“I’m sure you’ve heard the news about Lawson and Mackson,” he said in a solemn voice.
“I did,” I said. Wanting to see what would happen if I threw him off kilter a bit, I added, “So I heard you were preparing to sue RL Co. for breach of contract. Will you be preparing now to do the same against Mack & Sons?”
There was a tiny pause but Harrison recovered quickly. “Oh well, I was just making sure all three of us were on the same page about what to do after Lawson’s death. The contract is a big one and sometimes people can get greedy or sloppy.”
Greedy or sloppy. Could he have chosen better words to describe the entire situation? Someone had been greedy and someone had also been sloppy. Whether these someones were the same person was now the question.
“I hadn’t gotten a chance to speak with Mackson but now I guess it was because he had been rushed to the hospital,” Harrison said.
Liam leaned a hip against the desk, listening to the call.
“Anyway, I was hoping that we would perhaps be able to talk. Tonight,” Harrison said, smoothly moving on to the next topic. “There’s a lot to discuss, especially with half of the alliance now dead.”
This wasn’t really a matter he needed to speak about with me personally. There was Jeremy. And he knew that.
“Where? Your office?” I asked.
“No, I can come to town. Why don’t you come over to my place?” Harrison asked.
My eyebrows rose at the invitation. Harrison Dell also had a house in Connecticut, like most wealthy New Yorkers. It was on the opposite end of town and was quite a palatial home.
But this meant he wanted to meet with me in private. Less witnesses. I pursed my lips. He wouldn’t be so stupid to murder me right in his own house, would he?
“Does around 8, suit you? We could have a late dinner,” he said.
I flicked my eyes up at Liam. “Fine,” I said. “8 tonight.”
“Oh but one thing,” Harrison added. “This is a private meeting with very sensitive topics that will be under discussion. I’d feel more comfortable if your brother didn’t join us.”
My whole body felt like a huge siren that had just been turned on. Red flags were popping up all over my brain. I stared at Liam whose lips had tightened in suspicion.
“Liam knows about the alliance and most of the details of the negotiations. I don’t think any of this will be news to him,” I said calmly. Harrison Dell wanted me to come to house the day after half the alliance had died and he wanted me to come alone.
“It’s not just that,” Harrison said, his voice dropping a note or two deeper. “There are certain other matters I’d like to discuss with you as well. Regarding your parents, particularly your father.”
“Well my father was more Liam’s—”
“Yes but Liam wasn’t chosen to succeed Madewell!” Harrison hissed over the phone. “You were! And as such, there’s information—vital information—you need to know and I’d prefer to tell it to you and only you.”
I looked up at Liam, a question in my eyes. What should I do? For all I knew, it was suicide to go into that house alone. I had to imagine it wouldn’t just be Harrison Dell in that house alone.
Liam seemed to be thinking quickly. His fingers tapped against his thighs as he thought. Finally he looked at me and gave me a short nod. Go.
“Fine, 8 o’clock tonight at your place,” I said, trusting Liam’s direction.
“Good! Good!” Harrison said, sounding relieved. “I’ll see you tonight.”
As soon as I hung up the phone, I turned to Liam. “I hope you have a plan,” I said.
“You’re not going in there alone,” Liam reassured.
“But you heard him—”
Liam raised a hand. “I’ll drive us there and then I’ll find my own way in,” he said. “I’ll just be on standby, in case something happens. But I will be there, Sophia. You won’t be alone.”
I shook my head. “Harrison Dell will have a security team around his house. He has money. He could very well have his security system on around every door and window of his house. How will you make it—”
“Sophia,” he said calmly, his gaze fixed on me, “you won’t be alone tonight. I promise. I will be there.”
I breathed deeply through my nose, letting his words sink in. “And if tonight, if I can find out if he is the one who….” I took another deep breath.
Everything was happening so quickly, so suddenly, I just couldn’t seem to be able to maintain my footing on the situation.
“You’ll have your gun. You’ll have your knife,” Liam said in a steady voice. “And you’ll have me.”
I nodded.
“Tonight, you’ll get your revenge, Sophia,” Liam vowed.
Chapter Nineteen
I tapped my feet against the bottom of the car as Liam turned up the long winding driveway up Harrison Dell’s huge home. I watched the beautiful trees as they passed by my window.
This wasn’t exactly how I had imagined it.
I hadn’t imagined taking my moment of revenge as a dinner guest. I hadn’t imagined attempting to take my revenge and being wrong. I hadn’t imagined having to do a second take on taking my revenge.
It all felt…wrong.
I looked over at Liam. He sat shadowed in the driver’s seat as he smoothly brought the car up the drive. He looked so in control, so competent. It used to pain me a little to realize that the real Liam, my stepbrother, would’ve fallen short during my mission for revenge. He had been too good, too soft, too sweet. He would’ve wanted me to walk away from this. He would’ve said I was too good to sully my hands like this.
