by Sophia Gray
I turned back toward Jeremiah again, my eyebrows raised in his direction. Something didn’t make sense about all of this. I was beginning to feel uneasy, used, not to mention the embarrassment of having fucked Samuel thinking he was a member who could help me.
“Why did you send me in there if you already had someone so close to him?”
“I didn’t send you in there, you insisted upon going. I couldn’t very well tell you about him. I figured you were going with or without me, so I might as well try to keep you safe. For all I knew, you might get incredibly lucky and learn something useful.”
“But I didn’t learn anything you didn’t already know.”
“Not true. There were some things that went on outside of Samuel’s knowledge that you were able to clear up for us and you seemed to have gained a level of trust with Damian very quickly that even Jack Knife hadn’t achieved in years of being undercover.”
I felt everything go red for a moment as a realization struck me. I shot up out of my chair and turned to face Samuel “Jack Knife” Robinson.
“You knew. You knew who I was before I even turned up there.”
“Yes.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“We’re done here.”
I was fuming as I picked up my purse and headed for the door. Jeremiah called my name as Samuel reached back and held it firmly closed with one of his large hands. I glared at him, only causing him to smirk a little, which infuriated me even more.
“We are not done, Janessa. You and I need to have some very long talks and very soon. I’m going to let you walk out of here right now and calm down, but you’re going to come back on Thursday at this same time and we are going to have a proper interview.”
“You can’t force me to tell you anything.”
“No. I can’t, but I trust that you will honor the agreement we made. You said if I helped you find your father’s killer, you would tell me whatever you could that would help me bring down Damian Diaz. Do you remember that, Janessa? Do you still believe he is a good person beneath it all after all you’ve learned?”
“I’m leaving now.”
“Let her go, Samuel,” he said, and Samuel moved out of the way for me to open the door. I yanked it open and stomped out of the building to the parking garage, making my way to my rental car in a blind rage.
“Janessa, wait!” Samuel called out to me, but I ignored him. I could hear his footsteps catching up to me and increased my pace, hoping to get into the car and leave before he reached me, but I failed. Instead, I found his hand on my arm, whirling me around to face him.
“Take your hands off of me!” I screeched at him.
“Listen, I’m sorry. I know why you are upset. I knew who you were and still did what I did with you.”
“You fucked me like I was some sort of play thing knowing good and well who I was and why I was there.”
“Yes. I admit that I did. It was what was expected of me. I could have said no, could have put you off. The truth is that I didn’t want to. It felt good, in a way, to be with someone like myself, even if you didn’t realize it at the time.”
“I’m nothing like you. I never will be,” I huffed, stomping away and getting into my car nearby.
I didn’t look back in his direction, instead making a hasty exit. I wanted, more than ever, to put all of this nonsense behind me as quickly as possible. I didn’t care what Jeremiah said, I was never coming back to this place and never telling him anything more than I had already divulged. These people, in their own way, were just as deceitful and shitty as the men in the Black Aces MC.
“I need to calm down,” I told myself. Glancing at my watch, I discovered that much more time had passed than I had realized. It was almost eleven. Driving over to a small section of town, I pulled up in front of the salon I used to frequent and walked inside.
“Oh, my god! Janessa! I hardly recognized you!” the owner exclaimed as she looked up from where she was sorting through some papers at the front desk.
“Good to see you too, Sherry. Do you think you can work me in for a cut and color?”
“You’re in luck. I’ve had some cancellations this morning and can take you back right now.”
“Perfect. I am so ready to do something with this mop.”
“I can see how you would be. You want your usual cut and color or something different?”
“No. I’d like to get back to being me again. The usual will be great.”
I sat in her chair watching as long strands of dark hair fell onto the heavy vinyl cover she had placed over me and slid to the floor below. I had spent a long while growing out my hair even before I had gone into the casino to apply. I had purchased fake contacts online and darkened my color to a deep, dark brown. During the time I had been with D, I had slept in my contacts and feared one would fall out in my sleep. It had been nice to finally take them out and toss them away. It would be even nicer to look completely like my old self again.
“There. How’s that?”
Sherry turned the chair to face the large mirror in front of me and I smiled. There I was, shoulder length layered honey blonde hair and blue eyes, the vision of the girl next door rather than the hooker in the seedy casino. This was me. This was who I once was. Looking in the mirror, I realized that I looked like myself again, but I still didn’t feel like myself. I wasn’t sure that I ever would again.
