by Ali Parker
“The money is safe. No one ever found it. Except for what Roy gave to me, it’s all there and all yours. There’s just one more thing. It’s kind of a big one; your father left you letters to explain it fully.” I pulled five separate envelopes out of my briefcase and handed each one to the brother whose name was printed on it. “This is going to come as a shock to you, but I promise you it’s true. Your father was working with the FBI to bring Ken and his criminal empire down.” ”
The room was quiet when I finished. There was only the low hum of a fan somewhere and the sound of a breeze rustling in trees outside providing a soundtrack to the boys and the wives processing everything I had told them. No one contradicted me or asked any questions. I knew they would, but they needed to hear the rest first.
“After your Dad put it together that Ken had been behind your mom’s death, he approached the FBI. I don’t know all the details, he never told me when he approached them, but it makes sense to me now that he would have done it then. He knew they were after him because he’d seen them sniffing around on occasion. He confessed that he had been taking money from Ken in order to hit him where it hurt, and he made a deal.”
“A deal?” Tyson’s eyes were wider and darker than I’d ever seen them.
“A deal. He knew he was going to be prosecuted. It was only a matter of time. He didn’t negotiate for his own freedom in return for his cooperation with Ken, but for yours. Mine, even.” I turned to each of them in turn.
“Tyson, he asked for you to be on the team prosecuting him so everyone in town could see you doing it. You had already become a prosecutor by then, and he didn’t want you to lose everything because people thought you were in on it.”
“I nearly fucking lost everything anyway.” I knew his anger wasn’t directed at me, but I flinched anyway.
“Conflict of interest is one thing. It’s unethical, but it’s not a crime. If people didn’t see you prosecuting him, they would never have trusted you as a prosecutor again. Plus, the defendant can waive a conflict if they’ve been made aware of it. You’re disqualified because of a conflict, unless its waived.”
I heard his sharp intake of breath and his whispered string of curses, but I slid my eyes to Sonny’s next. “Roy knew you wanted to become a cop. His deal included that no one blocked you or prevented that from happening in any way. I’m not sure how it worked behind the scenes since the FBI can’t make those promises on behalf of county police departments, but they must have pulled some strings.”
“Wait.” Evan narrowed his eyes on mine. “If he was working with the FBI, why the fuck didn’t they protect him after he got out?”
“He was going to try to get the last stuff they needed on Ken. If he saw them involved, he would have immediately known what was going on, and years of work would have gone down the drain. They offered anyway, but he turned them down.”
“It’s all down the drain now, anyway.” Jeremy cursed, hanging his head.
I cleared my throat. “Actually, it’s not. Ken might be dead, but there are a lot of people out there who were working with and for him. His influence spread to the highest levels of government and industry. The FBI can finally have access to his house, offices and all his records. I gave them my consent this morning, and since I’m Ken’s only child, that’s all they needed. A lot of heads are going to roll. Roy still succeeded, even if Ken never saw the inside of a prison cell.”
My revelations were met with silence once more. I got it; it was a lot to take in. Eventually, it was Marie that spoke. “You said he made a deal for your freedom, too?”
“Yes.” I sighed, letting my eyes close for a second before I revealed the last secret I’d been keeping. “When he needed someone to hide the money, he came to me. I didn’t know then where it was coming from. I thought it was his own. I didn’t realize he’d lost everything. He cleared it with the FBI long before he actually started asking me to move the money, but I didn’t know. I would have been an accomplice, otherwise.”
“Why would he risk you like that?” Niki’s brow was furrowed. “What if they didn’t keep up their end of the bargain and prosecuted you for being an accomplice?”
“Easy.” I shrugged. “He refused to give up the money to them. Roy said he didn’t know where the end of Ken’s influence was. It would all have been for nothing if someone in the bureau was working for him and found out where the money was. When he needed to make the money disappear, he told them I was the only one he trusted with it. They kept up their deal with Tyson and Sonny, but he made sure they would keep doing it by making sure I was the only one who knew where all that money went.”
Tyson stood and stalked out of the room, but no one else moved.
Finally, Sonny stood and surprised me by pulling me in for a tight hug. “Thank you for helping him, Eve. You were there for him when he needed someone, and I’m glad he had you.”
Stunned by being thanked, I was speechless. I returned his hug, my arms moving instinctively, and gave him an awkward pat on the back before stepping away. “I’d better get going.”
“You wouldn’t like some coffee?” Niki came to stand next to Sonny, slipping her hand into his. It wasn’t some kind of possessive show, but more like she knew he needed her and had moved to his side to offer her support. “I’m sure they’re going to have a lot of questions for you.”
She also sounded like she really wanted me to stay, but I couldn’t. Being around a family who were as close as they were, knowing they were grieving for a father who had made mistakes, but who had been a father to them, nonetheless, was too hard. It made me long for things I’d never had, and probably never would.
If I stayed, I was only going to end up wanting to spend more time with them, and that was never going to happen. I wasn’t one of them, and I never would be. Besides, I was sure Tyson wanted to spend some time with his family in the wake of what had happened, and I was relatively certain I was the last person he’d want to be there intruding on such a private moment.
