She’d been even worse than usual since the shootout at that biker bar that was being attributed to the Picolli Crime Family, because it contradicted more or less everything her article about the police had said. Everything is looking good in the city, and the Picollis are long gone… except for that bloodbath they orchestrated. She’d been through the wringer on that one.
“Wait,” I called out and she stopped and turned to look at me. “I can’t do this right now, I’ve got-”
“Are you kidding me? You’re here to follow instructions. Get on it, you fucking wannabe.”
That old familiar fear gripped me when Lucile raised her voice, like freezing fingers around my lungs. People were starting to look up from their desks, and I wanted to hide under mine. Who was I to say no to a senior reporter? When did a confrontation between myself and a beautiful woman like her ever end up with me on top?
Then I thought about Jace and what he thought about me. I remembered what he’d said to Lucile and stood as tall as I could. I still would have got a face full of her breasts if she walked into me, but that didn’t matter.
“If you want to go tell Mr. Kinsley why photocopies of your fuck up are more important than the exclusive article on Jace Barlow, then be my guest. Otherwise, I believe a wise man once said, get the fuck out of my face.”
I pointed back in the direction of her desk and glared at her. Lucile changed color between bright red and pale at least as fast as a chameleon for a few seconds, but then stormed off.
As soon as her back was turned, I collapsed into my chair and took deep breaths while I waited for my heart to stop threatening me with a cardiac arrest. My hands were still shaking by the time I was able to start messing around with my outline again, but deep down there was this river of exhilaration running through me. Maybe that would be the last time Lucile ever spoke down to me, who knew?
Chapter 20
Jace
Kendall had been taken aback to come out of the building where The Weekly Enquirer offices were located to see three identical cars parked there. Her face lit up the way it always did, when she bent down to look inside the open door of the middle one and saw me.
“Is this like a giant ‘find the ball under the cup’ game?” she asked, before climbing in and kissing me.
“No. You know how the President gets like fifty death threats every day and the Secret Service goes “yeah, yeah, whatever”? But then they get one they take seriously, so they put the president in the nearest tank?”
“You had a death threat?” She looked incredulous.
“Lots. Not as much as the President. We had one we had to take seriously though, so I had Lorenzo beef up security until we… uh… the police bring the guy in for questioning. Don’t worry, we’re safe.”
“OK,” she said.
Simple as that. She trusted me so much that I felt something I hadn’t felt before. Guilt about lying. My whole life had been full of lies, I’d have lost my life a long time ago if it hadn’t been.
I’d lose Kendall too if I told her everything. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach as I mulled that over. Kendall seemed like she was on top of the world today, even chattering away happily about how she could work this into her article, but my mood had no reason to improve by the time we arrived at Wellfort Group Home.
Why in the ever-loving fuck I agreed to come back to this place I’d never know. It had only been abandoned for about seven years by this stage, but it already looked like a relic from a past civilization.
The lead car, with three of my security detail in it, headed around the other side to monitor the other entrance. The men from the following car stayed within sight, but mostly looked outwards. They were all carrying guns, of course, as were the men in the decoy convoys that would leave from the underground parking lots of wherever I stopped for more than fifteen minutes. Lorenzo and I had reinstated the procedures from the early days after I seized the Picollis’ assets and heads.
Kendall and I walked across the cracked concrete and stood almost in the shadow of the stained brick building that didn’t have a single window intact. I should have had the place demolished and built a giant public toilet facility here.
Kendall took out her notebook and pen. I was giving her the information she needed for an article, but I’d still be damned if I wanted my actual voice recorded on a Dictaphone talking about anything at all.
“So it’s been eleven years since you lived here. How do you feel being back?” she asked.
I looked around the area the staff had called the basketball court, but what we’d called the-place-where-you-get-the-shit-kicked-out-of-you. The ghost voices of chanting kids echoed in my mind.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
“Pissed off.”
“Why?”
“This place. This fuckin’ place. Kids shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t a home. It was a cage for animals. You put kids in, you get animals out.”
“What do you mean? It didn’t turn you into an animal.” she asked.
“It did. You see that ladder over there?”
I pointed at the rusty iron rungs that were bolted to the side of the building. A fire escape at one point, that ladder was already a relic in my day because there wasn’t a single fucking window anywhere near it that didn’t have permanent bars on it. Kendall nodded.
“See how one of the bottom rungs is missing? I ripped that off and changed the way this kid’s face looked with it. He never came back to Wellfort.”
Kendall stopped scribbling and looked up, horrified and confused. “Why?”
“Because he was fucking huge. I was in fights every week, Lord of the Flies had nothing on this place. The guy started hearing rumors that some people thought I could beat him. Well, he was almost eighteen by that point. He’d ruled the roost for so long, used to kick my ass all the time when I was younger, and he didn’t like people talking like that. People start talking like that, you have to watch your back a whole lot more.”
“What did the staff do to stop all the fighting?”
“Stop it? You kidding me? They took bets, this was their fucking entertainment,” I spat.
“You can’t be serious!”
“Look at me. I’m serious. I got a scar here where a kid hit me with a brick. I had a scar here on my neck, it’s faded now, from rope burn when another motherfucker tried to strangle me.”
I shook my head in disgust, remembering the staff who used to hold back, waiting until somebody was about to get killed before they “noticed” the fight and “took appropriate action” as per state guidelines.
“Couldn’t you just… not fight? Stay out of their game?” she asked.
“No.”
“Everybody fought?”
“No. I tell you what though, the kids that didn’t fight had nothin’. If you’re here, you already don’t have much, but those poor fucks had nothing,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“This place taught me that at least. If you don’t fight, then somebody is going to come and take away whatever it is that you care about. Those kids didn’t have a shirt on their back most of the time. Yeah. It taught me that alright. Nobody is ever going to take what’s mine without a fight, without payback.”
“Is that why this place got shut down in the end?”
“I have no idea, never looked into it.”
Kendall wrote something in her notebook, and when she looked up at me again her eyes were glassy. She spoke with a choked voice.