Chapter 13

CHAPTERTHIRTEEN

“Damn, Jane,” I said around a mouthful of chicken enchilada. “I thought your fish tacos were heaven but I was wrong. This is.”

I was not blowing sunshine.

The woman could cook.

“Thanks.”

It was a shy murmur.

Forty-eight hours in and already I could call it.

The “it” being Jane’s responses to something I’d said.

She was confident and she was sure of herself if the topic was anything to do with her adult life. She was proud and showed it when I’d asked her about when she moved to Moscow to attend University of Idaho. She had no issues expressing her opinions about what she wanted for her future. That future being the same as her present; boring, friendless, and alone. It was only when I complemented her she became shy.

The mystery that was Jane Morgan had been solved.

There was no complicated relationship with her brother because there was no relationship. There were only complicated emotions from a sister who loved the boy who had protected her but who hated the man he’d become.

She was not confident or sure of herself, though she thought she was and pretended to be because no woman who was self-assured got shy and borderline timid when someone reminded them of how great they were. They took the compliment in stride and didn’t dip their heads to break eye contact. They stood proud in the knowledge that the other person recognized the accomplishment—big or small.

And lastly a woman who truly understood her worth wouldn’t settle for a lonely existence. She wouldn’t settle—period. She’d know down to her bones she deserved more and she’d fight to get it.

“May I ask you a question?” she asked, sitting opposite of me at the table yet not meeting my gaze.

As much as I wanted to tell her to look at me, I let it slide, but only because I knew she was feeling shy.

“Sure.”

I took another bite and waited.

When she didn’t speak, I looked up from my half-eaten enchiladas and gave her my attention.

“Babe?”

“It’s…ah…personal,” she stammered and I smiled.

“I see you think I need that warning or maybe I have something to hide so you’re giving me an out. But I don’t, so just ask.”

“It’s about your dad.”

Well, that explained why she was nervous.

“I don’t have a dad.”

“I mean—”

“I know what you meant,” I cut in to save her from an unnecessary explanation. “And my answer’s the same. I don’t have a dad. My mother’s husband knocked her up, stuck around for a few years, then decided a wife and son was not something he was interested in having so he took off.”

I went back to my dinner thinking that would be the end of it.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

“Nothing to be sorry for. I’m not dodging your question. There’s just nothing to say. My mother has an ex-husband who didn’t pay a dime of child support or alimony though he’d been ordered to do both since up until he left she was a stay-at-home mom. To avoid paying those I can only assume he either worked under the table, which I find unlikely since he was an accountant when he was married to my mom and made good money so he’d want to keep doing that, or bought a fake social and worked that way, or he died. Don’t know, don’t care beyond my mom had to work herself sick when I was a kid. I care a fuck of a lot about that. But she’s good now and that asshole’s been a ghost for over forty years so there’s no sense in giving him headspace he doesn’t deserve.”

“It’s that easy for you?”

“Is what that easy?”

“Not giving your dad headspace,” she clarified.

“Baby, get this—I don’t have a dad. I have no real memories of him. Don’t know for a fact, I’ve never spent any time around three-year-olds, but my guess is, I wasn’t even speaking in complete sentences when he bounced and left my mother—his wife. But even if he’d stuck around for longer and I remembered him I still wouldn’t claim the man as my dad. A dad sticks. A dad teaches his child. A dad loves his son. A dad provides for his son. The asshole who had a part in making me bailed on his child and his wife. He’s no father, certainly not a dad, and he’s not the kind of man I want to know. So, no, it’s not that easy. It is what it is and I have more important things to give my time and energy to.”

Jane used the prongs of her fork to push around the bits of chicken left on her plate.

“I wish I could do that,” she admitted.

I couldn’t bring myself to explain to her the reasons why she couldn’t. She hadn’t moved past the hurt. She hadn’t given up hope that Zeus would magically turn back into Trevor. Logically she knew her father was an evil motherfucker but her heart still longed for a dad.

“What did Trevor say to you today that set you off?” she asked.

I’d been waiting for her to ask and I was surprised it had taken all day for her to do it. I was also grateful because I didn’t want to discuss her dickhead of a brother.

“Nothing worth repeating.”

“He said he was going to tell my father our marriage was fake,” she wrongly guessed.

That would’ve pissed me off.

Zeus telling me he was going to deliver Jane to their father personally didn’t piss me off, it gave me an itchy trigger finger and burn-his-compound-to-ash vibes.

