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“Don’t stand, officer. I already told you about the spring-loaded explosives. I will not risk my family. You’ve admitted to wanting to hurt me or mine, that means this meeting has ended, and quite possibly, so have your lives.”
“Just stop!” she snaps. “Jesus Christ. We’re speaking. No one has touched a single weapon except you.” She turns to Sophia. “Off the record. I’m not reporting any of this, because once it’s all out in the open, I suspect you’ll find you’re all friends.”
Every man in the room scoffs, so she amends her statement.
“Or at least not enemies. Jesus. Stop being so fucking trigger-happy. Speak, Sophia. Get this shit out before someone dies.”
Sophia’s eyes come to me. Dark, sparkling, and dangerous. “You wanna know why I have Colum’s money? You can’t figure out how I can have it, but still be a good person?”
Right. I say nothing out loud.
“I need to know where you’re coming from first,” she hedges. “Why are you here? Who are you fighting for? Who are you fighting against? I can’t tell which angle you’re looking to attack us from.”
“It shouldn’t matter where I’m coming from. Give me your answer, and maybe then I’ll give you mine.”
“I steal it.”
She opens her laptop – a Griffin laptop – and works for a moment. It’s almost as though she’s ended the conversation, as though that’s all the information she’s willing to share, but then with a finaltap, tap, tap, she turns the laptop to show me bank statements.
“You see the money, right?”
“Why are you telling him this, Soph?” Jay moves in closer to whisper. “Why are you showing him our business?”
“Because I don’t think he’s our enemy. Tate says we’re all gonna be pals soon. I’ve shown you, I’ve shown Kane. I trust every man and woman that spends time in Checkmate, so I’m willing to offer this olive branch.” Her eyes come to me. “You see the accounts the money came from? You see the accounts it sits in now?”
I nod. “The Ellie Solomon Dance Academy. You’ve funneled money out of a murderer’s bank account, and now you let it sit in a dance school?”
“Murderer.” Her eyes darken as she looks to Jay. “He calls him a murderer.” Her gaze finally comes back to me. “Who did he hurt, Theo? Who did Colum murder? Because I’m saying if that’s your beef, we aren’t your enemy.”
“I’d like to believe you, but then I find accounts fat with money that might be dirty.”
“Oh, it’s dirty,” she scoffs. “I never said it wasn’t. That money is the proceeds of horrible things done to good people. It’s the very epitome of blood money. On top of that, it’s stolen. It’s extra dirty. But I didn’t accept it from him as some kind of payment. I slid my ass into his accounts when he wasn’t watching, then I stole it.”
“Well, there was that ten million you blackmailed him.”
“Oh, yeah.” She pats Jay’s arm. “Okay,mostof it is stolen, but ten mil was paid to me in exchange for his son’s life.”
My heart slams around and winds me. “Huh?”
“He was under the assumption Jay was deceased.” She reaches out and slides a thumb over his forehead. “Jay was shot on Colum’s orders, and after a… well, we’ll say sleight of hands, he was removed from the world for a short while to let Colum think he’d been successful. That left Kane. I reached out to Colum at one point and said I had possession of what he wanted. I offered to sell him, Colum paid ten million dollars, and the day I handed Kane over was the day that cop you trust so much ended his life.”
My eyes shoot to Libby in surprise.
“No,” Soph murmurs. “Not that cop. The other one. The chief. He didn’thaveto end Colum’s life. He could have sent him away, but I guess his finger slipped. Colum was dead, I had ten million dollars, plus another thirty or so that was so well hidden, the IRS had no clue it existed. Now it sits in a dance academy filed underdonations.”
“He tried to have his sons killed?” I look into Kane’s eyes. Then Jay’s. I study the scar on Jay’s forehead and allow my brain to click into a new gear. “He had one executed, and put a contract on the other?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Sophia draws her laptop back around. “It would appear that we have something in common. You call Colum a murderer. I say the same. Now I use that prick’s money to fund a dance school, but beneath the surface, that dance school isn’t much of a dance school at all, but a shelter for women who need a little help.”
“A shelter…” My gaze snaps from face to face. The guys are still silent. Jess is watchful, and Sophia is running this show. “You help battered women?”
She nods. “Colum’s money funds the very types of women he victimized. He was a horrible man, he bought, sold, and raped girls without a single fucking lick of remorse. Now he funds a dance academy, and he no longer breathes, so hopefully we’ve slowed the number of women who might need such services.”
“And you? How do you connect?”
She turns the laptop back to me one last time, presenting a spreadsheet of costs, the bare necessities any standard woman might need in a month. Toiletries. Bedding. Underwear. Clothes. Medication. Baby items take up a large portion of the budget; babies that are born from innocent women and predatory men.
“Ellie Solomon was my baby sister. She wasn’t the first girl he hurt, and she certainly wasn’t the last. But she was the beginning of his end. She was the reason I became who I am. She was the reason I met Jay. She was the reason for everything, so I name my school for her, and when women come to us for help, they cash checks and sing Ellie’s praises.” She snaps the laptop closed. “That was a lot of goodwill, Griffin. I told you a lot. Now it’s your turn. How do you connect, and why the fuck do you think these men should pay for their father’s crimes?”
