Chapter 51 Weaponized #2
How was my brother still this much of an idiot?
“They’re not going to go to the cops, you fucking amateur, because those whores are either dead or being sold elsewhere,” I assured him. “Matt wants us dead, not behind bars. We wouldn’t be in there for very long, and he knows that.”
“What if it’s not Matt?” Daniel argued.
I lifted my gaze and stared him down. “It’s Matt, and you know it.”
“There’s another problem,” Scott added. “The turf is now swarming with feds. We can’t move on it.”
I sighed, unsurprised there would be an investigation, and it would be a long time before those properties could be operational again.
“I’ll reach out to my contact and have him pull some strings.
Those buildings are owned through a chain of shells and registered to a dead man.
We have nothing to worry about. We’ll wait out the fire, and if anyone tries to move on our turf in the meantime, we’ll orchestrate another gang war to keep them occupied. ”
Daniel’s eyes widened. “That’s also a significant amount of money lost, Darren!” he chided angrily. “Especially for that region.”
“We can afford it,” I reminded him.
I watched as his face started to redden. “I don’t care if—”
The doors to my office suddenly burst open, and the small frame of my wife barged in with an attitude like she was ready to set the place on fire. Camaro quickly trailed in after her, growling to herself.
“Mrs. Davis, stop!” Sloane called as she marched in behind her, but Jaden ignored her. “I’m sorry for her disruption, Mr. Davis,” she said as she tried to snatch Jaden’s arm, but she twisted out of her grasp easily.
“Back off, Sloane!” she barked, yanking her wrist away.
“Jaden, what the fuck are you doing?” I growled, my agitation with her defiance reaching an end. “Get upstairs. Now.”
“You wanna fuck up my world?” she snapped at me, eyes blazing with retribution.
“Fine! Then watch me fuck up yours.” Her voice held an odd tone of confidence, her white teeth bared with an animalistic ferocity my cock was more than ready to tame again.
“Recognize this?” She lifted a book she had been holding by her side, showing me the front cover of something I hadn’t thought about in years.
I narrowed my eyes at the tattered paperback version of Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
“Your favorite book, right?” Jaden continued.
She then opened the paperback and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
“You’ll never guess what I found in it.” Holding up the folded paper, she tilted her head and glared at me.
“A goodbye letter from your mother.” Her words had me pausing, wondering if I had heard her correctly.
A goodbye letter? “Here, Daniel,” she said, handing him the paper.
I rounded my desk as Daniel unfolded it and started to read. Standing shoulder to shoulder, I looked over the words that were allegedly written by our own mother before she’d been killed.
The room was silent as Daniel and I absorbed the message she’d written just before we’d lost her. But the more I read, the hotter the rage grew in my blood.
How in the hell was this even possible?
“What the fuck,” Daniel whispered under his breath.
When I glanced back at Jaden, the grin she had on her face was dripping with a familiar triumph I recognized immediately. And it made me want to smack it right off her conniving little face.
“How does it feel?” she abruptly asked. “Knowing your helpless dying mother orchestrated her own assassination so she could frame an innocent family in hopes of freeing you both from your father’s insanity?
” She stepped closer and pointed at the note still clinging between Daniel’s fingers.
“She did all of that out of LOVE for her children even though it was completely deranged. She inadvertently destroyed multiple families in an attempt to save her sons from becoming the very monsters you allowed your father to turn you into!”
Everyone in the room stayed silent, the air filled with the kind of tension that could suffocate an entire stadium.
I could feel Scott’s eyes boring into the back of my head as he watched the unfolding scene.
Sloane essentially mirrored his actions.
Daniel seemed to be too preoccupied with reading the letter over and over again to hear anything Jaden was saying.
“How long have you known about this?” I asked her pointedly.
She folded her arms across her chest and leaned on her hip. “Not long after you first brought me here.”
Fuck. That long ago?
“Does anyone else know?” Scott asked from behind me.
Jaden eyed him as she slowly shook her head.
Snatching the letter from Daniel’s hand, I marched toward the fireplace behind me, crumpling the letter in my fist.
“Hey! What are you doing?” Daniel asked, his voice hitched.
Turning on the gas fireplace, I tossed the letter into the flames. My hands clutched tightly around the mantel as I watched the last words of my dead mother burn until they were nothing but specks of ash.
And then I forced that very same blaze to incinerate my feelings on the matter with it. I didn’t have time to process the actions of a dead woman. Right now, I needed to protect my family from the potential consequences of those actions.
“Why the hell did you do that? That was from Mom!” Daniel shouted angrily.
Turning back around, I leveled my brother with a reality check.
“Because if that letter ever got out to anyone else, the repercussions could be astronomical to our reputation and credibility,” I answered firmly.
“Everyone’s world changed because of that war, not just ours.
