Caraway shook his head. “He claims he can’t remember what happened, which is convenient.”
Could he really not remember, or did he just want to be able to take revenge on me and Nicole himself?
“And how badly is he hurt?” I asked, trying to appear the concerned daughter. “How long will he stay in hospital?”
“He’s not good. His speech is badly slurred, and it seems he has numbness down one side of his body which is an indication that he may have suffered a stroke, or else the damage happened from the head trauma. He won’t say if this was any more than an accident, though with his background we have to consider the possibility that his injuries were intentional.”
I nodded. “Of course.” I paused, frowning, trying to make it look as though I was deep in some internal battle with myself. “I know our dad is far from being perfect, but he’s still our dad, you know? I hate to think of him there, alone, and hurt. Do you think we’d be allowed to visit? He and I might not be on great terms, but he adores Nicole.”
My sister, still with her face half covered with her hand and pressed against my shoulder, nodded.
“As long as he wants to see you, I can’t see why not.”
“Okay, thanks.”
My arm around my sister’s shoulders tightened. I wanted the detective to leave now. There were a thousand things Nicole and I needed to say to each other, and we couldn’t say any of them with either of the two police officers here.
Detective Caraway, however, seemed to have other ideas. “I understand that Joseph Monroe will be defending Lee Mason.”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“Didn’t he also get your father out of jail?”
“Technically, my father’s case never got to court, but yes, Joseph Monroe was the lawyer defending him. But I’m sure you knew all of that.”
He held back a smile. “Yes, I did. At least now we can ask your father a few questions regarding the murder of Harvey Baglione. I hope it’s not going to become a conflict of interest.”
“As you pointed out, my father’s case didn’t even get to court. I’m sure it will be fine.”
“I guess that will depend on whether we discover if your father had any involvement.”
He held my gaze, as though challenging me to break. I wasn’t going to.
“I guess so,” I replied.
I knew they’d never discover the truth behind what had happened. My father was smart enough to cover up his own tracks. The only way I was going to be certain of X walking was if I could find Harvey’s body, and I had Dylan Ferrera working on that. Seeing X walk had been my priority, but now with the news my father was still alive, I had other things I needed to do.
“Well,” I said, releasing Nicole and getting to my feet, “if that’s everything …”
He took my cue and got to his feet as well, as did his partner, who’d remained silent during the conversation. I wondered what the point was in him even being here, unless it was for backup, of course.
We left Nicole on the couch, still visibly shaken, and I walked them both to the door.
“I’ll meet you in the car,” Caraway said to his partner.
“Sure.”
He remained silent while the other officer went to the vehicle, and then turned back to me. “Can I speak off the record?” he asked.
I shrugged as a response.
He stepped in closer to me, his head tilted slightly to the side, concern filling his brown eyes. “Verity, I’m worried about you. Whatever the hell is going on, you’re getting dragged deeper and deeper into what is going to end up as a hell of a mess.”
“My life has always been a mess, Detective Caraway.”
“I can help you, Verity. I know you’re not interested in going back into Witness Protection, but I can help you get away from New York and start again.”
I had the feeling he wasn’t just offering in a professional capacity.
“What are you offering, here? To sweep in and take me away from all of this?” I gave a cold laugh. “You have no idea.”
Hurt crossed his features, but only for the briefest of moments, before he schooled his expression back into one of a professional. I wondered what he would say if he knew I was pregnant with X’s baby. Would he withdraw his offer, or would my pregnancy make me appear even more of a damsel in distress in his eyes?
“I think I do have some idea, Verity. I think the guy who is currently sitting in jail is nothing but bad news. I think you already knew something bad had happened to your father, which is why you and your sister are living back here, and I think staying in New York is one day going to result in your death.”
I breathed in slowly through my nose, trying not to let myself look ruffled by the things he’d said. Maybe X was bad news, but so was I. He and I were a match on that front, which is why we worked so well together. Neither of us felt like we were being pushed into a way of life we were uncomfortable with. I could handle what he was, and he wasn’t intimidated by me.
We didn’t judge each other, and that mattered.
“You’re wrong on all counts,” I told him. “And I’m fine right where I am. Yes, my father and I have a difficult relationship, but he’s still my father. He told me we could put it all behind us.”
His eyebrows arched. “And you went for that? It was only a couple of months ago you were saying he was going to kill you. You also accused him of killing your mother. Are you just going to put that behind you?”
My eyes narrowed. “Maybe I got it wrong.”
“Oh, come on!”
I could see he was exasperated with me, but what more could I do? At no point was I going to leave with him and abandon X in jail, with my father still alive out there. We needed to finish the job and get X freed. There was no running away from this.
I softened my tone. “Listen, Detective Caraway, I appreciate you looking out for me, but this is my home. New York is my home. Nicole and I already tried running away once, and it didn’t work out so well for us. We’re better off facing up to the world we grew up in, instead of trying to run away and pretend it doesn’t exist. It always seems to track us down anyway.”
