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Henri took a deep breath, ran a hand through his hair, and shook his head.
“You have to understand, I made this…this stupid vow when I was five. Joel, he…” Henri shrugged. “He stood up for me with Jimmy. He saved me, and I vowed that I would always be there to…I don’t know—”
“Save him?” It was the first words Bailey had spoken for some time, and his voice sounded foreign even to his own ears. It cracked a little with shock, disbelief. He still wasn’t one hundred percent sure where this conversation was going or how it was going to end. But with every new revelation, every word out of Henri’s mouth, everything Bailey had heard Henri mumble or shout in his sleep was starting to come together, forming a picture Bailey wasn’t sure he was going to be comfortable looking at.
“Yeah,” Henri said. “I guess that’s it. I’d be there to save him or help him if he ever needed it.”
Bailey’s stomach dropped as Henri looked to his feet, and the fact that he was no longer able to look Bailey in the eye did nothing to ease the mounting dread swirling inside.
What had the two boys who had gone through hell done to the devil who’d lorded over them? Bailey wasn’t sure he was ready to hear the answer.
“So Jimmy came to Chicago because of Joel, am I right?”
Henri raised his eyes and nodded. “He was pissed that Joel had left all those years ago. He’d expected to mold him even from inside prison, just like they did me. Wasn’t real happy to hear his boy had up and vanished on him.”
“So he came after him,” Bailey said, slowly beginning to make sense of what he knew. But then Henri threw in a twist.
“No. He came after Julien and took him.”
Bailey’s mouth fell open. “Took him?”
“From their parking garage.” Henri slipped his hands into his pockets and turned away from Bailey to look back out the window. “He took him to some shitty abandoned warehouse, tied him to a chair overnight, and taunted him for fun until Joel finally showed up. But that wasn’t enough for that evil fucker. He wanted total revenge, couldn’t believe his son had walked away from him. No one walked away from Big Jimmy and got out alive. So he shot Joel, point-blank, right in front of Julien.”
Henri fell silent, and the only sound Bailey could hear was his own thumping heart. What Henri had just described was enough to make his skin crawl. And Bailey couldn’t believe that the three men he’d seen up in Oshkosh just last month had managed to live through all of that and come out on the other side to tell the tale—or not tell it, as it was.
“We all thought Joel died that night. I’m pretty sure Julien’s still in therapy from it, and Bright Eyes is about the strongest, bravest princess I’ve ever met. You see, that motherfucker Jimmy took the one person he knew would make Joel come out and play, and I wasn’t about to let Joel face him on his own.”
Bailey tried to keep his reaction to all of that information as neutral as possible. But he couldn’t help but wonder just how far Henri had gone to “help” his friend.
“And what about you?” Bailey said, and when Henri glanced over his shoulder, Bailey added, “You were there, weren’t you? You went to help.”
Henri’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. But I’m fine. It’s over now.”
“But you aren’t fine. You’re having nightmares. It’s because of that night, isn’t it? Because of what happened… You said you all thought Joel died that night. You included?”
Bailey took a step closer, staring at the man he’d given himself over to, finding himself in the all-too-familiar position of digging for an answer he knew would break his heart.
He could either leave this conversation right here, where nothing overly incriminating had been said, or he could ask the one thing that had been plaguing him since he’d heard Henri say it in his sleep tonight.
Bailey braced himself as he looked Henri directly in the eye and knew it was time to learn the truth about the man he’d fallen in love with. “Did you kill Jimmy Donovan that night, Henri?”
And Henri didn’t hesitate, not even a second. “Yes…I did.”
Chapter Twenty-One
CONFESSION
A lie tonight would be kinder than the truth.
But I can’t do that. I won’t. Not to him.
I promised.
“HERE, AT LEAST let me walk you to your door.” Henri’s voice was quiet in the confines of the Aston Martin.
Bailey stared out the window to where his front porch light shone. It was around five the following night. They’d arrived at O’Hare at three after changing their flights to come home earlier, and of course that had left them in peak-hour traffic on one of the coldest, wettest days this year.
