Chapter 8
Eight
J oey Barnes wasn’t a topic she cared to discuss ever .
No one knew the full extent of what he’d put her through, of what she’d allowed him to do to her, because she was too embarrassed and too ashamed to ask for help.
To admit those things to Quentin was more than she could bear, but she also knew it was necessary.
“Tell me, Lowey. Or I’ll find out on my own.”
“You know the day the divorce decree was final, he basically lost it. He came to the bar at closing time, waited until everyone had left and then came in and—” She stopped, unable to say all the things he’d done to her.
The torment of kneeling in front of him while he held a gun to her head, while he debated with her all the reasons he ought to kill her, or the reasons he should just, as he’d put it, fuck up her pretty face until no one would ever want her again.
“I know enough about that,” he said. “But that wasn’t the only time, was it?”
“No,” she admitted, speaking slowly as she uncovered some of her most painful memories.
“He started beating the hell out of me almost as soon as I married him…I was eighteen. Didn’t know any better.
Married him and let him mo ve me into the shithole his family lives in.
The black eyes, the twisted arms, the bruised ribs, the split lips…
I stayed inside most of the time because it was easier just not to see people than to try and camouflage it or have to lie.
I didn’t want my Papaw to know how bad it was. ”
It was difficult to put into words, but she knew she had to try.
“With him, it wasn’t that he was jealous.
It was that he owned me—body and soul. If he wanted to hit me, he did.
If he wanted to lock me up and starve me, he did.
If he wanted sex, and I didn’t feel inclined… well, that wasn’t really an option.”
She watched him for a response, noting the tension in his jaw, his clenched fists. He didn’t say anything, but she understood that. There was no appropriate response to what she’d just said to him.
“How did you get out?”
Lowey shrugged. “He thought he owned me, and it never occurred to him that I would turn him in for doing something illegal…I called Matt Shepherd, and he put me in touch with someone from the DEA, and they busted him while he was out of the house. He got three years, and I got out. While he was in prison, I filed for divorce and moved back in with my grandfather. ”
It sounded so simple when she said it. None of that took into account the terror, the fear, she’d lived with every moment of every day, waiting for him to get out, waiting for him to come for her.
Then her grandfather had died, and she’d been alone.
Completely and totally alone. And she couldn’t tell him that the very reason he’d appealed to her was because he would never want to own or possess her.
The commitment phobia that had broken her heart had been one of his most appealing qualities.
“So he got out, and then he came for you,” he replied.
“Yeah. Within a week of his release, he was at the bar…but I’m not telling you about that night.
I’ve relived it enough already, and I’m not going back to do it again.
” Maybe it was cowardly, but she was okay with that.
If she told him the whole truth, he’d look at her differently.
And she didn’t want his pity. Never that.
Changing the tone of the conversation, she said, “It seriously pisses me off that he got more time for cooking meth than he did for trying to murder me.”
“It more than pisses me off,” he said. “I promise you, Lowey, one way or another, he’s not getting near you again. ”
“Don’t make promises, Quentin. We both know that’s not your thing.”
“I don’t make many promises, Lowey, but when I make them, I keep them. He’s never getting near you again. Count on it.”
She sighed then. “He’s been in contact—even from jail. Usually through his brothers and his cousins. For the past year, ever since he went back to jail. They blame me…all of them blame me.”
“It stops today.”
There was no point in telling him that she had her doubts. She’d accepted last year that when she died, it would be at Joey Barnes’s hands. But that didn’t mean she’d go down without a fight. Never again.
Joseph Allen Barnes sipped his beer and watched the rather long-in-the-tooth stripper sashay across the small stage and wrap her body around the pole. She might have been old, but she could sure as hell move, he thought with a grin.
Reaching into his pocket for a few singles, he waved them toward the stripper. He wondered what he could get her to do for the hundred-dollar bill he had tucked into his wallet .
After he’d tucked the bills into her G-string, she offered him a wave and a smile before sauntering back to the pole. His appreciation of the view she offered was interrupted by someone smacking the back of his head, hard.
“What the fuck did you do?”
Joey looked back to see his cousin standing behind him. Tommy looked pissed.
“What the hell did you do that for? I ain’t done nothing.”
Tommy sat down and took the beer Joey had been working on, draining the bottle. “Your mama called and says some dude came to the trailer looking for you. Claims to be a Darcy and says Lowey’s hooked up with another one of ’em.”
Joey’s fists clenched at his sides. Fucking whore . “She’s my ex. None of my damn business who she hooks up with, now is it?”
Tommy laughed. “Try that with somebody else, ass wipe. I know what you did to her bar, and I know you used my damn gun to do it. I found the empty box of shells!”
Joey shrugged it off. Silas was taking care of it. “They can’t prove it.”
“It’s the goddamn Darcys. They don’t have to prove it!
Do I need to remind you about the kind of people you got us tangled up with?
These Russians are bad dudes, Joey. Taking over distribution for them was your idea…
you and your damn dead cell mate. I shoulda known better than to listen to a fuck-up like you! ”
Joey shoved him then, sending the chair tipping backward and Tommy sprawling on the floor. “Are you making money? Yeah, well then shut up! I hooked you into this deal…but I owe that bitch, and she fucking well owes me! She’s gonna pay. Whatever it takes!”
Tommy had just made it to his feet when the bouncers wandered over, looming nearby.
They weren’t too interested in guys beating the hell out of each other.
That was less of a problem than when patrons went after the girls.
Dusting himself off, Tommy shook his head.
“You’re gonna get us both killed. We’ve got bigger shit to worry about than who your ex-wife is fucking! ”
“She sent me to prison!” Joey shouted. “You think I care whose dick she’s ridin’?”
Tommy shook his head. “Stay focused, Joey. Stay focused, or we’re both gonna wind up with a bullet in our heads!”
“I’m not fucking this up, Tommy! We’re gonna get the drugs, we’re gonna get ’em to the distributors, and when it’s done, that bitch will pay.”
Tommy sat back and scrubbed his hands over his face. “This ain’t gonna end well.”