Chapter Twenty – Jason
I was familiar with the house. Laina had been here many times before. Lola, the so-called queen of the city, lived here. I assumed with what happened, Lola had pulled some strings, and that was why Laina was here.
Vance Hawkins was dead. When I heard the news, I had a few thoughts, but my first thought was Laina and how she was handling it. Then I thought about who could’ve done it, and my mind settled on one person in particular, the same person everyone in that house probably thought was responsible.
When I pulled up to the house, there were other cars in the driveway.
Some were parked in front of the closed garage doors, while others were stationed near the front door.
I didn’t need to guess to know who those vehicles belonged to; there was only a small group of people who would be gathered here at a time like this.
I got out of my car and headed straight for the door.
It was unlocked, so I strolled right in.
I heard voices talking in a room not far from the front vestibule, and I followed those voices until I came upon a living room, where a good majority of the people in this house must’ve been.
Thanks to my time here in the city, thanks to the past few months of tailing Laina and getting to know her and her friends, I was able to recognize all of them.
Lola. Maddox Luciano. A man with snake tattoos known as Viper. A rather tall man who put my frame to shame—one of Laina’s boyfriends, Mike. The one who had a metal studio in a not-so-good part of the city, Fang.
And, of course, my son, who muttered as soon as he saw me walk in, “Oh, good. You’re here. Yay.” He, clearly, could not be less enthused, and I didn’t blame him. Things between us had been… strained.
Yes, I’d kidnapped his girlfriend. Yes, I’d had a talk with her alone. Yes, I believed Tessa’s lies without question. I didn’t need to be reminded of any of that; I was well aware of the mistakes I’d made.
Lola checked me out, though she didn’t get up. “Damn, you are a fine-looking guy, aren’t cha?” Beside her, she received two glares from the men surrounding her, which didn’t seem to affect her in the slightest.
I chose not to address her comment, instead saying, “I’m Jason, but I assume you already knew that.”
“Yeah,” Maddox huffed as he put an arm around Lola’s shoulders and hugged her close. “We knew that.” A possessive gesture that was meant to warn me away from his woman—a gesture I didn’t need. Lola was beautiful, but it took more than a beautiful face to lure me in.
“Laina—” I started.
“Upstairs,” Fang said, appraising me in the most curious way possible, with his head cocked and his eyebrows slightly raised.
“She’s still in shock, I think. She wasn’t ready to talk to any of us, but maybe you’d have luck.
” When he talked, I noticed the oddness of his canine teeth, and it took me a few moments to realize they appeared odd because they were too long.
Too long, too sharp, and too silver, unlike the rest of his teeth.
Ah, now I understood where he got the name from, as I always highly doubted he was born with it.
Laina definitely had an interesting group of boyfriends.
Mike leaned against a wall a good fifteen feet away from me, his arms crossed over his chest. He watched me warily, eyeing me up like he didn’t trust me—and I supposed he had good reason not to, given everything.
“How do we know you didn’t do this?” he questioned, his voice hard, rough.
Everything about the man was intimidating.
But I’d been around a long time. I didn’t get so easily intimidated.
“Killing the mayor is a huge job. I solve problems, but I tend to steer clear of high-profile assassinations,” I said, hoping the rest of the room believed me. “I’m not perfect in any respect, but I’m no goddamn assassin.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Fang said, the only one who was quick to jump to my side. “He didn’t do it.”
Another man strolled into the room behind me, joining us. I turned to meet the blue gaze of a blond-haired man wearing a crisp suit. He had a phone in his hand, though he wasn’t currently making any calls. “Jason Miller,” the man said. “I’ve done a lot of research into you.”
“Sylvester Luciano,” I greeted him gruffly. “I’ve done the same.”
Sylvester studied me for only a few moments before he looked at everyone else. “I’m with Fang here. I don’t think Jason did it.”
It was Kieran who muttered, “Tessa. She did it. Whether or not she pulled the trigger herself…” He ran a hand along the side of his face.
“She could’ve bugged the house, known Laina was going to be away.
