by Ivy Black
“There were dozens of witnesses,” Harry replied. “That’s why we were able to settle out of court, because there was no way in hell that he was going to be successful in defending a case. All he asked was that it stay out of the papers, and I was fine with that because I didn’t want the club getting any bad attention.”
The only newspaper clipping Darrien ever showed me was my father’s obituary.
“I remember just sitting next to his hospital bed, wondering why so much bad kept finding my son. He deserves a happy life.”
“He’s been careful not to tell me too much, Harry,” Marisha said, “because your father respects your privacy, but do you mind telling me the story of what happened with your mom? It’d be nice to understand it better so that I know what lines not to cross and stuff. Of course, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s okay. I haven’t talked about it with Celia either, so there’s no time like the present,” he replied.
“Thank you,” Marisha said sincerely.
I watched Harry as he took a deep breath and started to tell his story. “My mom was always abusive to my dad when I was a kid. My dad was always very respectful of women and just took my mom’s abuse in his stride, but she was vicious with him. She’d hit him, abuse him verbally, talk down to him, all of it. My dad had always said, as long as it wasn’t me, he was fine to take it, but then one time at my birthday party, I spilled ketchup on my shirt and she lost it. All the other kids’ moms started talking about it, and my mom got embarrassed.”
“That’s awful,” Marisha said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “That’s stuff kids do.”
“Yeah, well, she took it personally for whatever reason, and that’s when the abuse against me started.” Cameron shifted uncomfortably as Harry talked, and it was clear he struggled to listen to the story of someone hurting the boy he’d come to love as his son. “My dad wouldn’t go for that though. He was always willing to take it, but the second it was me, he had to step in. One night, he tried to take me and run from her, but she caught us trying to leave. She…”
Harry hesitated and I could tell that even all this time later, it was hard for him to tell the story. I put my hand on his back, knowing that I’d made a huge mistake and my time to comfort him was running short. “It’s okay.”
He smiled at me and continued. “She shot him in his back, while he was trying to load me into the car to leave her for good. He didn’t take any of the furniture or anything, even left his entire life savings for her to live off of, but she didn’t care. She killed him and then called the police and said she did it in self-defense because he was trying to kidnap me.”
“The cop that arrived on the scene was a woman, and one of those ‘protect all women’ types. It’s not a bad thing, but it blinded her when she met Harry and his mom,” Cameron explained. “She fudged some of the story to make sure that Harry’s mom didn’t go to prison for the murder, made it seem like it was self-defense. The judge, another female, took Harry’s mom’s side even after Harry testified that she’d murdered him. Then as Harry got older and ran away a lot, that judge kept getting his case and kept forcing him to go back to his mom.”
“No wonder you don’t trust women,” Marisha said. “Harry, I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
“Between that and the accident, I just wanted my kid to catch a break,” Cameron told us.
At that exact moment, Harry looked up at me and smiled. “I did.”
My heart shattered into a million pieces. I forced a smile back, tears gathering in my eyes, and all I could do was wrap my arms around him and hug him. He’d go back to hating women for sure when he realized what I’d done. Hell, he’d probably just start to hate everyone. Emotions burned in my nose as I realized I’d made a grave mistake, and worse than that was the fact that I had absolutely no clue how to fix it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bullet
I was surprised when Celia suddenly decided to go back home after dinner with Cameron and Marisha. At first, I was terrified that I’d scared her with my story about my parents and mentioning that I was searching for my younger sibling, but she swore that wasn’t it and said she just needed to take care of something. Because I was really and truly falling in love with Celia, I didn’t want to push her to stay, but while I was waking up in bed alone, I was kind of wishing I’d tried at least a little harder. I’d have to work today, and she probably would, too, but it would have been nice to have her in my arms for at least a few minutes.
She promised to call me and that we’d see each other in the week, so as much as I nearly wanted to roll back over and go to sleep, the cats were scratching at my door, so I got up. I took my time traveling through my morning, giving the boys their food and eating breakfast myself, then I grabbed my phone and went into my living room to relax for a little bit before getting ready.
It was just after eight, and I was aware of the fact that I was slowly passing the time at which I’d typically be leaving my house and heading in, but I was early every single day. One later day wouldn’t hurt anything.
Or so I thought.
As the nine o’clock hour came and went, I started to get one call from the club right after the other. First Nick, then Seth, then Avery, then Bucky. I’d only been the VP for about a month, why was everyone all of a sudden ringing my phone off the hook? I reluctantly stood up and trudged back to my bedroom, prepared to get dressed and head to the bar as soon as possible so everyone would calm down, when I suddenly got a string of texts from Avery.
“Harry, if you get this, you need to call me ASAP.”
“Something is wrong with the books.”
“Nick thinks you stole some money. Well, a lot of money.”
“I need you to call me right away.”
I stood staring at my phone in shock. Did Seth forget to notate the check or something? I was just there yesterday, how did I all of a sudden come to be accused of stealing? Smacking the call button on Avery’s text feed and putting it on speaker, I ran around my room, finding anything to wear so I could leave and go to the club, and then Avery picked up.
