Chapter 43
Wrong direction
Scarlett
The next half hour is a blur of activity. My dad’s grip on my hand tightens as he pulls me toward a black SUV with tinted windows. Men dressed in dark tactical uniforms open the back door, and we load inside.
Wilfred sits on my right. The doors slam, the tires screech, and the car takes off down a road different from the one we came in on.
We enter a tunnel.
“Are you okay?” my dad asks from my left.
“No.”
Wilfred places his hand over mine. I don’t know why I let him comfort me, but I do.
Maybe I’m all out of my fight juice. Maybe it’s because my slacks tore when I scraped my knee hard.
Blood coats my pants. The fabric sticks to the wound, and I know that the moment the adrenaline wears off, it’ll hurt.
But I’m not tending to it.
Why am I not tending to it?
I’m pretty sure it’s because of what my dad said to me at the luncheon. He suggested my mother had manipulated me into going to med school. He suggested my mother lied to me. “Was what you said about Mom true?” I ask, my voice quivering.
“Yes. She didn’t think you’d make a good wife. Med school was a better choice. She made up a story of rebellion and cause. It worked. You are a great doctor.”
I never wanted to marry. Did she tell me that, or did I decide that? How can I not tell? Did she condition me somehow? Oh my God. My therapist isn’t strong enough for this. I will need a better therapist. Do I want to know the truth?
“It’s okay, Scarlett. It’s over now,” my dad says, clearly trying to comfort me, thinking I held back a sob because of all that happened at lunch.
While a shoot-out is definitely stressful, that’s not what’s happening inside my head.
I’m unraveling because my entire life was a lie.
My mother lied to me, and I built my life around what she told me. I trusted every word out of her mouth.
Wait, is my dad lying? I don’t know. I don’t think he is. He had no reason to bring up Mom that way. It seemed sincere. It seemed resentful too. Like he couldn’t wait to tell me the truth.
“It’s over,” he repeats.
“I’m afraid it’s only just begun.”
I can feel his gaze on my cheek, but I ignore it. Besides, we’re in a dark tunnel and our vision is limited.
“Can you tend to yourself, or do you need help?” my dad asks.
“It depends on the severity of my wounds.”
A light flashes, then dims again, and the car roars as it climbs a steep incline. Once the road levels out, the driver parks the car, and the men in the front get out. The three of us stay in the back. I withdraw my hand from under Wilfred’s.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Nothing. Just making sure the ride is secure.”
I look out the window, and it appears we’re still in the tunnel. “Where are we?” My adrenaline is wearing off. Pain from the front of my body makes me sweat. My right shoulder hurts now too, since my dad yanked me out from under the table and away from the bullets.
Outside the car and around us, bright neon lights pop off.
I sense movement under my feet, as if we’re being transported.
Are we? Wilfred and my dad step out, with Wilfred offering me his bloody hand.
My hope is that it’s not Endo’s blood. I’m unsure how I’d handle his death, so I try not to think about it.
And I definitely don’t accept the offered palm.
I step out from my dad’s side.
He looks me up and down and fixes my blouse over my right breast, which fell out of my bra.
It makes me think about a baby. “What did Mom say about me being a mother?”
My dad’s eyes seem to show sympathy. “She didn’t think you’d like that.”
“Did she like it?”
Dad has to think about it. “Sometimes. She would have liked to have had two boys a lot more.”
I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from what he said to me. “Don’t tell Charlotte.”
“She knows,” he says.
“You shouldn’t have told her.”
“I didn’t. Your mother did the moment she found out her little bastard needed a father.”
“Jesus, Dad. What is wrong with you?”
“Grow up, Scarlett!” He spits the words in my face. “Smell the gunpowder in the air.” He grabs my chin and lifts my face. “Smell it. It’s the smell of money, and money buys power and freedom.”
“Yes, but I smell lots of blood too.”
He releases me. “You know nothing. It’s pointless.”
“She’s in shock,” Wilfred says from behind me.
“You should be in shock too. It’s what would happen to normal people, given our circumstances.” I look around. Neon lights. Dark metal walls.
