Chapter 31

THIRTY-ONE

TAVISH

“Your hospitality is significantly nicer than the last time I was here,” I say as I look around. “Weirdly, last time I was stabbed, threatened, and sure as fuck never paid.”

Arthur sits across from me on the couch. “I’m sorry that my hospitality was… less than appealing.”

“Sure as fuck was.”

“So your little friends are all heading here, it seems?” he asks.

“Nahhh, I doubt that,” I reply, but he flashes me a picture of all of them on a boat with Jackson’s pants down around his ankles. I’m… honestly rather confused by it. Were they having so much fun they thought a striptease was in order? And why the hell does Ellis seem so transfixed by his ass? And… why does Arthur have it? I guess they did take my phone from me. “Oh, that’s an old photo.”

“Sure, sure,” he says. “And… please don’t tell me that these are the ‘people who know my secret so if you kill me, they’ll expose it to the world’?”

“I mean… some of them know, but they’re not the only ones who do.”

“Just Jeremy Walker and Henry Johnson, then?”

“You’re going to kill the chief of police to keep him quiet?” I ask.

“I mean… killing isn’t the only way to keep someone quiet,” he says. “But yes, that does seem the most… permanent.”

“I just… I didn’t know you were such a bad guy, Arthur. I thought you ran a legitimate business. It really did seem like the one caught up in everything was your daughter. So why are you doing this?”

“Sometimes parents are pushed to do things they’d never fathom doing to protect the ones they love most.”

“I don’t know. If my dad was here, he’d kick back and crack open a beer as he watched you fuck me up… he’d probably give pointers the whole time. ‘He doesn’t like having his feet touched. Go for the feet.’”

Arthur seems oddly confused now. “What?”

“My feet. They’re super ticklish.”

“Uh… okay?”

“So this daughter of yours. I’m assuming she’s living here. But why go to such extremes? Why not just kill Zachary and she’d have been fine to live on with her life?”

“Because I wasn’t aware it was Zachary until a month or so ago,” he says. “I don’t need to tell you any of this shit.”

“Yeah, but you’re going to anyway because bad guys love monologuing.”

“I’m not a fucking bad guy!”

“You were going to torture Ellis and kill me! I mean, maybe I’m a bad judge, but that doesn’t sound like a good guy.”

“Sometimes we have to go far to protect the ones we love.”

“And what about the people who care about me? How far do you think they’ll go to protect me?”

“If you want to protect them, then you’re going to tell them to turn the fuck around and go home.”

“Okay. I will. Let me have my phone.”

He hands it over and I pull up the group text.

Me: This is Tavish. Arthur allowed me to have my phone so I can tell you to stop forcing Ellis to look at Jackson’s ass. His precious eyes should never be subjected to such a thing.

Leland: GASP. I’m turning this motherfucking boat around, you hear me? Jackson’s ass is beautiful. You tell me it’s motherfucking beautiful.

Henry: How the fuck hasn’t anyone murdered you guys yet?

Leland: Beautiful, I declare!

“What the fuck is this?” Arthur growls as he yanks the phone from me.

“What? I did what you asked,” I say. “You said to get them to leave and Leland’s declaring right there he’s turning the boat around.”

Arthur clearly doesn’t understand that if I’d begged Leland to turn around, he’d have grabbed an oar and started helping the boat go faster. Really, this is the best bet for getting him to leave.

“Help me understand this, Arthur. So your daughter decides to get into selling drugs. Is this behind your back? I have to assume so. You don’t seem very into the whole drug thing.”

Arthur just watches me.

“So she starts talking with your pal Zachary. Who knows whose idea it was, but they decide they’re going to take drugs that Zachary comes in contact with through work and she’s going to sell them. So where does it all go wrong? Talk to me, Arthur. Your other employees are doing what you ask for money. But they don’t have a stake in the game like I do.”

“What kind of stake do you have?” Arthur asks. “You implied on the phone you’d kill Zachary. Why would you do that for a man you barely know?”

“Let’s say we’ve gotten to know each other a bit. I guess running for your lives while some asshole tries to kill you does that to you. Here’s the thing, Arthur. You’re a fucking billionaire. You are the face of a very important company. I really don’t want you to stay pissed off at me. I mean, sure, I could possibly kill you. But I’m more than positive that you have my face on camera and have plenty of people for hire who could toss me right into police custody. I’d be stuck having to change my name, change my life to hide from you.