“Hello?” He sounded frantic.
“Avery, what the fuck is going on?” I barked. “What do you mean Nick thinks I stole money?”
“The books are off. Really off. They aren’t saying much to anyone about it, but Nick’s on a fucking rampage around here, saying he made a mistake. You gotta get here and get this cleared up fast.”
“Okay, I’m on my way.”
The line went dead without me even saying goodbye and I finished getting dressed and made my way to the club as fast as I could get there. It was a particularly hot day in Hoppa, and between that and the anxiety I was suddenly feeling, I was drenched in sweat as I walked in.
Which even I had to admit, didn’t look good.
All of the members were sitting around the bar and all their gazes shot in my direction as I walked in. In all of their expressions, in a way that made me feel sick to my stomach, I could see that hint of consideration that I’d actually done what Nick was accusing me of. All except for Avery who jumped up and ran over.
“Hey.”
“Where’s Nick?” I asked.
“In the back with Dynamite. I’d be careful heading back there, man. Nicky’s blowin’ a stack.”
“I can’t believe he would just blindly think I was stealing without talking to me first,” I replied.
“That’s what we all said, that he needs to talk to you first. Just head on back, but keep your wits about you, and holler if you need some help.”
Some help? Did they all know something I didn’t know? Was I about to be bum-rushed by a man who wasn’t even going to give me a chance to defend myself, or was there some kind of damning evidence that already had them all convinced? It made no sense to linger in the front anymore, so I walked around the bar, through the swinging door, and back into the warehouse.
The tension in the room as soon as I ent
ered was oppressive. Seth was sitting at the table with the books unfolded in front of him, and Nick was sitting in his regular spot, glaring back at me.
“Hey, Harry,” he greeted. “Come. Sit.”
“Nicky,” I said as I started over. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you know I would never steal from you.” I side-eyed Seth. Was he setting me up or something? Was his nice-guy act just a facade? “What’s going on?”
“Show him,” Nick said.
Seth turned the books to face me. He pointed to the column that had all the numbers in it from yesterday. “See anything wrong here?”
I scanned the numbers from all the different vendors, and the fifty-k check that we’d written out, and the bottom line showed a fifty-thousand dollar hit from the check we’d written, but that was it. “No?”
“Look again,” Seth said.
At that, I started to slowly add up all the numbers in the column. When I got to the bottom, before the fifty-k check, I was already fifty in the hole, but then the check made it a hundred k. “These numbers don’t add up,” I said. “There’s an extra fifty… missing.” I looked up at Nick and felt conflicted. I didn’t want to blame Seth for anything that wasn’t his fault either, but I still had to ask the honest question. “Why is an imbalance in the books that he’s handling lead you to believe that I’m stealing?”
Seth flipped a bunch of pages of the book, taking it back to about a month and a half ago when I was still handling the books personally. He had a bunch of columns highlighted and I looked through them and saw that there was a similar issue. They all looked as if someone had reconciled the books, and then gone back after the fact to make it look like we had certain amounts under what we had. The bottom lines all had numbers that showed less than we had, almost as if someone was skimming off the top and fudging the numbers to match.
“Okay,” I said. “I get how this looks, but I didn’t do that. First of all, it’s sloppy. Second of all, you would have realized it before now, Squared. You saw the books every week.”
“Yeah, but I trusted what you told me, that everything was lining up the way it needed to.”
“And you didn’t want to cut the check until the end of the year,” Seth added. “Right as all the numbers would be rolling over and it would be easy to take more without anyone noticing. We cut the check for the expansion and I reported these earnings. We’re now short fifty grand that we needed to cover bills and payroll.”
“I’m not stealing money from the club,” I spat.
“Show me your bank account,” Nick said.
My heart stopped. “What?”
“Right now. Show me your bank account on your phone. You wouldn’t have fifty grand in there.”
Fuck.
Now I was realizing that it wasn’t just some random, shit luck. Someone set me up. “Okay… I do have fifty grand in my account right now, but it’s not money from the club. It’s what’s left of my settlement from the accident.”
Nick crossed his arms. “The settlement from years ago?”
My skin was boiling with anger. I couldn’t blame Nick for the conclusion he was coming to, outside of being angry that he would honestly believe that I’d do anything like that. “Yeah. I’ve been saving it because I’m searching for my missing younger sibling.”
“You’ve never mentioned a brother or sister before,” Nick remarked.
“Yeah, because I don’t like talking about it here,” I said back. “Nicky. You know me. You know I would never steal from you. This club means more to me than anything. I’m taking my job seriously, and I would never be that messy!”
“So, I should believe it’s not you because you got caught and you would never get caught?” he asked.
“No…” I let my head fall back. “Nicky—”
“Oh, fuck…” Seth murmured. “Shit, Harry…”
“What?” Nick and I said at the same time.
