JackParent’s Day - 11 years ago
I’d always been a good actor. Good enough that I should’ve traded skates for the stage back in college.
Back then, I used my skills to charm girls into having another one of my signature cocktails.
I liked them drunk and pliant–not comatose exactly, but with their guard down and inhibitions switched off.
I also used it to charm sponsors, which was how I ended up driving that brand new truck at age twenty-one.
A gift from a sponsor. One that, granted, didn’t last very long after I crashed that night.
It wasn’t killing the girl that killed that sponsorship, no, they didn’t really care about that.
It was that the crash wrecked my knees, ending any chance at a pro career.
And landing me a prime spot as Franklin Barrett’s lackey.
Then again, those acting skills paid off today.
When that asshole sat in my chair, behind my desk and asked me for his money, I knew exactly what to do. I coughed, I spluttered, I shrank and shook. My voice wobbled like I was a toddler whose toys were being taken away.
“I don’t have it.” I answered. I kept up the act the whole way through our conversation.
Inside, though, I was roaring with laughter.
The great Franklin Barrett. He might think he had me by the balls, and in some ways he did, but I had his money.
I’d taken bits and pieces, small enough amounts to be written off as accounting errors and built myself a lovely little nest egg.
Franklin always operated like he was untouchable. Like he didn’t need anything from anyone. I knew better. He needed me, not just to launder his money, but to keep his twisted means of production churning.
Camp Agonde was at the very heart of Barrett’s supply chain, so he might have been pissed about the money, fuck, he might have come close to ending me, but he didn’t.
I played my part too well. When he walked out of my office that day, I breathed a sigh of relief when Blue Grace became his next target.
Three days later, after the late-night programs wrapped up, I returned to my office only to find a man dressed all in black waiting behind my door, his gun trained at my forehead.
He bore all the marks of one of Franklin’s men.
After all, it wasn’t my first visit from one of his foot soldiers.
I knew what would follow. Sure enough, the next day, I caught up with the Rothberg girl as she was leaving the nurse’s office.
It was as simple as a quick lie, telling her that her brother was in my office, that he needed to speak to her. She followed me without a question.
When I handed her over to Franklin’s nameless man, he thanked me and said, “Mr. Barrett said to call Daniel and let him know his debt’s been cleared.”
Once Rachel realized her brother wasn’t there, she struggled against the man’s hold.
But she was a tiny slip of a thing, and he was huge, so it didn’t take long for him to overpower her, tying her wrists and tossing her over his shoulder so he could exit the same way he’d come in, climbing out of the back windows.
None of that stopped her screaming as he hauled her away.
I called Daniel right then. He wasn’t a distraught father, there was no concern, just a cold, ‘Make it look real,’ followed by a ‘thank you, Jack, will that be all?’
With that brief conversation, the last piece of the puzzle slotted into place. Three families. Three children. Grace, Rothberg, and Barrett.
I was caught up in a much bigger game than I’d realized.
The last of the girl’s blood-curdling screams still shook my office walls when Toni burst through the door that day.
In her reaction to the scream, to my mention of her father, and request to join Brennon Grace and Xavier Rothberg in a sailing class, I saw the first steps towards my freedom.
And though it would take years to bear fruit, that was the day the rest of my plans started to take shape.