Chapter Thirty-Five
COOPER
Icaught up to them to see Alice handing bunny back to a crying Petra. My mother stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring at Petra with a combination of horror and revulsion.
“What is this? You have a child with this…this…this…woman?” Lacey struggled mightily to hold back the word she wanted to call Alice, but the way she said woman was more epithet than anything else.
Alice unbuckled Petra and pulled her out of the high chair, holding her tight, the bunny sandwiched between them. She turned, hiding Petra from sight. My mother’s face was growing increasingly red, her eyes wide as she shook with indignation and rage.
We saw the eruption coming and there was nothing we could do to stop it.
“You fucking whore. I told you to stay away from my son. I'm going to make you pay—”
Petra started to wail, set off by the vitriol in my mother's tone as her shouts filled the room. Clinging to Alice, Petra sobbed, “Daddy. Daddy. Where Daddy? Where Daddy?”
Unable to stand her panicked distress, I crossed the room to take Petra from Alice. My little sister burrowed her head into my neck, clutching the front of my shirt, still crying, “Where Daddy? Where Daddy?”
In that moment, I would have gladly killed both my parents. Lacey for setting her off and Maxwell for walking out and leaving her confused and abandoned.
Lacey fell silent, her brain trying to process through the cocktails she’d probably consumed with breakfast, but finally, she ended up in the right place.
When she spoke, her voice was hard as stone. “She's not yours, is she?”
“She is now,” I said, cradling Petra against me, rubbing her back to soothe her sobs. “That's all you need to know. She's mine now. Mine and Alice’s.”
“Is this why you’ve turned on your father?
You want him out of the way so you can claim her?
I don’t understand why you’d even want her.
If you have to have a child, you can't take your father's leavings. For God’s sake, think about how it will look!
Just get rid of her, and your father and I will leave.
Everything can go back to normal. That's your only option.”
“Listen up, crazy lady,” Alice cut in.
I knew that tone. Alice was done. So was I. If my mother’s voice was stone, Alice’s was adamantine. I'd never seen her sky-blue eyes so coldly furious.
“Cooper is going to take you back downstairs and lock you in the safe house.
You are going to stay there until he decides to let you go.
You can keep your bullshit opinions to yourself.
He doesn't care what you have to say. I don't care what you have to say.
And you have nothing to do with this little girl.
“If you’d lay off drinking for a few days, your brain might un-pickle itself and you’d see that you're throwing away everything worth having in your life to cling to a man who doesn't give a shit about you. But that's your problem. I'm not going to let you make it ours.”
Alice strode across the kitchen and took Petra from my arms, passing Lacey without a backward glance. “I'm going to get her calmed down and give her a bath. Cooper, could you take out the trash?”
I shouldn't have enjoyed the outrage splashed across my mother's face at Alice's pithy comment, but I did. I enjoyed it a lot.
My mother transformed again after Alice disappeared, meekly allowing me to escort her back downstairs.
I followed her into the safe house to find my father lounging on the couch, reading the newspaper, a steaming cup of coffee in hand.
With wary eyes, he took in Lacey's lack of expression and my hard jaw.
“Whatever you two are cooking up, it's not going to work,” I told him, tired of beating around the bush. “At ten forty-five, someone will bring you to the conference room. Agent Holley is arriving at eleven. Understood?”
“I'll be there, boy,” he said easily. Too easily.
I looked from his relaxed smile to my mother's utter lack of expression. I couldn't shake the feeling that they were up to something. I tried to convince myself it was nothing.
For one thing, my father was way too clever to trust anything important to my mother considering the amount of alcohol she consumed in a given day. She was not what I would call a reliable partner in crime.
She was, however, infinitely persuadable if offered any of her weaknesses. My father had said she was happy as long as her credit cards were paid off. I wished I could say he was wrong.
After I got to my office, I texted Alice to check on Petra. She responded after a short delay with a picture of Petra, covered to her neck in white bubbles, a dot of bubbles on the tip of her nose. She was smiling and looked like she was playing with some kind of bath toy.
The idea had been for Alice to hit her desk for a few hours this morning while I watched Petra, but things had turned around since then. I texted,
I'll switch with you once we’re done with Holley.
Works for me.
We definitely needed to get her an assistant.
I rescheduled some meetings, reviewed the paperwork Dave Price had sent over, and made a short list of current employees who might be interested in the assistant job.
It sounded like a junior position, but only to someone who didn't realize that Alice was a whole lot more than an office manager.
Ten forty-five rolled around way too fast. Evers, Axel, and Knox joined me in the conference room, sitting on either side of the seat we’d saved for Dad, leaving the far side of the table for the FBI.
Right on schedule, two of my men escorted my father into the conference room. As if he wasn’t the flight risk we all knew he was, Maxwell ignored his guards, striding ahead of them with his most charming smile plastered on his face.
When he was seated, I slapped the termination papers in front of him and handed him a pen. He signed, muttering, “Your mother about chewed my head off. That woman is pissed.”
