Ace didn’t strike me as someone at the top of that pyramid.
J:I’m willing to help.
ME:Bored?
J:Angry. Please let me smash something.
“How strange,” a deep voice says, sending a chill down my spine. “I raised you for over a decade, and I don’t remember ever seeing you smile like that.”
My eyes lift slowly to a tall, lean man in a well-tailored business suit. An inky, black sensation spreads through my veins and makes my shoulders tense.
“Hello, Finn,” Jarod Cross says in the raspy voice that won him a hundred awards.
I turn my phone off and face him. “Hello, Dad.”
“Let’s take a ride.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
FINN
A car ride with Jarod Cross never ends well. My brothers have both experienced it and came back scared, shaken, and pissed off.
Now, it’s my turn.
I sit upright, hands at my sides, ready for anything, but Dad says nothing to me.
Eventually, the car rolls to a stop. When I look out the window, I see an empty factory.
Jarod’s driver opens my door, eyes downcast.
My stomach is in knots, and a part of me wants to stay in the comfort of the car, but I force myself to join my adoptive father.
“What is this place?”
“The Aramore Glass Factory.” He gestures for me to walk beside him.
I don’t.
“It’s fine, Finn. You can relax. There are no cameras.”
“Why are we here?”
Jarod squints his eyes against the sun as he stares at the decaying building. “Years ago, this place burned in an industrialaccident. Terrible, really. A lot of factory workers lost their lives. At one point, I believe a few organizations were trying to preserve it as a historic site, but no one really cared.” Dad lifts one shoulder. “The workers were nobodies.”
He speaks about a mass accident so casually that it steals my breath right out of my throat.
“The building was never rebuilt, but Kurosaki bought it. Well, on paper, my record company bought it but… eh.”
“How much of the governor race has Kurosaki been funding?”
“All of it.” Dad twirls a hand that used to be covered in silver rings. “Being a politician isn’t cheap, Finn. Why do you think I was going so hard for the inheritance?”
The ties between my adoptive father and Kurosaki keep going deeper, and it only makes me sick. How can Dad run for governor and pretend to be a moral family man when his soul is this black?
Jarod barks out a laugh. He puts a fist to his mouth to try and stop, but the chuckles seep through his fingers.
“That’s very cute, Finn. I really like this intense face of yours. Your expressions—they’re not over-exaggerated. It’s just a tiny movement of your eyebrows or your eyes slightly narrowing… wow. I could build an entire brand out of you. It’s a pity that face will probably be scarred in some knife fight in a back alley, but alas, you live by the sword, you die by the sword.”