“No.”

I got no more out when she guessed again.

“He said he’d take me to Montana and give me to Satan.”

Fuck.

I contemplated lying but instead asked, “Why would you think that?”

“Because that’s Trevor. When he’s backed into a corner he loses his mind. When he feels like he’s been disrespected he lashes out. And just so you know, you don’t have confirm I’m right because I know. You might not outright lie to me and I get that you think you’re protecting me by being cagey but I know who Trevor is. I’ve always known that one day there was a chance he’d turn on me.”

In an effort to contain the urge to find my phone and make a call that would end Zeus’s miserable life I went back to eating.

“Davis?”

I swallowed then said, “Need a minute, baby.”

Apparently I needed more than a minute to get myself under control. The rest of my food was gone, though I didn’t taste a single bite I took. Another reason to make the call, I’d missed out on the rest of heaven on a plate in the form of Jane’s chicken enchiladas.

“He will not get to you,” I told her.

“I know.”

She knows?

Maybe she didn’t understand the fullness of what I was saying.

I rested my elbows on the table and pinned her with a stare.

“He won’t get anywhere near you. Neither will Satan. This is done for you.”

“I don’t know about done. I don’t think it ever will be but I know neither of them will come near me as long as I’m married to you.”

If I hadn’t already been thinking of ways to convince her to stay married to me while I dated her and we explored what was going on between us, that would’ve done it.

My phone rang and I knew it was mine—even though earlier I learned that we had the same ringtone—because hers was in my backpack and turned off.

“I need to get that,” I told her before I pushed away from the table. “Leave the dishes. I’ll do them when I’m off the phone.”

“I can—”

“Leave ‘em baby. You cook. I clean.”

“Okay.”

I tagged my phone off the coffee table, saw it was Wilson, and braced.

“Yo.”

“We got a problem.”

Fuck.

“A new one or did the old one escalate?”

“New, mixed with the old,” Wilson said then went on to elaborate. “Brasco called. High school girl in Post Falls killed herself. Since the suicide was in Post Falls it’s a different department. Brasco read about it in the paper, recognized the girl from the pictures Zeus is using as blackmail. He called the detective that caught the case. Found out the girl left a note. All it says is ‘I’m sorry’.”

“Fuck.”

Zeus’s latest attempt at proving he’s a worthless asshole was to blackmail cops when he couldn’t find any to buy off. So far he’d snagged three rookies using the same racket—underage girl in a bar who doesn’t look to be underage, has a fake ID, was already drinking in the bar so when she approached the cop he had no reason to think she’s not at least twenty-one. Then when the cop takes what’s on offer the girl records the encounter and Zeus has the goods.

It was a fucked-up play but it was seriously whacked because the girls were not twenty-one, they were seventeen.

“Brasco’s done waiting on IA to do their thing. Two of the cops are cooperating. The third is married and is playing dumb, willing to roll the dice and play Zeus’s game in hopes whatever pictures he has don’t get sent to his wife, who incidentally just gave birth. Brasco wants a meet with Butch.”

Butch was a patched member of the Horsemen MC. He was also an undercover DEA agent who was at the end of his rope and getting frustrated. Butch had been the one to warn Takeback about the cops.

“He’s not keen on meetups,” I told Wilson, something he very well knew.

“A seventeen-year-old is dead. Brasco no longer cares who’s keen on what. He’s also not waiting for IA to finish their investigation even though he knows it’s gonna fuck the cops who are working that angle of lying to Zeus, telling him he’s covered when he’s really not. And he really doesn’t care that Stone Phillips is trying to save his marriage but fucking over the department in doing so. He’s done, Davis, and he’s pulled River in.”

Fucking shit.

River Kent was Jet Brasco’s partner. He was also married to Letty who was best friends with Brooklyn who was Rhode’s fiancée. Further from that, River’s siblings: Phoenix, Echo, and Shiloh were all cops back in Georgia. Meaning River’s sense of justice was fine-tuned so he’d be all over fucking over IA to take down Zeus in light of a teenage girl taking her own life.

“They do that and the charges don’t stick, he might fuck Butch.”

“No shit,” Wilson griped. “We all want this done but the DEA’s been building their case for years. With that said, Zeus isn’t their end game, he’s a cog in a bigger game.”

