37 #2
“Hey, I had a question about a supply order.” Fuck, it didn’t sound convincing at all. My voice squeaked, and it hadn’t done that in ages. Showing my father any kind of weakness was a mistake.
Dad waved the men out of the room. “Give me a minute with my son.”
The moment the men were out of the room, I was able to release some of the tension in my shoulders. At least I wouldn’t have an audience for this. I could just deal with my dad.
“What can I do for you, boy?” he asked.
I cleared my throat, doing my best to will my voice into cooperating as I wanted it to. “So I was looking at the accounting sheets, seeing this order for parts. The problem is, the price was way more than it normally is? On top of that, when I checked our inventory, those parts didn’t exist.”
Dad’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forward, steepling his fingers in front of him. “Now why would you go looking through the accounting?”
Fuck, the room felt like it had gone up over a hundred degrees. Sweat poured out of me in buckets. I caught myself thinking about the stupid tape stuck to the microphone. Surely, they were used to doing shit like this and took nerves into consideration?
“Well, the lift was acting funny. Making the oddest sound. So I wanted to see if we had the funds to repair it.” It was a lie, but it was the most believable thing I could come up with.
Dad’s eyes narrowed. Yeah, he didn’t fucking believe me. I’d normally just ask him to take care of shit like that, not do it myself. But what had that gotten me in the past? Shoddy repair work or nothing being done at all.
“Listen here. If you need something like that done—”
“Come to you. I get it, but you’ve been so busy lately with all sorts of different people in and out of this place. The one time I thought I wouldn’t bother you...” I trailed off, motioning to my father like I wanted him to continue.
He sighed heavily before sitting back in his seat.
The whole thing felt sort of mafia-esque, I had to fight back a laugh at the image that it painted in my head.
There was no way my father would survive in any type of mafia.
He’d be too opinionated doing something stupid to get himself killed. Not that he wasn’t doing that now.
“Alright. You want to know the real secret?” He opened a drawer in his desk, pulling out a bottle of pills before tossing it across the room to me. It almost slipped out of my hands thanks to how damp they were.
The brightly colored pills told me exactly what they were. I hated that I was holding them at all.
“What is this?” I still had to play dumb. It was really stupid because I’d seen him handing them off to Jayden. He’d even threatened me about it. Though he hadn’t completely let on about what it was he thought I knew.
Dad’s smile grew evil. “Our big paycheck. With all that stuff flying around on the streets, I’ve been making top dollar.”
His answer was too vague. Detective Brown had said they needed him to outright say what it was in order for them to make an arrest. The question was how the hell I could get him to say it without sounding like I was digging for information.
I hadn’t been a saint as a teenager. Some of that was thanks to my dad. He’d encouraged me to act out, but when I didn’t act how he wanted me to, I was punished. He’d never made me do drugs, but there had been a lot of drinking at a young age.
I shook the bottle, letting the brightly colored pills rattle in the container. There were a lot of them, probably close to a hundred, with little flowers stamped on one side.
“Careful there, son. You might damage the product.”
He still wasn’t saying it, which only amped up my irritation. At that point, I’d have no choice but to ask him directly.
“What is it?”
His face dropped before he stood from his seat. “Are you a fucking idiot? You don’t know the good stuff when you see it?”
Well, there went that idea. I was about to give up when he circled around the desk, snatched the bottle from me, and smacked the back of my head.
“I’m almost ashamed to call you my son. Of all the things I taught you over the years, you never once learned to truly live on the dangerous side like your dear old dad. ”
Of course not. I hated the person he was. I didn’t want to be anything like him.
If he wasn’t going to tell me what they were, I had to think of the next best thing. Detective Brown hadn’t said anything about bringing the pills to them, but it was all that I could do. It had to be enough.
I snatched the little bottle of pills back out of my father’s hand. “I know what they are. It’s not like I’m a fucking idiot.” For good measure, I rolled my eyes. That was a stupid mistake because it earned me a punch to the gut.
“If you know what the fuck they are, get your dumbass out there and make me some money the honest way.”
