Sweetened Suffering (Sweet Treats Book 2)

by Charity B.

  I get a bite to eat and pick up my Valium prescription on the way to the correctional facility. The pills aren’t even down my throat when my phone rings.

  “Hello, Mr. Sørensen, William Morrison here.”

  I’ve been wondering when I was going to hear from him.

  “Yes, hi. Do you have anything for me?”

  “I’m not sure how much you know already, so I apologize if this is less than informative.”

  “We can operate under the assumption that I don’t know anything.”

  He grunts. “Okay then. The boy, Toben Michaels. Twenty-three years old…his mother, Korin Michaels, passed away in October of ‘91 and his father, Jarod Michaels, was most recently seen in Florida.” He rattles off the information as I hear his keyboard keys clicking. “He was enrolled in the Shadoebox City public school system until March of 2002, when he was sent to River Forge Academy; a boarding school for troubled youth, in Michigan. He dropped out on his eighteenth birthday.”

  Wait. Toben went to school in Michigan for seven years? That doesn’t make sense. Tavin never mentioned that, and some of the pictures I saw on their fridge would have to have been taken during that time.

  His voice changes from reading off the screen as I hear a chair squeak. “Something is peculiar though. This week alone, he’s visited three separate corporate establishments and two hotels. I haven’t been able to find out why, yet.”

  “I don’t need you to. What about Tavin?”

  “She’s tough. I can’t find a single piece of information on her. Are you sure that’s her real name? There was a Brian and Lacie Winters that lived at the address, before Mrs. Winters’ death in 2004. Mr. Winters was incarcerated that same year for her homicide. There’s no mention of a child anywhere. She also hasn’t been at the house. I have yet to see her at all.”

  She hasn’t been home? After the big deal she made about needing to go back?

  “That’s it?”

  “There is one more thing that I found interesting. Did you know the house is currently owned by Logan James?”

  All the air seems to get sucked into the vents making it a miracle that I am able to speak. “Logan James of the Rissa Corporation?”

  “Yep. What I find odd though, is that it’s owned by him personally, not Rissa.”

  I’m sweaty, so I crank up the A/C. How is this possible? So many times, my father has tried to get me to meet Logan James, and I avoided it at all costs because of his reputation for being ruthless and crooked. Maybe if I’d agreed to one of those meetings, I would have recognized him at Tavin’s house.

  That explains the twenty-thousand dollar suit. He’s one of the richest men in the world. Why would the chief executive officer of a multi-trillion dollar food distribution company risk dealing in the sex trade?

  This isn’t adding up, and Tavin not going home doesn’t sit right, either. She left me to go back. If she isn’t there, where is she? With Logan?

  “Is Logan married?”

  “Uh…” I hear the click, click, click of the keys. “Let’s see…Logan James, fifty-five years old…oh, here it is. Yes. Been married for…twenty-five years to Victoria James. They have a boy, Beau, and a girl, Bethany, together.”

  I wipe my hand over my face as I get off on the exit for the prison. “Okay, thank you, Mr. Morrison. Is there anything else?”

  “No, that’s it, for now.”

  Well fuck. Every answer I get brings up fifty more questions. Where the hell is she? I’m trying not to worry, but regardless of how I feel towards her, the idea of her being seriously hurt or worse, is still terrifying.

  He’s seen Toben though, and if I know Tavin, she isn’t far from him.

  I’ve never been to mall jail much less an actual correctional facility, and meeting Tavin’s father is bound to be interesting, so my curiosity is significantly piqued. Visually, the facility isn’t far from how I imagined it.

  I stop at the gate as an officer signals for me to roll down my window. “ID, please.” I hand it to him and he gives it to the man in the booth behind him. “Visiting an inmate?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man in the booth brings out what I presume is a drug dog, and then returns my ID. The dog walks around the Alfa as the officer directs me to the visitor’s parking. Once I’m cleared, I follow his directions to the correct lot.

