Chapter 34
“Why?” My question ricocheted through the basement interrogation room as the door swished open. Footsteps stumbled over the threshold, but I didn’t turn my head from my ex-foster brother. Micah dangled by his arms suspended above his head, scrambling to grasp some ground beneath his toes.
When Bee tracked him down five months ago, I almost didn’t recognize him.
It had been seven years since he stood in that courtroom, testifying against Renzo.
It didn’t matter that Renzo had committed the crime.
What mattered was that Micah never witnessed it.
Even worse, he ran, tacitly approving what Charlie Hayes had planned for Boyan, Lou, and me that day.
Micah wasn’t the same long-legged scraggly older kid I remembered.
Pimple scars lined his cheeks and chin, made worse by the weight he’d put on.
His body had filled out in a stockier fashion, not fit, not quite loose either.
His hair was an oily mess, and his clothes were bland yet stained.
His eyes held the most marked change. They were empty, almost like he knew he was living on borrowed time.
“Just tell me why. You owe us that much.”
“I don’t owe you shit,” he answered breathily, barely lifting his head.
Tore had kept him down here the last month, with the light constantly on as random sounds played intermittently.
As expected, Tore, Vinny, and Renzo entered the room, but Micah couldn’t see them, hanging as he was with his back to the door.
I checked the IV line taped to Micah’s arm.
The drip flowed nicely. It wouldn’t be long before his muscles began shaking uncontrollably and shots of pain rushed through his nerves.
“I wasn’t aware she would be here.” Renzo’s voice was so collected. He hid his monster well. “Are you sure this is appropriate?”
“She requested this. I authorized it. Hope you don’t mind, cugi.” Tore winked my way.
Renzo huffed a scoff and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and feet. “Let’s see what she can come up with.”
He’d changed into jeans, and man, it was sinful how well he filled them. His shirt stretched over his abs, outlining every sculpted edge. My fingers itched to feel every groove and ridge, to remember exactly what touching him felt like last night—warm, smooth, inviting, sinful.
His gaze, with one eyebrow ticked up, tracked me. I’d never felt so exposed. He’d seen all of me. I put everything on display for him, and he simply used and discarded me. A mistake, a pawn, a debt owed—that was all he’d ever see me as. My face burned as I turned back to Micah.
“You betrayed us,” I said to my ex-foster brother.
“You can’t betray people you never trusted and cared about.”
“We lived in the same house. We shared food and clothes. We understood each other’s hardships. We were siblings.”
“I was never your family,” he spat. “Perfect Ainsley Burch. From a perfect home. With your perfect little life. Miss Queen Bee, who turned her nose up at me the moment you set foot in that house. As if you were better than me.” His tone turned brash, spittle flying out of his mouth.
“I deserved better. I deserved to be cared for, but you saw only those kids. Not me. Never me. Only them.”
“So you set us up?”
“I wanted you shamed. I wanted you brought down. You needed to get a taste of what real misery was.” His muscles started seizing and shivering.
“For fourteen years, you got love, and all you could do when you lost it was bitch and moan and act the victim. What did I ever get? Who ever gave me anything good for free? I had to pay every day of my life. Why not little miss perfect?”
“What about Lou and Boyan? What’d they do?”
He gurgled a wobbly chuckle. His eyes sparked. “Collateral.”
“No.” I stepped closer to him. “You were bitter, so you decided to make them suffer too.” Sweat pimpled on his brow, and his jaw was tightened.
“Look at all of you. You all got adopted, and where did that leave me?”
“Who’s to blame for that? You sent our benefactor to jail.”
“He’s a crook.” His spit landed on my cheek. I wiped at it with my sleeve.
“And you perjured yourself in court. You ran with a gang. You stole. You sold drugs on street corners. What exactly does that make you?”
“I had no choice.” His face turned flush red.
“There’s always a choice. You made one by almost letting Charlie take advantage of us the same way he used to take advantage of you.”
His eyes widened with fear. His mouth dropped and closed, but nothing comprehensible came out. The three mobsters stayed in the background, Tore extending an arm to stop Renzo from interrupting.
“H-how di-did…”
“You think we wouldn’t look into you before finding you?
Witness protection doesn’t hide who you were, only who you become.
” I leaned in. “I know what Charlie did to you. I know you were alone in that house for years. I know you suffered the worst of us. I’ve seen the medical reports.
I’ve read the caseworker notes. I know nobody helped.
You were alone, but you decided to take it out on innocent kids instead of your aggressor.
On top of that, you angered a mafia don and sent him to jail.
Did you honestly think you could get away with it?
” He grunted and sobbed as the IV fluids took full effect, sensations of itchy skin and burning veins definitely plaguing him.
“You’ve been living on borrowed time. You had to know that. ”
“I was supposed to be safe,” he cried out. “They promised me I’d be safe. That none of you could get to me. This was supposed to be a new start.”
“But you can’t make a new start with lies. They all come out eventually.” I pressed my thumbnail into his skin, enough to indent, not to break it. He screamed, and I pulled away, satisfied.
“What did you do to me?”
“I stimulated your nerves. Everything you feel will be stronger. The pain you feel will be more intense.” He sobbed pitifully. “You’re going to die today, Micah. I can’t change that. I won’t. You’re the only one who can make this easier on yourself.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“People don’t want to be victims either. But you allowed that, didn’t you?” Saliva and snot bubbled through his blubbering wails. “Didn’t you!”
