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Joy couldn’t believe he was worried about his brother, a man who was more in jail than out. “Are you saying it’s true? Are you saying you did hire your brother to kill me?”

“What you gon’ do to me?” Gramps asked William again.

William frowned. “What are you talking about?”

Then Gramps looked at Max. “If all that’s true what they said, what you gon’ do to me?”

Joy looked at William. Neither one of them could believe it, or even understand it.

But Max wasn’t emotionally attached like that. He answered the old man. “I’ll call the local police since the crime occurred here in Bridell. And they will arrest you and charge you with solicitation to commit murder, or murder-for-hire.”

“Then get to callin’,” Gramps said.

Joy jumped to her feet. “Gramps, what’s wrong with you?”

Gramps jumped up too, with his wrists outstretched. “ You can cuff me now. Ain’t no need of waiting. Gon’ on and get it over with. You got all them armed men here. They can take me downtown. Let’s get this show on the road!”

“Show?” Joy was beside herself. “How can you call this a show?”

William stood up too. He was staring at Gramps. “Did you or did you not hire your brother to kill my wife?” he asked him point blank.

Gramps looked at him defiantly. “What do you think?” He glanced at Joy, and William could see a trace of regret in his eyes, but then he looked over at Max again. “What you waiting for? Let’s go!”

Max looked at William. Nobody ordered him around except William. It took a moment but eventually William, so bewildered and concerned for Joy, gave the nod. It was like he knew Gramps, but suddenly he didn’t know that motherfucker. And it was eating him alive.

Max opened the door and ordered two guards to cuff Gramps and put him in one of the SUVs. Two men came in and proceeded to do just that.

“Because I hired him,” Gramps said, “I’ll get the harsher punishment right?”

Max nodded. “Right.”

William went over to Gramps. Max hurried over there too just in case. “You aren’t going anywhere until you talk to Joynetta,” William said.

Another look of regret filled Gramps’ eyes. But it was quickly overtaken with defiance. “I ain’t got nothing to say to her,” he said.

William was perplexed. “What are you doing? Is that brother of yours worth destroying her faith in you man?”

Gramps looked William squarely in the eyes. “Do you have a brother?” he asked him.

“No,” William said.

“Then shut the fuck up!”

William’s jaw tightened. Had he been any other man, he wouldn’t still be standing. But he was still the man Joy considered her grandfather.

Gramps looked at Max again, as if the emotionalism was getting to him too. “Get me out of here,” he said. “I’m tired of this shit!”

Even Max was floored by this turn of events. But he gave the nod and his men escorted Delvin Armstrong, in cuffs, out of his own house.

Then Max and William looked at Joy. She had to sit back down. Before she fell.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It was only after they were told that Gramps would not be granted bail because of the seriousness of the offense he was accused of was Joy able to agree to leave Bridell. She had insisted they go to the police station, to check on Gramps, and that was when they got the bleak report: No bail. No way. He was not getting out any time soon.

Joy told William to hire him an attorney, the best one money could buy, and to Max’s shock, William agreed to do so. Not because he wanted to: he didn’t. But because of Joy. What Max still didn’t understand, nor did anybody else in his circle understood, was that William would do anything for Joy. He hired a local lawyer, who would know the players, and he ordered his own attorney to get to Bridell.

Max still couldn’t believe it.