Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
I t wasn't until I was sitting in the park across from Emmett's house with Walker that I began to get antsy. I'd never considered myself an impatient person before today. I was typically the opposite; however, today, I was ready to confront Emmett, clear everything up, and hopefully bring it to an end.
We settled onto the bench facing Emmett's house. The afternoon sun cast long shadows across the overgrown lawn, highlighting the peeling paint and sagging gutters. Everything about the place screamed neglect.
"Is he alone?" I leaned forward on the bench, fingernails digging into my palms.
Walker's hand tightened on his knee until the knuckles went white. "There's a woman with him."
"Who?"
His shoulders squared, the way they always did before delivering bad news. "Sarah Moore." He kept his eyes locked on the house, scanning for movement. "Though on the streets, they call her Candy." Something in his tone made my skin prickle.
"The streets?" I questioned.
"She's a known prostitute," he replied. "But I believe she's also known to the Regional Bank as Olivia Ryan." Now, that had my attention.
" She's on the move ," a voice called out over a speaker.
"Movement," Walker murmured.
A figure emerged from around the corner of the house, and my breath caught. The resemblance hit me like a physical blow—the same high cheekbones, the familiar tilt of her chin. But where Olivia's features held youth and hope, this woman's face was a road map of hard living. Each line, each hollow, spoke of choices and consequences. Of paths that could have been. The sight of her made my stomach turn.
Sarah Moore. A glimpse of what Olivia's life might have become without intervention. Without protection.
Sarah’s beat-up black car disappeared around the corner, leaving behind only exhaust fumes and questions. I studied the house again, its windows like dead eyes staring back at us. Somewhere inside, Emmett was waiting—or hiding.
"Emmett's alone now." Walker’s hand moved instinctively to his holster. "Since we don't know what to expect, I'll be going in with you."
My pride wanted to refuse, but the memory of Olivia's fear stopped me. "I'm pretty sure I can handle this."
"Yes, I'm sure you can, but I'm not willing to take the chance." The steel in his voice left no room for argument. "Nick." Walker's voice stopped me mid-stride. I turned, catching something in his tone I'd never heard before—uncertainty. He took a half-step closer, lowering his voice though no one else was near.
"What is it?"
His eyes met mine. "We've been watching him for days now." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "The Emmett you knew? The one Olivia remembers?" Another pause. "Prepare yourself."
Each step toward Emmett's door felt heavier than the last. Walker's presence behind me, his men positioned around the house, should have been reassuring. Instead, the military precision of it all only confirmed what my gut had been screaming: this was no simple visit.
I raised my fist to knock, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then rapped twice. The sound echoed hollow in the stillness. No footsteps. No voice. Nothing but the weight of silence pressing against my eardrums. I knocked again, harder this time, my knuckles stinging against the wood. Still nothing.
"Are you sure he's here?" My hand hovered over the door.
Walker touched the gun at his hip. He gestured to the fresh cigarette butts scattered by the steps.
I pounded my knuckles against the wood again. Something rustled inside. "Emmett, open the door." My palm flattened against the door frame, feeling the vibration of movement inside.
Each unanswered knock coiled my tension higher. Rustling sounds behind the door confirmed what we already knew—Emmett was there, watching, choosing silence.
"Emmett, open the door." My voice scraped against the quiet afternoon. Nothing. Raw heat flooded my veins, and my fist connected with the wood before I could stop myself. "Open the damn door!"
Walker's tap on my shoulder was gentle but firm. I stepped aside, recognizing the cold efficiency in his stance. One precise kick, and the door gave way with a groan that seemed to echo through the darkness. The smell hit first—a toxic cocktail of mold, stale beer, and something deeper, something rotting. My eyes struggled to adjust as we stepped inside, feet crunching on clutter.
Gradually, shapes emerged from the gloom. Take-out containers formed precarious towers. Clothing draped like dead things across overturned furniture. Empty bottles caught what little light filtered through the blackout curtains, their labels facing different directions like lost compasses.
"What are you doing here?" Emmett hunched deeper into his couch, one hand curled protectively around his beer bottle. Light from the doorway caught half his face, turning the hollow of his cheek into a dark crater.
The room was dark, with only the open front door's light illuminating a portion of the room. Walker moved to the windows and pulled open the blackout drapes, and there he was, sitting on the couch, leaning back with a beer in his hand.
My eyes adjusted to the dark, and reality hit like a physical blow. "What the fuck is going on, Emmett?"
The man in front of me was a ghost of the Emmett I knew. His t-shirt hung from his shoulders like it was on a wire hanger, the neckline revealing collarbones that jutted like knives. Shadows pooled in the hollows of his cheeks, and his eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into their sockets, fever-bright in the dim light. When he moved, his joints carved sharp angles through his skin.
