by Alex Grayson
I suddenly feel like crying, which is stupid given what I told him only a moment ago.
Before I can respond, he speaks again.
“I’ll be keeping in touch with Maisy’s doctor. He already knows you’ll both be moving to Malus and has recommended a doctor in San Antonio, who happens to be one of the best nephrologists in the US. He thinks if Maisy keeps improving like she is, she should be well enough to move within a month. I expect no trouble will come from you.”
My back stiffens. The highhanded asshole. One of the first things we did when Judge met her doctor was have him authorized to access her medical care, which allows him any information he may want. I did it because he deserves to have that role. Now it only pisses me off.
I keep my back to him when I grind out between clenched teeth, “No problems.”
“Good. I’ll check on Maisy before getting in the shower.”
The sound of his feet on the hardwood floor echoes in the room. With my body tense and anger heating my blood, I continue to the kitchen, the desire I felt running through me moments ago gone cold.
I STAND OUTSIDE MAISY’S room and listen to Judge read her a bedtime story. He’s reclining against the headboard and she’s on her side with her head on his shoulder and her arms wrapped tightly around one of his. Like she’s holding on to him to keep him from leaving.
He’s on the fourth story. It’s nine fifteen at night and she should have been asleep an hour ago. As angry as I was at Judge earlier when he reminded me about moving, I can’t force myself to go in there and interrupt their time together. Especially knowing they don’t have much of it left.
“He’s good with her.”
I look over my shoulder and see Declan’s eyes trained on the room and the two people on the bed. Turning away from the heartwarming sight, I lean against the wall. As soon as Judge is done, I’ll go and tuck my girl in.
“He is, but I’m surprised you think so. You don’t seem to like him much, despite your adamancy on me telling him about Maisy.”
Declan’s eyes drift down to mine. “He had a right to know.” Guilt churns with his words. “And even if he didn’t, he was needed to help Maisy. Besides, it’s not that I don’t like the guy. I’m just making sure he’s worthy of you both.”
Grabbing my low ponytail, I pull it over my shoulder and fiddle with the end. “And your verdict?”
He looks past my shoulder again, his expression turning thoughtful.
“There’s something there, and I’m not sure what it is. He’s hiding something.” He looks back at me. “But he loves her. There’s no doubt about it. I don’t believe he’d hurt either of you. Actually, I suspect he’d protect you both with his life.” His head tilts to the side, scrutinizing me, and I shift under his gaze. “The question is, is he who you want?”
I glance to the side. Twelve years ago, Judge was all I wanted. He was everything I saw. Every part of my future, I envisioned him with me. I was young and naive back then, unaware of the cruelties of life. I’m wiser now, more experienced and cognizant of how easily life can screw you over.
In a perfect world, I’d grab ahold of Judge and never let him go, just like I told him to do with Maisy. But we don’t live in a perfect world.
I bring my eyes back to Declan. “I don’t know.”
He nods. “That’s understandable. After what he did, it’s no surprise you’re scared.”
I shift so I’m facing him more. “He wants us to move to Malus with him once Maisy is better,” I tell him.
“I figured as much. Are you going to?”
I shrug. “We’ll go for the summer and see how it is. I won’t let him bully me into it though. Maisy comes first, always. If she’s not happy there, then we’ll come back and I’ll deal with whatever he throws at me.”
He gives the end of my ponytail a gentle yank. “I’m going to miss you both. It’ll be too quiet around here with you gone.”
I smile sadly at him. “We may be back.” I laugh lightly. “Hell, you may never get rid of us.”
He shakes his head slowly. “You won’t be back.”
I turn away and look back in the room. I get the sense that he’s right. Judge won my heart the first day I met him all those years ago, and I never got it back. Even now, watching him tuck our daughter into bed, whispering soft words I can’t hear that leave a sleepy smile on Maisy’s face, I want back what we once had. I’m not there yet, but I know I’ll end up giving in to him.
I just hope this time he doesn’t completely crush the heart he holds so easily in his hands.
