He looked curious but didn’t stop her. She got up and went down the hall to her room. As soon as she opened the door she saw the vent hanging open. She didn’t have to climb up and look to know that it was gone.
“Shit!” She padded back down the hall to Damien’s room. When he saw her face he said, “It’s in a safe place...with the rest of what I have on my father.”
Chapter 22
“Where is Damien tonight?” Kevin asked his brother. They were all sitting around the table at Jackson’s restaurant...Kevin, Alex, Brad, their sister Sylvie and Jackson.
“He had plans,” Jackson said simply. His eyes were on the door as he said it. Kevin turned around and immediately knew why Jackson had become distracted. Lucas Kramer and his brothers...all five of them had walked in the door. Kramer came over to the table.
“Gentlemen, Sylvie, how is everyone this evening?”
Everyone said “Fine”. Jackson was eyeing Lucas. He’s known him his entire life and he was well aware when Lucas wanted something. Tonight, he had that look. “Have a seat Lucas,” he looked at Lucas’s brothers and said, “All of you, please, join us.”
Lucas sat down next to Jackson; the brothers took the table behind them. “We’ve already eaten, but a drink would be nice.”
Jackson called the waiter over and the men gave him their drink orders.
“It’s quiet in here tonight,” Lucas said, looking around.
Jackson shrugged. “Thursday night is always family night. Word gets around, people stay away.”
Lucas chuckled and said, “Yeah, we have that same effect on our customers at the club when we all get together. We’re such fun people to hang out with that I can’t understand it.”
They all laughed. The waiter brought the men their drinks then and when he was gone Lucas said, “We need to talk about Greg Acosta.”
Something dark flickered behind Jackson’s eyes as he said, “What about him? He’s dead.”
“He’s dead yes, but he had evidence on my family...both of our families that could cause us serious harm. He gave it to that worthless partner of his I’m sure...”
“He’s dead as well.”
“Thank you for stating the obvious.”
Lucas was obviously annoyed. He was one of the few people that could speak his mind freely to Jackson...up to a point. Tonight Jackson let him get away with it, although he obviously didn’t care that Lucas was annoyed. Lucas went on to say, “They’re both dead, but we still don’t have the evidence. One of them gave it to someone.”
“So what are you suggesting, Lucas? My food is getting cold while you beat around the bush.”
Lucas looked pissed but he was still trying to keep it in check. He was smart enough to know when to back off...just a bit anyways. “We need to talk to everyone that either of them knew. We need to spread some pressure around. Someone knows something. Maybe Acosta has a girlfriend who’s walking around with the key to his safe deposit box or maybe he gave it to his mom...or his sister.”
Jackson sat his fork down and wiped his mouth. “What do you think his mother or his sister would do with it if he had given it to them?” His protective instincts were peaked. He was pissed at Paige but he wasn’t ready to throw her under the bus. Lucas would let his heathen son kill her if he thought she had what he wanted.
“I doubt that either of them would even know what they had,” Lucas said, satisfying Jackson that he didn’t know Paige was in town. Lucas went on to say, “Them knowing what to do with it is not the point. The point is that it can’t just be out there floating around.”
“Stay away from New Jersey. Crystal and Paige don’t have anything to do with any of this,” Jackson warned. “And maybe if your stupid ass son had handled this correctly from the beginning...”
Lucas narrowed his eyes and said, “Caine did what he had to do. He’s the one who discovered Acosta had burrowed himself into our family in the first place. He was suspicious of him from the start. If not for him...”
Jackson pushed back his plate and said, “If not for him, what? If not for him, my step-son would still be alive?” Jackson was raising his voice now. He rarely did. It meant that the person he was directing it at should be very afraid.
“Your step-son was going to destroy you. Caine did you a favor!”
Jackson pounded his fist into the table and said, “It wasn’t his place to assume that I wanted him to do me any favors. I should have been the one to handle him, shouldn’t I? I never gave the okay for your fucking son....”
“Watch what you say about my boy...”
“I’ll say whatever I please about your fucked up in the head son who puts more blow up his nose than he sells on the street...”
Lucas jumped to his feet and so did Jackson. Everyone in the room tensed. “You can’t blame Caine for this. He thought he was doing the right thing. He was protecting his family. If you had a tighter rein on your family and your ex’s...”
“Tighter rein? Your fucking son killed my step-son. Maybe I should send one of my sons to kill him.”
“That’s not the same thing and you fucking know it. Greg Acosta was not your blood.”
“His blood was not for Caine to spill without my say so either and you know it. Your son will get his in due time...but first I will find this “evidence” and destroy it.”
“Did you just threaten my son?”
Suddenly all of Lucas’s brothers had guns in their hands. Within half a second, so did every member of Jackson’s family...as well as his bartender, waiter and hostess. Jackson chuckled and looked at the brothers.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “You shoot me and you will never walk out of here alive. You all just need to remember how lucky you are that I consider the Kramer’s as part of my family.”
Lucas looked towards his brothers and nodded. He was a lot of things, but stupid he was not. The guns were put away as quickly as they had come out. Only when the last of the Kramer’s guns disappeared did Jackson’s family and staff put theirs away as well. The tension in the room was palpable as Jackson looked at Lucas and said, “Are we clear that I will handle this?”
