Chapter 13
COURTESY
* * *
I stood outside the bar I had allowed Katherine’s father to maintain full ownership at my discretion. As long as he continued funneling me thirty percent of the profits from the underground fighting rings he ran in the basement, then he could do as he pleased.
The establishment itself was nothing special, just a little hole-in-the-wall bar on the shady side of the city, catering to the retired alcoholics and occasional bikers who passed through.
With how broken down it looked, you’d never suspect the additional hidden basement concealing an upscale amusement park of violence and debauchery beneath it.
After parking on the street in front of the building, the SUVs of my security team idled in front of and behind my car, the driver of each always remaining at the wheel.
The other three passengers from both vehicles exited, following me inside the decrepit bar.
Two remained near the door, locking it behind us as we moved into the windowless parlor.
The low lighting revealed an array of battered-looking tables and chairs from the 1980s, an old-school jukebox in the corner, and a tattered pool table bordering on ancient.
The scent of beer and bleach lingered in the air, along with the stale stench of sweat and vomit, an aroma fitting for the shit-hole it was.
Aside from the rundown aesthetics, the place was empty of people, except for the older man in a gray suit sitting at the bar with two of his own men lingering in the background.
Richard was nearing his seventies. His thinning gray hair haphazardly brushed to the side while his suntanned, weathered skin hung loosely from the curve of his jawline.
Time had not been kind to his body, the evidence of which was obvious when he grimaced as he turned in his seat in my direction.
“You have ten minutes,” I told him. “What’s the urgency, Richard?”
He glared at me from across the room but thankfully got to the point.
“I’ve learned some disturbing news, Darren,” he said, his gaze hard while his voice abandoned the nervousness that had initially drawn my attention.
I could hardly blame the obvious hatred burning in his eyes as he stared at me.
After everything I’d already taken from him and his family, I’d envision the death of the man who killed my child every time I saw him too.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” I replied, my patience already running thin.
His eyes blazed with an animalistic fury I could feel from the other side of the room, a subtle snarl forming across his lips before he finally spoke.
“Is it true that your mother plotted her own assassination and pinned it on my family to start a war?” he asked incredulously.
Rather than reveal the initial shock on my face that I felt in my stomach, I allowed my features to instead form into a frown of irritation and confusion. And then I started to chuckle.
“Where in the fuck did you hear that bullshit?” I asked, trying not to sound at all alarmed.
“From your own fucking brother!” Richard snarled back at me.
My heart thundered in my chest at the revelation. Had my own brother actually betrayed our family’s greatest secret? After I specifically told him what would happen if word got out?
My raging emotions aside, I needed to consider some serious damage control before I concerned myself with Daniel’s motives. And as much as I wanted to defend his dignity to avoid the impression of weakness or vulnerability in my family, I needed to dismiss this in any way possible.
“My brother?” I replied in outrage, raising my brows in disbelief. “The one currently recovering from brain damage? You took some clear deranged nonsense from him as truth? You must be losing your touch, Richard.”
Katherine’s withered husk of a father abruptly stood from his chair and squared his bony shoulders. “Which is exactly why I called you here. Why would he say that, Darren? That’s some pretty specific bullshit to spout off.”
I rolled my eyes at his insistence. “I don’t know, Richard. Was he drunk?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters!” I nearly growled. “When did he tell you this?”
“A few hours ago,” he answered.
WHAT.
I shook my head and shifted my gaze to mask my rage as I tried to salvage the colossal mess Daniel had once again caused me. I may just have to kill the motherfucker after all. It was just one fuckup after another.
“Then he was definitely drunk,” I bit out.
Richard glared at me, baring his teeth. “People tend to be the most honest when they’re drunk, you know.”
I shook my head again. “Not in this case. His brain is a mess right now, Richard. He probably dreamed the shit up last night, and his brain couldn’t process it properly, who the fuck knows.”
Richard’s gaze hardened like he didn’t believe me, and he was unfortunately right not to.
I sure as shit wouldn’t. The difference was I would have kept the information to my damn self instead of flaunting it like it was my ticket to the top.
