Chapter 14
Chapter 14
BEAU
I glance out the sliding glass doors and catch a glimpse of King and Iris snuggled up with each other on the beach, which slightly eases my mind. This’ll give me time to call my father. It’s been far too long for a phone call, but it’s time he knows what we’ve been through. There’s about a fifty-fifty chance he’ll get irately pissed at me for allowing it all to go this far without filling him in. He’s always been there when I’ve made the call for help in the past… it’s just not something I like to do.
But there’s also the other fifty percent telling me he won’t want to hear what the society has done or how we’ve managed to piss them off. That blind loyalty he thinks I should have simply because he’s told me to is for the birds.
The phone continues ringing against my ear while my eyes scan the beach once again. I freeze in place, noticing Iris crying at the same time my father’s secretary answers the phone.
“Banks and Beaumont, this is Charlene.” She always answers her phone. I knew to try her when he didn’t answer his cell phone, knowing he won’t recognize this number.
“Charlene, this is Beau. Is my father around?”
“Beau. I haven’t seen you in forever. How’s life at Bentley?” Her Southern drawl seems to be stronger than ever.
“It’s been a wild ride.” I don’t lie, but I’m certainly not about to tell her the truth.
“I bet it has. Well honey, hold on one second. Let me see if I can catch your father before the board meeting starts.”
Charlene puts me on hold and I put my focus back on Iris. King is wiping her tears, consoling her and I find myself appreciating the moment more than I ever imagined I would. Seeing him with Iris, watching him handle her with care when she needs it, and giving her hell like he always has when she doesn’t.
“Beau, I have two minutes.” My father sounds irritated that I’ve disturbed his power trip of a day, as if it’ll deter him from making any more money if he takes ten goddamn minutes to talk to his son.
“I want you to know, King and I are in some deep shit with The Brotherhood. In fact, fuck the entire society. I want nothing to do with it. You can push their shit on to one of those bastard children who seem to come out of the shadows every few years.” The fact he’s limited me to mere minutes after I haven’t spoken to him in weeks, set me on fire. He’s not used to being talked to this way either, so the consequences are bound to be brutal. However, I don’t give a flying fuck.
“Where are you?” His voice is stern and I can almost imagine him shushing someone trying to get his attention just so he can pretend to be a parent for a few minutes.
“Don’t worry about it. Your two minutes are up.” I hit end on the call and toss the phone in the couch. Reaching out to my father was the only reason I wanted one… so I won’t be needing it now. “Fuck.” Frustration rakes through my body. What the hell are we going to do? We can’t play house in her grandfather’s beach house for the rest of our lives while the people responsible for our living hell are permitted to breathe and walk as if they didn’t cross the wrong motherfuckers. My pacing is interrupted when I decide to use the phone again, this time to access the one absolute thing that’s necessary.
Money.
I pull up the website for my main bank account and check my balance, relieved when I access the account with no issue. Leaving a grand, I transfer the rest into a holding account King and I have in place in the event something like this happened. My father is probably less than a minute from draining my account as we speak. I’ve barely got that site closed and I’m logging into our secret stash to ensure the deposit is pending. I can’t help the smirk on my face when I see it at the top of my screen.
King and I started shoveling money into this account the second we turned eighteen. I’m not sure what drove me to think of that, but security has always been important to me. Our families know nothing about it, until today. My father will see the transfer once he goes in ‘to teach me a lesson’.
Growing up with everything handed to you leaves you very vulnerable. Maybe it was all the secrets our fathers kept and the business they held at all hours of the day and night to leave me on alert, wanting to ensure I’m never left high and dry. Not to mention, if my mother ever gets the balls to leave my dad… I want to make sure she has everything she needs. King agreed and followed suit, so now we both have safety nets that no one else can access.
Once I’ve ensured both of my accounts are untouched, I take a deep breath and decide to make one more phone call before I ditch the phone. My eyes find Iris again; this time her face is lit up with laughter and I can almost hear her loud cackle, the recollections running wild with memories of a time very long ago.
“Hello,” my mother’s soft voice greets on the other end of the call.
“Mom, it’s me. How are you?”
