Chapter 27
Dallas
I don’t know how much time passes. Minutes? An hour?
But slowly, I realize the police lights are gone, cars with big engines are rushing in, and rain spills over my lips so fast I’m swallowing it.
Was he planning this the whole time? I stare at the ground, and I faintly recognize Army’s and Iron’s voices behind me, but I’m too busy retracing our moments together.
His bed. My classroom. The teacher’s lounge.
When he kissed me by the school doors before I ran out to risk myself for a condom.
A million other questions float around the periphery of my brain—how did he know what we were hiding here? Were his friends in on it? Where did he take everything?
Only one thought keeps digging deep into my chest, though. Was he planning this the whole fucking time?
Was he faking it? The kisses in the weight room. His words as he lay on the floor of the boat. His eyes tonight in the Den.
“What did you do?” I hear Army shout.
I would’ve been able to tell if he was playing me, right?
“What did you say?” Army growls in my face.
I spin away, my clothes hanging on me soaking wet as I trudge past Iron, Aracely, maybe Krisjen…
“Dallas!” Army yells.
I turn, walking backward. “Get the boat fueled up!” I growl. “I’m taking Rip, Tyson, and Trace! We’re tying up that motherfucker and taking him out to the sea! He’ll tell me where the hell our shit went with an anchor locked around his fucking ankle!”
Pivoting again, I charge for the cars, but Army rushes me. I only have time to turn around and catch him before we both fall to the wet earth.
“I will put you in a fucking cell!” he barks in my face. “Don’t make one move out of the Bay until I say so! Do you hear me?”
“Get the fuck off me,” I grit out, turning my face away.
He climbs off me, leaving me in the mud, and I just lie there, combing my hand through my hair.
This isn’t my fault. I don’t know how he knew what was in the tomb. It’s been there for years.
Before Liv left for college, we discovered treasure in one of the graves after Macon realized that Sebastian Louissaint wasn’t buried in his plot.
One of our ancestors whose ship was lost at sea on its way to Haiti almost three hundred years ago.
We guessed maybe his wife or sons put the grave there as a memorial, but it led us down a rabbit hole of discovering several of the graves were fake.
The people either died on Sebastian’s ship or never existed at all.
And the few people who might’ve known about the loot hidden in them died before they could let their families know.
A couple of years ago, we moved the wealth we found buried in this cemetery under the guise of laying our parents to rest in the new family tomb.
The elders all knew where it was.
Macon charges past me, and I can’t even lift my eyes to watch him take in the loss. I didn’t tell anyone, but I know—somehow—it has to be my fault.
“Fuck!” Army belts out, charging the ground in front of me like he’s going to kill someone. “What does this mean?”
I hear other doors slam behind me, fat drops of rain kicking up puddles in the overgrown graveyard.
Callum…The whole night was a lie? To distract me, occupy me until he could have a crew clean us out?
“Macon?” Army presses.
I look up at my oldest brother, his body frozen, and I’ve never seen that look on his face. Fear.
He blinks. “It means the government will buy our land from us, against our will, and sell it to him,” he says. “Because he’s going to make it more valuable now that he has two hundred and sixty million dollars at his disposal.”
A lump slides down his throat and right into my stomach. My eyes burn, and I close them, more drops streaming down my face.
What the fuck has happened?
I didn’t just fail. I managed to hurt us in a way we can never recover from, and it didn’t even occur to me to suspect him.
It takes every muscle to stand up. I thought I was so smart.
“He would do that to us?” Iron steps up, searching all of our faces for some kind of hope before he lands on me. “Is there any chance he won’t do that?”
Why not? Because he’s so in love with me? He has a quarter of a billion dollars. No one gives back that kind of money.
I hear Trace’s phone go off next to me, and he pulls it out.
“Oh, goddamn.” The color drains from his face as he darts his eyes up. “The pub.”
He whips around and runs for his car, and it only takes everyone a second to realize there’s something else wrong.
