Chapter 31
Madoc
The heat that made my brain feel like it was on fire an hour ago has moved into my chest, anger now replaced with fear.
My God, this was why he left eight years ago. I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, phones ringing out in the police station where damn-near our whole fucking family sits and waits. The water I’d splashed on my face drips off my skin, back into the sink.
How did I not know that something was wrong?
I mean, I knew something was wrong. Why didn’t I press him? Chase him down? Stop him from running? Bring him back?
Why was it so easy to believe he was just some kid being rebellious? I did everything I could to escape my house—my pain—when I was younger, how did I not see that he was doing the same damn thing?
Shit, part of me even thought I’d been suffocating him and he just needed space. I wasn’t his dad, and I started to wonder if he was sick of us.
“Jared, Jax…” I spit out at myself in the mirror. “Their kids are no trouble. Why don’t mine just fucking talk to me?”
Tears spring up, and I bow my head, gripping the sink. Shame replaces the fear. I’m not built for self-pity. I clear my throat and grab some paper towels, wiping my face clean.
“James is definitely going to fuck with Jared someday.” I fix my hair, being more realistic now. “Dylan already nearly gave him a heart attack. That was funny. And Hawke is a late bloomer. There’s still time for him to be a hassle to Jax.”
I won’t be the only one trying to wrangle my damn kids.
Balling up the paper towel, I stuff it into the basket and whip open the door. Fallon turns, her arms crossed over her chest, as Tate, Jared, Jax, and Juliet all look up at me. Bypassing them, I head to the counter and pick up Lucas’s statement, continuing where I left off.
He made friends…they started Green Street as a social club…Drew Reeves took over and moved in a direction Lucas and Lance couldn’t follow…Lucas refused to give him the building…wanted it shut down…
And I get to the part where Lucas gave him a dare that backfired. Reeves hid a half-alive man in the trunk, and Lucas sank the car, not realizing someone was in there.
I skim over why Lucas felt he couldn’t come forward. Reeves, with his position in Shelburne Falls, could hurt Lucas and those he loved.
Tracing my memories, I can’t figure out what was going on in my life at that time. What was I doing the night this all happened? What the fuck was so important all the months later as he struggled to keep his head above water with the guilt and I didn’t notice?
Hands touch my shoulders, and I turn, Fallon’s arms circling my neck.
Barry and two other officers are in Weston, questioning Green Street and…collecting the remains.
“Should we call Grace?” Fallon asks in my ear.
“No.”
I pull back. Lucas’s mother needs to know what the plan is before she hears about the problem. Grace can handle it, but she’ll panic. Just like I am now. One thing at a time.
“I need to go talk to him first.”
She nods and backs away, and I gesture to Sam Barnes, the officer on duty. She tips her head for me to follow.
I start after her, but Jax stops me. “He’s a better man than me,” he says as if I need assurances. “They’ll never find the bodies I buried in the woods.”
I swallow at the reminder of Jax’s justice back in the day. It’s not even remotely the same thing. For him, it was self-defense, and he didn’t owe anyone a proper burial.
I follow Sam back to the cells and pass an empty one before getting to Lucas standing alone in the far corner. Barry hasn’t formally charged him. Just holding him until he can question witnesses. Lucas is cooperating.
Sam leaves, closing the door behind her, and I look at the kid I’ve known for well over half our lives.
Standing tall, his arms crossed over his chest.
Just like Fallon, he doesn’t look away.
I close the distance between me and the bars. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He hesitates as he gazes at me. “Because you would’ve tried to fix it and put yourself in the line of fire instead.”
Reeves had his thugs crash my son’s party a couple of years ago, looking for my laptop. His enterprise must’ve been getting massive, and he wanted to ensure he could blackmail me if—when—it spilled over into the Falls and I tried to stop him.
There was nothing to hide, but I’m sure he would’ve found something to twist to his benefit.
“And when Hawke sent Reeves running from Shelburne Falls two years ago?” I charge. “You must’ve heard. Why didn’t you come back then?”
Lucas flexes his jaw, and I don’t know if he’s struggling to tell me something, or just doesn’t have an answer.
My nose nearly brushes the bars. “You’re my family,” I huff. “Whether you think of me as yours or not.”
He looks away for a moment.
“You’re my family,” I state again, “and we would’ve gotten through it. Running is never the answer—”
He squares his shoulders, blurting it out. “I didn’t want you to know.”
What?
Why? He knew what Jax had done. He knew about mine and Jared’s mistakes. Did he think we weren’t up for it?
I narrow my eyes. “Lucas—”
“Look, I know, okay?” he cuts me off. “‘I was never a job and you never expected me to be perfect…’ I know everything you would’ve said, but you would’ve said it because you cared about me.
” The tendon in his neck flexes, and I can tell he’s trying to steady his voice.
“It wouldn’t have changed the fact that dealing with my mistakes could’ve hurt you, and me not being able to own up to it buried two miles away in the woods was killing me. So I left.”
Reeves had him thinking he was trapped.
“My mood was hurting my mother,” he continued. “I didn’t deserve to be around Quinn. What if the web got bigger? What if I made another serious mistake?” His eyes redden. “I didn’t trust myself anymore.”
And I didn’t know what to say. That feeling is easy to muster when you’re young. You haven’t made enough mistakes to know there will be a hundred more before your life is over.
“That’s why you wanted to leave the moment you got here,” I say, my voice gravelly.
He nods slowly. “The new leadership at Green Street wanted me gone. They believed a founding member with a deed to the property threatened them.”
He was supposed to be on the plane back to Dubai over a week ago.
I don’t blink. “And Quinn was why you stayed.”
He can’t stop the smile that starts to form as he drops his eyes to the floor.
“I just wanted to protect her at first,” he tells me.
“Noah Van der Berg and Farrow Kelly were pissing me off.” He laughs a little.
“I remembered how good it was to have her around. And I wasn’t about to leave her alone to make all the mistakes she was begging to.
” He raises his eyes to me. “But the way she looks at the world, Madoc… I was...”
His chin trembles, and I have a lot to unpack right now. Not only his future but hers.
But there’s one thing he doesn’t have to say out loud. He’s in love with her.
“And if you go to jail?” I press. “You covered up a crime. You own a building used for mob business.”
I know he handled the arrangements to have the body buried once the police are done, and something happened with Hugo Navarre. The cops got word that his own people ran him out of town this evening. He could be back, but he’s gone now. Was that Lucas’s doing?
Between that and what Kade told us, Lucas has been getting everything taken care of in case he had to go away.
But his tone is soft and calm. “I love her, and I told her. And now, I just want you to be proud of me again, even if it takes fifty years.”
My eyes burn, and I drop my gaze, not sure how to respond. How could he think I wouldn’t be proud of him?
But even as I think it, the disappointment of hearing him with Quinn at her house earlier—and then seeing them together—still lingers. I knew all the years I helped raise him that he was a good man, but that threw me.
We would’ve handled Drew Reeves together. Quinn, though…
God, I love him, but he hid from me for years. Is he going to leave again? Does he really love her, or is she an anchor?
“Drew Reeves is around,” he tells me. “You need Hawke and Jax to be monitoring cameras. In Weston, as well.” He hesitates, then levels me with a calm stare. “Quinn won’t leave her house, but my phone is linked to the cameras installed around her property. The cops have my cell. The code is 1793.”
I swallow hard, realization dawning that a lot has been going on that I didn’t know about. He put cameras up outside her new house? I wouldn’t have thought of that. I need to get his phone back.
“I’ve already contacted a lawyer,” he says. “They’re on their way.”