  As I walk through the entrance, I’m a little surprised at how normal it looks in here. There’s a front desk with a female officer and I smile at her as I hand her my ID. Her gaze lingers a moment before clicking the keys on her computer.

  “Name, please?”

  “Alexander Sørensen.”

  She smiles at me and holds out my ID with another card. “This is your pass card. Be sure to hang onto it until you leave.” A few more mouse clicks and she points behind me. “All right, hon, go ahead and take a seat in the waiting room. They’ll call you when it’s time for processing.”

  I nod and sit down. This could be a waiting room anywhere if it wasn’t for the metal detector and the interesting posters. You wouldn’t believe the things people can transport anally, Jesus Christ.

  “Alexander Sørensen?” I jump as I hear my name. I’ve been waiting for so long, I almost dozed off. I stand and walk to the officer as he lists off a few other names. Once he seems satisfied, he leads us to the metal detector. “Take off your shoes, empty your pockets, and put it all in this bin.”

  While I don’t have any issues, the third woman behind me must have something because the next thing I know, she’s being escorted away by two officers as she screams about it being a mistake. Once that little ordeal is over, an officer takes the group down a long, straight hallway lined in doors.

  Abruptly, he stops right in front of me and turns. “Inmate’s name?”

  His gaze isn’t directed at me, so I look over my shoulder to make sure I’m who he’s speaking to. “Brian Winters.”

  He holds his hand out behind him. “Second to the last door on the left.” I nod and follow his direction.

  This hallway is a little more like I would imagine a prison to be, with the whitewashed, brick walls and worn flooring. The officer is guiding the other visitors to their appropriate doors as I wrap my hand around the handle of mine. Once inside, I give my pass card to another officer.

  He looks at it and points behind me to a cluster of tables and chairs. “Sit and wait at one of the tables. The inmate is being notified of your arrival.”

  I do as he says, taking in the scenery of bars on the windows and the Plexiglas protecting the desk.

  Yawning, I turn my wrist over to see the time. Christ. This is taking all damn day. I’ve been here for over three hours.

  “A. Sørensen?”

  I look up to see the corrections officer directing a man to my table. He’s taller than I imagined and probably in his mid-forties. Gray streaks are scattered throughout his brown hair as his scowl appears comfortable in its location.

  I stand and hold out my hand. “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Mr. Winters.”

  He doesn’t take it. He gives no response at all as he pulls out the chair to sit. I do the same as I clear my throat and question if this was really the best idea.

  Chuckling to himself, he crosses his arms as he leans back in his seat. “You’re telling me that little cunt is actually still alive?”

  Shock forces my jaw to drop and I momentarily forget that I’m angry at her. “For the duration of this visit, I’m going to ask that you call her by her name.”

  “I’ll call her whatever the fuck I want,” he spats. “Who the hell are you, and why are you here?”

  Biting my tongue and swallowing my pride, I remember that I don’t have a lot of information resources to be exhausting this one. “Who I am is irrelevant. As I said in my letter, I have some questions, the first one being, why isn’t there a legal record of her anywhere?”

  He shakes his head as he wipes his nose. “Because Lacie didn’t do what she should have and ne
ither did I. One of my biggest regrets is not killing that little bitch when I had the chance.”

  “Just like you killed your wife?”

  I kind of wish I could retract that statement when he flies up to standing, gripping his hands in fists. While I may be bigger and stronger than this asshole, I have the feeling he’s a hell of a lot crazier.

  “Inmate! Sit down!” The guard calls from behind him.

  “I didn’t kill Lacie,” he bites out.

  “Inmate, last warning.”

  He sits down while glaring into my soul.

  “I’m sure you’re as innocent as every other upstanding citizen in here.”

  God, shut up Alexander, just shut the fuck up.

  He narrows his eyes at me. “You’re here because you need something from me, right? So, I’d think about the next thing you say, if I were you.”

