“And what do you think the media is going to say if she goes missing? Shows up floating in the river? All eyes are going to be on me. No one gives a fuck if one of the junkie whores goes missing. But a mother of three who just so happens to be my ex-wife? You don’t think that’s going to look suspicious or raise some questions? You know we don’t need that right now.”
Panic pounded through my veins. Rage jumped in to take a ride, too.
Lawrence straightened his tie. “Car accidents happen every day.”
“That’s the mother of my children you’re talking about.”
“Who is a liability. She will do anything to get custody of her children, including hire my fucking attorney. She’ll throw you under the bus faster than you can say go. Last chance, Reed. Get her back here by the end of the month or I will take matters into my own hands.”
Vomit climbed my throat when I realized it was the last day of the month.
Thanksgiving gone without me even realizing it.
“Just like I had to do with Dear Industries,” Lawrence continued.
Dear Industries.
My mind started to spin. I’d heard that company name before.
My chest tightened, and dread sank to the pit of my stomach when I realized from where.
It was the last documents I’d signed off on.
Documents that made it look like Lawrence had legitimately taken over a business when it’d amounted to little more than a heist.
Documents that had come from a fake man’s name with a fake social security number from a fake bank account with a huge transaction of cash that I’d filtered into some of his more legitimate companies.
One I’d forged as legit.
“My accountant went through those numbers a hundred times,” Reed growled. “The numbers are good. Nothing is ever going to come out exact. A few dollars aren’t going to kill anyone.”
“I wouldn’t call five hundred thousand dollars a few dollars. And I’m pretty sure that it would.” The implication rode on the air, so palpable between the two of them I could feel it from where I sat.
“I won’t be stolen from. I don’t give a fuck who you are. Not to mention, you overdrew on Williamstown by two million. You had a deadline. Now I will take back what is mine.”
Williamstown.
My head spun.
That was the name of the rundown apartment complex where my mother and I had lived when I’d met Bennet. When he’d taken me in and given me a job and treated me like a son, when really, he had been suckering me into his shady business that I’d been too naïve to see at the time.
Petty theft and sifting through people’s garbage cans hardly amounted to my being shrewd enough to grasp the full extent of the debased wickedness and corruption and greed.
Evil.
Bennet had owned that building.
God.
What a fool I’d been.
I’d buried my head in the sand and stupidly believed that Lawrence had stumbled upon me outside that complex.
Noticing that I was half starved and wholly desperate.
I’d thought him a powerful businessman who would own half of the city.
Realization slammed me.
What the fucker had been doing was running a prostitution ring.
One my mother had gotten involved in.
Sickness twisted my guts into a thousand knots.
Was that why we’d gone there in the first place? Was that why she’d packed us up and promised me we were starting a new life when, in reality, she was driving right to her demise?
Dead six months later.
Because of me.
Forever and ever. Her voice spun through my mind.
You left me, mine whispered back.
Did I really think I was any better?
I’d dived right into the middle of it, sucked under, never let up for air until it was the only thing I breathed.
I’d become the devil. Just like these two.
No fucking better.
My pen and my voice had been my weapon.
I was nothing but a flimsy piece of paper that amounted to a cover for the disgusting empire Lawrence had built.
“I needed that money for the campaign.” Reed’s voice was twisted in his own kind of hatred. “You know the deal. I get the guns here and you get me the money.”
My mind immediately flashed to the picture Grace had been able to smuggle out of Reed’s house.
Down on the dock.
The Dearborne money came from imports and exports. The reason his great grandfather had settled in Charleston to begin with.
It all crashed over me.
How deep this went. What was happening.
I shot to my feet while the video was still playing, a clatter of footsteps echoing across the floor as Mallory ran into the room. “Daddy, can we go to the movies?”
Both men jerked away from the other. Reed’s expression showed nothing but annoyance. “I’m working, Mallory. Go back in the kitchen.”
“But, Dad—”
“Go!”
Go.
Yeah, fucker, you could count on it. Because I was already running out the door.