43. Rowan
FORTY-THREE
ROWAN
I flipped open my phone for the eight hundredth time that night, waiting for the update from Sport that hadn’t come yet.
He always updated me at the same time every day. Always. For him to go dark was concerning.
I called Angel first, and when the phone rang through to voicemail, I tried Nash, who hit the fuck you button so fast I almost mistook it for a dead battery.
Almost.
I stared at the screen, wondering why the fuck both of them were pointedly ignoring my calls. Had I done something to piss them off? Were they fighting or something? Maybe I was overreacting, seeing things where there were none.
I was off my game. I hadn’t been as detail-oriented lately as I usually was, and it was affecting my work. With Lilly still withholding judgment on the whole Harper/failed contract fiasco and Harper on a night shift at the shop, I had too much on my plate, yet not enough to keep me distracted.
We’d all been a little off-kilter since she left.
Harper took the best parts of us with her and left a raw, gaping wound in each of our souls that ached around the edges like a phantom limb. The house felt empty without her here. The whole day felt like a waste when I woke up alone, ate alone, went to bed alone. I ached to hold her in my arms again, but she’d made her position on things clear when she left without even a word, or a damn goodbye.
I had to respect that.
I didn’t have to like it, but I promised her I’d respect her decision to return to her old life when all this blew over.
I sent proof of life for her to the attorney in charge of her mother’s legacy and asked him to reach out to her with options. She didn’t want that money. I knew that, he knew that, her mother knew that. But I knew Harper, and she’d find a way to put that blood money to good use.
She’d come a long way from her days as a spoiled socialite bitch. She stood confidently on her own two feet now, a self-made woman with a new identity, one she preferred over her own, it seemed.
I couldn’t blame her for that. Anonymity had its perks, as I well knew.
My phone rang suddenly, and I didn’t even glance at the screen before I answered it. "Blackwood speaking."
"Ah, Boss, I have some bad news."
Sport. That could only mean one thing, and I forced myself to remain a level of calm as I rushed to the closet for my coat. "What happened to her?"
"Oh, she’s fine. But I stayed home today from work, so I asked a buddy to keep an eye on her for me." He cleared his throat, the rasping hoarseness making me glad he wasn’t near Harper right now. I hated the thought of her getting whatever fucking sickness this man was struggling with, but it was likely drug-related, to be honest. I knew a cokehead when I saw one.
Which was why I paid him well enough to maintain his lifestyle and his habit while slumming it in the mechanic shop.
Money motivated all men. The only question was, how much.
"Have you kept in touch with her today?"
"Oh, yeah, I texted her at lunch, and she even sent proof of life from the taco stand. I’ll send it to you."
I pulled the phone away from my face as the photo came through, and there she was, the bane of my existence, the woman who owned me, heart and soul, since we were teenagers, standing in line at the taco truck that parked outside the shop on the corner every weekday at noon like clockwork. She smiled and held up a peace sign in the photo, and a pang of jealousy ran through my veins as I realized she thought she’d sent this to Sport. She was posing for him, smiling, like a normal fucking woman .
She had a life, and we weren’t in it. And she was happy. Almost like the three of us dragged her down and caused her pain, and she could only be free once she’d cut the ties that bound us all.
Could it be that we weren’t meant to be?
"See, boss? She’s fine. Safe and sound, and eating lunch with Big John. He’s not gonna let anything happen to her."
"Sure, yeah, thanks for touching base. Keep me posted. I wanna know when she makes it home."
He shuffled around, the receiver rustling against something in the background, and his voice returned, a little further away from the phone than before. "Sure thing, man. I’ll let you know when she arrives, and if anything changes."
"And you’d better chill it on the drugs because if you put her in danger again because of your habit and hangovers, I will find you, and I will make you regret it."
I didn’t wait for him to hang up. I ended the call with a snarl of rage, of jealousy so engrained in my psyche that it made me question who I was.
I didn’t get jealous. That wasn’t my deal. But seeing Harper message another man so carefree, like she had grown close to him, stung like a thousand bees. It felt like I’d pushed him and her together, and I had no one but myself to blame for the ensuing friendship.
Was there more there than just amiable coexistence of two coworkers? Could she truly fall for someone like him? He was a rich brat, someone who was bored enough to take on a well-paying job since Mommy and Daddy cut up his credit cards and locked down the trust fund. He literally bled money.
Surely, she could smell a fake, a fraud like him, from a million miles away.