The liquor.
In moments, everyone is following, jumping into cars and racing back to St. Carmen. I drift behind them in a daze, barely registering anything Macon and Army are saying to each other as they head for their vehicles.
I didn’t want Callum to have the Bay. I tried to fight against it, and he beat me.
He played me, and he beat me, and I don’t know why my stomach hurts.
Do I really give a shit? My family still has a little money in the bank.
Krisjen has money. Clay has money. Army has a good job.
Trace has the pub. They’ll be fine, and maybe putting an end to all this is for the best. It’ll free everyone from the constant struggle to survive and to keep our people together.
Army pushes me toward his cruiser.
I stumble forward, stopping myself with a snarl. “I’ll stay here.”
He moves to the driver’s side, growling over the roof. “Get in the goddamn car!”
Fuck. Like I need this right now. I’ve failed my family, and I failed my mother. Does he need a black-and-white sign to get it through his head that I can’t fix this?
I don’t want to be at home with any of them later, though.
Liv climbs into the passenger seat, and I dip into the back, Army barely waiting for me to close the door before he takes off.
Rain blows across the windows, the storm intensifying.
He must be congratulating himself right now. He’s probably telling all of his friends, his father, his new fucking dick, Micah Hearst…
Laying my head against the seat, I reach up and rub my eyes with one hand as I clench my jaw.
What is he going to do to us?
What if he doesn’t want the land at all and just wants to trap us?
Army seethes, shaking his head and casting glares at me in the rearview mirror. “He read you like a book,” he spits out. “The one thing you can’t do is keep your dick in your pants, and he was playing you the whole fucking time.”
I drop my eyes, so much on the tip of my tongue to fire back—an insult, an excuse, a threat—but he’s right. I’m not complicated. I was so easy for Callum to overpower.
“I hope it was worth it.” He shakes his head. “I really hope you were the man for a full five seconds!”
“He’ll fix it, Army,” Liv tells him.
“Really? I’d love to see that,” he retorts. “The one thing anyone can bank on about Dallas is that he won’t show up when it counts!”
I lock my mouth shut, instinct telling me to fight, but my throat is filling with words I don’t want to face, and I’m afraid of what will come out. It’s not just anger, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m feeling right now.
We’re in a worse position, because I let Callum in, and it’s like I’m still sitting on the stairs of my house, seeing my brothers and sister walk in the door. Again. On my watch.
Army races through town, and I gaze out the window, the rain coating the sidewalks.
Why am I still here?
Why did I stay?
Tomorrow, I could be in Tennessee or Texas. Halfway to Arizona.
Or maybe I could head up north—Wyoming, Montana, Alaska…As long as there’s a road, I think I’d keep driving in circles and not give a shit.
“Ah, God,” Army groans.
Tipping my head back up, I see the doors to the storeroom, my family’s headlights spilling over Trace and Iron as they run into the back of the pub.
We all step into the rain, Liv and Iron hurrying to look inside, but I already know it’s empty.
Callum had the police and a crew clear out the tomb, and after my family dropped the liquor, they came in with a truck and loaded that, too.
Trace kicks a stack of pallets, sending them toppling over. “Son of a bitch!”
His face contorts into anger—and fear—and a fist squeezes my heart. I’ve never seen him upset like this. He never had to be, because the rest of us did it for him, but he loves this bar.
One by one, everyone follows him into the pub through the rear door, inspecting the rest of the place to make sure there’s no further damage.
Stepping slowly, I drift in last, behind Aracely.
“Who can we call?” Krisjen asks.
“If he didn’t already own the cops,” Army grumbles, “he definitely does now.”
“We can hire lawyers,” Liv states as Trace moves behind the oval bar in the center of the room and grabs a bottle. “We can tie this up for years. It was in our possession anyway! What’s the case?” She looks to Iron, me, and then Krisjen. “The Nuestra Senora de Atocha.”
