“Yeah, and we were friends,” Ray adds. “Until Harry here got all pussy-footed after things got a little too real for him.”
“I never agreed to castrate a grown man, Ray. That was an awful thing you did.”
Ray chuckles. “I didn’t do a thing. You did it.”
I blink. “But you made me do it.”
“I don’t recall holding a gun to your fucking head.”
I swallow. He’s right. My actions are my own. I was pressured into them, but I could have refused. I didn’t feel like I had a choice at the time, but deep down, I’ve always known that I did. That I actively chose to harm an innocent man to impress my friend.
I never did it again. I devoted my life to healing people from that point on.
But now isn’t the time to dwell on the past.
“How’d you get mixed up with Rouge?”
Ray exhales sharply. “The same way anyone does. Right place at the right time. Or, as is the case with some of us, the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“What the fuck does that means?”
He shakes his wrists under my grip. “Let me go and maybe I’ll tell you.”
I roll my eyes. “Tell me, and maybe I’ll let you go.”
He chuckles. “There’s that Brother Harry fire I liked. Where the hell did it go that night? Why’d you have to go all noble out of nowhere?”
“What we did that night was wrong, Ray. You know it, and I know it.”
“We were correcting an injustice.”
“Is that what you’re doing now? Correcting injustices by killing these innocent people?”
Ray scoffs. “Who said anything about killing?”
Jack grabs the plate with the cherry tart on it. “You weren’t going to kill me? Then prove it. Take a bite of the tart.”
“Not hungry.”
“I don’t give a shit.” Jack nudges the plate against Ray’s cheek. “Take a bite of the tart or admit you’re killing people.”
Ray darts his eyes around the room, but a tiny grin soon cracks his face. “Fine. You got me. The tart is drugged. Stuff that’ll knock you out like that.”
“And then, what?” I demand. “You take the body back to Aces and dismember it?”
“Dismember?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. I’ve seen the cooler of organs, Ray. Behind the hidden passageway out of the ladies’ restroom at Aces.”
Ray’s grin widens. “Wow, you two really are little sleuths, aren’t you?”
“Not me,” Jack says. “Harrison figured it out.”
“My girlfriend and I,” I say.
Ray raises an eyebrow. “A girlfriend? Finally got over my sister, did you?”
“I got over her the night we stopped hanging,” I say. “Any person who shared their DNA with you was sure to be just as fucked up in the head.”
