“She didn’t do anything!” I shouted and instantly regretted it. The shouting caused a horrible pressure in my head that had me swallowing back a mouthful of rising bile.
Pain aside, no fucking way was I going to keep lying here like a little bitch at Jeffers’s feet. Grabbing the side of the couch, I held my breath and pulled myself into a sitting position. The first thing I noticed, other than Jeffers’s same tired expression he always had when speaking to me, was that I felt unusually light. It took me half a second to realize I’d been stripped of my weapons.
Above me, Jeffers sighed. “We’ve got rules, you know we have rules for a reason. I let you break them, but just because I let you do whatever the fuck you want doesn’t mean everyone else can.”
I glared up at him, wishing I were at full strength. “I’m fucking her, Jeff,” I spat out. “I’ve been fucking that crazy bitch of yours for years. Now I’m not and she’s pissed off. That’s what this is. That’s all this is.”
I didn’t get the reaction I was expecting. Jeffers’s jaw didn’t go slack, his eyes didn’t widen, nothing about him seemed surprised or shocked by my revelation. He just continued to sit there with the same tired look on his face.
“Did you hear me?” I asked. “Did you hear what the fuck I said?”
He nodded. “Loud and clear,” he said quietly.
I stared at him, wondering what the fuck the punch line was. Did he not believe me?
“I’m not stupid,” he eventually said. “You think I didn’t know?”
I sat there for a moment simply absorbing his words. Jeffers knew. He fucking knew and had done nothing. What the fuck?
“You’re wondering why I didn’t kill you?” Snorting softly, he shook his head. “You’re all I got left, Adler. The only goddamn family I have left, and she’s ... she was the only person who made me feeling anything after ...” He stopped and looked away. “She’s a fucking basket case. I knew that from the beginning, but it was part of her appeal. Always talking, so much energy, always wanting something from me. I could hardly think straight around her, and I needed that, needed not to be thinking.”
I didn’t know what the fuck to say to that. On one hand, I felt guilty as all hell.He knew, he fucking knew this whole time and never said a word.But on the other hand I felt like punching his teeth out. What the fuck was wrong with him? So I changed the subject.
“What’s the charge against Autumn?”
Jeffers’s brow raised. “Turns out Joe’s been running his own businesses on the side, women and drugs, all profits going directly in his pocket. Took him down this morning.”
My fists clenched. “What the fuck does Autumn have to do with Joe?”
“Funny thing,” Jeffers said. “Didn’t take much coercing to have him give up the names of everyone involved. He named you and her.”
I knew there was no way Joe would have even known her name. This was Liv’s doing; I was sure of it. Still, I cursed myself for ever bringing her to his place. Just the fact that she’d been there while I’d handed over the ingredients I’d known were going to be used to make Joe’s own brand of post-apocalyptic meth was enough to implicate her
“Then why aren’t I locked up and waiting to be tossed to the dogs?”
Jeffers continued to stare at me, his expression stoic. “You know I’d never let anything happen to you. And it’s pointless to put you in the pits or the cage. You’d enjoy it too much.”
“Jeff,” I growled, and then paused, realizing I suddenly wasn’t above begging. Not if it meant Autumn wouldn’t be tossed into the cage. “Just give her to me. We’ll leave, and we won’t come back.”
He didn’t even stop to think about it. Shaking his head, his expression turned grim. “Rules, Adler, there are rules. If we don’t enforce them, all hell breaks loose. You think I like this shit? I fucking hate it. But fear is the only thing keeping these assholes in line anymore. You know this.”
Somehow I managed to stand. Dizzy and nauseated, I grabbed the arm of the couch and bent down over Jeffers, bringing us eye to eye.
“There is no proof she had anything to do with it,” I bit out. “You’re just accepting Joe’s word over mine.”
Jeffers took hold of my face, one hand on each side of my head. “I may love you like a brother,” he said, “but I damn well don’t trust you.”
Ripping free of his grip, I staggered backward and fell heavily onto a sofa. Several minutes ticked by, neither of us speaking until I gritted out, “Now what?”
Jeffers shrugged, a gesture that from someone else would tell me he couldn’t care less about what happened to Autumn, but Jeffers had never been cold. And I could plainly see the devastation in his eyes as he stared back at me.
Jeffers gestured toward the door. “Now we go down to the pits and you pray she survives.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Autumn
The smell, oh God ...the smell.
