33. Lex
33
LEX
“Y ou have twenty minutes.” The guard’s warning is spoken in such a quiet tone that it doesn’t echo down the long concrete hallway of Hansgard Correctional Facility. I nod my acknowledgement anyway and wait for him to glance up one way and down the other before quickly pulling open the door to the shower rooms just wide enough for me to slip inside. He’ll remain outside until I’m done where I’ll then be led back to the front as if I’m any other inmate scheduled to be released today.
Echoes of water slapping off skin and flat tile ricochet into the cold space. I follow the sound of the spray of a single shower head, striding towards the lone stall at the end. There are no curtains to hide off each individual alcove, but there are bricked walls to give each one some semblance of privacy. I’m not necessarily concerned about privacy, though. Allen Donovan and I are the only ones here—something I quietly arranged with the guard now standing outside.
“Donovan.” Juliet’s father lets out a shout and whirls around as I cross in front of his stall and stand there.
“What the fuck!” He covers himself, cupping both hands over his junk as he gapes at me, wide-eyed and horrified. His eyes dart to the side, where the exit remains firmly closed.
I roll my eyes and rip off a towel, tossing it to him as he hastily snatches it out of the air and begins to wrap it around his waist before shutting off the water. “Who the hell are you?” he demands once he’s covered.
I arch an eyebrow. “Your worst nightmare if you piss me off.”
He keeps looking at the damn door and it’s starting to irritate me. I make a point of turning my body and standing directly in its path and watch the pulse in his throat throb with renewed terror. Donovan has clearly not gotten used to prison life. He’s likely wondering if I’ve come here to rape him as he’s heard happen to so many men confined in these places. I roll my eyes at the absurdity. The only body I’d ever be interested in is Juliet’s.
“W-what do you want from me?” Donovan asks, jutting his chin out as if he’s not scared.
My lips twitch. Maybe Juliet got her stubbornness from this man. Pushing away that thought, I suck in a breath and fix him with a darker look. “Information,” I say.
Donovan’s brow puckers as he stares back at me for several moments. He doesn’t move forward, doesn’t try to exit his stall lest he draw closer to where I stand. I wait for it and am surprised that it doesn’t take long for him to figure out who I actually am. His eyes widen after a moment and then that brow puckers once again.
“You’re… the Scorpion?” He frowns.
“What?” I grin. “You thought I’d be shorter?”
“Older, actually.”
I shrug. I’ve never actually gotten that before, but I’m not surprised. I’ve never actually met a client face to face, and Allen Donovan is only special because of who he is to Juliet. Sniffing sharply, I wrinkle my nose at the smell of antiseptic and flat unscented soap before marching over to the row of sinks across from the shower stalls. Turning my back on one, I prop myself up and cross my arms over my chest.
“We need to talk,” I state.
Donovan just stares at me for a moment more. Then his eyes dart to the door and back to me. I arch an eyebrow, waiting to see what he’ll do. If he’ll run or stay. Thankfully, he stays—just because he’s Juliet’s father doesn’t mean I won’t break an ankle to get him to stick around so I can get what I need.
“I’m not even going to ask how you got in here,” he says with a shake of his head. “All I want to know is if you’ve found my wife. If you’ve found anything to help my case. The trial?—”
I wave a hand through the air, cutting him off. “I know the trial was moved up,” I say. The court system updated automatically when the change was made and I’d set an alert to come directly to my cell if anything changed regarding the Donovan case. “And no, I haven’t found your wife yet. I’m working on it. I’m here for something else.”
“Information,” he says, repeating my earlier answer.
“Yes.” I nod and push away from the sink. Allen Donovan stiffens as I approach, not bothering to hide my annoyance as I back him into the half wall between stalls. “I find it difficult to believe that you had no idea of the embezzlement scheme cooked up in your company,” I inform him. “I find it awfully suspicious, too, that your wife suddenly disappears not long after you’re incarcerated and the only one left to deal with the aftermath of fucking over an entire town is your daughter.”