"I've been busy." His laugh came out like broken glass, sharp and dangerous.
Something caught my eye through the gloom—the soft blue pulse of LED lights. Computers. Computers everywhere. He had several set up on the kitchen table and three laptops sitting in front of him on the coffee table.
Why would someone need so many computers?
"Emmett, what's going on?" My boot crunched through a layer of takeout containers, sending roaches scurrying for cover.
"Nick, go home." Emmett pushed himself up from the couch, his keyboard clattering to the floor. One hand braced against the wall for balance, leaving a greasy smear.
Something inside me snapped. The room narrowed to a tunnel, with Emmett's thin face at the end of it. My hands were moving before my brain could catch up, fingers twisting in the fabric of his shirt. The impact when I slammed him into the wall sent a picture frame crashing to the floor.
His eyes went wide—not with fear, but with something worse: recognition. He'd been waiting for this. My forearm found his throat, pressing just hard enough to make each breath a struggle. The pulse in his neck hammered against my skin, each beat a reminder of how easy it would be to press harder.
He struggled to grab at my arm and gasped for air.
The floorboards creaked behind me—Walker, close enough that his presence pressed against my awareness. My fingers trembled against Emmett's throat as the past few days crashed through my mind: Olivia's tear-stained face, her trembling hands, the fear that never quite left her eyes. The pressure built in my chest like a kettle about to blow.
"Nick," Walker snapped.
"I'm going to let you go," I growled through gritted teeth. "And when I do, you're going to sit the fuck down and answer my questions, or I'm going to kill you." Emmett nodded, and I released him, tossing him away from me and back toward the couch.
My pulse throbbed in my temples, each heartbeat a hammer strike. The room seemed to pulse red at the edges of my vision, and my breaths came out like a bull’s before a charge. I could taste copper on my tongue from where I'd bitten the inside of my cheek without realizing it.
"What do you want to know?" Emmett asked through gasping breaths.
"What kind of mess are you in, for starters?”
He took a moment. It was apparent he didn't want to say it out loud.
"Gambling." The word fell from Emmett's lips like a dead weight.
I waited for more, for some elaborate explanation that would make sense of everything. But he just sat there, shoulders curved inward, eyes fixed on his hands.
"Gambling," I repeated, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. "You're telling me you threw away everything—your money, our assets, your sister's future—on what? Cards? Horses?" Each question landed like a blow, but Emmett didn't flinch. Instead, a tremor ran through his hands, and something in his expression shifted.
"It's worse than that." His voice cracked on the last word.
"What?" I growled.
"I've been out of money for a while now and borrowed from some pretty bad people."
"You borrowed money you can't pay back?" I asked, knowing the answer.
"Yes."
"And that's why Olivia is in Florida with me?"
"Yes, they threatened her and me, so I sent her to you. That is also why you can't be here. I sent her to you because we have no connection and no way for anyone to find her, but with you here, it puts her in danger."
"How much?" The words scraped against my throat.
Emmett's eyes darted to the computers, then back to his hands. A muscle jumped in his jaw.
"How. Fucking. Much?"
"Three-fifty." His voice was barely a whisper.
"Thousand?" The room seemed to tilt slightly. Blood rushed in my ears as the number sank in. Three hundred and fifty thousand. Enough to buy a small house. Start a business. Fund a future. Instead, it had bought... nothing but a bad habit. I looked around at the wreckage of his life, searching for any sign that the brother Olivia loved still existed.
"What the fuck is the matter with you?" Anger colored my tone as I ran my hand through my hair to keep from strangling him. "Your sister needed you."
"Nick, she's 21 years old. She needs to take care of herself." I lunged for him. I was going to kill him, but Walker caught me before reaching him.
"Nick," Walker barked. "This isn't going to make it better, and if you kill him, Olivia will be alone."
"She's better off without the selfish bastard," I growled, snatching my arm away from Walker, but I didn't go after Emmett. I knew it would hurt Olivia if I did, and then she would have no one because I'd be in jail.
Olivia's face flickered through my mind—not as she was now, but as she'd been as a girl, looking up at her brother like he hung the moon. The memory doused my rage like cold water, leaving something harder and more calculated in its place. Every instinct screamed to walk away, to let Emmett drown in the mess he'd made. But as long as he was in danger, so was she. And that was the one thing I couldn't live with.
I drew in a slow breath, tasting mold, stale beer, and failure. "Get dressed," I said, each word measured and sharp. "We're paying off your debt."
"Nick, you can't," Emmett snapped. "First, it doesn't work like that. I don't contact them; they contact me. Secondly, if you go, you put Olivia in danger. Right now, no one knows where Olivia is except you, me, and Anthony, well, and I guess Walker too." I looked over at Walker; I knew he knew more about this kind of stuff than I did. Walker gave a slight nod that told me he thought Emmett was right.
