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I shrugged and finally took a long drink. Breaking my stare away from the silver sheet, I refocused my attention back toward my friends. “She has her marching orders, and I have mine. We have to do what we have to do to get through this Initiation.”
“You’re a shitty liar,” Beau said as he patted my back. “But I suppose we’ll all have our turn battling the demons we’ll be faced with.
Beau was correct.
I was a shitty liar.
I was fucking dying inside.
But Grace and I had a mission. We had loaded the gun, pulled the trigger, and there was no stopping the bullet mid-shot.
22
Montgomery
The knock on the door had me shooting straight out of bed. Grace stirred but didn’t fully wake up. I had been tossing and turning for most of the night trying to get the image of Grace on auction out of my head, so it didn’t take much to wake me from my fitful slumber. We had gone to bed barely saying more than a few words to each other.
What was there to say?
We had to do what we had to do. She had to do what she had to do, just as I did.
But would we ever be the same when this was all over? Would the darkness swallow us up completely? As we approached the finish line, the walls were closing in on me and I felt like the suffocation would soon be too much.
“Montgomery?” Mrs. H whispered as she entered the room wearing a robe and slippers. She extended her hand and gave me a cell phone. “I think you better take this call.”
She then tiptoed out of the room as I put the phone to my ear.
“This is Montgomery Kingston,” I said, anxious to know what was so important to have to call me at this hour. I glanced at the bedside table to see that it was three in the morning.
God, please don’t let it be anything involving my mother. Please…
“There’s a shipment arriving at the warehouse in an hour that your father is meeting. The Feds know what’s on the cargo, and a bust is planned,” said a man’s voice that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite recognize.
“Who is this?”
“A friend.”
“How do you know about the shipment? Who are you, and how do you know the Feds are coming?” Warning bells were banging in my head.
“Do what you want with the information, but in one hour your father and all the men he’s with will be arrested.”
A click. Silence.
“Hello? Hello?”
I put down the cell and stared straight ahead as I tried to process the information from the warning call. How could anyone know about the shipment? I knew it was coming, and I also knew my father had it loaded with so much Black Market shit that it oozed with shady dealings. There was nothing I could do to stop my father while being here at The Oleander, and although I hated what was happening, I was powerless.
But the Feds knew… Father had been sloppy.
There would be a bust…
Running my hand through my hair, I took a deep breath to try to calm my nerves and to formulate a plan of action. Father’s ego and his power-hungry greed might fuck up everything.
I immediately tried calling him but there was no answer. I considered calling my mother but there was no point in waking her up and scaring her if there was nothing she could do to stop him. If the shipment was due to arrive in an hour, then he would be out of the house and heading toward the warehouse anyway.
There was only one thing to do. I had to go to that warehouse to stop him myself.
I went back to the bedroom to get dressed. Grace was still sleeping, beautiful in the moonlight that shone through the window.
I crept as quietly as I could over to the dresser and pulled out a pair of jeans and a black cotton shirt.
Part of me wanted to wake her up and explain it all. But what could I say? That I was risking everything we’d sacrificed so much for to go to try to save my jackass of a father?
I’d had a plan. I’d been trying to ingratiate myself to him, pretending to play his games so he’d let me in to the inner workings of the business and I could have a shot at stopping the illegal shit from the inside before it got to this.
But it was obviously too late. He was too far gone and now if I didn’t do something...
I tried calling him again, but again, it went straight to voicemail.
Damn it!
Because it only really sunk in then—what I’d have to do and what it would mean.
It was one of the most basic rules of the Trials. Initiates were never to leave the grounds during the 109 days of Initiation. Never. Doing so risked expulsion from the Initiation, no matter how close to the end a person was.
