One small mercy? I hadn't killed Cass' father and fed him to him. That would have been all sorts of awkward.
"This is all very horrifying and stuff," Boner said, just this side of serious for a change. "Do you have any idea where this prick is? Asking for a friend. Okay, the friend is me. I have a blade with his name on it."
Cass turned his face to look at him. For a moment I thought he was going to ask Boner not to kill his father.
Instead he pressed his lips together and closed his eyes.
"I don't know. I tried not to pay attention whenever his name came up. It was easier to pretend he didn't exist than it was to wish he was around."
"We understand," I said softly. "He shouldn't be too hard to track down."
He was an important, influential, high-profile man. Finding him would be easy. Getting to him? That was going to be the challenge. One we had to be up to, or this wouldn't end. At least, it wouldn't end well for us.
"We know who we're up against," Archer said. "We know who to look for."
"Yeah. Someone with a shit ton of money," I said. "And a whole bunch of connections, including police connections."
Did Cross know about Getzoff? Or vice versa? I suspected Getzoff didn't. What would he have done if he knew? Trying to arrest someone as powerful as a judge would be career suicide if not physical suicide. That was exactly why men like Forrest got away with too many things. Everyone was too scared to speak out.
Personally, I wasn't too scared to stab him in the balls. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
In fact, the whole situation was strangely satisfying. Now I had an excuse to go after Cass' father for what he did to him and Jules. Judge Forrest Cross left a trail of victims behind him. It was past time for that to stop.
Cass dropped his head. "I feel responsible. If I'd known what he was doing, I could have…"
"How could you have known?" I asked. "Men like him are good at keeping secrets. What matters now is what we're going to do about it."
"You're not going to ask me to reach out to him, are you?" He lifted his head up and looked back at me, his expression pained.
I hesitated for a moment before saying, "Absolutely not. Not if you don't want to."
"Might make it easier to trap him," Boner said, sounding just as unhappy about the suggestion as I was.
"I'm not using Cass for bait," I said firmly.
Even if Getzoff hadn't ended up dead, I wasn't going to throw one of my men to the wolf. No, we'd have to find another way.
"Does Jules know?" Archer asked, directing the question to me.
"I haven't told him yet," I said.
Now I understood why my instincts told me not to say anything. If anyone was going to go off half-cocked and chase after Forrest, it would be Jules. No doubt he'd take the whole thing personally when I explained it to him. Something I wasn't looking forward to, not even a little bit. He was going to lose his shit.
I didn't blame him. If someone said all of this about my father, I'd lose more than my shit. In fact, I had, but that didn't matter right now.
"I should be the one to tell him," Cass said. "He might handle it better if it comes from me."
It was Boner who articulated all of our thoughts by snorting softly.
"He's not going to take it well no matter who tells him. That being the case, can I tell him? I mean, he hates me anyway."
"I don't think he'd believe you," I said honestly. "He'd think you were trying to stir him up."
"He'd only be half-right,” Boner said, pretending to look sulky. "Fine, I'll leave it to you then. But I'll be right there watching. I might even film it on my phone so we can watch it back later."
Cass turned around and snapped, "This isn't funny. I knew my father was an asshole, but I didn't know he was a monster."
Boner didn't flinch. "My father was an absolute monsterandan asshole. So was Harlow's father. Welcome to the 'My Father is a Prick Club.' No wonder we all have issues."