If they knew it had all been based on nothing but complete bullshit created by a delusional dying woman, it would cause chaos everywhere. ”
Daniel stayed silent for a moment as his eyes shifted to the floor, finally nodding in understanding. But when my gaze collided with Jaden’s hardened stare, I knew another war of epic proportions was brewing right before my eyes.
More withheld information she had no business knowing, more lies and omissions.
The fact that she’d known this long and waited until this exact moment to reveal her little discovery told me she was much more conniving than I’d previously thought.
And it made me wonder what else she was secretly hiding from me.
“Does Katherine know?” Daniel suddenly asked Jaden.
Her eyes narrowed as she frowned at him. “She’s always known her family was innocent,” she answered him coldly. “Which is why Darren murdering her nine-year-old sister was so much harder to bear.”
Her gaze then immediately turned back to me, a wrathful fire blazing behind them with so much heat I could feel it warming my skin.
So Katherine had finally found a single vertebra in her glass spine strong enough to reveal the bloodied past she wanted so desperately to change. For the first time ever, a tiny spark of admiration for her had flickered for just a single moment before I quickly snuffed it out.
“Children killing children,” Jaden continued, her voice hard with disdain. “What a world to be raised in.”
I smirked then, relishing the taste of her bait I rarely got to enjoy anymore.
“I was hardly a child then, Jaden,” I reminded her.
She scoffed at my dismissal. “Sixteen is still a child, Darren. Your brain wasn’t even fully developed yet,” she argued.
“Which is why it was so easy for your father to mold your squishy little brain into the exact shape he wanted. And now look at you. Your mother died for nothing. She’d be so disappointed in both of you. ”
“Shut the fuck up, you little shit!” Daniel scorned. “You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about!”
I could feel my hands curling into tight fists as an inferno of fire rivaling a volcanic eruption burst through my veins.
“Daniel, get out,” I seethed, my eyes seeing nothing but red as I stared back at the gorgeous little demon I had created.
“Why? So you can coddle your bitch of a wife some more?” he retorted bitterly.
“I said get the fuck out!” I roared at him, ready to remove him in pieces if I had to.
Scott quickly stepped up and took Daniel roughly by the shoulders.
“Come on, dude. It’s not worth it.”
Daniel growled a series of inaudible grumbles as he reluctantly went with Scott.
“You too, Sloane,” I added sharply. “And take Camaro with you.”
Sloane nodded and whistled for Camaro to follow her, a huffed groan leaving the dog’s mouth as they both turned to leave. When the doors slammed shut, I realized two showdowns with my wife in the last twenty minutes was a new record for us. And it made me want to fucking strangle her.
“What exactly did you think you were going to accomplish with that little stunt just now?”
She cocked a brow at my question. “You finally revealed your twisted little secret,” she answered bluntly. “I thought it was only fair for me to do the same.”
“That’s not what I asked you,” I replied sharply. “What were you hoping to achieve by revealing that letter? Fuck up my world? Is that what you thought you were doing?”
Jaden shook her head. “Sometimes all it takes is planting one little seed. And it seems like it’s already taking effect. I can see it in your eyes.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I snarled, damn near ready to do something I might actually regret later.
Jaden stepped forward, dropping her arms to her sides, and glared up at me without fear.
“You seem to think that making me a mother to your children is a foolproof plan in ensuring I’ll never leave you. That I’ll stay for them. That I’ll learn to accept and return love, for them. But as you can see, your own mother has already obliterated that little theory into dust.”
I snatched her throat in my hand and ripped her toward me, squeezing just enough to bring that fear back into her pretty eyes.
“Three and a half years, Jaden,” I growled. “Three and a half years. That’s how long I’ve owned you. And you’ve waited until now to try to leverage that little piece of information? For what? Did you really think it was going to change my mind? That your duties as my wife would suddenly vanish?”
She huffed a humorous laugh. “Of course not. You’re too damn stubborn for that,” she rasped, her jagged voice vibrating against my palm.
“Then what, princess? What did you think revealing my mother’s insanity would prove? Other than the fact that you’re a conniving little brat bound for a world of misery in the next five minutes.”
She exhaled sharply through her nose, her eyes shadowed with the doubt she failed to conceal.
“You’re trying to achieve something by force under the false impression that I’ll change my mind and become more content with my life if you make me a mother,” she argued back, even as her jaw trembled against my hand.
“But that’s not what’s going to happen. If anything, Darren, you’ll just make me more dangerous. ”
I smirked at her little threat, somehow missing this kind of twisted psychological sparring only she and I could share. The turbulent delusions of her mind always had me intrigued.
“And how do you figure that?” I asked.
She paused for a moment as her hazel eyes swirled with a storm of chaos aimed directly at me.
“Because the most dangerous weapon on this planet isn’t nuclear power, armies, or even money, Darren,” she murmured softly, her gaze hardening with a ferocity I recognized as the threat it was meant to be. “It’s a mother’s love for her child. And you just handed it to me on a silver platter.”
To be continued in Part 2
Coming sooner than you think