“Okay, but we’ll talk soon?” Niki smiled warmly. I nodded, struggling to turn my lips into an answering smile before muttering my goodbyes. Tyson still wasn’t back. My heart was screaming for me to go and find him, to make sure he was okay, but I forced it to shut the hell up. He didn’t want to see me, and I wouldn’t force my presence on him. Especially not on a day like today.
Sonny walked me to the door, giving me a final hug. The man was an expert level hugger. His arms were strong and wrapped tightly around me. It was the kind of brotherly hug I’d craved throughout my childhood.
“Stay in touch, okay? We will, too. Once we’ve been able to think about all this.” He grinned when he released me, keeping both of his large hands on my shoulders. “Niki likes you, and so do I. Plus, if you were that close to Roy, you’re practically family. We take care of our family.”
The tears I’d been wrestling with all morning jumped to my eyes again, but I refused to let them fall. “Thanks. I’ll do that.”
Before the traitorous tears could start leaking, I turned and walked to my car. For some reason, Tyson was standing next to it. His hands were in the pockets of his jeans, and his frame looked tense. When he saw me coming up to him, his chest rose on a deep breath.
Shit. What was he doing out here? My tears were still way too shallow to hold them back if he went off on me again, and I really didn’t want him to see me cry.
Also, my heart hadn’t even begun healing after our last showdown. After the battering it had taken when I found out about Roy, it wouldn’t be able to handle being ripped out and stomped on again. Squaring my shoulders, I folded my arms across my torso. Words could still wrap around them and land like tiny little grenades in my chest, but it was the best I could do.
“What do you want, Tyson? I’m leaving, okay? I only came here because your dad left me explicit instructions. You won’t see me again. Don’t worry.” It turned out that my own words ended up being the tiny grenades that blew what was left of my heart to
smithereens, but that didn’t make them any less true. “Goodbye, Tyson.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Tyson
“What?” I frowned, confusion spreading through me like wildfire. Eve was looking at me like she was on a warpath, ready for a fight. Her arms were folded defensively around her, and her chin thrust into the air.
There was an almost palpable air of grief and sadness around her, but I guessed that made sense under the circumstances. What I couldn’t quite place was the hostility shooting from her eyes, until I remembered what had happened the last time we had seen each other.
Christ. Was that really only five days ago? I brought my hands up to rub my eyes. The last twenty-four hours had been grueling and tough. To say it had placed a lot of things in perspective for me was the understatement of the century.
“No, Eve.” I took a step closer to her, but she moved back at the exact same time. It cracked something deep inside me to see her moving away from me instead of toward me, but I had only myself to blame for that.
I had hurt her. Badly. That much was crystal fucking clear. At the time, I’d thought I had a good reason to say the things I had, but that didn’t excuse it. I should have just walked away and thought things through before talking to her, but I hadn’t.
So many emotions had slammed into me when Ken told me he was her father that I’d totally lost control. I jumped to conclusions and believed them. I lied. I had wanted nothing more than to decimate her just as much as she had done to me, though I hadn’t even known if she felt enough for me to be hurt at all. Never mind decimated.
Evidently, she had felt enough for me, and I had succeeded in my mission. Now, I was going to have to deal with the consequences.
I put my hands up and took a deliberate step backward, showing her I wouldn’t touch her and wouldn’t come too close. It killed me not to take her into my arms and hold her tight, but I was going to have to work for the privilege of doing that again.
It was nothing less than I deserved for what I had done. Honestly, the painful tightness in my muscles and the annoying itch to touch her was probably much less than I deserved. “Can we talk?”
Her eyes narrowed, but she didn’t move. I took her silent stillness as a sign to continue. “It’s not really a conversation we can have in my brother’s driveway.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Her voice was cool, but there was a sharp edge to it that cut me to the bone.
I winced. “I don’t blame you, but I really do want to talk to you.”
She gave me a long, hard look before releasing a deep sigh and finally uncrossing her arms to rummage around her purse for her keys. “Fine, but then you’re coming to my place. I’m assuming if we can’t talk here, you can’t talk in public either, and I’m not going to your house.”
“I’ll leave if you tell me to. I promise.” I was hoping she wouldn’t tell me to leave once she’d heard me out, but I wouldn’t be more of an asshole to her than I already had been. She was giving me an opportunity I hadn’t given her in agreeing to talk to me even when she didn’t want to. If she told me to go, I would go. “Lead the way.”
It occurred to me when I pulled up behind her outside a small, neat house on the outskirts of town that I’d never been to her house before. In fact, I’d gotten the distinct feeling she hadn’t wanted me there. After she unlocked the door and threw her keys into a small porcelain bowl on a side table in her entrance hall, I understood why.
“You weren’t kidding when you said you guys were close.” There were four photographs of her and Roy on the red wall inside. They were framed with dark wood and depicted a relationship one would have with a parent or a valued family member.