That was the first I’d heard of that. Not the years part—that was why Butch was at the end of his rope. He’d been breathing nothing but filth for a long time.

“Bigger game?”

“Bigger game,” Wilson confirmed.

“Care to elaborate?”

“I would if I’d been fully briefed, which I haven’t been. I’ve just been warned to keep Brasco in line.”

That was a joke.

Jet Brasco was not a man you kept in line.

“I’m thinking the only line Brasco’s willing to be kept in is maybe the gun section at Black Sheep.”

“You’re not lying. Got one more thing for you. Before Zeus’s temper tantrum, and thanks for that by the way, now I have the asshole calling and threatening to nab both you and Jane.”

My chest ignited and my throat clogged.

“Come again?”

“Ignore the dick like the rest of us are doing. You know damn good and well that stupid fuck doesn’t have the balls to go after you or your woman.”

It was good to know Wilson had picked up on that. Jane was mine, and that had nothing to do with the piece of paper I’d signed.

“Anyway,” he continued. “Rhode got the announcement out and Zeus confirmed Satan has seen it. Called him this morning bright and early to ream his ass for allowing his sister to marry a pig.”

I wasn’t fond of cops being called pigs.

“Is that the cover Rhode put out? I was a cop before I worked for Takeback?”

“Nope. Your shiny new LinkedIn profile has your military career and Takeback as your current employer.”

“So he’s just an equal opportunity asshole.”

“Yup. But he knows, he’s not happy, and hit Zeus up for fifty K.”

I heard the water turn on so I glanced over my shoulder and found Jane at the sink.

“Jane, honey, come sit down. I told you I’d do the dishes.”

“I don’t want to intrude, and since this place is one room, it’s the kitchen or the bathroom and sorry, but I’m not sitting in that bathroom waiting you out.”

“Come sit down, find something for us to watch. I’ll wash while I finish talking to Wilson.”

“Look at you all domesticated and shit,” Wilson jabbered.

“I’d tell you to fuck off if that comment bothered me,” I shot back, making my way to the kitchen.

“Huh?” Jane asked.

I pulled the dish out of her hand and said, “Nothing, baby. I was talking to Wilson.”

“You tell your boss to fuck off?” she whispered.

I heard Wilson chuckle, meaning he heard Jane.

“Yeah, and I’m gonna tell him to fuck off again if he doesn’t stop laughing.”

Jane looked horrified. It was cute and so un-Jane-like I couldn’t stop myself from leaning down and kissing her nose. “Go find something for us to watch, yeah?”

“Okay.”

Soft and breathy.

I wasn’t sure if I needed to keep Wilson on the phone for another ten minutes until I could get that sweet sound out of my head or if I needed to hang up now and find more ways to make her breathy and sweet. I knew what I wanted to do, but it was too soon.

“You’re fucked.” Wilson told me something I knew.

So I didn’t bother denying it.

“Yup.”

I picked up the sponge Jane had left in the sink and started scrubbing.

“What’d he say about the fifty K?” I asked, leaving Zeus’s name out of the question.

“He paid it.”

I nearly choked.

“Say that again.”

“Zeus paid it. Fifty K for Jane’s freedom.”

Fury.

That was all I felt.

First, all Jane was worth to her father was fifty thousand.

Second, Zeus paid the debt—with dirty money.

She’d hate that.

No. She’d die a thousand painful deaths if she knew her freedom was bought from innocent people’s misery.

“I need a favor.”

Wilson sighed, long and loud.

“I already know what you’re going to ask.”

I bet he did. Wilson knew me well.

“There’s forty in my safe at home. Float me the ten and I’ll get it back to you when I get home.”

“Davis—”

“She’s my wife,” I cut him off.

“On paper.”

I had nothing to say to that because while that might have been true, Wilson also knew it wasn’t. And if at the end of this she ended up being my ex-wife, it wouldn’t matter.

I’d pay ten times that to ensure she was safe.

And I’d do that with hard-earned, clean money because that was damn well what she deserved.

“You know that’s bullshit,” I said.

Another sigh. This one not as long but just as loud.

“I hope to fuck you know what you’re doing.”

I had no clue.

“Let me know when it’s done. And make sure he knows to keep his trap shut.”

“Copy that.”

Wilson disconnected.

I took my time washing dishes.

Fifty thousand dollars.

That was all Jane was worth to her piece-of-shit father.

The dumbfuck had no idea his girl was priceless.