THIRTY-THREE - JAMESON
He was alive?
He was alive! My dad hadn’t been dead this entire time? I’d never been more relieved and confused and hurt at the same time. So many emotions and questions ran through me, even more than before.
He reached out into the dark and grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out of the isolation room.
“Stop!” I tried pulling away from him, but he gripped onto me tighter.
“We’re running out of time.”
“I’m not going with you.” I tugged again. “Not until you tell me what’s going on!”
“Later. Right now, you’re going to have to trust me. Please come on. We don’t have a lot of time—actually, we don’t have any.
He pulled me by the arm, practically dragging me. “Can you at least slow down? I can’t see shit.” We were sprinting through ankle-deep water, slipping and sliding in thick, silky mud beneath our feet.
I lost my footing and fell at one point, but he lifted me back up.
“Almost there.”
I hadn’t the slightest clue where he thought he was taking me because the direction we were heading led right into a storage room at the dead end of the hull. I almost didn’t want to trust him, and a part of me didn’t.
I heard the metal grating as the storage room door shut behind me. “Dad, what’s going on? We can’t get out this way.”
“Yes, we can.” I heard the click of a button, and a tiny flashlight came on, illuminating the small room. My dad’s face came into view.
“It’s you,” I whispered.
He smiled. “Yup. It’s me.”
I threw myself into him in a hug. His arms wrapped tightly around me, squeezing extra hard. “As much as I need this, this actually hurts like a bitch. But I think you’re right. Neither of us is gonna be left if I don’t get us out of here.”
I pulled away. “Okay. Okay, but how?”
He walked over to the back wall and pushed on it. It swung inward, revealing a dark space. He held out his hand. “Come. Let’s go.”
“I—what in the world?”
I took his hand, hiked my dress up with the other, and stepped over the bottom of the doorway. The space was a long, narrow hallway barely wide enough for one person and zero lighting that ran what felt like the length of the entire barge.
More explosions went off above us.
“James, we need to run. Now.”
“Okay, Dad. Let’s go.”
My dad had never steered me wrong, with the exception of the last twelve months, but given my current circumstances, I was left with no choice but to trust him.
Considering I had zero idea where I was or where we were heading or that this hallway existed, and now it sounded like my casino was under attack from the inside, all I could do was let go.
After running for what felt like forever, we made it to the end. “A ladder? You want me to climb a ladder?”
“It’s either that or sink. You pick.”
I blew a breath at my wet, dirty, disheveled hair that had fallen across my face. “Fuck it,” I said as I gripped onto the sides of the ladder and stepped up on the first metal rung. “Don’t let me fall.”
He flashed the light at me. “Then don’t fall…and whatever you do, don’t stop.”
I looked up and could see a literal light at the end of a tunnel because this skinny metal ladder had been welded inside the walls of an actual tunnel that soared straight upward. Eventually, I reached the top and was able to pull myself out. My dad climbed out right behind me.
“Dad, where in the hell are we?”
I stood up and looked around. We were at the far other end of the property on the opposite end of the event center. It looked like we’d just climbed out of a manhole cover in the grass.
“Not far enough away. We need to be out there.” He pointed toward the parking lot that was now full of partygoers, staff members, and a few emergency vehicles.
We made our way out to the crowd, looking for anyone we’d recognize.
Ivan spotted us first. “Shit, I didn’t think y’all were gonna make it.”
“I didn’t either,” Dad told him as he wrapped his arm cautiously around me.
“Well, glad you’re here. People are already talking, whispering and shit. I don’t know what to tell them.”
“I’ll handle it.” Dad faced me. “You okay?”
I grabbed on to my side where I’d been hit with a blank. “Yeah, I think so. It’ll heal.”
“I know that was a lot, and we have a lot to talk about.”
I didn’t know what to say. Less than a year ago, I’d held a funeral for my dad. I mourned over him. I fought for him. Hell, I tried to kill someone who I thought was the reason for his death, and he wasn’t even the right guy?
I still didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground and was left with more questions than answers at the moment. Only one question stuck out the most. “Where have you been?”
“Hiding.” He sighed. “You remember the night I—?”
“How could I forget?” I cut him off. I knew exactly what night he was referring to. “I watched my dad die in front of me.”
“And I’m sorry for that. But Kane needed to be stopped.”
Dad had already caught him moving people once years and years ago, before I was even born. Back then, they’d come to some kind of civil agreement that Dad wouldn’t interfere with Kane’s transactions with the assurance that Kane wouldn’t move any more people.
While my dad ran a business in an industry that practically thrived on human sacrifice to a certain degree, those lives were here voluntarily. They knew the rules, the stakes, and the consequences.
Trafficking victims were just that—victims. They didn’t ask for what they’d gone through.
I guess once my dad learned that Kane had gotten back on his bullshit, he wasn’t having any of it anymore.
“This still doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know, and it will. That night, I randomly picked off one of Kane’s boats, you know, make sure he was behaving.
He wasn’t. I’d hit the jackpot and chosen the right one.
When we cleared it, we found women and children.
I’d had enough of this shit. So I made a few phone calls to my connections and called in a few favors with some authorities in very high places.
Our operation was born almost overnight.
The problem was I was only given twelve months to make it happen, start to finish, otherwise I’d be pulled from our ops, and all the higher-ups within every three-letter agency involved would take over. ”
“Oh my god, Dad. I don’t even know what to say.”
“I know,” he continued. “The long and short of it is I’ve been under in my own self-made witness protection program working day in and day out to get to the source of this ring and bust it up or, at the very least, stop it on Kane’s end.