“Or… better yet, I could simply kill Zachary and solve all of our problems. But before that, I’d like to know the truth of everything,” I say.

Arthur laughs. “So let me get this straight. You now like this Ellis kid enough to do all of this but are willing to kill his father?”

“One of your… buddies held a gun to Ellis’s head as Zachary basically said fuck you and ran off. What do you think? If killing Zachary keeps Ellis safe, then I’m going to kill him. But I’m not going to kill him until I know more information.”

“Why do you need to know anything at all?”

“Because not knowing enough is how I ended up in this fucking position. Not knowing enough is how you ended up not realizing that Zachary tried killing your daughter. So Zachary gets pissed at your daughter, why?”

“He was trying to hide his crimes.”

“Are you telling me the truth or not? I can sit here all night until I hear what I think sounds like the truth.”

“The very truth.”

“And Nate Stewart?”

“I don’t know why Zachary killed him. I think because he found out Nate knows the truth.”

“I see. Because Nate was the one making the falsified information about Ellis, right?”

He looks confused about that.

“The forged documents making Ellis seem like a killer were on Nate’s computer,” I explain.

“Maybe Zachary was trying to set him up. He’s not the one who made them. I hired someone for that.”

“So maybe Nate found out what you were doing?” I ask. If he had the falsified documents on his computer as well as proof that Arthur was paying off Sally, does that mean that Nate wasn’t working with Arthur? Could he have been holding that information against Arthur, which is how he wound up dead? In that case, I would have to believe that Zachary really didn’t kill him. Arthur would have had him killed.

“Nate was a very important man in my company.”

“I see,” I say. “Why did Zachary hide in the first place? If you didn’t know he was the one who tried to kill your daughter, why would he have to hide? You’re telling me Jasmine didn’t know who tried to kill her? Yeah, if it got out she was involved with drugs she’d have gone to prison for a bit, but with your status, I doubt she’d have had long. Probably could have tacked a lot of it onto Zachary.”

“Neither of us knew it was Zachary. I thought it was someone worse. She was convinced it was someone from the cartel and I was afraid they’d come back for her. Hell, they wouldn’t just kill her, they’d destroy my entire company. They’d destroy everything I had built for us. I knew I had to protect her, and the only way that seemed possible was to pretend she was dead. I was afraid they would kill Zachary and were going to hurt his family. I thought I was protecting my child and the family of a friend. And then when he went missing months later? I was sure they’d killed him, and I knew his family needed to be protected. Well, you see where that fucking got me,” he growls.

“So how’d you play it off that Jasmine died?”

“I hired someone to provide a body. Money can get you a long way.”

“You were fine using the body of another woman?”

“She was already dead. Nothing would change that.”

“You’ve gone quite far to protect your child who got into this mess by dealing drugs.”

“Everyone makes mistakes.”

I raise an eyebrow, not quite sure I would consider any of this “mistakes.” He’s a man who’s prepared to turn a blind eye to everything his daughter’s done. “So how did you find out, then? That it was Zachary and not some cartel like you thought?”

Arthur is quiet as I realize he’s trying to think of something. He doesn’t want to tell me the truth, which means that something in the story he’s told me so far is likely false. Which part? Did Zachary reach out to him? Was his daughter keeping it a secret? Or was Nate really not killed by Zachary?

There’s a knock on the door. Not a simple knock but an obnoxious one that starts with a few knocks then continues on up until it reaches irritating levels.

“What the fuck?” Arthur snaps. “What the absolute fuck do you need?”

The door swings open and a young woman steps in. “Papa! I need you to stop being such a little dick-faced piece of shit! I’m so glad I took after my mother and don’t look like you.” She stumbles in as Leland continues to push her. “Is what I assume she’d have said if I hadn’t taped her mouth shut. Funny, huh? I’m hilarious. I know. I know.”

Arthur jumps up but there are too many guns pointed at him for him to do much. “How the fuck did you get in here?”

“Let me tell you, but then we’d have to wind it back some years. Dark night, PI scuttling?—”

“Not that far back, dear god,” Micah says.

“Fuck. Fine. Wind it back an hour.”