“Your father…” I trail off, not sure how to outright ask if it’s really his father that makes him do terrible things or if a part of him really is savage.
“Is not a good man,” he finishes for me.
I bite my lip.Not a good mandoesn’t even come close. I thought Jax wasn’t a good man—what kind of man knows that strangulation is the cleanest type of murder? But now that I’ve met his father, I realize how wrong I was. Jax isn’t cruel. Or sexist. And I could never picture him raising a hand to his child. Killing his kid’s bully? Sure. But he would never hurt his child. That’s a type of evil that Jax doesn’t have in him. I know that for sure, even if my judgment of character hasn’t been the best.
“Did you really get your law degree?” I ask.
“And passed the bar.” He doesn’t open his eyes.
“Then why not… do that? Be a lawyer instead of—”
“A criminal?” he supplies.
I wince and shut up. I’m not trying to make him feel bad, at least not right now. He had a gun to his head earlier. I don’t need to add to his shit. The fire crackles in the suspended silence until he finally sighs.
“Because that’s what James wants me to be.”
I furrow my brows. So itishis father who has made him into this. But who cares what that prick wants? “Just because he’s your father doesn’t mean you have to do what he says,” I say softly, and then snort. “What’s he gonna do? Have you killed? You’re his son.”
I’m pretty sure that abusive parents like keeping their kids close so they can continue to take out their anger on them. Atleast, that’s what that one book I bought on psychology when I thought I would be able to go to college had said.
Jax’s jaw goes taut, and I swear I can hear the gnash of his teeth.
“There’s worse things than death,” he says before blowing out a breath. “Have you ever heard of Don McAvoy?” he asks.
The name tickles something in the back of my mind, and I suddenly remember a guy at Bell’s. He was going on and on, wanting me to turn up the news on the box TV mounted to the corner of the ceiling. There was a scandal, some political bullshit I couldn’t care less about, but the guy was a good tipper, so I turned it up and let it drone on for an hour while he drank.
“Wasn’t he the district attorney who was taking bribes?” I make sure I have it right.
“That man never took a bribe in his life.” Jax scoffs.
“But… he’s in prison for doing just that,” I say, sure that the news had said the evidence was damning.
Jax shrugs. “You don’t cross James Landon.”
I give a halfhearted eye roll. “He can’t be that powerful.”
“His reach is farther than you can imagine, Kira.” He finally opens his eyes to pin me with a stare. “Governor Kane? They play golf every Sunday. And Kane is a nobody compared to some of the people James has in his pocket. If James knows your name, he owns you.”
I suppress a shudder at what he’s implying. “You don’t really think he’d have you locked up?”
“It’s what he does best.” He’s quick and matter-of-fact. “You don’t know how many innocent people are rotting in prison because James decided they crossed him.”
The image of iron bars slamming shut flashes in my head. I picture men pacing in small cement boxes, years carved off their lives for crimes they never committed. My stomach knots, and it takes me a moment to speak, my voice a whisper.
“If he won’t let you practice law, then… what did you do to cross him?”
Jax’s face creases in pain. “I loved my mother.”
Nix mentioned once that Caleb’s mother had passed, and even though I don’t know the history, Jax’s answer drops like an anchor, hooking into my heart and pulling me down with it. I can only imagine the kind of abuse Mrs. Landon faced living with a man like James. And I have no doubt that Jax witnessed it.
I want to say something to make it better, but every word I can think of feels too small. So instead, I inch closer, close enough that my forearm brushes against his ribs. For a while, neither of us speaks, and I let the warmth of his body bring me back to the surface.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be more comfortable?” I finally ask. “Jeans can’t be comfy.”
A slow grin spreads across his face, bright in the dim, and it makes my stomach flip in the most inconvenient way. “Do you want me to take them off?”
A heat instantly swirls in my lower stomach, sinful and traitorous. “That’s not… that’s not what I meant.”