Donovan pales. “I-I didn’t even know Denise was missing.”
I eye him contemplatively. “Be that as it may, where are the trust funds?”
“Trust funds?” He blinks up at me, a deer caught in a hunter’s trap.
I scowl. “Yes,” I snap. “The trust funds. Your wife had her own family’s trust fund and your daughter should have had money separated out for her.”
“The government took it all!” Donovan insists, the paleness of his cheeks receding as he reddens in outrage. “They seized all of our assets!”
My upper lip curls back and I tilt my head down, staring into his ruddy face. “There would still be accounts marked for their trust funds,” I say slowly as if he’s a particularly stupid man who needs me to spell it out for him. “There’s nothing.”
He frowns. “That’s not true.” Donovan shakes his head. “That can’t be true. Morpheus would’ve told?—”
“Morpheus?” I cut him off. “Why would your business partner know anything about your wife or your daughter’s trust funds?”
Donovan pushes back against the wall, earning himself a bare scant inch of space from me. “Because he’s my partner,” the man snaps. “Morpheus…” He drifts off, and his face goes slack for a brief moment. “Morpheus had access. He…” Donovan swallows and I take a step back as he gags a bit, afraid he might vomit right on top of me. “He couldn’t have…”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. In the weeks since this man first contacted me to look into the embezzlement, I’d already checked into Morpheus Calloway. “There’ve been no records of him pulling funds from the accounts. Everything was done from your login.”
“He has my login information!” Donovan bursts out.
I go still. Of all of the most idiotic… With a barely withheld curse, I rip out a folded notebook from my back pocket along with the pen I brought for just this case—to write down any new information this man has. I shove both into his chest.
“Write down every date, time, and account you can think of. Every time you pulled or moved large funds,” I order.
He clutches the notebook and pen in his hands for a moment and then turns, flattening the pages on the wall, and begins to write. Seconds tick into minutes, and I know from the clock bolted to the wall above the exit that my time is almost gone.
When we’ve got less than two minutes left, I snatch the notebook from his hand. “That’s enough,” I snap, shoving the notebook and pen back into my pocket as I glare at him.
“Do you really think Morpheus would do this to me?” Donovan asks, shaking. “My best friend…” I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s more here than meets the eye, but telling him as much won’t help.
There are a lot of loose ends. Morpheus Calloway is still in Silverwood, and Denise Donovan is the one missing. If the business partner is really the one involved, then he’s got some fucking balls. Then again, if it is him—then why would Denise Donovan disappear? I feel as if all of the numbers needed for the equation are sitting right in front of me, but they’re not placed correctly, and each time I rearrange them, I keep coming up with the wrong answers.
“Keep this meeting to yourself,” I say, backing towards the door as the guard outside knocks twice, his signal that it’s time for me to get out. “I’ll be in touch.”
With that final word of parting, I turn and walk out, leaving Allen Donovan to tremble with the after effects of finding out that the man he trusted with everything might have been the one to bring his kingdom crashing down around him.
* * *
“Where the hell have you been?” Gio’s question shoots out at me the second I step through the door of his house.
Rolling my head to the side, I crack the stiffness created by driving back and forth from Silverwood to Hansgard from my neck. “Working,” I say.
Gio eyes me with a grumpy scowl, but doesn’t ask anything more as I stride through his living room and into the kitchen. The smell of meaty chorizo reaches my nostrils, and I inhale deeply. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until this moment. Spying G’s Mama at the stove, I amble towards her and peer over her shoulder.
“That for us?” I ask.
Mama Camila jumps as if she hadn’t heard me enter the kitchen and whips around. “Oh, Lex.” She breathes a sigh of relief before smacking my stomach with the back of her hand. “You scared me, boy!”
I grin and then reach around her to pilfer a bite of sausage from the pan and pop it into my mouth. Her eyes widen and she lets out a stream of Spanish words too fast for me to even pick out one in the mix. The hot sausage burns the inside of my mouth, thankfully one of the fully cooked pieces in the pan. I chew quickly and swallow as she lifts the wooden spoon she’d been using to cook it and holds it up like she’s planning on whacking me with it.