“It’s perfect, as always, Sherry. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, honey. It’s good to see you again. Hopefully you won’t be such a stranger in the future.”
“Oh, you can count on it. I’ll see you for a trim in a month or so.”
“Sounds good. Have Jill at the counter go ahead and set that up for you if you want or you can call later.”
“I’ll do that. Thanks again.”
“Hey, it’s what we do here.”
I smiled at her and paid Jill at the counter, making an appointment for six weeks from today. Stepping out on the front sidewalk, I already felt better. I slid behind the wheel of the car and headed down to the rental place to return it. Thirty minutes later, I had all that sorted and was on foot. I enjoyed the warm day, a nice breeze blowing through my hair as I made my way down the sidewalk toward a small café where my father and I used to eat. Walking inside was like a ripple in time. Nothing had changed since the last time I was there.
“Janessa! It’s been so long,” Mr. Carroway, the aging manager said with a big smile when he saw me. “Let me get you a table. Will your father be joining you?”
“No, Mr. Carroway. I’m afraid my father passed.”
“Oh, I am so sorry to hear that, my precious girl. He was always a joy to have here. I am glad that you’ve finally returned on your own, at least.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome. Right this way.”
I followed him in the awkward silence that I knew would be repeated with various people for some time to come and sat at the small single table near a window. The city looked different to me, somehow foreign, like it had when I had first come here from the farm to live with my father. Everything seemed new, waiting to be discovered again.
“Will you be having your usual?”
“You remember what that is?”
“Of course. I’ve a mind like a steel trap. There’s a bit of rust, mind you, but I just dust it off from time to time and the details are still there.”
“The usual will be fine.”
He excused himself and returned moments later with a small dinner salad and a glass of lemon water, waiting on me personally despite the wait staff who seemed fairly unfettered with the small crowd being served. Ten minutes later, he returned with a plate of spaghetti and warm toasted garlic bread that would make the finest Italian restaurants envious of its presentation and taste.
“Oh, this looks wonderful. I’ve missed it.”
“It has missed you. I’ll be right back with a nice pitc
her of sangria for you,” he replied as he removed my salad plate.
“I never ordered sangria with my usual.”
“No, but you should have. It’s on the house.”
“Thank you, Mr. Carroway. It is good to be home again.”
“Home is always one of life’s greatest pleasures, isn’t it? I’ll leave you to your meal.”
He returned a few moments later with a fresh wine glass and a small glass pitcher filled with cold sangria and chunks of fresh fruit, silently pouring me a glass and then disappearing with a wink. I picked up the glass and took a sip. It was like nectar compared to the shots and beer I had been consuming in the casino in the past weeks. The restaurant began filling quickly as I enjoyed my meal, listening to the happy conversations of people around me. No one realized what a great gift innocence in life could be until it was lost. I found myself envying them theirs.
“Excuse me,” I said politely, waving a server over once my meal was finished and no bill had arrived, “but I’d like to get my check, please.”
“No check for you today. Mr. Carroway said so.”
I smiled at her and nodded. I normally didn’t like charity or sympathy, but it felt good to have someone care for me even in such a small way as comping my lunch tab. I would be sure to make it up to him the next time I came in and thank him personally. Stepping back out into the sunshine, I walked a little further down the street and into a clothing shop to buy a few things. An hour later, I left with three bags and two boxes of shoes, juggling them in one hand and a crook of an arm while I hailed a cab home.
Chapter Thirty-One
A week passed, and I still had not gone back to the DEA. I had several missed calls from Jeremiah and messages I couldn’t be bothered to listen to. D still weighed heavily on my mind. My feelings for him were real, but he was a self-proclaimed monster and what Jeremiah had told me about him seemed to confirm it. Still, I knew that it had not been something D had done lightly. I tried to put myself in his shoes.
If I were in the middle of a field with men who had no qualms about killing me unless I killed my best friend, would I do it? Leaving the possibility of promotion as a result of my actions out of the equation, I tried to decide if I could kill someone I cared about in order to save myself. There was a part of me that would like to believe I wouldn’t, but how could I know unless I was in that situation?
In the end, I told myself that I would have made the same choice. The reasoning was simple when you boiled it down to its essential elements. Kill and you survive. Don’t kill and no one survives. Who would it have served for D to have refused to kill his friend? No one. It would have eased his guilty conscience, and I believed he had one. You don’t tattoo a symbol of the man you killed on your chest unless you see it as a penance for what you have been forced to do, a reminder not to ever be put in a position like that again.
