Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Logan
T wo days later…
“Okay, that’s the last of it,” Kenton sighed, dusting his hands off on his jeans. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, but Dad put a majority of his shit in the attic.”
“Dibs, I don’t have to come and help out with that,” Tom Townsend yelled, holding his hand in the air.
Not missing a beat, Hurst clapped him on the shoulder. “So nice of you to offer. I’ll write your name down.”
Glaring at his grandpa, Tom stalked away to where his brothers were standing laughing.
Seeing DB, Garrett, Ellis, Alejandro, and Carter standing in a group, looking at something, I walked over to join them, squeezing in between two of them to see the screen of what turned out to be one of their phones.
“Pa-pa-pang pai,” Ava shouted, as the group behind her chanted, “Down in one, down in one.”
Squinting, I made out what looked like a restaurant with Ava and Bexley sitting at a table, surrounded by other patrons. On the table were plates with the remnants of what they’d eaten and numerous small ceramic shot glasses.
“What’s this?”
“Ava and Bex went to a Chinese restaurant last night and ended up doing Sake shooters. The video went viral on the internet because a news crew were visiting the building next door and heard the noise,” DB explained, bursting out laughing when Bex and Ava shot the contents of the little glasses down and fell backward off their chairs.
Only those two would go to a Chinese restaurant, get drunk on Japanese rice wine, and then get filmed by a news crew.
I was just about to call her dad over to join us when Ava squealed, “ Totally! He’s right, Bex. We need to have a cigar to celebrate .”
That wasn’t what stopped me from showing him the video.
No, that was Bex shaking her head and saying, “ I can’t. I’ve got the worst gag reflex. Even eating bananas triggers it, and if I stick a cigar in my mouth, I’ll probably puke . Just thinking ‘bout it makes me— ” she broke off, gagging and cringing.
All of the guys looked at me sympathetically. “Sucks to be you, dude,” Cole Townsend murmured behind me, clapping me on the shoulder and shaking it gently. “That doesn’t bode well for you.”
“What doesn’t?” Kenton asked as he joined us. Hearing his daughter’s voice coming from the video, he frowned and squeezed between Ellis and Garrett to see the screen of the phone. “Is she… Wait, why does that have the logo for a news channel on it? Did Bexley get into trouble?”
None of us got to answer him because just then, the news anchor came onto the screen.
“ When we went to Torus Trading to report on the organized crime and money laundering operation that was uncovered yesterday, we assumed we were finished with our story. As we left the building, we heard screaming and shouting from Pia’s Lotus, an establishment known for its cuisine and variety of Sakes, and assumed we were stumbling across something seedy and sinister related to the original story we were reporting on. What we saw here tonight was, in fact, the celebrations of two women that ended up bringing people together, people who were in shock at what had been going on in their city, under their noses, this whole time. If this isn’t proof that we can withstand anything, I don’t know what is. ”
If it’d stopped there, it would have been okay for Kenton. Instead, just then, the crowd started roaring, “ Gag reflex, gag reflex !” just as Bex tried to eat a banana in the background. We saw a brief glimpse of her gagging as she bit into the tip, then the video cut off.
“Damn,” Carter whispered next to me. “You’re screwed, man.”
Kenton straightened, his lips pinched tightly together, and then asked, “Whose phone is that?”
Normally DB was a take-charge kind of guy, the one who spoke clearly and confidently no matter what. However, at that moment, when he replied with, “It’s mine, sir,” he sounded more like a kid who’d been caught doing something wrong than the sheriff he was.
“Send it to me,” Kenton ordered, pulling his phone out and reeling off his number. In seconds his phone beeped, and we heard the video start again from the beginning.
We all could have moved away and at least pretended to be doing something, but for some unknown reason, we were rooted to the spot until he got to the end.
“I’m going to kick her ass,” Kenton muttered, putting his phone in his pocket. “No,” he glared at me, “ you’re going to kick her ass.”
“More like kiss it,” Garrett snickered, getting a glare from me and a curious look from Bex’s dad.
“What’s that? They kissed?” When the guys from work all nodded, he looked expectantly at me. “Well, all right, then. It took you long enough! So, you kick her ass, and me and her mother will just lecture her about doing dumb shit on live television. Not that I expect her ever to go on live television again,” he added, more to himself than the rest of us.
Raising my hand slowly, I told him, “Uh, the kiss wasn’t exactly an intentional one.” I could feel my cheeks burning as the others smirked at me behind him, including Hurst. “It was an accident. I mean, not exactly an accident because I was aiming for her cheek, but then she tried to kiss my cheek, and we didn’t get the angles right.” I swear, it was like someone had erased all of the pauses speech patterns had to separate words because they all just mixed together.
For shit’s sake, I was telling her dad I’d kissed his daughter… The daughter who I’d humiliated seven years ago so badly that she pretty much ran away from home.
Just to add to my embarrassment, Grandpa walked up behind her dad, having disappeared to use the bathroom a couple of minutes before this atomic bomb had hit.
“Son, not sure you wanna tell a father that you kissed his daughter in public by mistake. See, she’s got a reputation to uphold, and you kissing her makes your intentions known, if you get my drift.”
Glaring at him, I snapped, “It’s not the eighteenth century anymore, Grandpa. Welcome to the modern ages where shit like that happens all the time.”
Smiling smugly at me, he shrugged, “You’re still telling the poor girl’s dad you kissed her, and it didn’t mean jack to you. How would you feel if that was your daughter?”