One was of her wearing a graduation robe and proudly holding up a certificate. I could see her arm and shoulder in the shot, telling me she’d taken the picture of the two of them grinning like fools herself. Another showed her sitting at a sparse, rickety desk, smiling at Roy, who was fiddling with a laptop.
Eve followed my gaze, her voice even. “That was my first day in my own office. Roy was helping me install my computer on my new network.”
I nodded, stepping closer to the wall. The other two were more casual pictures. One had been taken at a ballgame and the other while they were sitting under an umbrella at a coffee shop. “I heard Sonny thanking you earlier. I should have been the one doing that. You obviously meant a lot to him, and him to you. I can’t imagine how hard all this has been on you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, dropping her head back and taking a deep breath. When she leveled her gaze at me again, there was such sorrow there that I ached for her despite the mess my own emotions were tangled in. “What are you doing here, Tyson?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“You already said that.” She moved around me to close the door but didn’t lead me any deeper into her home. My eyes darted past her to a living area to our right. Two brown leather couches, a coffee table and a flat screen TV on a small stand filled up the tiny space, but it was the personal touches that caught my eye.
A vase of fresh, bright yellow flowers sat on top of the coffee table, and several orange, yellow and red pillows and throws were scattered around. There was an empty mug beside the vase, and a paperback book lying open but face down beside that.
“Well? You said you wanted to talk,” Eve said, her words clipped.
I took a deep breath, forgetting about examining my surroundings and wanting to learn more about the woman who occupied this house—the real her, that was—and focusing on what I was there for. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“He’s been dead to me for a long time.” She shrugged but hugged herself tighter. “I’m sorry about yours, too.”
Her voice was softer now, sincere. I suddenly didn’t know what to do with my hands. All they wanted to do was touch her, but I couldn’t. Eventually, I settled for hooking my thumbs into my pockets and blowing out a deep breath. “I… What you did for Roy...”
I was struggling to find the right words. Eve’s eyes narrowed again, and her stance became defensive, her nostrils flaring. I realized too late where she thought I was going with this. “. You can’t prosecute me for anything. I only helped him because he loves you and what Ken did was wrong.”
Unfortunately, the lawyer in me was speaking before my brain could catch up. “That’s not really how crime works, Eve. Honorable intentions don’t mean—”
I cut myself off by huffing out a frustrated breath. Both of my hands slipped from my pockets and went to my hair. “Shit. Look, that’s really not why I’m here. I don’t want to prosecute you.”
“So, what? You don’t want to, but you have to because it’s your duty?”
“No.” The word came out much more forcefully than I had intended it to. “Wow, this really isn’t going the way I hoped it would.”
Eve scoffed. “What? You thought I would just present my wrists so you could arrest me and go in without a fight?”
“I don’t arrest people.” There I go again.
Shutting my mouth, I inhaled deeply through my nose. Only once I was sure I had the lawyer in me tamped down, I tried again. “This isn’t really what I came here for, but clearly we need to get this squared away first. I never used to think there was a gray area in crime, but I’m seeing now that there is. The last few weeks have taught me a hell of a lot more than any book ever could. You’re a vigilante, I get that. You helped my dad when we couldn’t, and for that, I will forever be grateful to you. I’m not going to prosecute you for it. It never even crossed my mind. Plus, even if I wanted to, which I really don’t, there is the deal my Dad made for you. That doesn’t go away just because he’s gone.”
After searching my eyes for a long minute, Eve finally relaxed enough to let her arms drop to her sides. “Fine. What are you here for then?”
“I’m here to tell you how sorry I am.” There. Finally, something came out right. “I’m so fucking sorry, Eve. I know it doesn�
��t change a thing, but I just wanted you to know. I said some terrible, hurtful things. I lashed out at you, and I shouldn’t have.”
“You should have given me a chance to explain.” Her voice was small, her eyes becoming watery. “That being said, I owe you an apology, too. I should have told you Ken was my father earlier. I wanted to, but I meant what I said the other day. I was scared to tell you. I thought that as soon as you found out, I would lose you and I wasn’t ready for that to happen. I just wanted to hang on to you for as long as I could, knowing that once you knew, I would never get you back.”
“You were wrong.” The itching in my hands got worse. My feet moved without conscious thought but fuck it. I couldn’t stay away from her. Only stopping once our chests were pushed together, I put my hands on her hips. “I know who you are now, and I’m right here. If you’ll take me back, I’m yours.”
“What?” Eve’s fingers closed around my forearms, but then they didn’t move. It was as if she couldn’t quite decide whether to push them off her or pull them around her. “What are you saying, Tyson?”
“I’m saying that what you just said was wrong. I want to hang on to you too, even knowing who you are. I’m yours, Eve. I know I wasn’t fair to you, but if you want me, you have me. I love you.”
I… What now? My body and mind both froze.
I’d never said those words to anyone outside my family before, and I hadn’t been planning on saying them to her. Looking down into her startled green eyes, though, I knew they were true. Possibly the truest words I’d ever spoken. “I love you, Eve. Please take me back.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Eve
I love you, Eve. Please take me back.
I love you, Eve. Please take me back.
I love you, Eve. Please take me back.
