Grant snuggled closer and planted a soft kiss on her collarbone, nudging her to continue. “It’s all right.”
“They found a stash of guns,” she choked out.
He lifted himself up on his elbow and stared at her, alarmed. “Guns?”
She nodded and felt her tears resume. “Guns. One of them had been used in a … murder.” Her last word was a whisper.
“But they weren’t your guns!” Grant objected. “Why should you have to go to prison?”
“Because my client skipped town—nobody knew where to find him. And somebody had to take the fall. At least that’s what my attorney said.”
Grant suddenly realized his hand had ceased caressing her face and instead was balled in a fist, pressing down on the pillow next to her head. He was infuriated.
Watching his eyes cloud over, Sophie ventured, “What are you thinking? Do you hate me for what I did?”
“Hate you? Of course not. I hate the man who did this to you, though. He’s never been brought to justice?”
“No. I don’t think the police have found him.”
“What’s his name?”
Sophie hesitated. “It doesn’t matter.”
Grant’s voice was low and tight. “Yes, it does. I want to hurt him like he hurt you.”
She now recognized that the intensity in his eyes represented furious vengeance, and it scared her. “Listen to you, Grant. What exactly are you planning? What are you going to do if you find him? Beat him up?” Her voice sounded harshly derisive, and she added in a softer tone, “Anyway, how would you find him? Have you forgotten that you’re on parole, not allowed to travel anywhere without Jerry’s permission? If you got yourself in so much as one fight you’d be back at Gurnee immediately. Have you thought of that?”
For Sophie’s sake, Grant tried to take a deep breath, studying her with a quiet intensity.
“I had to tell the police my client’s name, but other than that I should keep his identity confidential,” she said. “I may appear totally unethical but I can at least keep that one promise of privacy.”
It dawned on Grant that she felt as guilty and insecure about her situation as he felt about his. Unlike him, however, she had the decency to take responsibility for her lapse in judgment. In his weaker moments, Grant still blamed his brother for forcing him into prison. He couldn’t even step up and be accountable for his crimes.
Shaking this off for now, Grant tried to lighten the mood. “So, now I know about the guns and money leading to your arrest, Bonnie. Now it all makes sense, my little lawbreaker.”
Gently he gathered her in his arms and held her tight, protectively wrapping himself around her, skin on skin, feeling the wetness of her tears on his shoulder. “And I still love you.”
He felt her body shudder into his, leading him to squeeze her tighter, swathing her in his compassionate love. Sophie unleashed a torrent of sobs. Grant gently rubbed her back, and her body gradually stopped trembling, her breathing eventually evened out.
A loud knock on the door broke the mood. Grant looked into Sophie’s questioning eyes and gave a dismissive shake of his head. “I’m not answering it. Nobody knows where I live.”
She nodded and they continued holding each other, but the knocking resumed, louder this time.
“Maybe you should see who’s there?” she said, pulling back from his embrace.
The person was pounding now, and Grant sat up. “Oh! Maybe it’s my Uncle Joe!” Swiftly he rose from the bed and slid on his boxers and jeans, jogging out of the room shirtless.
Sophie scrambled out of the bed as well, sliding on her underwear and pantsuit. There was no way she wanted Grant’s father figure to catch her naked in his apartment.
Grant’s broke into a smile as he strode down the hallway. Joe was finally coming to visit him! He flung open the door and immediately gasped, his face morphing from exhilaration to shock in one second.
Standing on his doorstep was a dark-haired man, just his height, staring back at him. Logan.
“I have to talk to you,” Logan said.
“No!”
“Grant—”
“You’re not welcome here!” Grant’s eyes flared with rage.
Logan stepped forward and was inside the apartment before Grant could stop him. “I know you’re angry with me. Just hear me out,” he pleaded.
Clasping her halter top in place while straining to hear the conversation, Sophie froze. I know that voice. She stopped breathing and didn’t move a muscle. It felt like her heart stopped beating as well.