His lips twisted, but he nodded. “Okay. Can I ask you one thing?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t see me as the enemy, Verity. If you need help, call me, please. Whatever it is.”
He fished something from his pocket and the next moment was pushing a card into my palm. I glanced down to see his business card in my hand.
“My cell number is on there. Call it, day or night. Okay?”
I wasn’t going to promise to do that, but I appreciated the gesture.
He must have realized he wasn’t going to get a definite answer from me. He exhaled a slow breath and then turned from me and headed out the door. Without another word, or even glancing in my direction, he climbed back into the passenger seat.
I quickly reached for the controls for the gate and hit the button for them to slide open again.
The car engine started up and it reversed, before doing a three-point turn, and driving back out of the open gates. I watched him go until a little voice came from behind me.
“He’s still alive.”
I turned to my sister. “We’re going to have to do something.”
Her dark eyes widened. “Like what?”
“Go to the hospital and finish the job.”
She shook her head. “Vee, no. I hadn’t meant to kill him last time … I mean, I didn’t kill him, but … You know what I mean. I hadn’t ever wanted him dead.”
It was my turn to raise my eyebrows. “Hadn’t you? Really? After everything he’s done—what he made me do to Mom. Him killing Mateo right in front of you. You think he deserves to live?”
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I can’t stand the thought of having to go through all that again.”
“We’re going to have to. Until we know he’s gone, we’ll live through the pain he’s caused us over and over again. And
what happens when he talks about what really happened to him? Yeah, maybe he’s lying when he says he doesn’t remember and he’s just going to come back here and take out his revenge on us himself. But what if he genuinely doesn’t remember, like X lost his memory after he almost died, and then when he does remember, he goes to the cops and tells them you were the one who tried to kill him?”
Her face paled. I hated that I was frightening her, but she had to understand the reality of what we were dealing with. Our father was weak right now, but if we didn’t act quickly, things could change.
“You go,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. When she reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, I noted how her hand was shaking. “I can’t do it.”
I wanted to let her off this, but I couldn’t. “No, I need you. He’ll never let me in to visit, but he’s always had a soft spot for you. You need to be there, even if I’m the one to do the dirty work.”
Her hands covered her face. “Oh, God. I can’t believe this. How could he have survived out there all this time?”
“You heard what the detective said. If we’re to take any kind of solace in this, it’s that he probably suffered under the care of some woman with mental health problems. She might have thought she was helping him, but he was most likely suffering all this time.”
“She should have just left him to die,” Nicole mumbled miserably.
“Yeah, I wish she had, too, but she didn’t, and now we have to deal with the fallout. I’m not going to sit here and wait for him to get better and come to us. Are you?”
“I hate this, Vee.”
I pulled her into a hug. “Yeah, me, too.”
I knew I’d never be able to get my father to admit he set up X. If he was able to, I bet he’d do his best to get Nicole sent down, too. Anything to take everyone I loved away from me.
“So, when do we leave?” she asked.
“I don’t think we have any choice. We have to go right away.”
Chapter Fourteen
V
My father kept a number of guns stashed around the property. A couple were in gun safes, but those were mainly for show, making out he was a responsible gun owner, in case any nosy cops came poking around. He had plenty of other weapons hidden, however, an arsenal secreted behind one of the wooden panels of the dining room wall, more behind the wine case in the cellar, yet more beneath floorboards of his bedroom. I wasn’t under any illusions that we would ever need to use that number of guns, or that we were even capable of using so many between the two of us, but it felt good knowing we had them. We couldn’t take too many in the car, though, for fear of being stopped by the cops. A couple would look bad, but carrying a small arsenal would appear as though we had some serious crime on our minds.
Nicole put out her hand for me to rescind one of the weapons.
I looked at her open palm. “You sure?”
She motioned with her fingers. “Yeah. Dad taught me to shoot, just like he taught you. I know how to handle a gun.”
I put one of the smaller handguns into her grip, and she took it and checked the safety was on, and then tucked it down the back of her jeans. Sometimes, when I watched her, I felt as though I was looking in a mirror.
“We can’t shoot him,” I said, both of us knowing who ‘him’ was without me having to say the words. “It needs to look more natural than that.”
She nodded. “I figured.” She took a shaky breath. “This is going to be horrible. I’m still struggling to believe he’s alive. It’s like I get used to one reality, and someone comes and swipes it out from under me again.”
“Yeah, I know exactly how you feel. We’ll make sure he’s dead this time, though. It will be over.”
She closed her eyes briefly, shaking her head. “Does this make us evil people, Vee? I mean, I know we’re no angels, but deliberately planning on killing—” Her voice broke off as she choked back the word. She refocused herself and continued. “I didn’t mean it to happen last time. I just reacted in the situation. It was self-defense, manslaughter. This would be premeditated murder.”