Feigning your own ignorance until the right opportunity came along was clearly a lesson Richard struggled to learn in his old age.
Perhaps his brain was nothing but a mess of misfires as well.
“Sounds like an awfully convenient excuse to cover up your family’s insanity,” he replied bitterly. I was right. He absolutely was losing it.
“Careful, Richard,” I snapped, taking a hard step toward him. “I gave you the courtesy of entertaining your serious lack of judgment today. I won’t extend it further to afford you the opportunity to disrespect me and my family because of your own foolishness.”
The scowl on his face intensified as he raised his arm to point at me. “If I ever find out that you murdered my nine-year-old daughter because of a lie your mother engineered then you will see an uprising like never before, Davis. I swear it,” he growled through gritted teeth.
And just like that, the man signed his own death warrant.
“You should know better than to threaten me, old man,” I warned. “I sincerely hope you’ve managed to retain at least one brain cell or two and kept these little drunken ramblings to yourself.”
If he had already spread the truth, I’d find out in the next second or so.
He scoffed as he waved a hand through the air. “Like you’d fucking believe me even if I said I hadn’t.”
And there it is.
“Then you’ve made a very grave mistake by calling me here, Richard. Staying silent would have been a much safer choice for you.”
With that, I turned around and headed for the door, signaling to my guards with the tilt of my chin. Several gunshots followed just as I reached for the handle, bodies dropping to the floor before I’d even exited the building.
I couldn’t afford to risk Richard spreading harmful information around that could cause the exact kind of uprising he’d mistakenly threatened me with. And now that secret would stay buried with him and his unlucky bodyguards.
Pulling out my phone, I texted Scott the cleanup code for O’Neil’s, then got back into my car and quickly peeled off back toward the house.
The sun was already beginning to set, reminding me that time flew by so much faster than I could ever hope to keep up with.
My fist tightened around the steering wheel as my mind fought to formulate some reasonable explanation for why my brother would expose us to even more problems than we were already facing.
When had he even found the time to call with that surgery?
And since when did he start confiding in his father-in-law? Drunk, no less.
If he did it within the last few hours then the only reason I could fathom was to get back at me for threatening him.
But he had to know that would come back to bite both of us in the ass.
And that I wouldn’t just allow him to sabotage everything we both had worked so damn hard to achieve and maintain.
The closer I got to home, the closer I came to accepting the brother I knew was slipping through my fingers. His brain damage was worse than I had anticipated, and I needed to do something to stop him from causing more harm I wouldn’t be able to repair without more bloodshed.
When I was about halfway home, an alert came from my phone, reporting that Jaden’s heart rate had suddenly spiked to a higher level than normal.
I imagined she had woken from her nap and was now reexperiencing her grief all over again.
She had just better not be throwing shit around in the house again.
Stepping on the gas, I raced home, but once I entered through the front door, something seemed off. I could hear shouting and scuffling upstairs, along with muffled Russian cursing in the background.
Bolting up the stairs, I followed the mixed noise into Jaden’s art room, my brain preparing for another goddamn nightmare to handle, but what I walked in on was so much worse than I could have pictured.
The room was a goddamn mess, with half of Jaden’s art supplies flung across the room, all of her projects completely destroyed.
My guards were scattered throughout, their eyes focused on Sloane who had Daniel pinned to the floor, her fist stopping just inches from his face upon hearing me enter.
Her eyes widened before she abruptly stood, her chest heaving from obvious exertion.
What the fucking hell?
“Sir,” she said, acknowledging my presence with a slight nod, but the uncertainty wavering in her voice left me more than unsettled.
Her eyes then shot to the floor near the wall, my gaze quickly following in search of an explanation for what the fuck was going on.
And then it hit me like a goddamn freight train.
Jaden was huddled on the floor, her bruised arms wrapped securely around her bare legs that were tucked into her chest. Her focus remained on the floor, but I could see the bitter enragement that sharpened her beautiful features.
But when her eyes finally met mine, I knew the devastating truth.