“Get out of my home!” Grant yelled, trailing after his brother. Logan had strolled into the living room and was taking in the two plates on the messy kitchen table, covered with leftover food.
“Did you hear me?” Grant hollered, placing a hand on Logan’s muscular shoulder and spinning him around. “You can’t be here. I’m on parole! I can’t associate with known criminals!”
Suddenly Grant noticed Sophie quietly step out of the bedroom. The look on her face made him instantly drop his hand from his brother’s shoulder and go to her. All color had completely drained from her face, and her lips were parted in shock as her body visibly trembled.
Logan turned to look, and his jaw dropped at the sight of the elegant woman in the doorway.
“Sophie?”
“Logan,” she numbly acknowledged.
Grant gaped at the man and woman to his right and left.
“You know my brother?”
It took a second for his question to register, then a look of abject horror crossed her face. She drew her hand up to cover her mouth, feeling like she was going to faint, collapse, vomit, scream, punch, slap, explode, disintegrate …
But she did none of those. Instead, she tore ahead on wobbly legs and sprinted down the hallway, rushing past both men with such velocity that they had no chance to stop her. She was out the door before Grant knew what hit him, and he took a tentative step toward the exit before deciding he would never catch her in her frantic state.
He turned back to his brother, and a lifetime of hurt and fury poured into his seething words. “How the hell do you know Sophie?”
28. Fathers
Reeling from Sophie’s swift, unexplained departure, Grant’s bare chest heaved with strained attempts to get air.
“I’ll ask you again,” Grant fumed, glaring at his brother. “How the hell do you know Sophie?”
Logan continued to feel at a loss for words. That was Sophie? Coming out of what had to be Grant’s bedroom? They’d probably just had sex, although her haunted mahogany eyes had not looked sated but terrified. Logan knew that fearful look well. He’d seen it many times on the faces of men he was about to kill. She’d been afraid of him, and he felt sick with remorse.
But Sophie had seemed scared of Grant too. How did they know each other? Turning the tables, Logan inquired, “What was she doing here?”
Refusing to be redirected, Grant spat, “She knew your name! She knew you!”
Logan tried to figure out how to play this situation. He wasn’t about to share that he’d been in therapy. “Why do you care, man?”
“I’m the one asking questions here! How do you know each other?”
Running his tongue along his lower lip, Logan began cautiously. “We met about two years ago. At a, um, game. A Cubs game.”
“You met at a Cubs game?” Grant’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Yeah,” Logan confirmed, making it up on the fly. “We randomly sat next to each other at a game and found ourselves talking about the players. She really knew her stuff—first time I met a chick who actually knew anything about baseball. We went on a date or two, but nothing really happened.”
“That’s a lie,” Grant said, his lips curling into a sneer. “You’re lying.”
Damn. He thought it had been a good story. “What makes you think I’m lying?”
“Because Sophie is a Sox fan, you fraud.” Nostrils flaring, he inched closer to his brother,
refusing to be intimidated. Dressed only in jeans, Grant’s lean upper body seemed almost scrawny compared to Logan’s bulk. “I’ll ask you one more time. How do you know her?”
Silence. Logan’s deep-blue eyes met his gaze with a calculated stare.
Grant threw his arms up. “Why can’t you just tell the truth for once? You’ve destroyed me, Lo! You forced me to commit that robbery, to go to prison! Why can’t you just help me for once? Why?”
Logan sighed, gritting his teeth. He was once again hurting his brother, which had not been his intention at all. In a low voice he confessed, “Because I didn’t want to tell you she was my shrink.”
Grant stood perfectly still, listening intently.
Watching Grant’s non-reaction, Logan wondered if he had heard him. “She was my shrink, okay? The fucking judge made me go to therapy after the Great Lakes thing. I had to see a goddamn shrink! How embarrassing! Are you happy now?”