Krisjen nods, looking to her husband, who stares out the window with his back to us. “The treasure hunters discovered it, and it was ruled that it belonged to them,” she adds.
“And if we deplete everything we have left,” Army fires back, “paying legal fees?”
“There are a couple hundred people at stake here, Army,” Liv argues. “You gonna whine or work the problem?”
“I’ve been working problems a lot longer than you!” he growls. Then he pivots, jutting his finger in my direction. “It’s his fucking turn!”
“It’s not his fault.”
I lower my eyes again as Iron tries to defend me.
“They knew nothing for years,” Army retorts. “And all of a sudden, Callum Ames has our number after two fucking weeks of interacting with him.”
He’s right.
I said something. I must’ve done something…
Why else would Callum indulge me? Bring me into the Wolfe Room unless he was trying to gather info?
A laugh bubbles in my throat, and I taste the bile. I thought we were playing.
Macon moves toward the front door. “I’ll call the lawyers.”
Twisting the lock, he steps outside, making his call under the awning.
He used to be like Army. Angry, volatile, someone you did not want in your face, but Krisjen calmed him down and the past few years of prosperity and growth made him…happy.
He let himself hope.
Krisjen stands near the bar stools, but her eyes remain on her husband.
It’s not that we need the money so much. We have businesses, jobs, and educations.
But Callum can do so much harm with that much wealth. He can buy things that aren’t for sale.
He just took away our future.
Army paces like he’s on patrol. “I hope you two had fun tonight,” he says, looking between me and Aracely as she adds some soda to her tequila behind the bar.
“Actually, I did,” she chirps, tipping her chin up. “I forget what his name is, but he had the nicest pair of eyes I’ve had on me in a while.”
“Celi, you move from one white boy to the other,” Army retorts. “How do you even keep them straight?”
I see the glass fly before I even register that she’s the one who threw it. Tequila sloshes onto the floor, followed by the ice, as Army ducks, glass shattering against the wall a few feet from where I lean. I twist my face away from the scattering shards.
Aracely hops onto the bar, throws her legs over, and charges for him. “Take a look in the mirror before you call me a whore!” she bellows.
Shoving a table over, she plants both hands on his chest, pushing the St. Carmen police officer into the wall. She tries to punch him, but he picks her up, shielding his hand under her arm while she thrashes.
“Enough!”
We all startle at Macon’s roar, turning to see him just inside the doors.
Army throws Aracely off, everyone falling silent for him to speak.
“Call Dieter,” he tells Trace. “Check on how fast he can get us restocked.”
Army takes a step toward him. “But we still have to transport it.”
Macon cuts him off. “First problem is first,” he tells him, then asks, “Where will they take our shit?”
Army draws in a breath, the wheels in his head turning. “There’s a lockup at the jail, I guess. But they’ll have an armored vehicle coming to take it to a more secure location. Probably tomorrow.”
Macon turns to Krisjen at his side. “Call your grandfather.”
She nods, having a judge in the family not proving at all useful so far, but who knows.
Liv approaches me. “You need to go to him.”
Go to him. Callum?
I shake my head, in total disbelief she’s telling me to put myself in his path again. What am I supposed to do? Blow him until we make back two hundred and sixty million dollars? Beg?
When she sees the defiance on my face, she turns. “Macon, tell him.”
I drop my ass in a chair, waiting for the order.
It never comes, though.
“Let’s get home,” Macon tells everyone, starting to walk back out the way we came in. “People will be scared.”
Everyone follows his lead, and I ignore Liv’s eyes on me and Iron’s pause next to me.
“I’ll leave you a car,” he whispers, dropping the keys on the table.
He knows I need to be alone. Would he want to show his face at home after this?
Macon doesn’t want any more of my help anyway. Once they’re gone and the pub is quiet, I pull a bottle out from behind the bar and listen to the rain, doing what I do best. Getting rid of the pain.