She knew the camera system. After everything blowing up in her face over and over, I wouldn’t put it past her to need to do it herself. ”
He wasn’t wrong, about any of it. A person could only take so much before they snapped, and it was very likely Tessa had reached the breaking point. Then again, in a city like this, there were surely countless of men she could’ve hired to assassinate the mayor for her.
Unless Tessa confessed, it was very likely we would never know the full truth.
“Semi-related,” Sylvester said, “I have a meeting with Dr. Barnes Monday. I imagine I can… persuade him to talk. We’ll finally know whether or not she’s really pregnant.
From my sources, I hear he’s the doctor you call when you need someone to sign off on something that’s not strictly true.
Prescriptions, insurance fraud—Dr. Barnes has been sued half a dozen times. ”
Yes, that definitely didn’t sound good, but there was no point in discussing any of that now.
“Where upstairs is she?” I asked.
“My room,” Lola said. “Second room on the left.”
Kieran stood. “I’ll go with you.”
I gave him a look. “Pat me down if you want. I don’t have any weapons on me.”
He scoffed and muttered, “She’s practically in a coma up there. You wouldn’t need any weapons—”
“I’m not going to hurt her,” I said, emphasizing the words enough I hoped he’d believe me.
I wasn’t lying. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt that girl—unlike some members of the family, when faced with problems, my first instinct wasn’t to have them killed.
It was why I spent so long watching her, getting to know her.
None of this I took lightly, but at the same time, I understood why he didn’t trust me.
Still, as Kieran stared at me from across the room, I could tell he didn’t quite believe me.
“Kieran,” I spoke his name, “you have my word. I’ll never hurt her.”
That, finally, got him to stand down, so to speak. If you could not trust a man for his word, you couldn’t trust him at all. He was useless. He might as well have been an enemy; it was something I thought I’d taught to both my children when they were young.
Words mattered, as did actions. Lying was a coward’s tool.
With a sigh, Kieran sat back down and waved me off, saying, “Like she’s going to want to talk to you, anyway. If she didn’t talk to us, no way in hell will she talk to you.”
Fang chimed in, “Sometimes it’s difficult to open up to those closest to us.” His words earned him a hard glare from my son, but I had already tuned out of the conversation.
I left the room and went toward the stairwell—though it was more like a grand staircase, the wide kind with fancy wooden railings all the way up. I took the stairs one at a time even though I could’ve easily taken two, mostly to take my time in walking up as I tried to think of what I should say.
My apologies would be worth next to nothing to Laina. She might not want to talk to me at all. Hell, she might take a single look at me, be reminded of Tessa, and order me out, in which case I’d have no choice but to listen.
I voluntarily walked away from my parents when I was young, when they forced that decision on me, so I didn’t know what it was like to lose a parent who actually gave a shit about you.
No, I might not have been in the same position she was in now, but I had lost people I cared about.
Not everyone I helped made a new life for themselves.
Sometimes old habits died hard and pulled people so far down they felt helpless.
I made it to the room with the closed door, and though I hadn’t thought of what to say, I knocked without wasting any more time. Seconds went by, and I heard not a sound inside the room. She could be sleeping, or she could be laying in there, losing her mind to her grief.
Though a part of me wondered if I should give her space, I pushed into the room regardless, and I found her laying on her side on the bed. Her back was to me as I approached, so I had no clue whether or not Laina knew it was me, or if she thought I was one of her guys.
Slowly, I made my way toward the bed, sitting about halfway up it, close enough to her to be near but not so close that I was touching her. Out of all the things I could’ve said, I went with, “You have a lot of people down there who’re worried about you.”
I heard her breathe a little harder, and then, after a few seconds, she spoke: “Why are you here?”
What else could I tell her besides the truth? “I heard the news, and I was worried about you. I called Kieran. He told me where you guys were, and I came straight here.”
“Why do you care?” Her voice was totally different than what I was used to. Instead of the bold, confident Laina I’d met multiple times before, she sounded tired, weak, maybe even broken—something multiple kidnappings had never done.
Why did I care? Her question rang in my head a few times, and it took me far too long for me to wrestle with an answer that would suffice, “I just do. I care.”