“It wasn’t supposed to matter.”
“What wasn’t?” When he refused to answer, I nodded at Jac. He swept a metal brush over Micah’s bare arm. Micah screamed as if I were stabbing him over and over. “Tell me.”
In the background, Tore pulled a beer out of the mini-fridge and sat, like he was enjoying a grand show. Vinny approached Ricco on the sidelines, my guard and friend, ready to step in if things got out of hand. Renzo stood straighter, his gaze burning holes into me.
“Please. It hurts. Stop.”
“What would you have done if I’d screamed that? If Lou or Boyan had? Would you have helped us? Oh, that’s right. We did beg for help. You didn’t. You don’t deserve mercy.”
He wept, dangling from his chains. As a medical student, I should’ve struggled with seeing him like this. I should’ve wanted to help him. I didn’t, not one bit. For seven years, I lived with the suspicion that he left us, knowing what would happen. Some people are too far gone to be helped.
“Talk, and you’ll suffer less. What wasn’t supposed to matter?”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Jac punched him in the side.
“You were supposed to disappear,” Micah yelled.
“Me?”
“All I had to do was stay out of the way and just help carry your bodies to the van once you were unconscious. But then Charlie had to chase. He liked doing that. It was his game. You were screaming and crying like I used to. I couldn’t do it, so I ran. I didn’t help him. I swear. I didn’t do it.”
On my signal, Jac applied more pressure.
“Who told you what you had to do?”
“Charlie. Ah, stop. He said he’d share the haul after we’d delivered you three.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know. I swear I don’t. Ah, please, don’t. Ah. Ilias. His name was Ilias.”
Not good enough. A first name wasn’t confirmation of the Greeks’ involvement. I eyed Renzo, his muscles flexing beneath his T-shirt, fists bunched at his sides. Why did the damn asshole have to be so attractive?
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t care. I just wanted the money.”
“What money?” When he didn’t answer right away, Jac slapped him. “What money?”
“This guy. He paid Charlie to hand you guys off.”
“What guy?”
“I don’t know. I never saw him. Only Charlie spoke to him. It was supposed to be easy. Some chloroform, and then we were going to say you ran away with the kids.”
“You’re sick.”
“I just wanted the money. I just needed some Molly, and I was short.”
Jac punched him, then pulled his meaty fist back to do it again.
“So you decided to help the Hayeses abuse us for drugs? Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
Micah’s eyes widened with panic, the lines under them deep and dark. “No, no. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I swear. I was just supposed to help carry you to the car. I didn’t do anything. I ran.”
“What I’m curious about,” Renzo said, approaching with slow, firm steps, “is how far you ran.”
“Y-you’re…Renzo Iannelli.” Micah began to hyperventilate, his gaze haunted.
“I am.”
I backed away to let Renzo take over. After all, I’d gotten my answers.
I no longer needed to wonder why Micah betrayed us all those years ago.
The bastard gave us up for drugs, money, and jealousy.
How stereotypical. I’d suspected, but after so many years, the truth was a bitter pill left out so long it disintegrated to dust with one touch.
It didn’t matter anymore, and it barely hurt at all.
“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Anderson.”
Renzo didn’t show the restraint I had. He cut, hit, and broke bones.
Micah was even quicker to spill his guts.
He had run away from the planned van to three neighborhoods down and met up with some buddies, where he spent the following two nights until he received a phone call from a man promising him an obscene sum of money if he testified against Renzo.
It was a man with a prominent accent. However, when he collected the money, the voice of the person he met with was different, even though they had similar accents.
The second man he had a name for: Vasileios Papadopoulos.
Renzo stopped interrogating after that. I’d overheard that name a few times years before while living in Tore’s home.
Back then, Vasileios was the second-in-command in the Dimakos mafia.
As suspected earlier, the Greeks were responsible for the attempted assault, attempted kidnapping, and the false testimony.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get any headway from Micah on the missing financier who paid off the judge and police captain.
Even with Bee’s talents, that trail was a dead-end.
I didn’t see Renzo’s knife slash, but blood spilled and dripped from an open gash to Micah’s throat. His whimpers and cries gurgled, then died. Quick and painless, not what I had expected from Renzo. I had seen a lot worse over the years since Charlie and Marlene’s deaths.
“I wasn’t aware, Ainsley,” Renzo said, wiping his knife clean on Micah’s clothes, “that you were so skilled at interrogations. You almost didn’t need me at all.”
“What I cede isn’t out of need, Mr. Iannelli. I might agree with vigilante justice every now and then, but I refuse to get my hands as dirty as yours.”
“Anzy,” Tore gritted between his teeth.
“I’ll soon have to take the Hippocratic oath after all.”
“But you’re so good at interrogations.” There was a glint in Renzo’s eyes. Was he teasing me?
“This was personal.”
“I can understand that.”
Why did his mouth have to turn up on one side like that? This wasn’t a joke. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“Actually, there’s something I need to discuss with you,” he said. Vinny tossed him a cloth to wipe the blood off his hands. “Meet me in Tore’s study after you’ve cleaned up.”