It took longer than expected when he disappeared a few months in, and his boats stopped moving.
I figured he was onto us. Turns out he’d gone on a vacation to Italy for six months.
He just got back last month, and we kicked everything into high gear. ”
My heart sank. I thought back to around that time Kane came back from his vacation. That was when we found one of our security guards dead on his golf cart.
“That’s when he killed Briggs. Was that because of you?” He looked at me but didn’t answer. “Dad…”
“I’m sorry, Maggie-J, but we did what had to be done. Not letting a single one of his transactions slip by unsearched was our number one priority.”
“I understand.” Kind of. I knew my dad had good intentions, but what the fuck? “What about that guy? The one that came to see me?”
He sighed. “Y’all showed up at the house that night, and I panicked. I didn’t need y’all nosing around again and blowing my cover. You know I don’t like to play dirty unless I have to. He used to be one of Kane’s. Ivan knew Kane had gotten rid of him, so he hunted him down, used him.”
My stomach dropped. “I guess, but was it necessary to fake your own death? That seems a little extreme and flat-out wrong. I feel like you could’ve come up with a better plan.”
“I know, Maggie-J. I’m sorry. If we wanted everything to play out according to the deal we’d worked up, I needed to disappear and not just go under.
Kane had to think I’d fucked with the wrong person or pissed off someone else and they took care of me, which saved him the trouble.
As soon as he got back and his boats started moving again, we searched each and every one that passed, and when we found what we were looking for, we took it. ”
“He thought it was me, didn’t he? He thought I was the one who had interfered with his shipments.”
“Yup,” Ivan joined in. “We hadn’t accounted for that just yet, but we knew then shit was about to hit the fan because that wasn’t part of the original plan.
We had to think fast and act even faster.
That’s when Elliott called me and said I needed to start working on convincing you to let me get some outside help. ”
“Roman?” I asked, my words barely a whisper.
I glanced around. There were even fewer people here now, and not one of them Roman. Where the hell is he?
“He was the only person besides Ivan that I knew I could trust with you…with everything.”
Holy shit. My dad only did what he thought he had to do to protect me and entire lives of people he didn’t know.
“I’m really sorry I dragged you through all of this, but it needed to be done to stop Kane permanently. I knew we could do it, and a hell of a lot faster than anyone else.”
“So you used him? You took advantage of him this entire time? What if something had actually happened to him?”
“That was just a risk we had to take. He knew well what he was getting into when Ivan called him back. It’s his job.”
I couldn’t believe it—any of it. Even though I was beyond grateful for my dad to be alive, grateful that I had Roman back and he was alive…I think.
“Y’all let me think he was dead! I thought—fuck, I need to sit down.”
My dad walked me over to a curb. The tightness of the corset of the dress squeezed my chest as I carefully sat down.
“So what happens next? I mean, this can’t just be the end as if none of this happened?”
Dad smirked. “I told you—I called in a few favors that were owed to me. We worked out a deal. Clean slate for everyone.”
That wasn’t surprising. My dad had friends and connections in very high places. It was how he’d managed to keep Emerald Haze open, and I’m not talking the casino side of the business.
“Josephine!” I spotted her across the parking lot at the edge of the crowd, looking as lost as the rest of us. I got up and ran toward her. “Josephine! Where’s Roman? Have you seen him?”
“Yeah, he’s still inside.”
“Inside? What do you mean he’s still inside? Why isn’t he out here yet?”
“Don’t know. He said he was gonna do one last sweep, make sure everyone is out.”
“What? No! Have you heard those explosions?”
We looked up at the casino. Dark smoke billowed from the roof of the event center, getting lost in an even darker sky.
“Yes, ma’am. I told him I didn’t like—”
Her words were cut short as a series of even more explosions went off, one after the other. The ground shook as the entire event center side of the casino blew clean off its foundation and separated from the building.
Josephine wrapped her arms around me, and we ducked down as ash and pieces of the building rained down on us.
Our eyes locked. We had the exact same thought.
Even more fire truck and emergency vehicle sirens blared in the distance. The entire parking lot had been blocked off by yellow tape and police officers on foot creating a barricade. Most of the patrons had been cleared out, save for a few who were being interviewed by police.
Josephine and I held on to each other as we stood and watched a third of the building tilt at an angle, then finally break off from the main building.
“Shit.”
“Shit is right,” Josephine echoed.
My dad walked up from behind and wrapped his arm around me. “Damn. That’s gonna hurt.”
“Dad! Really?”
“What?”
“What? We still don’t have Roma—” As I said his name, I spotted him. He was limping his way across the parking lot on the other side of the building from the explosion.
“Roman!” I screamed his name as I took off running toward him as fast as I could with bare feet and a shredded Valentino ball gown that had literally been dragged through the mud and across asphalt.
“Babe” was all he mustered as I threw myself into his arms. “Wait, wait—hold on. Fuck,” he hissed.
He winced as I pulled back, looking him over. “What is it? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“Just a little.”
“Where?”
He pulled the front of his jacket to the side. The entire side of his white button-down shirt was soaked in bright red blood.
“Oh, god. Roman! You’re bleeding!”
“I’ll be fine. Here, take this.” He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a kitten. He handed it to me.
“Where in the hell did you get this thing?”
“It’s a long story.” He put his arm over my shoulders on his good side and squeezed me into him. “Fuck, James, you stink.”
I held up the fluffy orange-and-white, blue-eyed kitten and nuzzled my nose against its cold, wet one. The kitten let out a high-pitched meow.
“Comes with the territory.”