I looked at Liam’s strong jaw, stubbled and rough. But this Liam, he would never say those things. I wasn’t too good. I wasn’t too sweet. I was vengeful. I was angry. I was full of rage. And I needed someone who would support me. I needed someone who would fan the flames of my anger. And having this Liam has made me feel less alone in my darkness.
With every passing day, I felt more secure under Liam’s watch. He protected me, guided me, and most of all, stood by my side. I hadn’t realized how much I depended on his presence until just now. Now, when I was being forced into separating from my steady dark angel, I realized just how much I needed him. Wanted him.
Halfway up the drive, two black suited security guards stood on either side of the way. The one on the left raised up his hand as we approached. Liam rolled the car to a slow stop and rolled down his window.
“Miss Sophia Madewell?” the guard asked looking into the car window.
“Yes,” I answered.
He nodded back at his partner. “Okay, we’ve been instructed to escort you up the rest of the way, Miss Madewell,” the guard said. “Your driver can park at the secondary garage down the east side and can wait there.”
I felt a flutter of panic. So Harrison had really meant to corner me alone. I looked at the guard. “But he’s not—” I started, wanting to tell him that Liam was not my driver but my bodyguard, my brother, my dark angel from hell—anything to buy me a few more minutes of his calming presence.
But Liam raised a hand. “Alright. I’ll wait in the secondary garage for Miss Madewell,” he said. He gave me a look. It was clear he thought it better to keep his identity a secret for now.
I stared at him. I could read his eyes as if his thoughts were printed clearly within them. You can do this. I will be there with you.
This was it. I couldn’t dissolve into panic and hysterics now. I had come too far. I nodded and stepped out of the car. The guard to the right helped me out and escorted me up the rest of the drive.
I turned around once to watch Liam turn the car around and drive off in the opposite direction of me. God, how far was the secondary garage? Harrison was so paranoid that he had Liam park not in the main house garage but at a secondary garage?
As my guard dropped me off at the front doors of the house, I took a moment to collect myself. I straightened up and felt my gun press solidly against my lower back.
I knew my knife was strapped to my right leg.
Knowing I would be facing some kind of danger tonight but unsure if it would happen before or after dinner, I took care to dress in silk pants and blouse that allowed me free movement but still was appropriate for cocktails.
Feeling as ready as one could possibly be in such a situation, which wasn’t very ready at all, I knocked on the door.
But I only got one knock in.
The lightly burnished oak door swung open, already set slightly ajar. Well this is a good sign. I stepped into the house before I pulled out my gun. I kept it tucked behind me as I walked slowly into the house, staying close to the walls.
“Harrison?” I called out. “Mr. Dell?”
The house echoed with my voice. I passed the arching living room and the beautifully decorated kitchen. The lights were on in all the rooms. I saw the dining room at the end.
Keeping my hand firmly around my gun’s grip, I took a second before stepping into the entrance of the formal dining room.
And right in front of me, at the head of a ten person dining room table, was Harrison Dell with his head flat on the table, a small dark bloody hole at the center of his forehead.
All I could hear was my heartbeat as I stared at Harrison’s large face, now pale and cold in death. His lids were only half closed and I caught a glimpse of a pupil, staring blankly out at me. He had a look of slight surprise.
“What the hell—” I murmured to myself before crying out in pain.
I looked down at my left thigh.
There right in the middle of my thigh was a neat little silver dart. Or at least, what looked to be a dart. As if moving through water, I reached down and, biting my lip, pulled out the dart.
It was tipped with a small syringe.
“A mild sedative. A low dosage form of a tranquilizer really. You’re going to feel a bit woozy in a few seconds.”
I instinctively raised my gun up. I looked up at the far end of the dining table, the part I hadn’t even thought to look once I had caught sight of Harrison Dell’s dead body.
There at the opposite end sat Senator Sebastian Folsom, sipping what looked to be a glass of whiskey.
He seemed completely at ease, his cane leaning against the table by his side. He motioned to a chair with his whiskey hand. “You might want to sit down, Soph,” he said, as if passing off a friendly tip.
Already I could feel the edges of my vision swimming. “You…” I said, hesitating on my words more from shock than from the dart, “You drugged me?”
Senator Folsom lifted up a tiny silver gun from his lap. “I sure did, sweetheart,” he said. He took a sip of his whiskey. “There were two reasons for it and I’ll explain them both to you once you take a seat. Also, put that gun away before I shoot your arm off.”
I remained standing, holding out my gun. I stared at the Senator. I was so confused and whatever drug was flowing through me now did not make it easier for me to think. The Senator with his white hair and friendly face was sitting at Harrison Dell’s dining room table with a tranquilizer gun. And he had just shot me with one of those tranquilizers.
“Sit, Sophia,” Senator Folsom said, his voice taking on an edge of steel I had never heard before.
