Chapter 30
Tyler
Stella reared back as if I’d slapped her.
I felt almost nothing at the betrayed look on her face, because my rage was all-consuming.
I had just decided to spare her and her family from the fallout around Richard, and she and her brother showed up and ruined everything, proving that no good deed goes unpunished.
It was something I never should have forgotten.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked.
“Trust me, you’re not ready to find out. Your pretty little head would explode. Now move,” I said, waving her onward with the gun.
Thank fuck it was empty, because I might have been tempted to use it.
I felt crazed, desperate. It was all fucking ruined.
Everything I’d worked so hard to accomplish, gone, because one spoiled nepo baby had a lucky hunch.
I should have been meaner, taken the time to corner Blake at every opportunity and terrorize the stupid little shit.
I’d thought about it, but I’d held off because I worried Stella might get angry enough to go back to working against me.
My mistake. I should have fucking known I’d pay the price for making an exception to my rule.
As mad as I was at the McCormick children, I was even angrier with myself.
Behind us, the panicked echoes started to recede.
The SWAT team was probably close to rounding up everyone in the main room, and would start checking the side tunnels next.
Which meant we needed to move faster. Thank fuck I’d asked the urban explorers to find more ways out.
They’d discovered two. One branching off the other entrance, and this one, which twisted and turned for half a mile beneath the city before meandering back to the surface.
I’d written the directions into my phone, and the next one read: turn right beneath the orange u-groove wheel.
My eyes traced the pipes on the ceiling, looking for it.
Jesus Christ, tonight had been close. Paying off the cops had worked to my advantage, because one of them called to warn me I had incoming. I’d been heading toward this tunnel to escape when I caught sight of the McCormick siblings and decided to eavesdrop on their argument.
“What happened to not going after innocent people?” Stella asked from up ahead, her voice small but furious.
My answering laugh was ugly. “For all you claim to be one of the poors now, you’ve done a shitty job integrating.
Pull your fucking head out of your ass, Stella.
Everyone is capable of doing horrible, evil shit and getting away with it, because humanity, at its core, is self-serving and egotistical.
We’re at the top of the food chain because we’re the smartest and the most vicious.
The only difference between the crimes committed by the poor and those by the wealthy is that the latter has more money and resources to hide them. ”
“You expect me to believe that Keith from Accounting is an undercover serial killer?”
“No. But he is guilty of elder abuse. Did you know his siblings are planning to sue him for illegally changing their mother’s will when she was dying of Alzheimer’s, making him the sole beneficiary and cutting them out?”
“But I thought she didn’t have much money,” Stella said.
I almost threw the gun at the back of her head.
“It doesn’t matter that it’s not a million fucking dollars.
Thirty thousand is more than enough to make a greedy asshole like Keith commit a felony.
And while we’re talking about it, did you know your dad’s executive assistant has been having an affair with Adam from Finance for the past six months?
Oh, and guess what? She just took out a secret second life insurance policy on her husband.
Gee, wouldn’t it just be awful if he dies in some freak accident or is killed in a home invasion gone wrong? ”
“So, what? Everyone working for my parents is bad?”
I nearly roared. “No. Fuck, are you even listening? Nothing is black-and-white. I’m sure they have plenty of normal people on their payroll, but those aren’t the ones I care about.”
“That’s what you were after, then. Their dirty secrets. Why? To blackmail them into doing what?” Her voice rose, loud and harsh. “What have my parents ever done to make you target them like this?”
I didn’t answer her. Because I was too angry to trust myself right now, too angry not to blurt out everything like some cartoon super-villain.
I’d always thought their monologuing was laziness on the part of the writers, but now I felt like I understood their character motivations a little better.
They just wanted someone, anyone, even their worst enemy, to know how much they were about to lose.
How much effort and planning was going up in flames and how unfair it was that some lucky amateur sleuth was the one to take them down.
An orange wheel came into sight up ahead.
“Turn right,” I told Stella.
She did, and immediately fell again. I reached down to help her up, some stupid, sappy part of myself unable to take the sight of her sprawled in the muck, before I checked the urge.
No. I was done. I’d already put in my time pretending to be a gentle-man. Hell, I’d even tried to be a better person for her, and now there was probably a warrant out there with my fake name all over it.
I’d learned my lesson about going against what I knew to be true. It was time to go back to being who I really was.
Stella slowly crawled to her feet, and from the sniffle she attempted to hide, I could tell she was crying.
