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He nodded. “Guess you and your pops don’t talk a lot to begin with.”
“Not really.” I cleared my throat. “But that’s not what I came over here for. I wanted to ask you a question.”
“Sure. Ask away.”
“I wanted to know if there was some sort of… connection between the kind of people you work for and people like my father.” I asked, forward. “I know you guys report to Flint, and then he reports to Nathaniel. But what does Nathaniel do? Are there other people like him in the city? Other people as powerful as him?”
Bishop squinted at me, gauging my question.
“Is there a hierarchy? Is that what you’re asking me?”
I nodded.
He shifted, brushing a hand over his chin as he considered his answer. I was quiet, patient, letting him mull it. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully.
“There’s people in a ‘network’, I suppose. But the people at the top are the real big fish. There’s people like Flint, who run small-time operations at a high frequency. Then there’s people—like Nathaniel—who have as much power as the wealthy upperclass like your dad. They sit at the top and play the long game and pull the real strings. I guess you’d call them the closest thing to kingpins this neck of the woods has.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know all this?”
I bit my lip, glancing down at the faded and worn floorboards.
“Because I’m not sure my father is guilty of what he was arrested for, and I don’t think it’s too crazy to consider that someone set him up.”
A heavy silence met those words, and my stomach pitched sideways.
Bishop must know what I was thinking. My question had made it obvious.
My father had insisted since the day he was arrested that he’d been set up, sabotaged, framed. And just a couple weeks ago, I’d seen Bish and Kace come out of someone’s house in a wealthy neighborhood bearing stolen files—evidence to be used for blackmail or a setup, probably.
I wasn’t stupid, and although I may have been sheltered from the harsh realities of the world for much of my life, I was learning on a fast curve these days. Nathaniel had sent the Lost Boys to steal something from a wealthy businessman he had a grudge against, so was it really that far-fetched to think someone out there—whether Nathaniel or another man like him—might’ve done something similar to my dad?
Maybe it was naïve to think my father really might be innocent of fraud, but it was something I had to at least consider.
Because if it’s true… maybe I can do something about it. Maybe I can fix this, and we can all go home.
“Do you really think he’s innocent?” Bishop’s voice was hard. “Do you really think, after everything we’ve told you—”
“You don’t know my father like I do,” I interrupted. “You didn’t grow up with him, he didn’t raise you. You keep telling me I’m not allowed to judge you or anyone here, but all you do is judge me and my father and my family!” My stomach knotted and twisted, and I rose from the bed, stepping toward him. “Why is it so hard to think that maybe he’s innocent of this one thing? That maybe it was ‘karma’ or something, and this is the one thing he didn’t do, even if he is guilty of everything else you’ve said he’s done.”
“And have you considered that even if that’s true, maybe he doesn’t deserve to be proven innocent?”
A loud crack filled the quiet room, the sound as sharp and piercing as a gunshot. I heard it before I felt the prickle in my palm, a tingling pain from the impact of hitting Bishop’s cheek. And then I saw it—the bloom of red across his skin and the pure shock in his bright hazel eyes.
I breathed in. Breathed out.
He did the same, his nostrils flaring as he gazed at me, unblinking.
We were both still, so still, staring at each other in a room that felt like it had no oxygen left.
Then my body lurched into motion again, darting forward and bolting out the door on shaky legs. I practically threw myself down his front steps and ran across the street without even checking for cars in the road.
My entire body felt jittery and numb at the same time, and pain still radiated out from my hand—I could only imagine what Bishop’s cheek felt like.
The strange thing was, I wasn’t afraid of Bishop. I didn’t think he would hit me—there’d been too much shock and not enough anger in his eyes for that. What scared the actual fuck out of me was the fact that I’d been so angry that I had lashed out and hurt someone. That my reaction to my pain and confusion had been violence. That wasn’t me. That wasn’t who I was. Was it?
How much had I changed since coming here? And was I changing for the better or worse?
I had hit Bishop. And that was so fucked up—especially when, on some level, I knew he could be right.
What if my father was innocent of this one crime? If he’d done everything else Bish had accused him of, did it even matter? One count of innocence wouldn’t exonerate him from all the guilt he may truly carry.