Backing away, I hold my hands out in surrender. “Sorry,” I say, laughing. “I was hungry.”
Camila lowers her arm back to her side and offers me a withering glare before shaking her head. “You boys,” she huffs, turning back to her pan. “Always so hambriento .”
“Are you bothering my ma?” Gio calls from the living room. I drop back and give Camila a quick kiss on her cheek, earning another muttered mixture of Spanish and English before I head back to face my friend.
“Just—” The door opens as I answer him and I turn to find Nolan there. I frown. He’s supposed to be with Juliet, and Juliet can’t be here. “Where’s?—”
Nolan answers before I get the question fully out. “She’s at work,” he tells me. “You can pick her up later tonight.”
“ ‘Kayyyy .” G draws out the word, glancing between the two of us with a confused pucker to his brow. That would make two of us. I narrow my eyes on Nolan, noting the ease of his shoulders and the lack of tension around his eyes and mouth. That can only mean one thing.
“You fucked her.”
Nolan scowls and then peers past me into the kitchen. “Not out here,” he hisses, nodding to the hall that leads back towards the bedrooms. Gio practically shoots up from the couch and dives down the hall. I follow with Nolan bringing up the rear, and none of us speak again until we’re sequestered in Gio’s bedroom with the door firmly shut behind us.
Gio collapses into the bean bag chair in the corner as I take up residence on the end of the too-small twin bed he’s slept on since he was eleven. Nolan stands before us, arms crossed.
“I wanted you guys to meet me here because we need to talk,” he begins.
“About you fucking Prep Girl?” G asks. “Or about all of us fucking her?”
I eye him without speaking, waiting. Nolan blows out a long breath. “Juliet is…” He grinds his jaw and I can visibly see the way he searches for the words to explain. I could tell him it’s useless. I’ve been trying to understand what she does to me for thirteen years. There’s nothing sane about my need for her, my yearning to watch her, love her, keep her.
Wanting Juliet Donovan is a curse, and now we’re all under her spell.
Gio barks out a laugh when Nolan never seems to come to terms with his own role in falling for our stubborn woman. I roll my shoulders back and lean over, propping my arms against G’s mattress as I arch an eyebrow at both of them.
“You called us here to talk,” I say, “so talk.”
Nolan casts me a grateful look, one I know he’ll regret because I’m going to insist that I get some alone time with Juliet sooner or later and he’ll owe me for it.
“Darrio left town,” he states as if we didn’t already know, but it sets the tone for what he wants to discuss, and Gio’s easy demeanor changes in a heartbeat. He sits up, planting his elbows atop his knees as he watches Nolan start to pace. “I assume it has to do with the product he’s trying to ship through Silverwood and then up to Eastpoint.”
“If you want to tell him how dangerous it’ll be, you’re wasting your breath,” G says, a note of disgust in his tone. “He won’t listen.”
Darrio is a conniving bastard, and it’s only because of Mama Camila and G that he’s managed to live as long as he has. Had it been left up to me, I would’ve taken out the head of the Vargas gang long ago. So, too, I believe, would have Nolan.
“He’s had me running my usual rounds with the smaller deals,” Nolan continues as if G hadn’t spoken. “Savino has been in charge while he's gone.”
“He’s been coming around the house more too,” G admits. “To ‘check on’ Ma, he says.”
We all know what that means. Darrio couldn’t give a shit less about his old lady. No. Savino is merely making sure that G is still here and still doing what he’s supposed to, as well.
“The product he’s trying to send up north is a problem,” Nolan says. “But after your attack”—he gestures to Gio—“he seemed to think that there was more at play.”
I frown. “You didn’t tell him about what they said, right?” I demand. “About Juliet?”
