Once again, Vince was in the role of a lifetime because he frowned, holding Splice’s stare.
“Messing with Lisa? How? I haven’t done a thing.”
“A decade ago, do you remember I told you I’d met a woman I really liked, that I could see a future with her?”
“Yeah, and now you guys are reconnected; I’m happy for you, Splice. I really am. But I don’t get what this has to do with me.”
“You fucked with us then. You attacked Lisa, making her so scared that she left me; she left town. Now you’re doing it again. You trashed her car to scare her. You almost ran her down. You’ve made numerous threatening calls, telling her to leave me, to get out of town, or you’d do something to me.” Every word Splice said felt like rust coming out of his throat as he listed every crime this man had done, and laying it out there like that, Splice was ready to strangle Vince.
“I want to know what the fuck for. What is your reason? When you knew how happy I was back then. How happy I am now. Why you’d fuck with that.” Splice leaned in, and it was the first sign that his uncle was actually afraid when he saw his eyes flinch.
Good, he thought. That was good because Splice was not playing here.
He never would have come up with this plan or talked it over with his brothers if he wasn’t as serious as a tsunami about following through.
Once he identified the person harassing Lisa, he fully intended to make them pay. However, discovering it was Vince felt like the ultimate treachery.
“Before you consider lying to me again, everything has been traced back to you, Vince. That call you took the other day, when you were outside the dealership. That call was from me. I was across the street; I saw you pick up the call on the burner phone you’re using.” Leaning in another inch, he grabbed Vince’s chin, his teeth clenched, and got in his uncle’s face. “I would have forgiven you most anything in this fucking world. I would have helped you dig a grave had you asked me. But this? Scaring my woman. Trying to run her out of town a second fucking time, breaking us up. That I won’t forgive, Vince. You crossed a line with me.” Pushing Vince’s face back, Splice blew out his rage-filled breath and climbed to his feet again. Pacing away, he turned back to him.
It was clear Vince was strategizing his way out of the situation, fashioning a lie believable enough that Splice would swallow it.
Over the past few days, he’d gone over decades of memories between them and wondered what else Vince had lied right to his face about.
“It’s not like that, Splice. Believe me,” he started, and Splice refused to roll his eyes; after all, he’d expected Vince to lie his way out of it. “I’m being set up! You know I wouldn’t do anything like that. Why would I?”
“Why exactly? Ten years ago, you cornered Lisa in a dark street, threatened to hurt me, and told her to keep her mouth shut about what she’d overheard. What do you think my woman knows, Vince? Because guess what? She knowsnothing. All this bullshit you’ve been doing is for nothing. She can’t tell shit because she never heard you. So what are you hiding that you were so afraid my woman would spill to me? You saw I was back with Lisa, and your campaign to get rid of her started again. How far were you willing to go this time?” he grated through his teeth. Just imagining how far Vince would have gone to get rid of her was filling his veins with hate.
The silence went on for minutes.
“I can do this forever,” Splice said evenly. “Your only chance of ever getting out of here is to tell me the truth.”
It was a breakthrough because Vince’s head came up and he asked, “Does the club know I’m here?”
“All my brothers know you’re here and why. I don’t have memory loss. I was never in an accident. And I never broke up with Lisa.”
“Ah,” Vince said, and then he smiled. “Clever, son. I never suspected.”
“You underestimated me all this time. You never factored in how far I’d go to protect Lisa. You never thought I’d lie to you so I could protect her. That’s the difference between you and me, Vince; I have my priorities, and I don’t waver from them.”
“You’ve always been my priority.” He dared to say.
Splice snorted, “I doubt it. Or you never would have taken the one thing away from me that meant anything. You saw how I suffered after Dad died; how close I came to losing everything. Lisa gave me back my life.” He punched out the next words, “and you took her away from me. FUCKING WHY? Open your goddamn fucking mouth and tell me why! What shit made you threaten an innocent woman? I swear to God, I will call Ruin in here right now and end this. Trust me, I’m not lying.”
Vince blanched. Yeah,good. He might not be privy to club intel, but he’d heard enough scary stories about Ruin’s skills to be afraid of their enforcer.
“You can’t get rid of me, Splice. That’s not you, son. Let’s talk about it, okay? It doesn’t have to go this far.”
“Tell me.”
“Please, let’s talk.”
“Tell me,” he kept repeating after each weak attempt from Vince to beg for his life.
Splice was empty of family feelings.
No sympathy, no love for this man.
He wouldn’t forgive him for what he did to Lisa.
