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JACE
“Jacey, why don’t you stay the night?” Nicole asked, clutching on to my arm.
I had been here for four hours and had somehow managed to preoccupy her with things other than having sex. Don’t ask me how I’d fucking done it, but I had. I had done everything I had to do to keep her busy, including letting her dress me in makeup because she kept complaining that all her friends wouldn’t let her.
Of course, they had refused. They all knew how shitty she was at it. She couldn’t stop her hand from trembling the entire time. Part of me felt bad about it because tremors ran in her family. But the other part of me didn’t give a fuck because she couldn’t keep her hands off me, even after I told her no.
I curled my finger around a lock of her hair and tugged. “You know I don’t stay over.”
She frowned. “We didn’t even do anything fun.”
“You caked me in makeup, Nicole.” I felt myself getting annoyed with her, which I couldn’t if Poison hadn’t gotten what I needed yet, so I took a deep breath and smiled at her. “Isn’t that what you wanted? You never get to do that.”
Lips curling into a small smile, she nodded. “Fine. I’ll see you on Monday.”
When she shut the front door, I sighed and slumped my shoulders forward. God, that had taken longer than I’d expected it to take. Keeping up a front with Nicole after spending so much time with Allie had really taken a toll on me.
“Damn, what was she doing with you in there the entire time?” Landon asked when I slid into the car with a makeup wipe in one hand and my dignity in the other. “Prettying you up, Harbor?”
I backed out of the driveway and parked by a bunch of shrubs, opening the mirror and wiping off all the damn makeup Nicole had put on my face. When I got it all off, I threw the sheet into the garbage on the side of the door.
“Did you get my shit or not?” I asked through clenched teeth.
João handed me a folder. “This is what we found. There’s a ton of shit in there that could put a lot of people in this town away. That prick is probably blackmailing the rich to get money from them; that must be how he got enough cash to move into a guarded neighborhood.”
I opened the file and blew out a breath through my nose. There was a lot of shit that I hadn’t even known happened in this town, but I flipped through the paperwork until I found my father’s name.
There were a couple documents, but I saw the one that I had been looking for over the past two years. Copies of messages to a Rick Santos and a copy of a check written to the police chief himself for over a hundred million.
“Is this enough?” I asked.
“How would we know?”
“You guys have been to fucking jail,” I said.
“So have you,” Landon said.
João went to grab the folder back from me, but I pulled it away.
“This is worth more than two million dollars,” I said to them. “I take what I need about my father, and I'll give you the rest, but then you promise to do whatever the fuck I need you to do for me. Understand?”
João looked at the guys in the backseat. After a few moments, he nodded. “Deal. Anything you need, you got it.”
I grabbed what I needed from the folder, stuffed it into the glove compartment, and handed him the rest of the documents. I drove Kai and Landon to Landon’s house on the shitty side of town and parked the car for them to leave.
“I told you that there would be consequences if you hurt Allie,” Kai said, looking into the car through the passenger window. “The job you asked for is done. Watch your fucking back.”
João nodded to Kai before I rolled up the damn window and sped off, thinking nothing of his threat. This was for Allie, and he knew it. I had other shit to worry about. I would worry about Kai later.
“Plan it strategically,” João said as I pulled up to his place on Pierce Road. “Whatever information you’re planning on taking out of that folder, make sure it won’t get you sent to jail. You’re eighteen now. You won’t be sent to juvie this time, if you can’t convict him.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. I had to be strategic about this, but I also couldn’t wait. Dad would find out that the two million was missing and talk with me about it. If he sent me back to finish senior year at boarding school, I couldn’t protect Allie.
After he got out, I drove to Coach’s house and parked on the curb. Coach lived on Crestwood Drive—the street bordering the bad side of town and a few streets down from Jamal. My car would be gone by the morning—people worked quick when they saw something this expensive sitting on their road—but I didn’t give a fuck. It was Dad’s anyway.
All the lights were off in his house, yet I got out, grabbed the papers from the compartment, and knocked on the door anyway. I’d had to hold myself together the entire night, and I couldn’t anymore. I needed to talk to someone about this because it was eating me a-fucking-live on the inside.
After the third knock, Coach finally answered, his eyes wide when he saw me. “Jace, what are you doing here this late?”
I opened my mouth to say something—to say what I had wanted to say all night—but nothing would come out, except, “Can I stay here tonight? I don’t want to go home.”
His wife appeared behind him in a cheap, plush robe and a warm smile. With graying brown hair pulled into a braid down her back, she reminded me of Mom. “You’re always welcome here, Jace.”