  I hold my hands up in peace. “Okay, fair enough.” He waits for me to continue, and even though it isn’t going to tell me what I need to know, curiosity gets the better of me. “Can I ask what makes you hate her so much? I mean, she’s your daughter.”

  He scoffs, “I loved Lacie, but she was a dumb whore.” He reaches up to scratch his jaw, and little flakes of dry skin fall to the table, as he shrugs. “I never liked kids and definitely never wanted my own. When she told me she was knocked up, I was pissed. Abortions aren’t cheap and she was too scared to let me use a hanger.” He laughs, presumably at my expression, as his yellow fingers scratch his eyebrow. “We were young, she was sixteen and I was eighteen. She told me she wouldn’t carry to term, and with all the drugs we were doing, I believed her.” The chair squeaks as he shifts. “Needless to say, we were wrong. I found her in the basement one morning, covered in blood with an ugly, wrinkled baby sucking on her tit. It’s a girl, she had said…” He holds his hands out in front of me. “I remember almost being able to feel her little neck snap as I imagined it. Lacie freaked out when I tried to take her, and the truth is, if I hadn’t needed to get to work I may have gone through with it. I figured she was hormonal and exhausted and I thought for sure I would come home to a newborn in my trash can. Obviously, that never happened. She eventually got over the maternal thing, but she never was the same.”

  While I’ve heard of people like this existing, on the news and online, those stories always feel far away and detached. I’m sitting in front of a man that fantasized about killing a baby. Whether it was his own child or not, this is as close to real evil as it gets.

  My jaw has become concrete. Opening it feels impossible so I grate through my teeth, “How does Logan James fit into this?”

  His blue eyes darken as his lip lifts in a snarl. “I worked at the Wentworth Coffee factory in the industrial district downtown. It’s a Rissa company.” He pauses, raising his eyebrows as if he figured something out and laughs. “That’s why you care about all this. You’re fucking her.”

  “And why is that funny?”

  “Because the last time I saw her, she was twelve. That’s still how I picture her.”

  My stomach feels nauseated. This man, this life she’s from, is so different from what I know as reality.

  “You have five minutes, Winters.” The guard yells from behind him.

  What? No! Shit! I need more time. Brian pushes the chair back to stand up.

  “Wait. Please. How did Logan get involved with her? Is he the one who hired her to be the Sweet Girl?”

  His face squishes together in confusion for a moment before placing his hands on the table to lean toward me. When he speaks, I try not to focus on the black surrounding his teeth, as the stench of his breath makes me a little light headed.

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘Sweet Girl’. What I’m sure you want to know will be answered if you get the video tape.”

  “What tape?” My heart punches against my chest at the prospect of new information.

  “Let’s just say I never trusted Logan and I wanted something to hold over his head. He blindsided me when he killed my wife, and I never got the chance to use it before being sent here. If he hasn’t found it, it’s in the house. Upstairs in my old bedroom, in the wall behind the dresser.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because that fuck ruined my life and I can’t do anything about it while I’m in here.”

  “Winters! Let’s go.” The guard calls.

  Even after he’s gone, I sit at the table for a moment. My father and I have never gotten along, but compared to Mr. Winters, he’s a saint. No wonder she’s so fucked up. It doesn’t excuse what she did to me by any means, but damn, he’s intense. I can’t begin to imagine what it was like growing up in a house with him.

  Once I’m back on the freeway, my body relaxes. If I never see that man again it will be too soon, so I’m relieved it was informative. I press the call button on my steering wheel, for William’s number, and after a few rings it goes to voicemail.

  “Hello, William, this is Alexander Sørensen. I’ve been told there’s a video tape inside the house and I need you to get it. It’s supposed to be in the wall behind a dresser in one of the bedrooms. If you can’t find it there, look everywhere. This is now your biggest priority. Call me if you have questions.”

  Sunday, June 14th

  “AW, DAMN IT. SERIOUSLY?”

  The trail of mud this stupid dog just tracked in from outside, stretches from the back door all the way to the kitchen. She stands on her hind legs and dances in a circle. “You’re not being cute, now stay here.”