“Beau. What’s wrong? Why are you calling me from another phone number?” I want to go into detail and tell her everything, but I don’t. The last thing I need is to drag her into this without knowing what the future holds. Not to mention, she’s a worrier. She would be riddled with anxiety if she knew the half of it.
“Nothing. I lost my phone. I wanted to let you know to call this number if you need to reach me.”
“Beau. You sound off. I can hear it in your voice. Are you sure you’re not in trouble?”
“Positive. How is everyone?” I choose not to give her a heads up on my recent phone conversation with my father. It’s not something he’d tell her anyway. I’ve always had two separate parents; even though technically they’re still married, they lead individual lives. Neither of them ever bother to question the other. It’s the exact opposite of what I want with Iris.
“Oh, you know. The girls and I are out to brunch.” She’s always busied herself with being the wife of money. Maybe that’s what it is for them. Wealth… and status.
“Alright well, enjoy yourself. Tell them all I said hello.” I end the call quickly when I hear one of our other phones vibrating on the table.
Two steps and I’m standing over the screen; a notification of an incoming video vibrates, intriguing me to the point of opening the message. I haven’t even looked to see who the sender is when it starts to play.
It takes me a few seconds to realize what I’m seeing. It’s a video of both of Iris’ parents outside on a patio. Her father’s dressed in a suit while her mother has her hair in a towel and a robe wrapped snugly around her body. The camera view is coming from the side of the house, so I’m sure this is some sort of security footage.
The conversation starts to escalate until he backhands her across the face, causing her to fall to the ground. He follows her down, straddling her much smaller frame as he yanks the towel from her hair and holds it over her throat.
She gasps and tugs on the towel, not having the strength to overpower him and break free. He holds her down until her movement stops and her head falls to the side. Her lifeless body stops fighting.
Fuck.
The sound of the sliding glass door opening causes me to pause the video. Iris and King walk in and for a brief moment I consider hiding the video from Iris to protect her, but the thought is put to rest quickly once I see her face. I don’t want to have secrets with her. I can’t fathom living a life where we can’t trust each other and if she ever found out I hid something like this from her, she’d never trust me again. And I couldn’t blame her for it.
“Baby. We received a video you need to watch.” She stares at me suspiciously, slowly reaching for the phone in my hand. My heart aches as her fingers brush over mine because I know this video is going to shred her to pieces.
She takes it all in as I wrap my arms around her waist, standing against her back and seeing it again over her shoulder. King watches from beside me and I can feel the tension in the room grow the longer her father holds her mother down. The video goes on beyond what I originally saw, showing him stand and roll her over, face down before he straightens his suit jacket and strides back into the house. The video ends there.
She peers at me over her shoulder and I have to watch the explosion slowly building inside her as she processes the video. It’s fucked up and the fact she was looking relieved when she walked in but I had to ruin it, kills me inside. No matter how much I hate it, she had to know. Where we go from here will be entirely up to her, but King and I have wanted a reason to kill her piece of shit father since we were teenagers. I meet King’s stare, my thoughts reflected back as he's thinking the same damn thing I am.
All she has to do is say the word and we’ll make sure her father never breathes again. After the society’s bullshit tests, we could use a revenge kill to help ease some of the tension we’ve been carrying on our shoulders through it all. However, we won’t go off half-cocked and kill the fucker unless she wants us to.
Iris’ shoulders shake as a sob rips through her chest and I’m instantly drawing her into my chest, hugging her tighter. She needs to feel my strength right now, to know we’re here for her and there’s not a damn thing in the world we wouldn’t do for her.
“I got you, baby,” I murmur, leaning my forehead against her hair, allowing her to process this however she needs to.
King reaches out, taking her hands and squeezing. “We’re here, Iris. Talk to us. Tell us what you need. How can we make this better?”
Yes. Give us something. I’m better when I can fix whatever the hell is going on. I don’t say any of it out loud, but rather press a soft kiss to her shoulder. Everything she thought she knew in her world has crumbled. I couldn’t imagine witnessing my father kill my mother without taking his life in payment. I’d go fucking insane.
Her body rattles with her grief and all we can do is hold her, allowing her the moment to sob, scream, thrash, and wear the weight of her sadness before we figure out what the next step is. We need a plan, one where me and King end Iris’ father’s life for good.