“I didn’t see this at first, but this number was changed recently. I wrote a copy of these vendor numbers and I wrote an eight here and not a three. Someone had to have changed it yesterday while you and I were writing the check.”
“While we were writing it? How do you know?” I asked.
“Because I wrote the vendor numbers right before you walked in, and we were together the whole time. You couldn’t have changed the number, and after I cut the check, I closed up the books, maybe five minutes after you left.”
But that would mean…
Nick looked over at Seth for a second and then flung his arm out and punched him square across the jaw. Seth fell backward out of his chair and crumpled onto the ground.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Nick snapped. “You told me he stole it! I just fucking accused him of stealing fifty thousand dollars!”
“I’m sorry!” Seth yelped. “I really thought he did!”
“Fuck!” Nick screamed and then looked across at me. “Harry, I’m…”
I held my hand up. “No, don’t apologize to me. At the end of the day, this is still my fault.”
The scene played over in my head. Celia and I walked in and then Seth and I completely turned our backs to her while we discussed the check. I made sure to have us step away from her so that it wasn’t like she could listen to what we were saying, and then I went and sat right back down at the books as I wrote the check out, without looking to make sure that Seth’s math was all correct. No wonder Celia suddenly wanted to go home last night after the time we’d had together. No wonder why I hadn’t gotten a call or text from her yet that morning.
She stole fifty grand and did so in a way that made it look like it was me.
To say I was crushed would be an understatement. If she had come back to my house with me, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I would have ended up telling her I loved her. I did love her. After Saturday with her roommate and Sunday with my dad and Marisha, I was so sure that she was the woman I wanted to be with, that I’d fallen for her.
How could she do this to me?
“I brought Celia back here when I came in to write the check yesterday afternoon. I didn’t want to go through the bar, because I knew we’d get distracted and we had to get to dinner with my dad and his girlfriend. Celia was standing here with the books on the table. Nothing in me didn’t trust that she’d just leave everything alone. I don’t know why she did this, but it doesn’t matter, I never should have compromised our information by bringing a non-member back here.”
“She was just using you to steal from us?” Nick said. “That’s cold.”
It was hard to believe. Everything played back in my head. The jazz bar, the theme park, dinner with Laura, dinner with Cameron. All the coffee dates we’d had or dumb times I spent doing nothing but texting her like some lovestruck teenage boy. All of it had been a lie? All of it?
“I’ve got fifty grand,” I said. “I’ll go withdraw it tomorrow and bring it in to cover the debt. We already gave the check for the club expansion, and I don’t want to go back on that now.”
Seth had gotten back up in his chair and was holding his face, while looking at me sadly. “What about your sibling?”
We’d been searching for months with no luck anyway. Maybe this was the world’s way of saying it was time to give up on that. “I’ll figure something else out.”
I stood up and pulled my jacket off and hung it around the chair. “I’d like to nominate Seneca for membership. When the time comes, consider it my last act as VP. She’s good with her bike, she can fight, and she has honor that’s hard to find. She’ll be a good addition to the club.”
“Come on, Bullet, don’t do this. I’m sorry. I should have made absolute certain before I blew up. Don’t leave the club,” Nick pleaded.
“I put all of our hard work at risk. I don’t deserve this role.” I looked over at Seth. “Don’t let this throw you off. You’re a good accountant. Anyone would have missed that.”
With a final look at them, I made my way over to the back door of the
warehouse. I didn’t want to face anyone else at the time and could just say my goodbyes later. Before I got on my bike, I sent Celia a text telling her to call me immediately and then drove myself home to sit and wait.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Celia
I was sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for Darrien to come up for the day. In front of me, still unopened, was the box of things that Darrien often referred to when he was trying to guilt-trip me about the accident he’d been. I hadn’t yet opened it, because I wanted to see if he would be truthful with me first, but that didn’t stop me from staring down at it and wondering what was inside. A few of the things I knew, the ones he always threw in my face, like my father’s obituary or his medical bills, but what else? He never allowed me to go through the box myself, but always kept it off to the side on the kitchen counter as a reminder. He banked on me being stupid enough never to look in there myself.
And I was.
“Good morning,” Darrien said as he rolled up the ramp from the split-lower floor of the house where his bedroom was. “I’m surprised to see you home.” He rode into the kitchen and up to the dining room table, but then sniffed the air and realized nothing was cooking. “Are you not working on breakfast?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You seem angry.”
I decided to start in the easiest place to start, with the truth. Pulling out my phone, I unlocked it and it was still sitting open to the article that I had looked up the night before, after I got home. Once again, my uncle had done a great job of convincing me that he was telling me the whole story so there was no reason to go in search of the contrary. I never even thought to look anything up on my own, because in my naivete, I truly believed my godfather would never lie to me about something like that. He told me that researching articles about the accident would show me marred images of my father and only bring me pain, and I believed him. If only I’d let my curiosity beat out my fear. All it had taken was a quick Google search and an article on a small news website popped right up.
