3. Grayson
GRAYSON
The pleasant sounds of a bustling diner weren’t enough to cool the heat that had burned in my chest over the last two days after beating a man half to death in the employee parking lot of a casino in Primm.
There was no excuse for it. I should have stopped myself long before I did.
I couldn’t shake the sense of disappointment after losing control.
No more than I could shake the memory of how fucking good it was. How alive I felt for the first time in years.
With my hands around a coffee cup, I lifted my gaze to find probably the only man I knew who could truly understand what I was battling. “I thought I left that part of myself behind years ago. How na?ve is that?” I muttered, snorting.
Jack kept his thoughts to himself for much longer than I wished he would—one of his habits of thoroughly thinking things over before offering an opinion.
Usually, I admired that about him. However, not when I was almost on the edge of my seat, waiting to hear what he had to say.
“She’s so petite,” I added as if that would exonerate me or make it right.
The memory of her curvy body in a button-down blouse and a tight vest hadn’t left my mind, popping up at the most inopportune moments.
I had no business remembering her plump ass as fondly as I did, either. “Defenseless.”
A pendant lamp hanging over the table illuminated his salt and pepper hair.
Actually, upon closer inspection, I noticed there was a lot more salt nowadays.
Time had done a number on him in the fifteen years since we’d first become acquainted during one of my routine visits to the police station.
The lines around his mouth were deeper, his stubbled cheeks now sagged, but his ice-blue eyes were sharp and perceptive as ever when they met mine.
“I think your instincts were right on. Nothing is too much for a piece of shit like that.”
His voice was a growl, his gaze going unfocused as if he was looking back, thinking about the things he had seen over a twenty-five-year career in the police force.
He had retired as a detective several years back and was now enjoying his freedom, or so he wanted me to believe.
He didn’t know he looked and sounded so damn eager whenever I described a new client and their problems like when my good friend, Vaughn Eastman, requested protection for his wife he’d married in a drunken haze after a friend’s wedding.
I had talked over the details of the situation with Jack, and he had granted me some invaluable advice, but then he’d been doing that for years.
“Nobody’s trying to argue whether the man deserved to have his ass kicked,” I agreed, a little impatient. “But I could barely stop myself from taking it all the way. That is the first time in years I’ve gone that far, and it freaked me the fuck out,” I confessed.
“Did it maybe have something to do with all the memories your lunch with Dominic probably stirred up?”
Those perceptive eyes stared straight through me.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted, considering the question.
I had contemplated it quite a bit over the two days since setting my sights on Scarlet for the first time.
Or Sarah, as she was known at the casino.
Smart girl, using a different name, not to mention the change in her hair color.
Granted, it hadn’t made a massive difference since I’d recognized her without much trouble after the intel Drake gathered pointed me toward the casino.
Still, I had to wonder how she had gotten involved with Dominic if she was so smart.
That was none of my business. This was a job like any other. Only the client had changed, but the work had not.
Setting down his coffee, Jack asked, “You know what I think?” I arched an eyebrow, silently inviting him to continue. “I think you saw a woman in trouble, and it enraged you. Where do you think that came from?”
At times like this I almost regretted having shared so much with the man who had become my mentor in the years after I’d walked away from my old life as the only son of a mafia soldier, low-level but expected to maintain the same standards of silence and loyalty.
It was the world in which I had grown up, in which Dominic and I had attempted to make sense of rules and traditions set in place long before we were born.
His question made my skin prickle, and I shifted uncomfortably in the vinyl booth.
“I wasn’t thinking about her. She was the last thing on my mind.
” That was the truth, too, though I had certainly thought a lot in the hours and days after the beating I’d handed out about the mystery woman whose death had changed my life.
If she had anything to do with it, it was entirely subconscious.
“It would make sense if you did it for her,” he reasoned in his usual supportive way. “You weren’t able to help that woman years ago, but there’s a chance you could help this woman.”