It was all spinning in my brain. Senator Folsom, the sweet, crippled politician whom my dad had always felt so protective for. Senator Folsom who had always fought for the underdogs and was always battling the uninteresting battles like road budgets and dam inspection quotas. That same Senator Folsom was now sitting at Harrison Dell’s dining room table, looking at me as if I were a bug to be squashed.
“Sit, Sophia,” he repeated, his tone now taking away any hint of softness.
“Why?” I asked. Why are you doing this? Why are you here? Why did you shoot me? All thoughts swirled through my mind in a tornado of confusion.
“Because you should’ve stayed in the ground I put you in! You should’ve stayed dead!” he roared as he pounded his fist down on the table, making Harrison Dell’s head jostle in a grotesque manner. He took a breath and ran his hand over his hair, smoothing it down. “Now sit down before I shoot out both your knee caps and make you sit.”
I grabbed a chair and collapsed into it just before my legs gave out. My gun clattered to the floor as it fell out of my hand. It didn’t matter anyway. I could hardly feel my fingertips anymore. My whole body was starting to feel detached and numb.
I watched as Senator Folsom grabbed his cane and rose to his feet. It was hard to keep my eyes focused on him. Everything kept coming in waves, making me feel disoriented and nauseous.
But I knew one thing—I had been wrong. God, I had been so wrong.
Chapter Twenty
With wavy vision, I watched as Senator Folsom walked over to me with his distinctive gait. He leaned on his cane heavily as he rounded the table, heading straight towards me.
“You know,” Senator Folsom started, as if continuing a normal conversation, “it took nearly all of my years of being in politics to keep most of my composure when I saw you at my dinner several weeks ago.” He stopped in front of me. He looked over me as if assessing how quickly the drug was working. With how hard it was to keep my head staying upright, I thought it was working superbly. Senator Folsom seemed to agree. He nodded to himself and took a sip of his whiskey. “How did I do? Could you guess I was seething with anger at what looked like the ultimate fuck up in history?”
I shook my head. Or at least, I thought I shook my head. “No,” I whispered. He had looked truly surprised and relieved at seeing me alive. He had looked like Uncle Sebastian.
Senator Folsom smiled, pleased. “Good, good,” he said heartily. “I’m glad to hear it. I thought I had done a tremendous job as well.”
“What’s going—”
“You realize now that the Blue Boy vans weren’t from me, right?” he interrupted. Using the hand holding his whiskey glass, he scratched his nose. “I would never have been so sloppy or stupid. That had all been Lawson, that idiot.”
I stared at him. He knew about the Blue Boy vans? The tranquilizer had me woozy and disoriented but it was just weak enough to keep me from passing out. I could hear everything the Senator was saying but I wasn’t sure I was processing it fast enough.
“That had been Lawson?” I murmured, quite sure my words were slurring.
“Of course!” the Senator cried out. “Give me some credit here, Sophia. I am a meticulous man. I would never just send a van over to shoot a few bullets haphazardly into a side of a house!”
So the Blue Boy vans had been Lawson. But then what about….?
“Wait,” I said, feeling overwhelmed. “I’m confused. I thought—”
“It all started about forty years ago,” Senator Folsom started, ignoring whatever I had been about to say. “Do you know where I studied in college?”
“Harvard,” I answered promptly, forcing my eyes to focus on just one Senator Folsom.
“No, no, no,” he admonished. “That was for law school. I studied at Columbia for my undergraduate degree.” His large eyes, usually so wide and open, turned steely as they pinned me. “New York. I studied in New York.”
I nodded, unsure what other response I could give. Liam, where are you? The secondary garage had been far enough away that I hadn’t even been able to see it from the drive. Had he run into trouble?
“And forty years ago, there was a young, upstart punk who was running the streets as if he was the king of the fucking universe,” the Senator continued, his voice taking on an edge. “He sold drugs, he sold weapons, he even had a ring of pimps with some poor wretched women trapped underneath them. He was a terror to New York and grew very powerful, very fast.”
Senator Folsom grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked my head back. I cried out as pain shot through my scalp. Even feeling as incapacitated as I did, the pain was real and sharp and was the only thing that was able to cut through this hazy drugged fog.
“Do you know who I’m talking about?” S
enator Folsom murmured, his voice even and calm.
“My father,” I gasped, trying to pull my hair free from his grasp.
The Senator gave me a long glare before throwing my head back, releasing me from his unbelievably strong grip. “Your father,” he sneered. “Eric Madewell. Who soon became the head of the Made Mafia.”
Tears had involuntarily sprung to my lashes when the Senator had grabbed me. Pain seemed so much more pronounced now. The drug, whatever he had shot me with, seemed to only heighten physical sensations while incapacitating movement.
“But he…he wasn’t that at the end,” I mumbled. “My dad. He changed. He was different when you met him.”
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