"Do you think there's still the possibility of danger once it's paid?" I asked Walker more than Emmett.
"Yeah, there's always a possibility." I understood what he was saying. We had no idea what kind of enemies Emmett had, and it was possible it wasn't the loan sharks after him. Also, there was always the chance he'd run his debt right back up as soon as I left.
My muscles instinctively relaxed, just a fraction. His words carried the weight of experience, not the hollow ring of Emmett's promises. I found myself turning slightly toward him, unconsciously positioning myself so I could catch his subtle head shakes and warning glances—the silent language we'd developed over years of having each other's backs.
"Alright, I'll have the money transferred into your account within the hour." I pulled out my phone, the banking app's clean interface a stark contrast to the chaos around us. "Then you'll have three days to check yourself into rehab."
"Nick, I don't need rehab." Emmett's fingers danced across his nearest keyboard, muscle memory betraying his addiction to whatever was on those screens.
I caught Walker's eye. "Have your men clean out all these computers."
Walker's nod was crisp, military. He stepped into the hallway, already reaching for his radio.
"Wait!" Emmett stumbled up from the couch, tripping over a nest of power cables.
"Sit down," I growled, and he did.
"Nick, you don't need to take my computers." Emmett lurched up from the couch, his thin frame swaying. There was something in Emmett's voice I'd never heard before—desperation, yes, but tinged with something darker. His eyes tracked each machine like a drowning man watching his raft drift away.
I took one step forward. That was all it took—Emmett folded back into the cushions, deflating.
His fingers twitched toward the nearest laptop, protective. "Nick, you can't do this."
"You owe me $350,000, Emmett." The words tasted bitter. "I'm taking your computers as payment. You go to rehab, and we'll call it even."
Emmett's jaw worked back and forth, teeth grinding audibly in the silence. His shoulders slumped as he stared at the computers being carried away, and when he finally nodded, it was the gesture of a man watching his last lifeline slip through his fingers.
"I'll continue to help you as long as you're in rehab and once you're out unless you fall back on old ways." Several bulky men piled in one by one, each grabbing a computer and disappearing out the door.
"Are you going to tell Olivia?" Emmett asked.
"Not right now," I sighed. "We'll figure that out after you've gotten out of rehab." He looked relieved. "You need to call her, though. She's worried about you."
The walls of Emmett's apartment seemed to press closer with each passing second. My collar felt too tight, my skin too small for my body. Each breath of the moldy air coated my tongue with the taste of failure and rot.
My hand found the doorknob, knuckles still raw from earlier. The metal felt cool against my skin. The door beckoned like an oasis, promising escape from this tomb of broken promises and shattered trust.
Sucking in a deep breath of clean air, I followed Walker down the driveway toward the road where our trucks were parked.
"You think he's going to pay off his debts and check into rehab?" Walker matched my stride to the vehicle, scanning the street out of habit.
I pulled my keys from my pocket, the metal biting into my palm. "No, but for his own sake, I hope he does."
Walker's men moved quickly, each computer disappearing into an unmarked van like evidence at a crime scene. Which, I realized with a chill, was exactly what this was.
"The computers?" Walker positioned himself between me and the house, shoulders blocking any line of sight from Emmett's windows.
I watched another screen vanish into darkness. "Destroy them," I said finally. "All of them." Some questions were better left unanswered. Some doors were better left closed.
He nodded. "How long are you here for?"
"Not long."
"Can you stay for dinner?" Walker leaned against my truck door, his professional mask softening at the edges. "Amy and the kids would love to see you." His phone screen lit up with a family photo as he checked the time.
"I'll have to take a rain check on that." I fished my keys from my pocket, but didn't unlock the door yet. "I have someone else I need to see while I'm here."
My eyes drifted back to Emmett's window, where a shadow moved behind the curtains. "Will you keep an eye on him? Let me know if there's anything else."
He nodded, and I climbed into my truck. I let out a huge sigh as I watched Walker stroll over to his men and direct them to dispose of the computers.
I sat with my phone in my hand, thumb hovering over the banking app. Four hundred thousand dollars. More than I'd promised. Enough to cover whatever other surprises might be lurking in Emmett's web of lies. The rational part of my brain screamed that this was insane—throwing good money after bad behavior, rewarding someone who'd betrayed his own sister.
But this wasn't about Emmett anymore. It was about making sure Olivia could sleep at night without looking over her shoulder. About buying her peace of mind, even if she never knew the cost.
I typed in the numbers. Pressed send. Watched my account balance drop by nearly half a million dollars. The confirmation pinged cheerfully, as if I'd just bought coffee instead of paying off the devil.
My hands were steady as I started the engine, but my knuckles were white on the steering wheel as I pulled away from the curb. Away from Emmett. Away from whatever storm was coming.