I met Agent Holley at the door at exactly eleven o’clock. He’d showed accompanied by three of the bureau’s attorneys. All male, and all dressed in identical ill-fitting charcoal grey suits, they observed my handshake with Agent Holley without expression.
Holley’s greeting was friendly, but as we walked back to the conference room, neither of us mentioned the reason for our meeting.
I liked Agent Holley. Respected him. I wished I could say I was entirely on his side.
Until I was sure he wouldn’t toss me in prison along with my father, I’d keep my own counsel. I had to.
My father greeted Holley as if they were old golf buddies, shaking his hand and patting him on the shoulder with an affable smile. Holley allowed him his pretense but didn’t return it, taking a seat at the head of the table opposite Maxwell.
Maxwell's jaw hardened at Holley's assumption of authority, but he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Then Agent Holley started to talk. He listed the charges against my father, referencing the incontrovertible evidence they had for the majority of them.
Some of it was small-time, most of it was firmly in felony territory. When he was done, Maxwell sat back, crossed his arms over his chest, and said easily, “You'll never make all that stick.”
“I don't have to make all of it stick, Mr. Sinclair. In truth, any one of these charges would put you in jail for at least ten to fifteen years. Maybe you can skate on some of them, but do you really think you can shake them all?”
“I have evidence, too,” my father replied, eyes narrowed in something that almost looked like satisfaction, his head cocked to the side as he studied Agent Holley.
“You've been running around like busy little bees building a case against the Tsepovs, but you have no idea what I've got tucked away. I could make your career.”
Agent Holley didn't react in the slightest. Looking down at his pad, he wrote something without acknowledging Maxwell’s statement, reminding me of a psychiatrist calmly taking notes while his patient ranted and raved.
My father probably expected Agent Holley to surge forward, salivating for more, and beg him to cooperate.
He hid his disappointment when Holley shared a glance with the FBI counsel before he said, “No matter what you think you have, Mr. Sinclair, it's unavoidable that you’ll spend some time in prison.”
“I don’t know about that,” Maxwell cajoled, “you don’t know what I have.”
“No, but I know what I have. We don’t need your evidence.
It would be helpful, but it's not necessary. I'm here to give you a single opportunity to cooperate in exchange for a reduced sentence. If you can assist us in bringing in Andrei Tsepov we’re willing to talk. Anything less than that and the deal is off the table.”
“Listen, you boys can’t expect me to hand you Tsepov. Information? That I can deal with.”
“We don’t want information, Mr. Sinclair. We want Andrei Tsepov.”
“I’m not putting my ass on the line to draw Andrei out. You're crazy if you think it’ll be that easy.”
Agent Holley tapped the back of his pen on the desk to retract the point and closed his notebook. Unfolding from the chair to his full height, he loomed over the table.
“We’re done here. I’m sorry we couldn’t come to an agreement. I need you to stand and put your hands behind your head.”
Pulling a shiny set of handcuffs from his suit pocket, Agent Holley looked from one side of the table to the other, meeting the eyes of the attorneys he’d brought with him. “Gentlemen?” All three rose in unison.
For the first time, Maxwell's facade of charm cracked. He didn't stand, but he did lean forward, bracing his elbows on the conference table.
“Hey, let's not be hasty. I don't want to go to jail. I want to do the right thing as much as anyone—”
Lie. Such a fucking lie, and we all knew it.
But Maxwell wasn’t done. “You can’t expect me to be the one to bring him in.
I may not want to go to jail, but more than that, I don't want to die.
Andrei is not like his uncle. He's a fuck-up, and a nut-case, and he’s more dangerous than Sergey ever was.
If Andrei thinks I've betrayed him, he'll shoot me without a second thought.”
“Prison or cooperation, Mr. Sinclair. Those are your choices.” Agent Holley laid it out and waited.
Maxwell sat back and dropped his hands in his lap, staring at the floor between his feet. Finally, he let out the breath he’d been holding. “I’ll cooperate. You keep me alive and I’ll cooperate.”
With another shared glance, the FBI agents sat back down. Agent Holley re-opened his notebook and clicked his pen open.
“I suggest we hammer out a plan, Mr. Sinclair. Between your own people and ours, we’ll do everything we can to keep you alive, assuming you follow our directions. Your only other option is prison. Am I clear?”
Maxwell nodded.
I’d kept my mouth shut through their initial negotiations, but as they began to work out a way for Maxwell to draw Tsepov out into the open, I chimed in along with Evers, Knox, and Axel.
I didn't want my father to go to jail. He was an asshole and a shitty dad, but he was still my father.
I definitely did not want him to die. Tsepov had taken too much from too many people. Petra’s mother. Summer’s father. Lily’s husband. Every single woman and child whose life he’d destroyed.
Helping the FBI bring Tsepov in was a risk, but even my father had to admit it was worth it if it would keep him out of jail for the rest of his life.
If Maxwell was going to put himself in the line of fire, my brothers and I would do everything we could to make sure he came out of it in one piece. We could protect him from Tsepov. We couldn’t protect him from himself.