Nolan scowls at me. “Of course not,” he snaps. “When we talked at the hospital, G hadn’t even woken up yet. Once he did…” Nolan shakes his head. “I’m not telling that fucker shit if I don’t have to.”
“We still need to figure out who hired the guys to jump me, though,” G says, voice quiet.
“Agreed.” Nolan nods at him. “As well as who might have potentially burned down her apartment.”
“The information I found from the fire marshal showed no signs of being manipulated,” I say.
Nolan gives me a bland stare. “That might be so, but you don’t think it’s a coincidence any more than I do. How can you? The day G gets jumped and warned to stay away from her, her apartment burns down? Come on, man.”
He’s right. It is too much of a coincidence. “We’ve told her the truth about my attackers at least,” Gio comments. “She knows to be on the lookout and have her guard up.”
A snort escapes Nolan. “That girl doesn’t know how to not have her guard up.” Gio grins in response, and for a moment I watch the two of them—sharing some unspoken bond over a girl that when I demanded to be allowed to bring her with us when we left, they argued against her.
Somehow, I’d known that all it would take is pushing them together before they would realize how special she is.
“Lex, I want you working on the guys who attacked G,” Nolan says, dragging me back from my thoughts after a moment. “I know you’ve probably had it running in the background along with your other work, but I want it to be a priority now. We need to start tracking down leads while Darrio is absent.”
I nod. “I’ll put it to the forefront,” I agree readily.
“Check Megan too,” Gio suggests. “She and her bitches haven’t let up on Jules at all even after we made her one of ours. She might’ve had something to do with the apartment fire, at least. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
Before I can answer, Nolan’s phone trills, and he pulls it free with a curse.
“What is it?” I demand, eyeing him as I straighten up.
Nolan’s eyes scan the screen, reading whatever message is there, and his expression turns thunderous. “Motherfucker.” He shoves a hand through his hair as he stares down at the cell in his hand. “Darrio wants me to go back to Eastpoint.”
Gio groans. “ Fuck ,” he draws out the word. “When do we have to leave?”
“No.” Nolan shoves the phone back in his pocket and drops his other arm back to his side. “Not the three of us—just me.”
For a moment, neither Gio nor I speak, and then, at once, we burst up from our positions. “Are you fucking insane!” Gio yells.
“This is a bad idea,” I agree.
Nolan holds a hand up, a silent plea for calm, but calm has flown out the fucking window. We don’t split up for long-distance jobs like that. We never have.
“I don’t like this,” I say.
“Your disapproval is noted, but, according to Savino, it’s not up for discussion—he already expected me to ask to bring you two.”
My hands clench into fists, and I imagine what Savino’s head would look like removed from his body. It’s not an easy task to dismember a body—I should know—but the more practice I get at it, I’m sure it’ll get better.
“It’s just for a meeting,” Nolan says. “One day.”
“You’re not actually going to leave without us.” Gio laughs, but when Nolan doesn’t ease his stance or say anything, G’s expression shutters once more. “You… tell me you’re joking.”
Nolan shakes his head. “I’ll push it off for as long as I can, but one of you will need to take Juliet.”
“I’ll take her.” The words are out of my mouth before he’s finished speaking, and both Gio and Nolan shoot me an amused look.
“Fine.” To my surprise, Nolan doesn’t argue and G doesn’t offer himself up. Not that he can bring her back here if there’s any chance Darrio could return at any moment. Still, I’d expected some list of demands to keep my hands to myself from either one or both of them.
Instead, Nolan merely claps me on the shoulder. “I’ll keep you updated on when I’ll leave,” he says. “But make sure you keep that damn shrine of yours locked while she’s with you.”
“I will.” I breathe the promise into the air. All I can hear, though, is the sound of perfect puzzle pieces clicking into place. Even though I hate the thought of Nolan going off on his own without either Gio or me to back him up, I can’t help but feel the spark of excitement that fills my veins.
Juliet’s coming back to me. She’s going to stay with me again. In my house. In my bed. Right where she’s always belonged.