I realized that, on some level, it was what drove D to stay on top. If you were the top of the food chain, no one told you what to do. You dictated to everyone around you, and they listened. D grew up defending himself against abuse. He joined up with men like himself, the only kind of men he knew, ruthless and violent. Then, he was forced to do something he didn’t want to do and he used that pain to climb on top, to achieve power over everyone around him.
Did that justify his behavior? His actions? No, but it at least helped to understand them from his point of view. Whether or not that made it any better wasn’t really clear, but being able to make some sense of how a young, innocent boy grows up to be a monster somehow helped me to accept that perhaps the man I had fallen for was the remnants of the man he might have been in a different environment. It changed nothing except my ability to live with myself.
My thoughts were disrupted by a knock at the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, but perhaps it was a neighbor who had noticed I was home. So far, it had been a lot quieter since my return than I anticipated. My only interruption of peace had been Mrs. Peaches when I had rung her to let her know I was back and she need not bother checking on the house anymore. She had bent my ear for nearly a half hour before I could get her off the phone. I looked through the peephole and saw the face of Jeremiah. I began walking away.
“I hear you in there, Janessa. Don’t force me to make a scene in your pretty little neighborhood,” he barked through the door.
I groaned and turned around, opening the door and motioning for him to come in. I was surprised to find that Samuel had been standing to one side and waltzed in behind him. I shut the door behind them and frowned at the two of them.
“What do you want?”
“You know what we want, Janessa. We have unfinished business. You haven’t been returning my calls, so you’ve forced my hand. Now, you get a personal visit.”
“I feel like I’ve signed on with the mob.”
“No. The mob is nicer than we are.”
“I’m beginning to realize that. Might as well have a seat since you are obviously not going to leave me alone until I cooperate.”
“Correct.”
The two of them sat down on my sofa, and I sat in a chair opposite them, looking at them blankly.
“What is it that you want to know?”
“Everything. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
“That could take a while.”
“I’m sorry. We would have made an appointment, but oh, wait. We did make an appointment. You didn’t show up or return my calls. Now, you get to do this here and now, whether convenient or not.”
“When did you become such an asshole?”
“When you became uncooperative.”
“Fine. First, this goon sitting next to you hit on me, and then I fucked him, thinking I was going to get information out of him. He’s an asshole too.”
“I already know that.”
“You asked me to tell you everything. That is where I choose to start.”
Samuel was looking off with a vacant smile. I wanted to slap his smug, arrogant face so hard his teeth rattled. I could feel my anger rising and tried to get it under control. It wouldn’t do me any good. I just needed to get through this and get them out of here once and for all. I continued with everything I had learned while at the casino, leaving out anything that they didn’t already know and that I felt might incriminate D. Why I still chose to protect him, I wasn’t sure, but I did.
“I don’t think you are telling us everything.”
“I don’t care what you think.”
“None of what you have given us is useful in our investigation.”
“Guess this little intrusion of yours was a waste of time, then, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t be coy with me, Janessa. You are way out of your league here.”
“You’ve said that before. Are we done now?”
“For now. We’ll be in touch. I suggest you respond to my calls or messages next time unless you want us traipsing back across your perfectly manicured lawn.”
“Try to keep your feet on the walkway on your way out, and don’t feel the need to dawdle.”
Samuel chortled a little as he stood and I shot him an angry look. He smiled at me and winked. I felt like throwing something at him, but instead, I turned and walked to the door, opening it to discover Mrs. Peaches standing there looking confused.
“I didn’t even knock yet. I’m sorry. I didn’t notice you had company,” she said uncertainly.
“It’s okay, Mrs. P. They were just leaving.”
The two men nodded in her direction and made their way to the car as I motioned for her to come in and shut the door behind her.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“Oh, no, honey. Thank you. I can’t stay. I just saw those two men and well, after what happened to your father, I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine. They are just working on his case and needed to discuss some things with me.”
“Oh, they are with the authorities, then. Good. I was so concerned.
”
“I appreciate that, Mrs. P. Thank you for coming over.”
“No problem, honey. You just let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.”
“I will do that.”
I watched as she walked back to her house and then closed the door, leaning against it. Talking about D had only brought back memories that I had rather forget. A part of me wondered how he was, if he was okay, but I knew that he was capable of taking care of himself. He had done it before me and would do it with me gone. I tried to ignore the part of my brain that insisted upon adding that I was irrelevant to him.
