Chapter 33 Grudge #2
That I could do whatever I wanted to the man I’m about to see, and she’d only care that I came out whole. “Have I told you I love you, yet, today?”
“Yes. But I happen to love hearing it.”
Wraith is walking back toward me, ticket in hand. “Intend to tell you often. For the rest of our lives. I gotta go, Bug. Keep doing what you do best.”
“As long as you do the same. And love you too.”
She tells me the floor and room he’s in, and then we hang up, just as Wraith slaps a ticket on the dash of my truck.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Let’s get it done.”
“You know,” Wraith says casually, “I’d prefer to not get arrested, today, and seeing I just had to use my credit card to purchase the parking ticket, and how we’ve already passed twenty cameras, you good to keep this civil?”
I huff at that. “The fucker doesn’t deserve civil. But I intend to talk to him in words he can understand.”
Wraith chuckles. “So, you know some long words, Prez? ‘Cause I never heard you use them.”
I flip him the bird. “Jurisprudential. That’s a long word.”
Wraith shakes his head. “Just proved my fucking point. That’s not a long word. Like, constitutionalization. That’s a big fucking word.”
I glare at my right-hand man. “You jerking off to a dictionary in the morning? And don’t call me ‘Prez.’ Yes, I am. But you and I have been friends way too fucking long for you to be calling me that.”
“Sir?” Wraith asks. “I’ve been taking lessons from Babyface.”
“Fuck you.”
“My liege?”
I laugh at that one. “You’re gonna make me break character.”
He shrugs. “Maybe that was the point.”
The hospital is like any other. Whitewashed walls to make it feel bright and normal, but with that lingering scent of antiseptic. It’s bleached of character, in an attempt to make people forget why they’re here.
But I don’t.
There are years of my life lost to a concrete cell because of this man. A man who presented as an upstanding lawyer to the world but shook judges’ hands behind closed doors and took MC money under the table after dark.
He took Lucy away from me and leaned on a judge to keep me away from her.
I would kill him. But perhaps being unable to string a sentence together without a piece of paper is punishment enough for the man who used his voice for evil. And I’m certain the way we’re about to destroy his reputation and legacy will hurt more than a bullet.
Wraith walks by my side, hands in his pockets, eyeing the corridor like we’re already under threat.
Outside room 314, the door is slightly ajar. I place my palm on the door to push it open but pause when I hear a voice inside.
“If you tell me where you put it, I’ll find it,” someone says.
There’s a pause. Then, “No.”
“That one word doesn’t overly help,” the same person continues. “Look, I’ll draw your office. Just point to the location, and—”
The door creaks beneath my palm, and I push it all the way open.
Inside is a tall man, likely in his late twenties. He’s wiry, with a neat shirt, sleeves rolled up. He freezes mid-sentence, reaching for the sleek laptop case that sits open, but untouched on the bedside table.
The man blanches, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
Wraith steps next to me, blocking the door.
The demeanor of the man shifts suddenly.
“Problem?” I ask.
The man shakes his head, almost a beat too late. “No. No…I was just visiting, Mr. De Bose. I’m Adam. I work at the law firm. A junior associate. We’re working on…a case. A case together. I just needed a document from Mr. De Bose. The hearing is on Wednesday.”
De Bose glances between the two of us, indecision etched on his face. Then, he nods at Adam who grabs the laptop.
I step toward him, and Adam flinches at the gesture. “I have to go. I—I—well, I have to go.”
“I feel like we should let him go before he pisses his pants,” Wraith says with a chuckle.
But, as Adam attempts to pass me, I take the laptop from his hand. “I’ll take that. We need it for our conversation. Come back for it tomorrow.”
“I can’t,” Adam says, reaching for it like he’s trying to steal a fish out of a bear’s mouth. “It has sensitive legal information on—”
I don’t raise my voice.
I don’t have to.
I just stare at him. Dead-eyed. Calm to the bone. “I wasn’t asking.”
Adam glances at Lucy’s father, who nods in defeat. “Fine,” he says. “Should I call…security?” Adam asks bravely.
De Bose shakes his head. Furiously.
And I properly look at the man who almost sealed mine and Lucy’s fate all those years ago. His hair is graying. Dark circles ring his eyes. And though I don’t know much, medically, about a heart monitor, the number in the top right corner of the screen tells me his heart rate is accelerating.
He gestures with his hand for Adam to leave, which he does, at speed.
I promised Lucy I wasn’t gonna kill her father, but I would be fine if my presence was enough to trigger another heart attack.
“Calm the fuck down,” I say. “You can die once you’ve told me what I need.”
His eyes narrow, and I can tell he knows what I need to know. “No.”
The word sounds like he had to force it over his vocal chords.
But he presses a couple of buttons on a digital device in front of him that robotically says, “What?”
I glance at the device. It’s got boxes on it, with what look like images and category names. A bottle and glass with the category name ‘drinks.’ A skeleton with the word ‘body.’ I guess it’s an adaptive device to help him find words and speak for him.
“Must be hell, I say. “Trapped inside your head with all your secrets and no way to spill them. Kinda like being trapped in prison when you know you didn’t do the thing you’ve been found guilty of.”
His jaw clenches slightly. Barely perceptible.
Wraith opens the laptop and forcibly grabs De Bose’s finger to press it on the touch ID scanner to access it.
“Was it worth it?” I ask. “Lying to your daughter. Making her sign those papers. Making sure I rotted in a jail cell for something I didn’t do so you could erase me from the narrative of your family to keep the De Bose name squeaky clean.
And while you were busy pretending I was beneath your fucking family, you were doing business with a different motorcycle club. ”
“You…No…No.” De Bose’s stammered words catch me off guard. They’re uncertain. Unsure. Panicked. But I push on.
I nod. “Oh, yes. Lucy knows. Not just about what you did to me, but she knows about the Rebels. About the money. About your dealings. She might not have the whole picture, yet, but the one thing you never accepted about your daughter? She’s fucking smart.
She’s digging. And I’ll help her find out the truth about you and your connections to them. ”
His eyes follow me. Even if his mouth can’t say the words, he fucking knows he’s cooked.
“Got any more secrets?” I ask him, soft and low.
“Anything else you want to confess? Because you’re stuck, now.
The Rebels are trying to make Lucy do what you no longer can.
They’ve already tried to take her two times.
Either the Rebels are going to come for you, or the law will.
And neither will be pretty. Because if the law gets you, you’ll be locked up, like this, in a prison with men you condemned.
Or maybe the Rebels will come for you to keep you quiet.
If both of them miss, I’ll make sure one of my brothers doesn’t.
My father is inside for life, and he’ll happily take your life in a heartbeat. ”
Wraith puts the laptop in front of De Bose. “You better open some shit that’s worth our while.”
De Bose blinks. A single tear escapes the corner of his eye.
And a sliver of guilt pricks at me because, for a second, I think about the relationship I have with my father, and the one Lucy deserved to have with hers. But this man will never step up for her.
De Bose finally taps on the keyboard and pulls up his law firm website and toggles to a page that seems to be a series of head shots. When he finds what he’s looking for, he points.
It’s a photograph of Adam Shipley, the guy who was just here.
Then, he clicks a file folder on his laptop and opens a second photograph.
“Wes Granger?” I ask.
De Bose draws a circle, then points to Granger’s photo.
“What’s this got to do with Granger?” Wraith asks.
De Bose toggles back to the image of Adam before drawing the lines of what quickly look like a family tree. He points to Adam, then draws an ‘x’ where a son would go.
“Fuck. Adam is Wes Granger’s son.”