Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
HARPER
Z unlocks and tugs the heavy closet door open as dawn breaks the next morning.
I hold my weak arm up to block the sudden morning light filtering in through the windows, paining my eyes.
Only to see Z holding a bottle of water and a pack of Pop-Tarts like he’s doing me a favor.
I want to scratch his eyes out. But without drinking anything for two days, I’m not sure I’d be able to land the attack.
I’m as weak as a rag doll.
And Bruiser comes first anyway, which I know Z’s banking on.
So I take both without a word, because my son is being held somewhere with strangers. And until I know exactly where he is and that he’s safe, Z holds every card.
“You’re going to see Silas today,” Z says, leaning against the doorjamb, watching me drain half the bottle in one go. “And you’re going to get him to sign the deed over to the Dungeon. Just like we talked about.”
I lower the bottle, keeping my eyes cast down in submission. “And Bruiser?”
“He’ll come home as soon as I get the call that it’s done.”
I dare take a quick glance up at him, standing there in yesterday’s clothes, tracking me with eyes that have gone flat and watchful in a way I never let myself see before.
Z and I used to stare at the stars and tell each other everything.
That boy is gone.
I don’t know when it happened, or maybe that person always was just a fiction. Maybe just a story of the person I needed him to be, so I could survive.
“And if I tell Silas the truth?” I ask, keeping my voice very careful and very even. “If I tell him someone’s forcing my hand?”
Z’s jaw shifts. “Then my guys don’t bring Bruiser home.”
There it is.
I cap the water bottle and stand up on legs that are still stiff and cramped from the closet floor.
I stumble out of the closet and over to the bathroom without asking permission. After I use the toilet, I splash water and look at myself in the mirror. My hand is still wrapped in the torn hem of a shirt. My eyes are hollow.
I look like my mother at her worst, and that thought alone is enough to make me square my shoulders and straighten my spine.
I am not her.
My kid will not pay for my mistakes.
So an hour later, I’m signing in at the front desk of a Texas state correctional facility like it’s just a normal Tuesday. They check my bag, log my ID, and a female officer runs a wand over me with the same expression my old dentist used when he was checking for cavities.
Then the first door buzzes open and clangs shut behind me. Something animal in my chest responds to that sound in a way I don’t like. Something that says: Wrong side. You’re on the wrong side of that door now.
The corridor beyond is concrete block painted the color of old teeth, dirty along the baseboards where the mops reach just so far and no farther.
The smell is industrial cleaner on top, like you can tell they’re trying.
But underneath is a smell so foul that no amount of Pine-Sol is ever going to touch it.
I follow a guard down the hall on autopilot, my shoes squeaking on the floor. The Pop-Tarts sit like a rock in my empty stomach.
And then I’m sitting down at a visiting window, picking up a telephone receiver, and watching my father’s face light up the way it always does when he sees me through the scratched plexiglass.
“How’s the chip off the old block?” Silas asks, exactly the same way he usually starts all our visits together.
But I’m not here for fucking pleasantries or to bond over Bruiser.
I look Silas in the eye.
“Dad, I need you to show up for me one last time. I need you to give me the deed to the Dungeon so I can sell it.”
Silas’s entire demeanor changes, shoulders going stiff.
I lean forward, fingers clenching the phone as I stare through the glass at him. “Your grandson needs the money. I’ll never ask anything else of you again, and you know I wouldn’t ask this if there was any other way.”
Another long silence before he finally speaks. “Has somebody approached you?”
“What?” I shake my head like I’m confused. I always was a good liar—that tends to happen when you grow up with a narcissist for a mother and an ex-con father—and I try to draw on all my skills now.
“No, it’s just that we got overextended.” I sigh and rub my temples. “Like last time with the business.”
“Last time Z got into gambling debt.” Silas’s voice goes hard. “Is that what happened again?”
I breathe out heavily and drop my face into my hands. Z didn’t explicitly say to hide his involvement. And this is the most believable excuse without me pointing to the gang or whatever MC he might be involved with.
“Yes. I’m leaving him this time. For real. Believe me, we are never getting back together. Ever.”
Silas’s eyes narrow. He can tell something’s off with me, but he can also clearly hear the truth of that statement, at least. That’s always the important part of telling the most convincing lies—mix in a little bit of truth.