Right?
My phone vibrated, and I frowned as I watched a text from Angel pop up in my notifications.
Angel
what do you want, asshole?
My eyes rolled back into my head so often these days, I was becoming well-acquainted with the interior of my skull. My fingers flew across the screen as I hastily typed out a reply.
me
We’ve gotta talk about what we’re planning to tell Lilly when she decides to put us on trial.
The three dots indicating he was replying popped up, and I waited as he typed out another snappy comeback.
Angel
I don’t see how that’s my problem. I wanted to kill her. It was yours and Nash’s decision to protect her and void the contract instead. Deal with it yourself.
The urge to throw my phone into the nearby wall was so intense I nearly acted on it. Instead, I slipped it into my pocket and sighed, carding my fingers through my disheveled locs. The same locs I took pride in had started to come unwound, stray strands of hair poking out here and there in a disheveled manner that disgusted me.
I didn’t want her to see me like this, but she wasn’t here, so there was no reason to worry about it.
Angel looked at me with disgust any time he walked past me on his way out the door, but I could bear those looks of disdain. Nash wasn’t faring much better, so it wasn’t like I was the only one slowly falling apart these days.
Hell, I could even start to see the black roots of Angel’s bleached-blonde hair poking through.
Fuck you, asshole. I thought we were a team.
He’d done his best to distance himself from the two of us, and Nash, well, he was the same as always—drinking himself stupid every night, smoking like a train every day when he got up. The whole place stunk of stale smoke and desperation. Nothing would bring it out. Not unless we all changed drastically.
And our only reason to change was gone forever.
My phone rang again, and I was surprised to see my father’s name on the screen for a change. I almost didn’t answer it, but a small part of me wanted to lord it over him that he’d lost. That he’d never get Harper’s mom’s money. That he’d tried to beat me and lost.
"The fuck could you possibly want from me, old man?"
His low chuckle echoed on the other end of the line, and it sent a shiver down my spine. I knew that laugh. It was the same one he let loose every time he took off his belt to beat the shit out of one of us. It usually preceded pain.
And I’d had enough of pain to last a lifetime.
"Rowan, boy, is that any way to greet the man who holds your whole life in his hands?"
I wasn’t in the mood to banter back and forth in some fucked up power game with him. "What the fuck do you want, Father?"
"Well, I was hoping I could talk to you and your . . . brothers . . . in person. All at once. I’d like to give you a little gift, as it were. I did make a promise, and I intend to deliver." He paused as I mulled it over, letting out a little clicking noise as he sucked the inside of his cheek. "Not a lot of time to decide, Rowan. It’s either all of you or none of you. I’m not budging on that."
I winced as I debated whether or not to drag the other two into this. "I’m not subjecting my brothers to your torment."
"Now, Rowan, I wouldn’t expect you to trust me, but I will keep things civil where your brothers are concerned. But I don’t think you’ll wanna miss this meeting. There’s someone very important at the center of it."
Harper .
"I swear to all that’s holy, and all that’s not, I will kill you where you stand if you’ve hurt her."
"Oh, come on, Rowan. I’m despicable, but I’m not a murderer."
"No. You’re not. You’ve always had other people do your dirty work where that’s concerned."
"I have not harmed a hair on Harper’s fucking head yet. Happy?"
I frowned at his vague and empty words. There was more behind them than I could parse out over the phone. I needed to see him in person to tell what he had up his sleeve.
There was no other choice.
"When and where?"
"My house. Thirty minutes."
The line went dead, leaving me scrambling to convince the others to face their abuser with me.
We arrived at his house in slightly better shape than we’d been up to now, looking more like half-asleep, overworked men than strung-out street people. I considered that a win.
Father’s crew met us at the gate with grins as wide as the fucking desert, and that concerned me more than it should. These fuckers never smiled, not in all the years I’d known them.
Something was up, and I didn’t like it.
Immediately I was on high alert, mapping out the grounds as we parked the Torino by the door, careful to leave the doors unlocked in case we needed to get away from here fast. I shared a silent look with the others, none of us needing words to know that this was a lion’s den, and we were walking in basically unarmed.
Scratch that. Completely unarmed. The men at the door waved their little metal-detecting wands over us and removed our weapons, the simple knives we carried with us everywhere, with unbridled glee.
Father sat behind his desk, his lips curled into a smile I remembered from the times he thought he’d won a battle with us as teenagers.
