“Again.”
Two red stripes of color stood out on Nathan’s cheeks at that.
“If you know that, then you know I… I had some problems a few years ago, with drugs and… everything. It wiped me out financially. I have no savings, no investments, and Rebecca works three days a week fluffing cushions. She couldn’t live on that. Without my wages from the hospital, we’d lose the house. The car. Everything. That’s the only reason that Rebecca ran that man down. To pay off my debt, to protect our family. Our son.”
“What does Shepherd have to do with your son?”
Nathan rubbed his hand through his hair. “Rebecca can’t…. She couldn’t get pregnant, and we couldn’t adopt, not with my past. Not easily. Then she heard from one of her clients that Shepherd could…. He could provide more than drugs. That’s why I got back in touch with him. It wasn’t cheap, but it was cheaper than IVF. And it was a guaranteed result. He’d get us a baby. Hegotus a baby. All it took was money, some favors. Nothing we couldn’t live with until this. Rebecca couldn’t live with this. She thought she could at first, but when she saw what she’d done to that man and…. I want Rebecca to have protection too,” he said. “Immunity for her when she gets better. Otherwise I won’t tell you anything.”
“You already have, Nathan,” Merlo pointed out, not unkindly. “More than you could afford to if you planned to walk out of here with the rest of Shepherd’s secrets. But you knew that wasn’t going to happen when you came in. That’s why Shepherd sent one of his boys to do that to your face, didn’t he? He knew you wanted to come clean, get the guilt off your chest.”
Nathan barked out a harsh laugh and rested his forehead on his fist. “You make me sound brave,” he said. “I’m not. Never have been. I’m just more scared of what Shepherd is going to ask me to do next. Because I’ll do it, do it to pay him off, get him off my back. I’ve done it before.”
Merlo nodded. “Except somehow you always end up deeper in his pockets?”
The hint of sympathy in Merlo’s voice, something closer to fellow feeling than pity, pulled Nathan’s head back up. He stared with desperate eagerness over the table.
“Yeah,” he said. “Every time.”
There it was. The hook had caught. Bass glanced down at his phone as it rattled against his fingers. It was Shepherd again.
Where R U?
The next few days—or it could be weeks, sometimes it could even drag out to months—were the riskiest. Once the net started to close in, Shepherd would be on high alert for signs of disloyalty, even if he didn’t suspect a UC, as his allies saw blood in the water. Yet at the same time, Bass would need to stay close in case Shepherd reacted unexpectedly, and violently, to the applied pressure.
He texted back,Getting laid, as he pushed himself off the wall.
At this point Nathan and whatever incriminating evidence he had was Merlo’s business. If anything came out that Bass needed to know, there were ways to get in touch with him.
“FIFTY THATVille shit the bed,” Mick muttered in an aside to Bass as he passed him a beer. He pointed at Ville with his chin. “That’s the face of someone whose boss isn’t pleased with him.”
That was one way to describe it. Another would be that it was barely a face. Ville’s eyes were puffed up, bruised like blood blisters, and his face was so swollen it looked like raw meat ready to slide off his skull. Bass looked away.
One way or another, Ville had brought this on himself. He’d left Bass to take the rap for something Shepherd had done—bought his way into the bad boy’s good books—and he’d probably done a lot worse over the years between then and now to keep his name in there. That didn’t mean Bass couldn’t feel bad. He set Ville up for this particular beating, and he hadn’t even done it for revenge. It was just useful to have that dissent to keep eyes off him.
“I’ll take that bet,” Bass said as he took a swig of beer. “It looks like Shepherd’s already beaten the sorry into Ville. You gotta show your work for a good object lesson.”
They clinked bottles to seal the bet. Bass took another drink and made himself slouch back against the bar. Nerves crawled under his skin, itchy with adrenaline as he tried to judge the mood.
Most people seemed to be in the same boat, on edge. Sonny, balanced on a crutch under one arm, looked grim as he talked to Fat Boone in the corner. Bass looked them over quickly, registered the guns shoved into the waistbands of their jeans, and turned his attention back to his beer.
“Maybe we’re gonna move against the Albanians,” Bass guessed aloud. He bit the side of his tongue in irritation the second the words were out. People with nothing to worry about didn’t feel the pressure to fill the silence. Mick was content with his beer and whatever he’d picked out from between his teeth as they waited. But now that he’d opened his mouth, he needed to finish the thought. “Get some payback for Sonny and for my fucking love life.”
Mick scratched under his chin. “I heard you still had a soft spot for that doctor.”
“Nothing soft about it,” Bass cracked. The echo of his flirtation with Tag made him feel uncomfortable and sort of dirty for a second as Mick sniggered. “And trust me, he made me pay for it. Literally. You know what new shocks for a Mustang cost?”
Mick leaned his elbows back against the bar. “You know what your problem is, Bass? Gay guys have high standards. The key to a happy house is low expectations. My old lady is happy I buy her a pizza. She doesn’t expect much from me, and I don’t expect much from her.”
Bass gave Mick a sidelong look. It wasn’t something Bass’s dad had ever said, but other than the part about gay guys, it could have been the guiding principle of his life. Don’t expect too much, and you might be happy with what you get.
“I didn’t know you knew so much about the gay dating scene,” he said.
“I watch TV,” Mick said with a shrug. “I got YouTube.”
“Yeah, well—”
Before he had to think of an answer, Shepherd kicked the door to his office open from the inside. It slammed into the wall hard enough to crack the skin of paint and plaster and sagged crookedly from loose hinges. Shepherd stalked out, blood splattered over his white T-shirt and a girl’s long, dark hair tangled around his fist as he dragged her behind him.