“Crystal,” Lucas said.
Lucas was also smart enough to know when to drop a subject when it came to dealing with his old friend. He stayed for one more drink, changing the subject to talk about his construction company and some projects...legitimate ones they’d taken on. Kramer Construction Inc. had taken on the building of some new apartment complexes in the Bronx. He rattled on about how profitable the contract was as if that little bit of money would make a dent in what he made illegitimately. As far as Jackson was concerned, he was trying hard to draw them as far away from the subject of his son as possible. Jackson put up a good front and carried on a conversation with him for another hour or so. It was something he and Lucas had both gotten good at...ignoring the personal issues that consistently plague their friendship. Inside he was still seething. He and Greg might not have been close, but to Jackson he was still family and no one had the right to decide anything about Jackson’s family other than him.
When Lucas and his brothers finally left, Jackson looked at Alex and said, “You need to keep a very close eye on your brother and Paige. Damien is getting too close to her, I’m afraid. He’s not thinking clearly about what the consequences might be if he chooses to betray us.”
He needed to get to whatever it was she had first and send her home. He’d rather Alex roughed her up a bit over Lucas or Caine killing her. Kevin cleared his throat and Jackson’s crystal blue eyes landed on his brother’s face.
“Do you have something to say, Kevin?” Kevin usually always did, when it came to Damien.
“Maybe Damien is doing what he believes you would want him to do...protecting his family.”
“Paige is family,” Jackson said. “But you and I both know that a family member can sever their ties with us by hurting us all in some way. It’s been done before. Paige has the ability to do that with this evidence
Greg had before he died. She can choose to give it to us, or she can choose to suffer the fate that anyone who crosses us will suffer.”
Kevin didn’t make eye contact with his brother; instead he looked down at his drink. Jackson turned his attention back to Alex and said, “Paige didn’t destroy that evidence. She’s too smart for that. But, I think she may have enlisted Damien’s help to hide it. If he’s helping her, he’s betraying me as well. Do whatever it takes to find out where they are hiding it...and I mean whatever.”
“Seriously?” Kevin said.
Jackson’s eyes went back to his brother. Brad and Sylvie were obviously nervous, looking at Kevin like they wished he would shut up. “You’re giving him free rein to do whatever to your son?”
“You’ve seen first-hand what happens when my “son” defies me.”
“Unfortunately I have,” Kevin said with disgust. “For all that you spout about family, I’m not so sure you even know what it means sometimes.”
Jackson set his jaw tight. He was trying to control himself but his brother was pushing the boundaries of his patience. “You don’t want to be the one sticking up for Damien if he has crossed the boundaries Kevin.”
Kevin didn’t say anything but the look on his face spoke volumes. The others in the room knew there was something more going on between the two men than they were saying. Jackson and Kevin exchanged a look that said this wasn’t over and then both of them let it drop. Jackson was the only one who noticed the look on Kevin’s face when Alex got up and went out the door.
Chapter 23
Paige wanted to trust Damien with the evidence. She wanted to believe that he wouldn’t cave in to the pressure that Jackson would put on him if he ever found out that Damien had it. She wanted to believe that when the time came to bring both the Paine’s and the Kramer’s down...Damien would be ready to do the right thing. Unfortunately, she’d seen the scars that Jackson was willing to inflict on his own son to stay in power. She wanted to trust Damien, but with that working against him, she didn’t.
Damien was in the shower and Paige was in her room getting dressed while all of this was running through her mind. She wanted...needed to bring Jackson Paine and Lucas Kramer and their families to their knees...but she didn’t have the power to do that just yet. She did however have the power to exact her revenge on Caine. She thought about the things he did to her the last time she worked. She shuddered. He wasn’t going to have her again. Tonight was the night. It was time for him to pay for what he did to her brother and to her. She tried not to think too often about Greg. It broke her heart that these scums had tainted her memories of her brother. Each time she thought about him, it ended up with her in a puddle of tears as she imagined what his last hours must have been like. Greg’s life had really not been good since he was twelve and their father died. He and Paige had each other, but Greg had such a hard time dealing with their father’s death. When Crystal told them she was marrying Jackson, Greg was fourteen. That’s a defiant age anyways...but the fact that she was marrying this man and moving them away from the only home they’d ever known...the home they’d shared with their father...it was too much for him to accept. He resented his mother, believing she owed his father better than to remarry the first man that came along...and he hated Jackson from day one. Greg did his best to avoid Jackson at all costs. He never trusted him and he always believed that the men that came in and out of their home that his step-father called “business associates” were a part of something much more sinister. When he was eighteen, he started dating a woman who worked for Jackson’s company. Pillow talk happened and that was how Greg found out the truth about him. The first thing he did was talk to Paige about it. They both agreed that he had to tell their mother. When he did, Crystal laughed and told him his imagination was working overtime. That only made Greg angrier and more resentful of his own mother. A year later when Crystal caught him with another woman and finally left, Greg was not sympathetic. Paige and Crystal had managed to work through all of that...kind of. They at least had some sort of relationship. Greg and Crystal