Chapter Twelve
JUDGE
THIS FUCKING HURTS. A shit ton more than I anticipated. I’m a thirty-eight-year-old man, a man who hasn’t cried since I was a child, a man who’s been through hell and back and has even caused hell for some people, and I have a lump in my throat the size of Texas.
I can deal with my own grief over leaving Maisy, but watching her beautiful green eyes fill with tears damn near has me losing my shit. It’s never sat well with me, seeing a child cry, but witnessing your own child do it…. Fuck, that’s what pain is made of.
I’m at the front door with my bag on the floor at my feet. Maisy has her arms wrapped around my waist in a death grip, her face buried in my lower stomach. Ellie’s several feet away, her hand at her mouth and her eyes glassy with unspent tears. I don’t know if they stem from seeing Maisy so distraught or if it’s because she doesn’t want me to leave. I like to think it’s both.
I haven’t touched Ellie since last week; the day we brought Maisy home. It’s been pure hell being around her, but I’m giving her time. It was a split-second decision; one I knew in the back of my head the whole time but refused to acknowledge until then. Hearing Maisy call me daddy for the first time changed shit for me. It brought back things I thought I’d lost. I wanted it all. I wanted what I never wanted before, except with Ellie. A wife and children. What I told Ellie was the truth. There’s no fucking way I could ever just be a civil co-parent with her. It was stupid to even entertain the idea. I want every soft touch, every silent demand, every warm embrace. Quiet talks in the night, surrounding her body with mine. Waking to morning kisses and evenings at the dinner table. Once I set my mind on something, I don’t give up until I get it. And I want Ellie in every sense of the word.
I snap my gaze away from Ellie when Maisy sniffs. Bending down, I carefully scoop her up, mindful of her stitches. Her arms latch around my neck, her red-rimmed eyes meeting mine.
“You’re breaking my heart, Mase,” I rumble through a thick throat.
“I’m sorry.” She hiccups out a sob, and it leaves another laceration on my soul.
“You’ll be coming to Malus in a few weeks,” I remind her.
Tears drip from her chin onto my shirt as her bottom lip wobbles. “B-but, what if you change your mind? What if you don’t want me?”
I lean my face closer to hers. “That would never happen in a million years. Ever, Maisy.”
“You promise?”
I brush away her tears with the pad of my thumb. “I promise. There’s nothing that could make me not want you. I’ll call you each night before you go to bed.”
“Can we Skype?”
I smile. “We can definitely Skype.”
“Okay.”
She tightens her arms around my shoulders and burrows her face into my neck. Her tears continue to fall, but she’s not sobbing like she was before.
I wait until she pulls back, because there’s no way I can do it myself, before I set her on her feet. She immediately goes to her mom and fastens her arms around her waist. I take two steps toward Ellie, but stop myself before I get too close. If I’m within touching range, there’s no way I’ll be able to hold back from yanking her into my arms. Distance is better right now.
“I’ll call you once I land,” I inform her.
She clears her throat, but it still sounds hoarse. “Thank you.”
Declan steps forward and holds out his hand. I grip it firmly. “Take care of them,” I tell him. We’ll never be best friends, but if I have to leave them in someone’s hands, other than my brother’s, I’d choose Declan.
“Always. Safe flight.”
I run my eyes over Maisy one more time, knowing I’ll see her soon, but still feeling like I’m leaving her forever. I lift my gaze to Ellie, and with a dip of my chin, I grab the handle of my bag, turn, and leave the house. Already, my chest feels hollow as I climb inside my rental car. I don’t look back at the house. If I do and find Maisy or Ellie looking out the window, I won’t be able to leave.
When I pull to the end of their street, I make a right, in the opposite direction that would lead me to the airport. Ellie believes my flight is in a couple of hours, when in actuality, it leaves in five. I have a pit stop to make before I can leave Kentucky.
