40. Chapter 40
Chapter 40
DECLAN
T he weeks go by like a fucking fairy tale. I’m not sure if this is how they traditionally pass, but I feel like I am living in a Valentine’s Day card. And before I know it, it’s mid-May, the class that I met Vivian in is ending, and I am happier than I have ever been in my life.
I have never had this feeling of wanting to be with someone all the time. In fact I can’t even stand to be with myself half the time, but I can’t get enough of Vivian. I love to be with her, and when I’m not with her, I’m distracted by thoughts of being with her. It’s something that my brothers have become very irritated with and point out to me as often as they can. But even they love Vivian and have taken her in like one of us, so they have no room to talk.
My Dad gives me knowing glances all the time, and sometimes he even looks a little sad. Like he’s remembering the time he had with my mom. If he felt like this with her and then lost her, I’m amazed he survived her loss. But he did, and he has started his new MS treatment, a trial drug, and it’s going well. He hasn’t told my brothers yet, something I am constantly on him about since he is doing so well.
Vivian has finally left her backpack unpacked since the day I put her clothes in the drawer for her. In fact, she stores it empty in our closet now and uses just a small purse when she goes out. I encouraged her to get her first credit card to build credit, and she has decorated our apartment little by little. She glows, and the pride in my body at the fact that I helped her get here and she is mine is just ridiculous.
I’m dropping her off at work currently, one of my least favorite things. I hate that she works nights; I want her home and in my bed every night. She leans over to kiss me goodbye, and I grab her chin to keep her to me. “I want you to quit this job,” I say to her and she rolls her eyes.
“I need a job, Declan,” she says, in a way that makes clear she is tired of repeating herself.
“I’ll give you a job.”
“Yes, a woman who is paid by her boyfriend is a sugar baby, Declan. I will not be your sugar baby,” she reminds me. We’ve had this conversation a lot.
I sulk and kiss her again, then watch her walk into the building before making my way back to meet my dad at home. He’d texted me and asked me to meet him there just as I was bringing Vivian to work.
“Hey Dad,” I say, entering his office.
“Hey.” He motions for me to take a seat across from him. He looks rough, and I haven’t seen him this way in a while.
“What’s wrong?” I demand. “Are you not feeling—”
“I found out about Eric Runge.” My Vivian happiness bubble pops just like that. I had pestered my dad for weeks about that man, but then I had gotten busy with work things and slowly taking on more of his businesses and, well, just distracted by Vivian.
“And?” I ask as anger threads up my back.
“He’s dead, Declan.”
“When?”
“His body washed up on Horseneck Beach this morning, gunshot in his chest,” he tells me.
My stomach clenches with a crazy feeling. First there was Eddie, trying to get us involved in a drug war, and then he showed up dead. We still hadn’t heard any more about that or who he might be working for. Then this guy who is a known for-hire prick lights Vivian’s building on fire, and he too washes up dead on a local beach.
“I think this is my fault,” my father finally says, bringing my entire attention back to him.
“Your fault? Dad, how can any of this be on you?”
He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “It was all supposed to be perfect for you boys,” he says, and I think I hear a slight quiver to his voice.
“Dad?” I say, lowering my voice to try and give him the comfort he seems to need. “What are you talking about?”
“I promised your mother,” he says, slamming a fist on the desk, then looks up and meets my concerned gaze with his own angry stare. “I said by the time I left all of this to you guys it would be legitimate, it would be something that you guys could grow and not have to be beating the shit out of people for money. You guys were supposed to have a good, successful business to take over.”
“Dad, we do.”
“No,” he says, drilling me with his stare. “I fucked it up. I fucked it all up.”
I move closer to my father, approaching like I would a wounded animal. “Dad, you’re freaking me out. What the fuck is wrong?”
My father leans back in his desk chair, and he suddenly looks twenty years older. “I had some money put aside, from the days when I was moving drugs and taking bribes. I had it stowed away because your mom didn’t want to use it for anything. It was like an emergency fund of sorts. She asked me to save it to do something that would help get me to the next level.
“So I held onto it—truth is I forgot about it—but then someone came to me for money about twelve or so years ago. You know I had put that part of the business to bed for me just after you were born; it was too dangerous for a family man,” he tells me.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“So this guy came to me, late one night. Well, morning, actually. I was shutting down Sixth Street—someone had been out sick. He met me in the alley, and he looked like fucking shit. I almost shot him, to be honest. I thought he was some homeless guy trying to mug me at first. Now I kind of wish I had.
