Franny?” I couldn’t stop myself from whispering because that girl was just a child, just an innocent little thing who deserved the world.
“And Franny has … been born into it. I promise I’m keeping you and Franny safe.”
His words felt so sincere, laced with such sweet poison, I almost crumbled and folded right there, but my hand gripped the side of the sink to steady myself and slipped.
Red stain smeared across my palm. I saw how it painted my skin crimson and jolted away from it.
Immediately, Jameson steadied me by putting an arm around my waist and gripping my wrist softly.
“You can’t promise anything. There’s blood. His blood is everywhere.” I wheezed, and suddenly my breath caught like it didn’t want to enter my lungs. Blood—like at the school, like in my nightmares—filled my eyes. That red would not wash away no matter how hard I tried.
“Mia.” His voice was steady, strong, solid. “Darling Mia,” he murmured again, and I felt the tone of it, like I was too sweet, too na?ve, like I couldn’t handle this.
“I saw you kill a man, and now I’ve seen you piecing another one back together. That’s what a life like this is. Destruction and then piecing it back together as if it can be whole again. You realize that, right? Whatever you’re in can’t just be fixed.”
He nodded like he agreed that it was complicated, that my emotions were relevant, that I wasn’t spiraling into the panic attack that I was. “I like to think I can fix most anything.”
My brain tried to catch up with what was happening. I clawed through my memories and hoped to find more clues, things I’d missed, evidence in this estate. “The letter and the emblem on the seal—”
“You can’t go back to the life you lived, Mia, if you find out about this one. I’m trying to—”
“I’m already here. I already can’t go back. Because none of this is normal.” I gasped for air, but he didn’t let me get lost in my feelings or emotions.
“It’s normal here. Where you live. Now.” He yanked me into his chest, body to body, and let go of my wrist for a moment to turn on the water. Then he gripped it again to put my hand under the faucet.
When he splashed it over my hands, the ice-cold water jolted me, but he held me steady, firm, and with care as he rubbed at the red on my hand.
“Paradise Grove? A paradise in hell?”
“Maybe.” He took a breath. “Isn’t it normal to help a friend though? It was a minor procedure. I’m a doctor, he’s a patient. You saw him up and talking. His blood is being washed away.”
Washing away the stain didn’t mean that I forgot it had been there, that I wouldn’t be traumatized from this now too. “Everyone is just okay with this. How are you all okay with it?”