“You don’t like what I do,” my dad says, “but you sure liked your one-bedroom dorm and then the apartment. You sure liked going through med school without being indebted to anyone because I paid the tuition. You sure like your charity events, your stupid horses, your ability to work for free overseas, and not having to worry about money. You should be grateful I saved you before Macarley turned you into his whore.”
“That’s enough, Daniel,” Wilfred says.
“Get her cleaned up.” My dad walks away, flanked by his men. He pulls back a charcoal-black curtain and walks inside. A man closes the curtain and stands guard before it. I can feel the warmth of Wilfred’s body behind me.
“Let’s go,” he says.
I wince from pain and follow him. “Where are we?”
“Inside a transport container.”
We are moving. “What does that even mean?”
“We’re traveling in a container on a train.”
My brain isn’t processing. “We are parked inside a train?”
“Yes.”
I look up, and our eyes meet. His are dark, hard, cold. There’s nothing between us, yet the way he looks at me tells me that maybe I’m the only one who feels that way. He might be attracted to me. I think he is.
Endo tried to tell me about Wilfred, but I didn’t listen because I didn’t trust Endo. Maybe now I do. Maybe now, with the veil being peeled off, I can start seeing my dad and his business partner with my own eyes and my own sharp mind.
“Do you have a first aid kit?”
“We have more than that.” Wilfred pulls back a dark gray curtain, revealing a fully equipped medical room similar to one found inside a hospital emergency room.
I can tell he’s waiting for praise. “I’m impressed.”
He nods. “I thought you might be.”
I rest my foot on a stool and pull up my pants to assess my wound, discomfort with having to cut the side of my pant leg in front of Wilfred creeping up my body.
“Do you mind?” I ask and search for scissors inside the top drawer of a metal medical cart. At this point, my knee throbs with a heartbeat of its own.
The container tilts sideways, and my foot hits and unlatches the brake on the cart I’m searching.
It rolls past the curtain and into the adjacent curtained-off space.
It hits the wall and bounces off something, making it roll to the left.
I’m about to rush after the cart when someone grabs my ankle.
I look down and gasp, covering my mouth.
The callused hand belongs to a naked man with dark hair, a long dark beard, and dirty fingernails that haven’t been cut in a while.
He wears a thick shackle latched to a short chain that’s attached to the iron flooring.
A Jolly Roger tattoo on the dirty skin between a forefinger and a thumb tells me this man can only be Cass Macarley.
But there are many people with such tattoos.
It could be anyone. It really could.
But it’s not. I know it’s Cass Macarley.
Once the train levels out and we stop tilting and shaking, I think about how I will handle this situation.
“This is the man Endo Macarley is looking for, isn’t it?”
“Endo is dead,” Wilfred says, and I feel the grip on my ankle tighten like a vise. If I doubted it was Cass, I don’t anymore. I want him to know that I recognize him and that his brother is searching for him.
I tug my leg, but Cass holds on tight. I tug again. He lets go.
I walk up to Wilfred, who says, “We kept the Macarley dog here.”
“But if Endo is dead, why are we hiding inside a moving train?”
“We’re not hiding.”
“We both know we are. We both know you’re as scared of Endo Macarley as I am. This man…” I point to Cass on the floor. “He’s all Endo wants. Give him what he wants, and he’ll stop hunting you.”
Wilfred bares his teeth. “He’ll stop hunting when he’s dead.”
I don’t flinch. “Or when you are.”
A man wearing headphones joins us. “Endo is in pursuit. It’s just a matter of time until he figures out the tunnels. Then our problems will quadruple.”
Wilfred curses and looks from me to Cass Macarley, then back to me. “Your dad won’t give him Cass alive.”
“Do you always do what my dad says?” I challenge.
Wilfred’s jaw works as he thinks. He’s not like Endo. Endo decides in seconds. Even if he’s wrong, he’s decisive. But I can tell Wilfred wants something, even if that something goes against my dad’s orders. I wouldn’t mind if Wilfred betrayed my dad.
“By the time you make a decision, Endo will have caught up to us,” I say.
“I’ll release Cass under one condition.”
“Name it.”