“I’m at the Luciano house now. Send me what you have and I’ll tell Sylvester.”
“Perfect,” she beamed on the other line, oddly happy, considering. The girl hadn’t been truly happy since Tessa had made her return. “We still on for dinner later?”
“Yeah, I’ll pick you up at five.”
“Great.” After we exchanged goodbyes, the call ended and she texted me the doctor’s information. A quick search online showed he was, in fact, a doctor in the city, but that didn’t mean a thing.
So many people in this damned city were corrupt. The politicians, the police; why wouldn’t doctors also be included in that number? Tessa had money. Surely she’d squirrelled some away when she was with Vance. She definitely could have enough to pay off a doctor and get him to lie on any sort of test.
Speaking of the devil himself, Sylvester strolled into the kitchen right then, carrying a file. He spotted me and Viper instantly. “Big Mike,” he said. “I was hoping you were still here. You want to take a look at this before I have Lola send it all to your girl?” The suit-wearing man tossed the file onto the counter near me, and I grabbed it and flipped it open.
“What’s this?” I asked, flipping through the papers in the file. Pictures, some fuzzy, some not so fuzzy. A small house. An old truck. And then a person. Who? Jason, who we now knew as Jason Miller.
“Was able to dig some stuff up once we got his last name,” Sylvester said, running a hand through his blond hair as he watched me go through the file. Viper stood beside me, peering around me, just to be nosey.
“Summarize it for me,” I told him.
“Jason Miller made a name for himself out in Montana. Small town. Apparently he moved in and helped turn the town’s prospects around. The town had a bit of a gang problem, which he helped stop by basically taking over the gang and helping its members find real employment and providing a social safety net in the form of a family. He’s been in scuffles with the police a few times, got arrested here and there, but nothing ever stuck. Everyone there knows who he is, and they stay out of his business, knowing he’s got a mini-army behind him.”
Hmm. Not what I would have guessed, but then again, I didn’t put that much thought behind it.
“It’s probably not what you want to hear, but he doesn’t sound like a bad guy,” Sylvester said what I was thinking.
That was what I was worried about. If he was a bad guy, we could have fixed him like we fixed all our other problems—we could’ve killed him. Killed him and ended it just like that. But, of course, Jason had to be in an apparent league of his own, which meant I didn’t know how we’d deal with him.
Maybe we wouldn’t. It sounded as though Jason was hesitant to continue helping Tessa now that he knew the full truth.
I shut the file and pushed it back toward him. “Laina just called. She got the doctor’s name.”
Sylvester nodded once. “Send it to me. I’ll see what I can do.” He picked up the folder and turned around, exiting the kitchen and thereby leaving Viper and I to our drinks.
Beside me, my brother asked, “Does that change anything? I mean, we could still get rid of the guy, couldn’t we?”
We could, but… somehow I knew Laina would never go for that, and if I went behind her back and rid the city of Jason for her without asking, she’d get pissed. She might not ever forgive me, and that thought terrified me more than I would ever admit.
No. Laina was everything to me. We were on the same team. Unless she told me to put a bullet in Jason’s head, I’d have to hold back. Besides…
If I knew Laina like I thought I did, I was pretty damn sure killing the guy was the last thing she wanted to do.
Chapter Fifteen – Jason
I thought long and hard about it, but when Thursday rolled around, I decided to give Tessa a call and have her meet me in one of the clubs downtown. Not one of those ones where it’s full of alcohol and bodies grinding together; one of the gentlemen’s clubs. This one was called Gilded Rose. When I arrived, I realized it was the same club where Laina had confronted her and gotten her to tell the truth.
Huh. How ironic that I would choose the same club without meaning to.
Semi-dim lighting lit the way as I strolled in. For once I wore a shirt whose sleeves covered most of my tattoos; some clubs like this were suit and tie, but thankfully they let me in. It was late in the afternoon. Some patrons were sipping drinks and smoking cigars. I walked right past them to an empty table, and when a waiter came up to me asking if I’d like anything, I waved him off.
The stage front and center in the back of the club was empty; I could imagine someone up there, singing and maybe playing the piano, giving the whole place a roaring twenties kind of vibe. Based on the interior decorating, I’d say that was what the owner was going for.
I could not get what Laina showed me out of my mind. Speaking with Kieran was only another nail in the metaphorical coffin. I… I was almost ashamed to admit I never thought Tessa could be lying to me about any of it. The way she’d danced around the subject, told half-truths, I knew something was off, but I didn’t anticipate the level of lies to be that deep.
Some things you could never go back on. Some things, once done, could never be taken back. Trying to have your own flesh and blood killed was one of them. Truly, I didn’t know shecould sink down to that level, be the kind of person that level of scheming required.
She had more of her mother in her than I thought—not a complement. Way back when, I used to think Nora was my one and only. Tessa was an accident, but we did our best with her even though we were still kids. Kieran wasn’t exactly planned, but we were in a much better place when he was born… or so I’d thought.
The truth? The truth was Nora wasn’t the kind of woman who wanted to stick around. She didn’t want what I could give her, so she left, and in the process of leaving and abandoning the three of us, she’d proved to me she wasn’t who I’d thought she was.
Now Tessa had seemingly followed in her mother’s footsteps. Not something to be proud of—and that said nothing about her being okay with ordering Kieran to make a girl disappear.