“He said he was desperate, that he needed to borrow some money, and he promised to pay me back with fifty percent interest by the end of the week. He told me he’d fucked up, tried some shitty investments, and he’d lost it all. But he knew how to get it back by the end of the week. He sang me a song about his wife and kids, and I won’t lie, it got to me. So I lent him the money.”
“How much?”
“$300K.”
I whistle at the amount. “And then?”
“He paid me back, as promised, $450K.”
My mind is spinning. “What’s the problem?”
“That was the first of many. He came back to me numerous times over the years. And each time I lent it, we’d come to terms on payback and he would get it back to me in the approved time. It became like a sure deal to make money. I would say once every two years, he’d come asking for hundreds of thousands, and I would take it from that account and lend it and he would get it back to me. No big deal, a big nest egg for the future.
“And then, about two years ago he came to me, and it was the biggest loan he had asked for. By this time he’d gotten his name in the news a bit. He’d become a big name along the way in the business world. I’d also heard rumors here and there about him from some of my former associates. Apparently he wasn’t the stand-up guy he’d made himself seem to be in the mainstream. He never had been. I mean, I should have known better. I should’ve realized something was up if he kept coming to me for money. I mean, I trusted these guys who were telling me about him, and I stopped trusting the guy I was loaning to. I wasn’t as comfortable about just lending and taking his word. So he offered to do up a contract.
“He gave me this contract, and the terms were that I would lend him the money and he would pay me back over the next two years. I took the contract, met with my own set of lawyers, and I had shit added to it. If he didn’t pay me back within two years, I got fifty-two percent of shares in each of the companies he owned. I gave it to his lawyers, who added a clause. If I was convicted of a felony within six months of the end date, I forfeited all of my rights.”
“Did you sign it?”
He nods. “I did.”
“When are the two years up?” I ask.
“In five weeks,” he says softly.
My head spins with the information. “So why do you think this has to do with you and any of these weird crimes, Dad?”
“Because that fucker has refused to pay me back, and I think he is trying to pin something or multiple somethings on me if I force my hand with this contract.”
“But how can he do that?” I demand. “You have the contract—”
“I have the contract, the original ones, but any and all copies that have been made…he’s destroyed all of them.”
“Dad, that doesn’t make any sense. The lawyers were there.”
“They’re all gone.”
“Who?” I ask, baffled.
“The lawyers, all of them—they are gone.”
“Where?”
“They’re dead, Declan,” my father says. “His lawyers, my lawyers, the notary, anyone that had any involvement in any part of that contract I signed are no longer above ground.”
“Dad, I’m not following you.”
My father, the greatest man I have ever met, who has only ever wanted to do the best for his family, heaves out a large breath of air and looks absolutely defeated. “I was trying to make you guys have an easier, better life than I did,” he says and pins me with a look, “and I fucked up, Declan.”
“Dad, it’s fine. We do have a good life,” I tell him.
My father shakes his head. “No, it was supposed to be better, legitimate. I promised your mother.”
My heart hurts for this man who has given everything to us, yet feels like he has failed us. “Dad, who is it? Who did you make this deal with?”
My father looks me in the eyes. “Palmer Lexington.”
Shock is usually a reaction I can smother and hold back, but this is a bombshell, and I feel my eyes bulge out of my head. “No fucking way,” I tell my father. Palmer Lexington is a household name, a billionaire who supposedly made his money from nothing, who the news was just talking about being in the area for something for his kid at freaking Harvard and going around to support local spots like a golden boy. Or at least that’s the story he had put out. And his name has been all over the news because he is running for office in Massachusetts. He’s an investment banker who turns everything he touches to gold. And he has his hands and money in tons of companies.
“He’s a walking con man,” my father informs me. “And the deeper I dig, the more stuff I uncover about the guy.”
“Like what?” I ask. How can someone so public have so many skeletons, I wonder?
“The guy doesn’t know shit about money or business.”
“Dad, he’s a billionaire,” I remind him. “He has to know something.”
My father shakes his head. “No, he has charisma and he’s a good liar. He takes money and invests it in shit deals or he gambles it away. Then he scrambles to get money from wherever he can. He starts these small businesses and gets investors, and then when they don’t work out, the investors lose their money.”
