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ChapterThirty-Five
Eden
Time seemed to simply… stop existing.
It was as if I had been dropped into a horror movie and everyone around me didn’t understand how to make good decisions on the fly. I stared coldly at the wall over my father’s shoulder, trying to figure out what in the hell we were going to do about all of this.
Government bribes? WITSEC? The mafia?
“I’ve been dropped into a damn book,” I whispered to myself.
“I’m gonna be sick,” Em groaned.
The second that gagging noise filtered through her lips, I darted for Dominik’s little trash can I felt tickling the side of my leg. I held it up to her face as she doubled over, heaving and spitting as the stench of stomach bile filtered through the room. Dad didn’t even move. The man didn’t fucking flinch. He just stood there like a god damn ape watching his entire family fall apart with tears in his eyes.
However, the second Jackson scooped her into his arms, a pang of jealousy ripped right through my heart.
“Come here, beautiful. Let’s get you laying down,” he murmured.
He picked up my gagging sister and I barely managed to hand him the little trash can. She tucked her sweating forehead into the nape of his neck, and I wondered what that kind of comfort might feel like. I’d never had a man in my life dote on me like that. I’d never had anyone outside of my family take care of me whenever I didn’t feel well.
And as I peeked up at Dominik, I found him already staring down at me.
Your best friend makes you look like a bigger asshole than you already are.
How a man like him kept company like Jackson was beyond me. But that was neither here nor there. We had a very serious situation on our hands, and something told me that going to the police would only make things worse.
“Does the government know you took the bribe from Thaddius?” I asked as my sister’s gagging backdropped the conversation.
“Good question,” Dominik said as he continued standing beside me.
Dad nodded somberly. “They do, yeah. That was before I made a deal with them.”
“But, Thaddius doesn’t know you took a deal with the government.”
“He probably does now,” Mom murmured.
I ignored her quip. “Did you ever directly tell Thaddius about the WITSEC deal?”
Dad cleared his throat. “No, I didn’t. The Thaddius deal happened first, and then when someone in the FBI caught wind that I knew something—”
I held up my hand to stop him in his tracks. “How much do you wanna bet that when Thaddius saw me and my sister at that party, he started putting pieces together?”
I looked up at Dominik and watched him slide his hands into his pockets. “It’s possible, but if he’s never met you guys before?”
And that’s when Mom said the first smart thing all fucking evening. “Unless he never stopped keeping tabs on us.”
“Claudia,” Dad hissed.
I stood to my feet. “That actually makes sense. If you witnessed something that man did, and Thaddius is connected to the mafia, then it would only make sense that he’d want to keep tabs on the one person who can link him to a crime he didn’t go down for.”
“And if that’s the case,” Jackson said as he cradled my sister close, “then he’d absolutely know about your WITSEC deal.”
Dominik sighed. “That makes more sense, unfortunately.”
Dad shook his head. “But we don’t know that’s what’s happening. We’re just tossing out theories at this point.”
My gaze gravitated back to Jackson and Em on the couch. She straddled his lap, tucking herself closely into him as he rocked her side to side. He kept rubbing her back, and as he pressed his lips against the shell of her ear, he said something that made her giggle.