“I’d be kicking his ass if he did that to Layla,” Hurst chimed in, winking at me evilly behind Kenton’s back.
Looking down at his boots, Kenton shook his head and sighed sadly. “It’s going to break Lorena’s heart when I show her this video and tell her you kissed our daughter—our only baby—and it was all a worthless mistake. You know, Pops always said y’all were meant for each other, and with you stepping up the way you have, he’d be so happy.”
“Damn, son,” Gramps winced. “You’ve broken a dead man’s heart and her mother’s.”
Kenton was opening his mouth to say something else, so I threw my hands up in the air. “Fine! It meant something, okay? It meant a lot, but it was still an accident. She didn’t mean to kiss me— ”
“And she booped him on the nose and knocked twice on his head after it,” Carter interrupted, laughing his ass off with the others. “I think we’ve got it on the security cam from the reception area. Funniest shit I’ve seen in a long time.”
“What’s this?” Alex asked as he joined us.
“When Logan kissed Bex,” DB explained through his laughter. “I need to pull the footage up so we can relive it.”
The typically somber and serious Alex burst out laughing, getting a glare from me.
“Sorry, man, but it was hilarious. I was just coming out of the door from the cells when it happened. I swear I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.”
“So you’ll talk to her about doing dumb shit?” her dad asked again, looking at me hopefully.
Rubbing my face with both hands, I gave in. “Fine, I’ll talk to her about it, but knowing Bex, she’ll probably stew over it for the next thirty years anyway.”
Nodding at me, he turned back to the house and shouted, “Time to make it look like a homicidal maniac’s dream.”
Yup, because I was a sucker, we were going back in to put the plastic down on the floors for her.
As we walked back, Alex asked, “Why are we doing this if she’s getting them sanded and refinished?”
“Because she doesn’t want to risk the guy sanding down too far. She got it in her head that if she gets paint on it, he’ll have to sand down, even more, to get it off and ruin the grain of the wood,” I explained.
“She’s not all wrong,” Hurst nodded. “That can happen. When we were redoing the house, Lindee dropped yellow paint on the floor, and sanding it out was a bitch. The guy who came to refinish the floors had to sand a bit more to get it out of the grain, which meant he had to put an extra coat of varnish over the area. I swear even now, it looks different. ”
I have no idea if that was true because I’d never done it before, but Bex had started the job, so I was going to have to finish it.
With the mental image of her shitty gag reflex haunting me.
The next day…
I hadn’t slept for shit last night, and coming into work today to hear that Diego Mantoya, his buddy the linebacker, Ashesh, had made bail just put me in an even worse mood.
“Once it goes to court, they’ll be sentenced. It’s just shitty they got bail,” DB sighed as he told me the news.
“How did that even happen? He’s got a record for similar crimes. Hell, we found the drugs in his home, we have Cinder’s statement, and we’ve got the bodycam footage of those fucking tear gas canisters,” I growled, wanting to tear the head off whoever granted him bail.
“I don’t have the answers for why, Logan. The judge heard the case this morning and granted it. We’ve got three months until his next appearance in court for the case, so we gather as much evidence as we can, and we keep an eye on them.”
“It was Ingleston, wasn’t it?”
Ingleston was a judge who was notorious for granting bail when it shouldn’t be given. We hadn’t been able to get anything on him to date, but there was a lot of suspicion over how lenient he was with some cases.
He didn’t say the words, but the way DB’s lips pinched answered my question.
“I thought the ADA was looking through his cases for us?”
“He is, but there isn’t sufficient evidence to go after Ingleston yet. Mantoya lawyered up with none other than King Kirkwood, too, so it was always going to be a shit show.”
Yet another rat on the ship—our mayor’s son, who was a crooked son of a bitch. “Is Diego back at the property we arrested him in?”
DB smiled smugly at the question. “You mean in the house opposite Jarrod Klein? Yes, he is. Jarrod has also kindly granted us access to his doorbell and security cam footage.”
At least there was that.
Running my hand through my hair, I put the frustration and anger in a box, knowing there’d be a day soon where I’d be dealing with Diego and making sure he wasn’t allowed back out onto the streets.
“What now?”
“Well,” DB clapped his hands together, “seeing as how you’re all fired up and motivated. I need someone to look through all the shit we have on him under Diego Mantoya and his real name, as well as his buds. Find out more about Ashesh’s background and how he fits into it, maybe even speak to the brother, Cullan. Oh, and contact the witnesses from the previous cases again to see if they’ve remembered anymore about their run-ins with the group.”
“That sounds like overtime to me.” And overtime sounded good at this moment in time. I had too many conflicting thoughts and emotions inside me, both with work and Bexley. I needed something to distract me from all of it.
“It does, doesn’t it? And you’re the perfect guy for the job.”
I was just turning to leave and get to it when he called my name. Looking at him over my shoulder, I frowned at the expression on his face.
“Just to let you know, I did Bexley’s background check and sent it to Principal Teller two days ago. Between you and me, it looks like she’s got the job. I just thought you might like to know that.”
Not knowing what to say, I lifted my chin and left the room.
This added to the mess inside me I’d just been talking about, but it also took away one of the things I’d been worried about—the possibility of Bex changing her mind.
My brain was fucking with me, and I didn’t like it .
By tonight all of her shit would be on its way here, and with her house ready to decorate and a job waiting for her, that meant she was staying here for sure. Which meant I’d get to spend time with her, and we could figure out whatever it was that we had going on.
I wasn’t ready to relax altogether, but I also wasn’t in the mood to rip someone’s head off any more now.