What a fucking joke. The honest way? That would be by fixing cars that came into his garage, not by hawking pills on the streets. But this was my father we were talking about.
My stomach ached as I stuffed the bottle into my pocket, leaving his office. The men from earlier were standing right outside the door, and I was thankful that Dad hadn’t called them in to help him beat me. I could take a few shots from my old man, but I wasn’t prepared for an ambush.
As soon as I left the building, I walked down the street. The police were waiting for me a few blocks away. They didn’t want to come across as suspicious by being too close. With the way my gut was hurting, I sort of wished I didn’t need to walk all that way.
“Fuck, that hurts.” I’d mostly said it to myself, knowing I was still connected to that damn microphone. There was a small part of me that hoped someone would take pity on me and pick me up. They had to have someone who had an unmarked car somewhere.
I was in luck. After I had stumbled another block down the road with my arms clutched around my stomach, a dark blue SUV pulled up next to me. The passenger window rolled down, with Detective Brown in the driver’s seat.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Do I fucking look okay?”
He sighed, putting the car in park so I could climb inside.
The leather interior was almost too nice.
There was also a shit ton of crap on the dash that I had no idea what it did.
The outside of the vehicle was plain, non-descript, totally unassuming, but inside was a technological explosion of police equipment.
Detective Brown picked up a small walkie-talkie, clicking the button on the side. “Sasquatch has been picked up. Bringing him in for questioning.”
I snorted a laugh. “Sasquatch?”
The detective shrugged his shoulders. “We couldn’t think of a good code name that wouldn’t give you away. You’re tall, somewhat bulky, so now you’re Sasquatch.”
The comment made me laugh, which made the pain in my stomach worse. Dad had punched me in the gut lots of times, but this one took the icing on the cake. He had to have hit something, or at least caused some bruising.
“We’ll get a doctor to look at that,” Detective Brown said.
I wanted to scoff because that was one of the worst things that had changed over the last few months. I no longer qualified for state-assisted health insurance, and there was no way my dad was providing it to any of his so-called employees.
Detective Brown must have picked up on it because he frowned, hands tightening against his steering wheel as he drove the last four blocks to the rendezvous point.
“Don’t worry about it. We put you in that position—the least we can do is make sure that you weren’t seriously injured.”
I hated the idea that my father could have seriously injured me in some way. Maybe it would add to whatever charges he received. It wasn’t the silver lining anyone wanted to see.
Everything sort of happened quickly after I got out of Detective Brown’s car.
Another officer was at my side, asking if I had what my father had handed me.
I passed over the bottle of pills without much prodding.
The last thing I wanted was for anyone to think I wanted to keep holding the damn things.
From there I was ushered over to an ambulance, surprised that they had it on standby, but when you were sending someone in to catch a drug sale, guess there was a real chance they could end up hurt. Or worse, dead. At least all I was bitching about was that my stomach was sore.
The paramedic had me take my shirt off. To my surprise, there was already a bruise forming on my abdomen.
It started to make me nervous—I'd been hit a lot. It had never left a mark so quickly or hurt quite as bad. Though that was when I had to start wondering if Dad had been sampling the product. It would explain why he couldn’t control his strength.
Not that I ever considered that he tried to control himself around me.
I noticed a doctor sitting in the back of the ambulance.
They never transported me to the hospital.
He checked out the bruising, ran a few different tests by feeling along my stomach, doing this weird ass thing where he hit the bottoms of my feet.
At the end of the day, it was just a really hard hit that had left a nasty bruise, knocking the wind out of me.
An officer came to sit next to me while the doctor finished explaining what I needed to do over the next few days to recover. Take it easy. No heavy lifting. Maybe no overzealous sex. I laughed, asking him if he’d met my boyfriend. The officer looked surprised but didn’t say anything.
I understood where his surprise was coming from.
I didn’t look like a guy who liked to fuck around with other guys.
I’d always said I was bisexual—I had always preferred women more, or at least that was what I’d thought since I’d only ever really been with Whitney.
But all of that was bullshit, anyway. There was no specific way you had to look in order to be queer. You just loved who you loved.
And I did love Sable.
And I hoped that he loved me back.