Chapter Fourteen #2
Unaware of my internal struggle with his easy affection, Jacob said, "He's been searching for you since you disappeared.
I've had Cooper and his team watching him.
He was looking for you from the beginning, but now, his negotiations with the Raptors have stalled and he needs you to get them back online.
He wasn't desperate before, but he's getting there. "
"I'm part of the deal?" I asked, sick to my stomach at the memory of what Big John had said they would do to me.
"There's more to it than just you," Jacob said. "They can't agree on distribution. They can't agree on their cut—"
"Their cut of what?" I interrupted.
I was so clueless. Jacob gave me a squeeze. More affection. I was clueless in so many ways.
"Sales from heroin, mostly, and guns. Big John deals in more than that, but that's what he wants the Raptors for."
"Oh."
I didn't know what else to say. I couldn't believe John had been involved in this part of his father's business, though I knew he probably had. But my John, the man I had married, had been soft.
Soft body, affable personality, there was nothing about him that would suggest he had the capacity to make deals with biker gangs or sell drugs and weapons.
Without realizing I was going to speak, I said, "The police told me John was the victim of a mugging. He was shot. But it wasn't a mugging, was it?"
Jacob's arms tightened around me. "No," he said. "I don't think it was."
"Do you know who killed him?" I asked, my voice small.
I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but I had to. Jacob gave me another squeeze. I turned off the wok and waited for his answer.
"I don't know, not definitely. From what Cooper has turned up, it looks like it was an inside job."
I stepped away from Jacob and went to get the plates for dinner, every muscle in my body stiff with shock and denial.
An inside job?
John had been killed by one of his own? I took the plates down from the shelves, my movements jerky, the china clattering as I tried to set it on the counter. Jacob edged me aside with a gentle nudge.
"I'll do this," he said, piling steaming rice on each plate before covering it with veggies and chicken in a sweet and savory sesame teriyaki sauce.
The scent of the food turned my stomach. An inside job? That possibility had occurred to me before, but I'd buried it.
I'd still been living in our house, surrounded by the Jordan clan. I couldn't afford to suspect them of something so awful. But what Jacob said made a sickening kind of sense. John had never fit in with the rest of them.
It wasn't his fault. His father had set him aside from the beginning, seeing John as a way for the family to carve out a presence in the legitimate world of business.
John had done as he was told—gone to all the right schools, where he made the right friendships. He'd gotten his business degree. He'd golfed, joined the country club, gotten tips on investments, and increased the Jordan family connections and wealth.
He'd even married me. I wasn't Atlanta royalty, but in our small but affluent suburb, I was considered a prize.
I'm not being conceited about it. I was pretty and reasonably smart, but I knew my appeal had far more to do with my parents’ wealth and position in the community than it had to do with me.
My father had been a wealthy banker and my mother's family was old Atlanta. I'd been born with a silver spoon in my mouth and an impeccable pedigree, but had my father's failures become public knowledge, my tiara would have tarnished overnight.
Instead, John swooped in to save my mother and marry me. In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end for John. He'd accomplished everything his father had wanted. It had never been enough.
I recalled hushed arguments, John telling his father he wouldn't work for him and Big John telling him he was weak. A waste of effort. A regret.
Had Big John decided to cut his losses and wipe his hands of his oldest son in the most final way?
"Abigail." Jacob interrupted my thoughts. He stood in front of me, a plate in each hand. "Let's eat. What happened to John was set in motion long before you two got married. You're lucky you got away. When this is over, you'll never have to think of the Jordans again."
That was oversimplifying things, of course. I couldn't just wash the last four years from my mind, couldn't forget John and our marriage, his family.
I wished I could. But Jacob was right. I was lucky to have gotten away. I didn't want to give Big John and his threats more of me than he'd already taken. Picking up the bottle of wine and our glasses, I followed Jacob into the dining room.
I had more to worry about than the Jordan family. Like what was going on with Jacob. Why had he changed so much?
Hugging me? Kissing me? Calling me sweetheart? He'd gone a whole day without ordering me to strip naked. That couldn't be good.
Maybe it was time for me to make a move. To put things back on even ground. Jacob was intimidating when he was ordering me around, but when he was being sweet, he terrified me.
I couldn't afford to fool myself into believing we were in love. I wouldn't survive it, not on top of everything else.
It was time to remind us both why I was there.