"Ah, look, if it isn’t the three greatest failures of my life. The ruiners of my best-laid, longest-running plans. Idiots who couldn’t even kill a single girl."
"Maybe next time, don’t raise us with a future mark for a sibling."
Nash snorted at Angel’s quip, and I had to hand it to him—that one was good. Father’s face curled into a moue of disapproval as I chuckled along with my eldest brother.
He didn’t stay down long, though, his eyes piercing Angel straight through as he delivered a zinger of his own. "Typically, boys don’t grow up wanting to fuck their sisters. Can’t say the same for you lot, though, can I?"
He’d managed to silence the three of us in one go, one single insult that nailed the trio of us to the damned cross we’d been dragging for years.
We couldn’t say anything back. Couldn’t deny what was oh-so-obvious. Couldn’t excuse it. All we could do was swallow our pride and wait for him to decide what else he wanted to say.
"I thought that might get your attention." He snapped his fingers and two men jumped at once, moving to his sides with guns drawn. The rest of the room was obviously armed as well, and this was a move to show us we didn’t stand a chance if we thought we could kill him bare-handed like we were.
"What the hell do you want from us? I know it wasn’t just to gloat."
His eyes shot to Nash now, and that cheeky grin of satisfaction turned into a twisted frown of disgust. "Oh, my, so the freak does know how to speak for himself still. I wasn’t sure if those scars affected your ability to make words. "
Nash’s hand balled into a fist, but seconds before I assumed I’d have to pull him away from Father to avoid getting shot, he backed down, growling like a beast who was at the end of his chain and just waiting for someone to get close enough to bite.
Father’s phone rang, and he glanced at it before picking up. A single nod, a ‘good’ spoken into the receiver, and he hung up, his eyes never leaving us.
"I assume you’d all like to know why you’re here. Well, let me explain."
We watched him stand like immobilized hawks, tracking his every movement as he walked around his desk and motioned for us to take a seat. When we all refused, he shrugged and continued circling us, playing his little game as bodyguards one and two trailed just inches behind.
"Last time I invited your brother Rowan here, I told him he’d regret it, as would you, if he didn’t complete that contract. But apparently, he doesn’t take me seriously. None of you do. So I brought you here to show you that no matter what game you think you’re playing with me, I will always win."
His meaty, liver-spotted fist came down on the coffee table as he took his preferred seat before us, fitting right into the gnarled, worn-out leather throne he’d sat in so many years now that it had a permanent imprint in the cushion of his round, arrogant ass.
"I know you don’t think I can hurt you. You don’t think there’s anything I could do now that you’ve foiled my plans to get that bitch’s money. But this was all a test, boys. And you failed. So, to punish you for your utter disloyalty, I’ve decided to take the one thing that matters to you and destroy it."
I knew what he meant the second he stopped speaking. Somewhere along the line, he’d figured out our combined weakness was a greater threat than individual ones. He realized that striking one target and wounding all three of us would be easier than waving vague threats over our heads one by one, forcing us to play our desires against each other.
I’d been so blinded by my mental breakdown and intense questioning of myself that I didn’t realize he’d subverted all my best-laid plans. My heart stopped beating, and for a moment, I thought I might die.
And then I flipped my phone open and made a phone call I wasn’t sure I wanted answered.
When someone picked up on the other end, I lost all my calm, controlled demeanor, and the whole room was witness to my fear.
I knew the others knew, too. Their expressions matched my own.
"Sport? Sport, I?—"
"Sorry," the man on the other end of the phone said with a slight chuckle in his voice. "Sport’s dead. He crossed the wrong people, and we had to take him out." His laugh was more pronounced now, and I felt like I recognized that voice from somewhere, but I couldn’t quite place it with my mind in pieces. "But don’t worry. We’ll take good care of Miss Daniels for you."
The line went dead, and with it, all the hope I had clung to since she left the safety of the asylum.
I turned on my father, everything in me urging me to leave, though all I wanted to do was wrap my bare hands around his neck and strangle him until there was no more breath in his lungs.
"If you hurt her?—"
"Oh, I think we’re past that, son. I daresay she’s probably bleeding out in front of that stupid mechanic shop where she works by now. But if you hurry, you might get to tell her goodbye."
As the three of us rushed from the house, his parting shot echoed behind us, a reminder of the damage we’d done by not standing up to the man who ruined lives sooner.
"If I can’t have what I want, neither can you."