The address JW sent me a week ago isn’t far from where we lived with Mae and Dale all those years ago, so I know just where to go. According to Patrick, JW’s friend from the academy, the janitor, Jon Benton, is home alone today. His uncle is at his office, trying his best to have the case against his nephew thrown out. Jon’s being monitored with an ankle bracelet and isn’t allowed to leave the house without his uncle and prior approval from the judge. These circumstances aren’t normally given to people who haven’t been convicted yet, but Jon’s uncle is a slick motherfucker. The judge wasn’t going to release him on bail until the uncle made the monitor suggestion.
It doesn’t take long before I’m driving down a tree-lined street. The houses are immense and each sits on at least a couple of acres. A block down from where Jon currently resides, I pull up behind a line of cars. There’s an open house sign in front of one of the houses, which works in my favor because it won’t be strange for my car to be sitting there.
Opening the glove box, I pull out a pair of black leather gloves and stuff them in my back pocket. I get out of the car and pocket my phone and keys before casually making my way down the street, keeping my eyes on my surroundings. A few minutes later, I’m at a long driveway with ivy-covered wrought iron fences on either side. After making sure the only neighbor in viewing range isn’t out in their yard, I walk down the driveway to the side of the house. Finding the panel I’m looking for, I slip on my gloves and disengage the alarm, a nifty trick Emo explained to me over the phone once he found out what security system the house had.
It doesn’t take much to pick the lock. Stepping through the door and into a mudroom, I quietly close it behind me. The house is quiet except for the ticking of a clock and the low hum of the fridge. I hit the garage first and find what I need. Slowly, I make my way through each room, my senses alert. The uncle is definitely loaded. Top of the line appliances, Italian leather furniture, chandeliers that probably cost more than a blue collar’s yearly salary, state of the art electronics, Persian rugs, artwork that looks like shit but probably costs more than a sports car.
After the bottom floor has been covered and there’s no sign of Jon, I approach the wide staircase. I don’t worry about creaking noises. Rich assholes like Quinn Fitzgerald would never have a squeaky staircase.
At the top of the stairs, I can either go left or right. I choose left because it looks like the master suite is in the opposite direction. The first room is an empty bedroom, the second a bathroom, the third a linen closet, the fourth another empty bedroom. The fifth room is where I hit pay dirt. There, naked as the day he was born, is a sleeping Jon.
My steps are silent as I walk to the window and close the curtains. Stopping by the edge of the bed, I sneer down at the nasty fuck. He’s only twenty-eight, but his hair is already thinning and receding. There’s dry crusted cum in the hairs on his paunchy stomach, and an adult magazine lies by his hip. It’s open to a woman on her spread knees, her back arched so her fake tits poke out. One hand cups her breast while the other lies flat on her trim stomach. I curl my lip in disgust when I see what was done to her face.
I flip to the next page and find a man sitting in an office chair. He has a naked woman straddling his lap, bent over so her arms are flat on the desk in front of her, her breasts hanging off the slab of wood. He looks pristine in a business suit, except for the hard prick he’s holding out of the zipper of his slacks.
My eyes flick to Jon when he lets out a loud snore. The hand that has remnants of old cum wipes across his nose.
Disgusting pig.
After his breathing settles again, I turn the page and encounter another fake setup, and then another. Each one is repulsive and spikes my anger more than the last. It’s not the activity of the image that has me slowly losing my control but the faces of the people. Jon has pasted cutouts of his own face over the male model faces and the female model faces now have cutouts of girls. School-age girls. Girls who I can plainly see have mental disabilities. The images aren’t from books or magazines either. They’re cell phone shots that were printed from a home printer.
I’d bet every acre of the oil-rich land in Malus that these girls would be found at the local school Jon worked at.
When I flip to the back of the magazine, a sheet of paper falls out. Bending over, I pick it up. My blood fills with acid as I look over the full printed picture. Jon’s standing naked from the waist down, straddling a pair of legs. The girl’s in a wheelchair, bent over at the waist, while Jon forces his sick dick in her mouth. Her eyes are open wide, fright in their depths. From the way her arms hang limply and her chest sags forward, there’s no mistaking she’s paralyzed. There’s not a damn thing she can do to stop the man from abusing her.