  I walk down the hall to the linen closet for towels. Since it’s Sunday and Cara Jo is off, I’m going to have to give the little fucker a bath, myself.

  Setting the towels on the kitchen counter, I take off my shirt, so of course when I pick her up, her muddy paws smear all over my stomach.

  “Sure, I wanted another shower.”

  I glare at her and she licks me before I put her in the sink. As I get the water warm enough to spray her, she looks at me like I’m about to take her to slaughter. She isn’t making this easy on me and she keeps shaking her body to throw off the water, soaking me in the process. I mumble my complaints as the last of the soap washes down the drain. She shakes as if she’s dying from hypothermia and her expression is so sad and pathetic I almost feel bad.

  “Oh, come on, you’re being a bit dramatic, don’t you think?”

  I wrap her in a towel and she whines as she presses her body as close to mine as she can. I roll my eyes as I grab a treat from the cabinet. Her head pops out of the towel, and would you look at that—she’s suddenly no longer shivering to death. Putting her down, I throw the treat and off she goes to retrieve her prize.

  I grab some beer and a bag of pretzels before going downstairs. Even though I know it’s been way too long since I’ve been to Benny’s to spar, there’s a fight about to start and staying home to watch that sounds much better.

  It’s still during the prelims when the theater door opens and I turn around to see Silas. I hold up my hand and look back at the fights. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” He sits in the seat next to me and helps himself to one of my beers. “What are we doing today?”

  “I’m getting drunk and staying right here. I don’t know what you’re doing.”

  He pops the tab and shakes his head. “Oh, my Christ, dude. I’ve tried to be supportive, but it’s been days. I can’t believe you are getting this way over a broad. A cheating one at that. You seriously need to get it together. And you look like shit, by the way.” He gets up and turns off all my theater equipment. “So, get fucking dressed. We’re taking out the yacht.” I groan as Blind Mag runs through the open theater door and stands on her hind legs in front of Silas for attention. He laughs and picks her up as he rubs behind her ears. “I thought you said you got a dog? This thing is not a dog. It’s a giant rodent.”

  Blind Mag’s tongue is hanging out as she lies on the port side jump seat. “How did you talk me into bringing the fucking dog?”

 
; Silas laughs at me as he polishes off his beer and flips the steaks on the grill. “You don’t hate her nearly as much as you’re trying to act like you do. Besides, look at her. She’s loving this.”

  My smile makes its way onto my face without my consent. Her tail is wagging and she does look like she’s living the high life. To be honest, I’m glad he dragged us out here. Being on the water clears my head and he’s putting real effort into cheering me up, so I oblige.

  My cell phone rings and William’s name comes across the screen.

  “I need to take this, I’ll be right back.” Silas nods and I slip into the galley. “Hey, William, I only have a minute, what do you have?”

  “Not much, I haven’t gotten inside the house yet. I did, however, finally see Ms. Winters last night. I followed Mr. Michaels into an apartment building he’s been frequenting and she was the one to greet him.”

  “She has an apartment?” Unless Logan got it for her, I’m not sure how she pulled that off.

  “No, not her. There isn’t a tenant in the building with her name, so she must be staying with someone. I haven’t gotten as far as to find out who that is, though. I checked the public records and Logan James neither owns the building nor rents an apartment there.”

  “Which Apartments?”

  “Sinn Gates.”

  My fucking sister.

  All Sasha was supposed to do was get her out of my house, not become damn roommates with her. I can’t help feeling betrayed by this.

  “That’s my sister’s place… Is that it?”

  “Yes, for now.”

  “Okay, thanks. Let me know when you get the tape.”

  “Will do.”

  I go back up to the cockpit as Silas is taking the steaks off the grill. “Once we’re finished eating, we need to go to Sasha’s.”

  “Okay…why?”

  “She’s letting Tavin stay at her apartment. With Toben. Can you believe that?”