Instead of a satisfied expression on his brother’s face, there was a stunned paralysis. Grant’s tanned olive skin was rapidly losing color, and he looked almost green. Logan watched with fascination as his brother began trembling, crossing his balled-up fists before him and clenching his stomach.
Grant gave an anguished cry. “It was you! You—you stashed money in her office.”
“What?” Logan replied, dumbfounded. “How did you know that?”
A sickening realization took hold. “She knows we’re brothers,” Grant whispered.
Suddenly he made a mad dash to the bathroom. He yanked open the toilet and retched violently. Remnants of the dinner Sophie had cooked for him came rushing up, the reminder of her kindness making him even queasier. His whole body quivered as waves of nausea pulsed through him, and he gripped the counter for balance. Evidently his stomach of steel was a thing of the past.
Logan started to follow but stopped short, disgusted by the sound of his brother getting sick. He had no idea why Grant was so upset. “You okay in there?” he hollered, hearing nothing but heaving from the small bathroom.
Finally, the torturous vomiting ceased, and Grant pulled himself to the sink. Scooping handfuls of cold water into his parched mouth and onto his hot face, he dared to look into the mirror. Dead, glassy eyes stared back at him, and he fought the urge to claw violently at his skin, his hair—anything to remove the identifying markers bestowed upon him by his family. He wanted nothing to do with them.
“What’s your problem, dude?” one of those family members called from the living room. “Are you sick or something?”
Seeing red, Grant abruptly spun and charged out of the bathroom like a bull. He lowered his head as he hurtled forward, colliding into Logan’s unsuspecting torso with an immense force that threw the muscular man backward.
“What the f—?” The force of landing on his back pushed the air out of Logan’s lungs in a vigorous whoosh. Grant crashed on top of him and wound his right fist high in the air before smashing it into his brother’s jaw.
The blow seemed to awaken the older brother, and he groped above him to try to restrain Grant’s wrists before he received another strike.
“Get off me!” Logan ordered.
Grant’s white-hot rage powered his attack, and his right hand wriggled free to land another punch on his brother’s face. Logan snarled and met his attacker’s anger with the same intensity and strength. He shoved Grant off and scrambled to his feet, panting.
No longer holding the advantage of surprise, Grant warily scooted to a standing position as well. Tension crackled as the brothers fluidly circled each other, seeking any weakness to exploit. Grant felt his body trembling with the lingering aftereffects of vomiting, and he knew he was overmatched. His older brother beat people up for a living.
“Don’t do this,” Logan warned in his deep baritone. “I didn’t come here to hurt you.”
Grant exhaled with disgust. “Well, you’ve done a bang-up job so far.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as they continued prowling the small apartment, and his eyes narrowed once again. “Do you even care that you sent Sophie to prison?”
“Prison?” Logan repeated, bowled over by the weight of the word.
His eyes widening, Grant shouted, “You didn’t know? You didn’t know she went to prison because of you? Because of the guns you planted in her office?”
Logan’s arms fell to his side. “But I thought she’d get off. Those were our guns, not hers. That’s why I got the fuck out of town.”
Grant’s blood was boiling. “And when you left, who do you think had to take the fall, you selfish bastard?”
Swiftly Grant charged his brother again, only this time Logan was ready. He ducked when Grant took a big swing at his head, and retaliated with a powerful uppercut to the lighter man’s face, sending him reeling to the side. Staggering, Grant cradled his cheek.
“How the hell could you not know what happened to Sophie?” Grant demanded as he recovered from the blow to stand upright and face his brother once again.
“Dunno. Once I saw the cops at her office, I hightailed it outta town. I kept in touch with Angelo, but all I told him was that the cops were after me. He didn’t know anything about Sophie.”
Grant swallowed the bile rising in his throat. How could his brother be so fucking clueless?
“I figured Sophie would be a big hero for turning in the cash and guns.”
“A hero?” Grant’s fury clouded any sense of reason as he careened forward again, arms flailing, craving a pound of flesh from his brother, desperately wanting to hurt him like he’d hurt Sophie—like he’d hurt Grant too.