“I just need this from you so I can leave him—” I stop on a small choke, then pull back. I don’t want to oversell it. Silas knows I’m not an overly emotional person.
So I simply reach out and press my palm flat against the glass. “I never wanted Bruiser to have anything to do with…” I let my eyes dance around the cold concrete walls around us. “… any ugliness.”
It’s cruel to remind Dad of my childhood, especially after the sacrifice he made for me that put him behind these walls for the last ten years.
But I’m not above any form of manipulation when it comes to my son. My gaze drifts down to the counter and I let my hand drop.
“Knew that boy Z was no good for ya,” Silas growls. “From the beginning. Still, not glad to find out I was right.”
I lift my eyes back to Dad’s. “So you’ll help? You’ll sign over the deed to the Dungeon?”
Silas tilts his head and squints at me. “You finding out all this about Zedekiah what got you looking like you just went ten rounds in the ring with a demon from hell?”
I lick my still-dry lips and quash the impulse to lift my hand and run it through my hair. I probably do look like hell. I didn’t think about that. I was so determined to get in here and meet Z’s demands so he’ll reunite me with my son, I didn’t bother with a shower.
I try for a wan smile. “It’s been a rough forty-eight hours, that’s for sure. Discovering that the man you’ve loved since you were a kid is a liar will do that to a girl.”
“Always thought you and Caleb woulda been a better fit.”
I’m pretty sure I choke. Or make some other incoherent noise.
“Helen always thought so, too, before she died. I told her it was too odd, cause you were his stepsister. But she always said that wouldn’t be for long, and that you’d been pretty much grown by the time you moved in.”
Dad squares me with his gaze. “She said she could see how you looked at him.”
I never would’ve thought, on a day like the day I’ve just had, during the week I’ve just had, that I would still be capable of fucking blushing.
But here I am, blushing like a teenager now that my dad’s calling out my crush on my stepbrother.
“Well, I—” I sputter. “That was a long time ago.”
“He’d make a good father to Bruiser. Helluva lot better than that asshole Z. You could go up to Dallas and stay with him while you’re trying to figure things out. I bet he’d welcome you in.”
“Dad! Focus.” I snap my fingers in front of the glass, cheeks still hot. “Will you call your lawyer to draw up the papers or not?”
But Silas just does that thing he does sometimes. That thing where he goes real still, staring at you. Then his gaze shifts to something over my shoulder.
I frown, turning to look, but there’s no one. Just the same guard who brought me in.
“I’ll call my lawyer,” Silas says, leaning forward toward the glass, phone gripped loosely in his hand.
“But only if you promise me one thing,” he says, his voice barely a whisper in my ear through the line.
I mirror his pose, getting close to the glass. “What?”
His steel-gray eyes pierce mine. “You promise me that you’ll pick up that grandson of mine as soon as you leave here. And then you run. You fuckin’ promise me? You run.”
Which is when I realize I haven’t been pulling shit over on Silas.
He’s seen beneath my paltry attempts at hiding the truth.
He knows someone’s after him—or his property—for some reason. And he knows I’m in danger. He’s right, too. Even if I do exactly whatever the men behind Z’s threats want me to do.
I’m not safe.
And neither is Bruiser.
I realize it now by the hard seriousness in his gaze. Whatever’s going on here, Silas has some insight into it, and we’re not safe even now that I’ve done this “favor.”
Fuck.
“Too close to the glass!” the guard comes over and bangs on the glass with his bully stick, making me jump back. Silas’s eyes hold mine.
Well, fuckity fuck fuck!
Was the guard listening to everything we said the whole time? Does he work for whoever Z does? Z said that they had Silas’s own lawyer in their pocket.
Just what the hell are me and Bruiser entangled with here? What did Z land us in? And what the hell could it have to do with Silas, too?
I push back in my chair, barely hearing Dad say, “Love you, kid,” into the receiver before I nod, too in shock to say anything back.
“Love you, too,” I say, even though he can’t hear it. He’s still watching me, though, and I think he saw me mouth it back.
Then the guard on his side of the glass is hauling him up out of the chair and dragging him back toward the cell block.