My hands shake as I roll up the magazine. My eyes land on Jon. It’s a fucking shame I can’t draw this out. He deserves so much more than a quick kill. I’m the least brutal of my brothers when it comes to killing sick motherfuckers like Jon, but this time I would have made an exception.
Gripping the rolled magazine, I slam it down against his balls. He jerks up, eyes wide open, screams, and grabs at his junk. He falls to his side, moaning, and curls into a ball. I hold my place, stuffing the magazine and picture in my back pocket, and wait for him to notice me. It doesn’t take long.
Seconds later, realizing something hit him, he rolls to his back, eyes immediately landing on me.
“Who in the hell are you?” he wheezes out, breathing heavily.
“Your worst fucking nightmare,” I growl.
Before he has a chance to even try to get up, I already have my hand around his throat. He’s a small guy. Shorter than I am, with some weight in the middle, but I handle him easily, even with the limited strength from my surgery.
His legs kick out, clipping me on one of my thighs, so I rear back and punch the fuck out of his junk to get him to stop before he can nail me in the stomach. I need to get him to calm down before my strength wanes. His breath whooshes out and he tries to double over. Latching my arm around his neck, I squeeze tight and drag him from the bed. He tries to pry my arm away, but his attempts are feeble. His balls are causing too much pain for him to put up much of a struggle.
I grab the rope I put on the end of the bed and drag him behind me out of the room and down the stairs.
“Wh-what are—”
I tighten my arm around his throat to shut him up.
I come to a stop in the foyer where I saw a beam earlier. With him still in my arms, I wrestle the noose I made in the garage around his neck. My side is beginning to hurt where my incision is, but I manage to throw the rope over the beam and keep a hold of Jon.
Once I have the other end of the rope, I let Jon go, take several steps back, and immediately pull on the slack. It tightens on his neck. He spins around to face me, his hands going to the rope around his neck, but I already have it too tight for him to take off.
“What in the fuck are you doing, man?” he sputters, desperately yanking on the rope.
“If you don’t know the answer to that then you’re more stupid than you look.�
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Not wanting to hear his excuses and pleas, and with my time running out, I yank on the rope hard, ready for this to be done and over with. His feet lift from the ground, and his face turns beet red. He bucks and twists, frantically grabbing at the rope cutting off his oxygen. It’s useless, and from the terrified look in his eyes, he knows it.
Beads of sweat break out on my forehead, and my side screams at me as the rope tries to tug from my gloved hands. Turning with the rope over my shoulder, I slowly walk over to the banister, lifting Jon higher and higher. The resistance in the rope lessens as Jon’s struggles become weaker. I tie it around the banister and turn to face him. His face is purple now, his eyes nearly popping out of his head as he gently sways. Satisfaction soars through me, knowing he won’t ever hurt another innocent person. A normal person would feel remorse, horror, and disgust for taking another’s life. I never do. Not when I’m stopping another helpless victim from being hurt.
I pull my phone from my pocket and snap several pictures. I attach them in an email to myself before deleting them. Fuck if I want them on my phone if someone were to get a hold of it somehow.
I don’t waste any time walking back through the house, stopping by a side table and grabbing a manila envelope I spotted there earlier, and out the back door. My side feels like it’s on fire, but I stiffen my back, regulate my breathing, and keep my steps steady but unhurried as I walk back to my car.
Once I’m inside, the magazine and printed picture get put in the envelope I snagged from inside. I write the address of a local news station on the front and add Jon’s uncle’s address as the return address. The bastard’s dead, and some will think it tragic the way he went. People deserve to know the kind of psycho he was. If given to the police, there’s a chance his uncle would be able to sweep this under the rug. News stations are ruthless and love a good story. It’ll be all over town, and also force the police to investigate further and not let Quinn cover it up.