Logan expertly fought off Grant’s attack, grunting as he deflected several blows before throwing him to the ground, trying to subdue him. But Grant would not be deterred and quickly got on his feet again, managing to deliver a quick jab to Logan’s solar plexus in the melee.
Grant’s hand throbbed from hitting the solid wall of muscle, but Logan barely seemed to feel the punch as he swiftly struck back, delivering a devastating blow to Grant’s ribcage that left him groaning, panting while he listed to the right, painfully clutching his ribcage.
“Stop this!” Logan yelled. “I don’t want to hurt you!”
Miraculously Grant came at his brother yet again, though he now realized the futility of attacking the muscular man in his weakened state. This time Logan just spun him around and wrapped him in a bear hug, restraining Grant’s squirming sinewy body in his powerful arms.
They remained glued together, both breathing hard. Although this was not exactly a warm brotherly hug, it was the closest the two had come physically in more than twenty years. Logan wondered if they would ever be this close again. “Oh, Grant,” he said softly, refusing to release his brother.
Grant felt tears spring to his eyes as hopelessness enveloped him. He would never win. He would never be free of the harmful hold his family had over him. He had already lost his career, his freedom, his dignity, and now they’d taken Sophie away from him as well—and that was a loss he simply could not sustain. No wonder she’d looked at him with such terror. She now knew he was one of them.
“Let me go,” Grant begged, dismayed to hear his voice cracking. He took a deep breath and promised, “I won’t fight you anymore.” He had lost his will to fight. It was useless.
Logan weighed his options before reluctantly releasing his hold. Grant put some distance between them, and rested his shoulder against the living room wall.
“I hope you fought better than that in Gurnee,” Logan said. “It’s a wonder you didn’t get killed. Of course, you did have Dad to protect you in there.”
Grant sniffed. “How could you?” he pleaded, turning to look at Logan, sounding much younger than his thirty years. “How could you put me in there, with him?”
Logan looked down, his head bowed by shame. While going to prison for a three-year stretch was a horror for any man, only Grant would experience the additional devastating betrayal: Logan’s botched blackmail attempt force
d his baby brother to cohabit with their abusive father in Gurnee.
Daring to meet those wounded light-blue eyes, Logan muttered, “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but I am truly sorry. I never meant for you to be inside with him.”
Grant yanked his head to the side, angrily breaking their gaze. He twisted his hands in front of him, trying to ward off the images of intense charcoal eyes staring him down, threatening to drown him.
In a quiet voice Logan asked, “Did he hurt you?”
Drawing a shuddering breath, Grant felt shame flush his face. The pressure of handcuffs encircling his wrists, the kind gray-haired doctor sitting next to his bed, the empathic embarrassment of the psychiatrist’s words: You were catatonic, Mr. Madsen. And you, um, well, you had urinated all over yourself in the cell.
Darkly Grant confessed, “Let’s just say you’re not the only one who needed therapy.”
Logan smirked. “Oh, that’s how you met Sophie, then. She was your shrink too?”
“No! She lost her psychologist license. Because of you! You ruined her career.”
Logan’s face fell. He felt waves of hostility from his brother. Hostility that was well-deserved.
There was a tiny trace of jealousy in Logan’s voice as he ventured, “So how did you meet?”
Grant shook his head disgustedly. “We have the same parole officer. We met outside his office.” Watching Logan absorb this explanation, it suddenly dawned on Grant that if not for Logan forcing him to pull that job and get arrested, he would have never met Sophie. Logan was the reason he’d found the love of his life. And now, Logan was the reason he’d lost the love of his life.
His steely eyes set with resentment, Grant seethed, “We were in love. Love! Something you know nothing about, Lo. And now she won’t want anything to do with me—knowing I’m a Barberi, knowing my brother is the man who ruined her.” The wicked sarcasm returned. “Thank you so much, Lo. Thank you for coming here.”
With Good Behavior [Conduct Series #1] Page 29