“How come they haven’t sued him or gone to the feds about him then?”
“Because he doesn’t use big investors or businesses. He gets regular Joes excited and interested and then he takes their life savings. He’s busted up families, and I’ve heard some guys have killed themselves from it. He does legitimate deals with their money and lets the small businesses flop. He has them sign all kinds of NDAs so they can’t break them or talk without ridiculous repercussions.”
I cannot wrap my head around the fact that my father knows and has done business of sorts with the guy who was on the cover of Time magazine last year.
“Okay, so he came to you for a loan, and he got you to sign a contract for shares?” I ask, trying to keep my head on straight. My father nods and I continue, “And you’ve gotten no payment and the anniversary of the contract is coming in five weeks. But one of the clauses is that you can have no felonies within six months of the end of the contract.”
“In the last four months, we had drugs sold at our place, setting us up in the middle of a drug war, the house was broken into, and Vivian’s apartment went up in flames,” my father says.
I feel myself freeze. “What does Vivian’s apartment have to do with this?” I ask.
“I put in an offer to that sleazebag of a landlord—a lowball offer, but an offer. He told me to fuck off.”
“Why did you offer to buy it?” I ask.
“Because I knew you cared about her, and I knew you hated her in that place. I thought maybe we could buy it and fix it up. But I wasn’t going to pay top dollar for a shithole.”
“And then it went up in flames?” I ask him. Making it look like my father torched the place. “But why would you torch it? That wouldn’t have benefited you,” I say, trying to process everything.
“From my sources, things haven’t gone the way Lexington has wanted them. First it was with Eddie. He was supposed to say I was selling the drugs, either getting me killed and out of the picture or getting the cops’ attention and getting me convicted, effectively removing me. But Eddie used it to try and create a war between Tony and the Vavitos. Thought he could outsmart him. So Lexington got rid of him.
“And Runge, well, he was supposed to make sure my real estate offer went through on Vivian’s building. He heard Falco had been there and assumed it was me, getting my offer straight. Then once the deal was signed, Runge was supposed to torch the building, because then it would have been me trying to get the insurance money. But Runge got impatient. Had another job to do, and just heard me make the offer. So he got offed for his fuckup too. I’d heard Runge was on Lexington’s payroll, and this just confirms it. They would have probably been killed no matter what. That’s his MO. He uses low-level criminals, people no one will miss or who won’t make a big wave, and has them do his bidding.”
“He sounds like the scum of the earth,” I tell him.
“Yeah,” my father agrees. “He’s what happens when the wrong people get rich. Which happens all the time.”
“So how do we handle him?”
My father shakes his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I should have just let it all go,” Dad muses, rubbing his chin and looking away. “I probably should have said fuck it and dropped it, but I couldn’t leave you boys, knowing there was that kind of money out there.”
“Dad, it’s just money. We are—”
“It’s five million dollars, Declan,” my father says, “plus 30% interest.”
I freeze, and my stomach flips.
“The fucker was taking my phone calls, but now he doesn’t. And I showed my hand. I got heated one night, told him I still have a copy of the contract. Probably why he sent some goons in here that night, hoping they’d either find it or I’d kill one, getting me convicted of something. I really didn’t realize until I sat down today that he is getting closer and closer to our family. And, well, he’s got the resources to make bad things happen to you boys. And I can’t have that.”
“What are you going to do, Dad?”
My father shakes his head, unable to answer my question, still so lost in what has transpired. “I was so fucking mad when I found out, you know. I was feeling shitty, and I wasn’t improving. Then I thought I had a plan to help me relax and not worry about the future for you guys, and that was all a lie. All these dreams I have for you, for my boys. I thought I was going to set up millions in trusts for each of you. You would’ve been all set, the four of you. But instead of keeping my wits about me, I flew off the handle, acted with my emotions, and now I have set us up. God, I have never felt so stupid, so fucking desperate.”
“Dad, you need to let me take this over,” I tell him. I have no idea what I am going to do, but I have a clearer head about all of this than my father does. He’s right to say he is acting with his emotions, and I’m afraid it’s going to kill him.
“No, Declan, I made this problem. I need—” My dad stops short just as I was about to interrupt him, and he doesn’t look right.
“Dad?” I ask as the color drains from his face, and he slumps in his seat. “Dad!” I shout, but there is no response.