had never been the same and she knew her mother sorely regretted that now. Wiping away the single tear that escaped down her face, she went over to her backpack and took out a little tube of Tylenol. She opened it up and let the few pills fall out in her hand. There was one that was just a little bit bigger than the others, barely discernable to the naked eye...but Paige had looked at it over and over again. It was a lot more sinister than it looked. When Paige was in her second year of medical school she worked for a doctor who was a research scientist in a lab where formulas for pharmaceuticals were experimented with and improved upon. It started out as a class project and then turned into an internship and finally a job. She worked with him for one whole semester and she learned more than she’d ever bargained for. She also became close to the doctor, even dating him for a while. He trusted her enough to let her in on his biggest secret...he was working on a synthetic form of succinylcholine that could be absorbed orally. If he was successful, he could very well be on track for a Pulitzer Prize. Paige was excited to be in on it and she even put in extra hours in the evenings working on it with him. As it is now, the drug is used in operating rooms and even as one of the drugs in the cocktail used for lethal injections. It can only be absorbed by the body in its liquid state when introduced intravenously into the body. Steve, the doctor had found a way to stabilize the drug so it would retain its potency and half-life in its oral form. His only reason for not introducing it to the public yet was that in some of the trials he’d done with monkeys in the lab...the primate had died. Before Paige left New Jersey she’d gone to see him. She’d been broken up with him for over a year, but they’d remained friends. She suspected that he was still in love with her...and even though it made her feel slightly guilty, she decided to use that to her advantage. They had lunch and then she’d gone back to the lab with him and he’d excitedly talked to her about his experiments and he’d told her then that the pills were, “almost ready” to be presented to the FDA for human trials. He was more excited about his work with the succinylcholine than he had been about anything in his life. That along with the way he felt about her were what led to her being able to talk him into letting her have just one pill. She was honest with him about what happened to Greg and she described what she knew about both the Kramer’s and the Paine’s to him. He wasn’t readily convinced...but with a little bit of persuasion and guiltily playing on his feelings for her, Paige left the lab that day with one of the pills. Her big selling point was telling him they might be coming after her next. That was really stretching the truth...but she would do what it took to end these people no matter what. The succinylcholine would paralyze an adult within minutes after taking it, rendering them unable to move or speak...but still conscious. The effects were short-lived and the medication didn’t stay in the system long enough to be detected by an autopsy. It was perfect for her plans.
She wanted Caine alive long enough to know that he was about to die, and why. She put the pills in her purse and took out her phone. She scrolled through her contacts and found the number of “Jules.” Jules was the one Tommy told her to call if she needed anything. She had the know how to do what she was planning and the Suc...but the rest of the supplies weren’t something she’d have easy access to. That would be where Jules comes in. Tommy told her that he told Jules about her and that she would probably be calling. She could trust her. She sent a text that said, “This is Paige. I’m ready. Can you meet me at Java Heaven on 7th Avenue?” A few seconds later she got a text that said, “When?”
“Twenty minutes?”
“Okay.”
“How will I know you?”
“I’m wearing a red sweater. When you see me, smile and say, “Nice day isn’t it?”
Paige felt strange playing at all of this cloak and dagger but she agreed. She looked at her watch. It was eleven forty five. She went to the bathroom where Damien was showering and stuck her head inside.
> “Hey, I’m going to run down to the deli and get us some sandwiches and coffee for lunch.”
“Okay. If you wait a few minutes, I’ll go with you.”
“No. Your leg is still a little swollen. You need to stay off of it. I won’t be long.”
She was relieved when Damien didn’t argue with her. She hurried out while he was in the shower though, just in case he changed his mind.
Paige walked the three blocks to the deli. When she got there, she was disappointed to see there were only three men there...no Jules. She stepped up to the counter and ordered two black coffees and two turkey sandwiches. She looked around while she waited. One of the men was sitting at a table alone was wearing a red sweater. But “Jules” was a woman...wasn’t she? She tried to remember if Tommy ever said it was a male or female. She couldn’t really recall him saying. She felt really stupid as she walked over near the man’s table. As she passed, he looked up at her and she smiled and said, “Nice day, isn’t it?”
The man smiled back and said, “Yes Paige, it is. Would you like to join me while you wait?” Relieved, Paige sat down at the table. “Jules, I presume?”
He grinned. He was a lot younger than she would imagine for a guy who was purported by the NYPD to be able to get “anything” anyone needed in the city. She briefly wondered if he was a good guy or a bad guy by trade. She decided it didn’t matter and she didn’t care.
“That’s me. You thought you were looking for a woman, didn’t you?”
“I have to admit that I did. How did you know?”
“Common mistake. What can I get for you, Paige?”
Paige handed him the list. He looked at it and raised an eyebrow. Nodding slowly he said, “I can handle this. You’ve thought this through?”
“Completely,” she said, simply, “Can you do this for me?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
“I leave for work around seven p.m. Can you have it that soon? I put the address of the building I’m staying at on the bottom there.”
House of Paine - (A Romantic Suspense - Book 1) Page 13