“He did this to us. We’re the product of the world he created for us. Don’t feel guilty, Nickie. Remember all the terrible things he’s done. Remember Mom and Mateo. If he lives, he’ll only go on to kill more innocent people. What we’re doing now will be saving lives. It’s hard and horrible, I get it, but it has to be done.”
Her fingers tightened around the handle of the gun. “It has to be done,” she parroted back at me.
“Good.”
We left the house and went out to the car. The hospital was a ninety-minute drive north from here. It was a journey I feared would go both too fast and too slowly. I wondered if my father remembered about my pregnancy. It suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t about to kill only my father, I’d be killing my child’s grandfather, too.
No, I couldn’t let myself think like that. I’d never let that man be in my child’s life. Look at how much he fucked up my and Nicole’s lives. To have him put my son or daughter through anything like that kind of pain caused a righteous anger to rise inside me. That was what I needed to focus on when the time came. I needed to remember all the reasons I wanted him dead.
Nicole climbed into the other side of the car and pulled the door shut behind her. She slid her gun into the glove box, and I slipped mine down into the side of the driver’s door. I wasn’t expecting to need to use it, but it was within easy access.
I hated this distraction from finding Harvey Baglione’s body and getting X out of jail, especially as he’d been so badly beaten. I was furious at the men who’d done that to him, but I couldn’t do anything with him in there and me out here. The only thing I could do to help was get him released. I prayed I could do so before he was hurt any worse. X could look after himself, but someone had gotten the better of him. I assumed he was holding back because he thought it would harm his chances of release, or perhaps there was simply too many of them for him to be able to fight.
Lost in thought, I maneuvered the car out of the driveway and through the gates, which I’d opened via the fob on the car’s keychain. I drove out onto the road and turned left. We almost reached the junction, but a large black SUV screeched up ahead of us, blocking the way.
Nicole sat up. “Vee?”
I frowned. Who the hell was this? “Hang on.”
I put the car into reverse, planning on spinning it around and heading back the other direction, but a second identical vehicle headed toward us, skidding across the road behind us.
My heartrate jolted up a level. “Fuck.”
This was bad news. We were blocked in both directions. I glanced at our house, the gates already shut. Could we jump from the car and run for the shelter of the house? No, these people, whoever they were, would shoot us the moment we were in the open.
Instead, I picked up the gun I’d left in the door of the car. Nicole, following my movements, opened the glove box and took out her own weapon.
The passenger door of the car in front of us opened, and a man with a shaven head, wearing a tight white t-shirt and jeans, climbed out. This was different than the normal clean cut, suited and booted men I was used to dealing with. This guy looked all kinds of rough, and, as other similar looking men began to emerge from the car, I braced myself for trouble.
I cracked open the driver’s door, but Nickie’s hand on my arm stopped me. “Vee, no!”
“I have to. We can’t just sit here.”
She gave the slightest of nods. “Be careful.”
I climbed fully from the car, facing the man in the white t-shirt, and keeping the car door between us. I made sure to hold the gun between the door and my body, so neither the people in front nor behind could see it.
“What the fuck is this?” I snapped. “Get out of the way.”
“Not going to happen,” the man called back. “You’re going to do something for me.”
“What? No, I’m not. Who the fuck are you, anyway? What the hell is thi
s all about?”
My mind raced. I didn’t recognize these men. My thoughts flicked to all the possibilities, so many people I’d pissed off over the last few months. Were they friends of Dylan’s? Had he decided he wasn’t going to take my orders after all? Or had my father, though injured in the hospital, sent people down to take care of us? Or were they linked to the men who had already died? Tony Mancini, or Giovanni Bianchi.
“My name is Leon Millen and I head up Blood Legion in this area. I assume you’ve heard of us?”
I had. They were a white supremacist gang. A nasty bunch, who dealt with counterfeiting and armed robbery to fund their mission to make America one hundred percent white again. I didn’t want anything to do with these people. Didn’t want my family, however corrupt it might be, to be tarred with the same brush as these assholes.
“We’re here with a message,” he said with a snide grin. “You’re going to give us what we want, or that pretty boy behind bars will end up dead, or worse.”
More men had emerged from the car blocking the road behind us. They all stood beside the vehicle with the same smug, amused expression on their faces.
My stomach twisted. X had warned me of this, that people in jail with him would recognize me and track me down. These men were clearly friends of the same ones who’d beaten him. Familiar rage boiled up inside me, but I had to control myself. If they didn’t get what they wanted, they’d send a message to make sure X paid.
I didn’t want to negotiate with these men, I wanted to pick up my gun and shoot each and every one of them, but I was back against a wall.
I gritted my teeth. “What do you want?”
“Business.”
“What kind of business?”
“We hear there’s been some opportunities your family have taken over lately. A couple of the big guys are either dead or missing, which means there are businesses which haven’t been paying their dues. No one has been around to take their cut, which means there’s an opening for some new guys in town.”
Judged (The Mercenary Series Book 4) Page 8