I hardened my heart against her tears. “There’s a ladder at the end of this tunnel. We’re going to take it down another level.”
“Where the bigger rats probably live,” she muttered.
“Maybe you’ll get lucky, and they’ll eat you.”
“Before or after you kill me?”
I said nothing. Let her be scared. It was the least she fucking deserved.
We continued on in silence for several minutes, and as my anger cooled from a boil to a simmer, I tried to tell myself that not everything was lost. While this plan might be ruined, there were still other options.
I’d known there was potential for someone to talk to the wrong person, or find a do-gooder cop that couldn’t be bought.
Or for one of my competitors to infiltrate my games.
So I’d dedicated a fair amount of time to developing alternatives.
Plan A had been all about going at things sideways to keep people from guessing my intentions, convincing them that they’d just organically fallen into my debt, and wow, how nice of me to not immediately break their kneecaps but instead allow them to pay me in installments or information.
Plan B cut the bullshit. No machinations, no deception.
I sent my goons after everyone I had dirt on and told them to give me what I wanted or I would make their lives a living hell.
Similar to what I’d done with Stella, but removing me from the equation.
The people I targeted wouldn’t know who, exactly, was on the other end of the blackmail, just that I existed and was capable of following through on my threats.
Plan C . . . well, let’s just say it was messier. Involved me getting my hands dirty. And it was the last resort for a reason.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” Stella said.
“Who?” I said.
“Richard Lawson’s son. This whole time, I thought you were targeting my parents because you went after Blake and then me, but it’s him you’re really gunning for, isn’t it?”
I stared at her back in the harsh light of my phone. How the fuck had she pieced it together? “What makes you think that?”
“What you went through with your mom. How much you hate rich people. Your mom being a ‘young, hot side piece’ to a wealthy older man. That my head would explode if I knew who you were. Also, the two of you look alike. I noticed it the first time I saw you together, but thought it was just coincidence. And you’re the same age his son should be. ”
Fucking hell. This was my fault again, for saying too much. For giving her context clues.
I shook my head. “You’ve told me he’s a good guy, and yet here you are dropping knowledge about an abandoned child. What a stand-up man.”
Her steps slowed. “Richard wouldn’t just abandon you.”
“Abandon a child,” I said, unwilling to confirm her suspicions. “And I changed my mind. You really are as dumb as you look.”
“And you’re as mean as you look!” She stopped, turning on me. “Richard is a good man. One of the best I know.”
“Most of the people you know are irredeemable scum.”
“Not him. He would be thrilled to find out his child was in the same city as him.” She grimaced. “Well, maybe not thrilled about that child being you, because, you know, you’re horrible. But that you were alive and healthy? He’d be over the moon.”
“Why the fuck would you think that, Stella?”
“Because I remember you.”
I took a staggered step backward. “What?”
She shook her head. “Hearing about you. During Richard’s divorce. I remember my parents saying something about how he’d met someone new and it was going well and he was happy.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, I do!” she insisted. “And then I remember him being sad for months, and asking what happened, and no one would tell me anything. I overheard my parents whispering one night about a baby, and Richard being desperate to find it.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Now you’re just lying.”
“I’m not lying!” she yelled, her face turning red. “Why would I lie?”
“Because that’s all people like you do!”
“People like me?” she roared. “You fucking lie about everything!”
“I’m not lying now!” I yelled back. “Richard is a fucking piece of shit.”
“Based on what? Your preconceived notions of him? Your false belief that he abandoned you and your mother? I’ve known the man since I was born.
He is my godfather. He’s been at every major milestone of my life, and he was one of the only people who didn’t abandon me after what happened with Maddie.
And because I’ve spent so much time around him, I know I’m not wrong.
I’m a decent judge of people’s character.
Case in point, I knew immediately you were a douchebag. ”
“And yet you kissed me.”
“Which I plan to speak to my therapist about at length in order to unravel the deep-seated self-hatred that must have led to that decision,” she said. “The point is, I know Richard. And he’s not capable of hiding some big, dark, ugly secret. He’s honest and genuine.”
I shook my head. “Why would I trust the word of someone who was best friends with Maddie Clyde? You know she killed a girl, right? In the Caribbean? Hit her over the head with an oar and knocked her into the water, where she drowned.”
The blood drained from Stella’s face.
“So, no, I might not know Richard as well as you do, but I trust my judgement of his character far more than I trust yours. And I can prove I’m right.”
“How?”
“By taking you to someone who was there when it all happened.”I hefted the gun again, pointing it past her. “Keep walking.”