“I guess.” Though nothing could bring her back, whoever she was—unnamed collateral damage. He was also being kind. I could have helped her if only I hadn’t frozen. If only I’d opened my mouth to stop what was unfolding.
“Do you think you can help Scarlet?” he asked, playing with a sugar packet from the caddy on the table.
He’d given up sugar the past few years on doctor’s orders, something that had irked the shit out of him.
I held fond memories of the bowl of chocolates he used to keep on his desk down at the station.
I had eaten my weight in Hershey’s by the time I got my act together and straightened up.
“Honestly, I’m not sure how I could help,” I confessed. As usual, he was able to casually get to the heart of the matter during a simple conversation. “Dominic wants to make sure she’s safe. I should tell him I found her. That’s my duty to my client.”
“So why haven’t you?”
Though I was completely safe speaking openly with him in this diner, I felt the need to lower my voice and lean partway across the table.
“I’ve been thinking. Beyond omerta, what’s one rule that’s been passed down from generation to generation in these old families?
What is one line that never gets crossed? ”
“No women or children.” The fact that he answered so readily tells me he’d considered this as well. He was only waiting for me to bring it up.
“Exactly. Why would anybody go after her to get to him? Either he is involved with some serious shit that goes beyond the families, or there’s something he’s not telling me.”
There was something I wasn’t telling Jack too—the way she curled into a ball, trembling, hands laced behind her head—a protective position born from experience.
She hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t planned her next move.
She had simply curled up, waiting for the storm to pass. How many storms had she weathered?
Was Dominic behind any of them?
“Follow your instincts,” Jack advised because it was easy for him to say.
He hadn’t met Scarlet, nor had he grown up like I had.
His family was law enforcement all the way back to his maternal and paternal grandfathers.
He only thought he understood the casual violence that could be inflicted upon the women who were so revered in public but often treated so horribly in private.
This was one situation in which my instincts were fucked.
Maybe if I hadn’t witnessed Scarlet being attacked, I would feel differently by the time Jack and I parted ways, promising each other to meet next week at the same time.
It was something I counted on, sometimes even looked forward to.
Some men had family dinners—Jack had been my family since I was eighteen.
Well, Jack and my friends, all of whom would be waiting for me by now at Sebastian’s restaurant.
Rather than open a second location named Home Again, he had decided several months back to expand his original location.
“Really, it makes more sense this way,” he’d told me at the time he made the decision, and he clearly had a point.
Rather than split his time between two locations, he’d expanded the original location and was doing more business than ever a month after the reopening.
His girlfriend, Claudia Granger, was chatting with a table full of diners when I arrived.
Catching my eye, she greeted me with a raised hand as she approached.
“Oh, good. Aiden can stop complaining about how hungry he is even though I put a platter of appetizers together,” she murmured after offering a brief hug.
“He is the world’s largest toddler sometimes,” I replied.
She laughed gently before I continued through the dining room, spotting Sebastian seated with Aiden, Jackson, and Vaughn.
There was something to be said for continuity and knowing what to expect.
Once a week we got together for dinner or simply for drinks.
It was only during the times life got in the way and made me change my plans that I realized how much I had come to rely on this— catching up, sharing ideas.
We often talked business, and though we all work in different fields, sometimes an outsider’s perspective was exactly what was needed.
What a shame I couldn’t open up with them tonight. Not about this.
“There you are.” Aiden McConnell patted his stomach, groaning and rolling his blue eyes even though a plate full of nothing but crumbs sat in front of him. “It’s a miracle I haven’t wasted away. What took you so long to get here?”
“Aww, I’m sorry. I forgot baby needs me to cut his food for him,” I replied, sparking soft laughter from the rest of the group.
“Had a meeting that ran a little longer.” They might have been my best friends, but that didn’t mean I had to share every detail of my day.
Sometimes, a man liked to have a few secrets, something private that was only his.