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Immediately, feet shuffling and low mumbling filters through the door. My heart jackhammers inside my chest, and nausea ripples in my stomach. This day has been fucktastic. Now, I’m just going to heap on top of it by most likely getting chewed out by the one person I counted on without having to pay them.
The door swings open, and the same huge lumberjack of a man from the cafe stands there stunned, shirtless, and holding his wallet. “You aren’t the Chinese delivery guy.”
“Stunning observation.” Man, the bitch just slips right out sometimes.
Lumberjack guy immediately glowers at me, not impressed with my sass. I guess I forgot that not everyone finds it adorable like Scott.
“Sorry. Sorry.” Unable to meet his eyes again, I stare at the floor. There’s a welcome mat just before the threshold that I never noticed before. Looking up and down the hall, I notice it’s the only one. More than anything, that right there makes me realize how much I’ve missed my friend. “Is Marci here?”
“Stud, you don’t have to strike up a conversation with every food delivery guy.” Marci peeks out around the broad frame of her boyfriend and gasps when she sees me. “Lacy? What are you doing here? Are you wearing flats?”
Looking me up and down, she seems confused, and it’s then it hits me that she probably hasn’t seen me without heelson since college. Hell, even then, I practically lived in them. Another gasp rips through the air, and before I know it, Marci is grabbing my arm and pulling me into the apartment. “You’re barefoot. And bleeding. Are you okay? What happened?”
Lumberjack moves out of the way, not fighting my entrance into their happy little love nest, which kinda surprises me. His hatred for me is plain as day on his face.
“It’s fine. I stepped on some glass in your stairwell.” I’m shoved down onto a kitchen chair before Marci starts zipping around her kitchen gathering supplies.
“Why aren’t you wearing shoes?”
I shrug, looking at my hands which haven’t been manicured in weeks. “I ran out of my apartment without them. Ran here the whole way from Williamsburg barefoot.”
“There is so much to unpack in that sentence, I barely know where to start.” She plops down on the floor in front of me, a bowl of soapy water in one hand and a kitchen towel in the other. “First, why are you living in Williamsburg?”
“You’ve seen the news about my dad?”
Marci lightly wipes away the blood from my foot, her eyes darting up to look at me every so often. “Yeah, I saw.”
I explain to her about the investigation, my accounts being frozen, and the night I last saw her. The night of the attack. Scott. By the time I’m done, Marci’s jaw is practically on the floor, and her hands hover above my foot where she had been applying a Band-Aid.
“I… Wow… I don’t know what to say.” Shaking herself from the shocked stupor my little speech has placed her in, Marci finishes patching me up and moves to sit across from me at the little table. “I hope you know, despite how things were left between us that night at the cafe, I never would have turned you away if you had called me. Yes, I was mad at you that night. I was fed up with the way you treat people. But when we first met incollege, the first couple years there, things weren’t that bad. You were always a bit spoiled. Always wanting your way and acting like a brat when you didn’t get it. But we had a bond, otherwise, I wouldn’t have stayed friends with you the past five years since you got famous. Despite what I might have said to you that night, I would never have turned you away when you were in need.”
For some reason, Marci calling me a brat makes me smile. Makes me think of Scott and his scowl when I start throwing a tantrum. He must be worried out of his mind right now. But her words also open a wound inside me that has been festering.
“Until just now, I really thought you would have just kicked me out. The people in my life have never been there just for me. My father sent me away the first chance he got. The people who raised me were paid to do so, and when I was too old to have nannies, they disappeared. I never heard from them again.” I suck in a deep breath, preparing to speak some truths that have been a long time coming.
“Your friendship has meant everything to me, but I have always been waiting for you to leave. I’ve been preparing for that moment you decide I’m not enough. But, since meeting Scott, I’ve realized it was the other way around. I pushed you into cutting ties. No one would put up with the kind of crappy friend I was. No one should.”
We’re both quiet for a moment. Marci obviously doesn’t want to rub salt in the wound even more by confirming that I was the world’s shittiest friend.
“I’m sorry, Marci. I was awful to you and giant lumberjack dude…”
“Micah.”
“Right.” I cringe, once again having put my foot in my mouth. “Micah.”
“Lacy, why are you here? Everything with this Scott guy sounds great. So, why on Earth are you sitting in my kitchen with a bleeding foot?”
Good question. The events of not just today, but the last month and a half weigh down my shoulders. The pain goes bone-deep, an agony I have no idea how to deal with, though I’m smart enough to realize fucking my sorta boyfriend against the wall wasn’t the best coping mechanism. “Today, I went in to talk with this agent from the FBI that froze all my accounts. I never really believed what they were saying about my Dad. He’s never been a good guy, but I didn’t think he could have done something this horrid. I was wrong.” The images of those poor girls flash before my eyes, adding a searing heat to the pain slicing through me. I squeeze my eyes shut tight until sparks of color obliterate everything else.
“But you believe them now?”
“Hard not to when you see photos of the man whom you share DNA with passing off suitcases full of money to men in warehouses. Or worse, inspecting girls lined up in shipping containers like they’re nothing more than a racehorse he’s about to place a bet on.”
Their faces would haunt me for the rest of my life. Some obviously on drugs. Some crying. The bruises on their faces and bodies. Agent Rose had started to show me even worse photos. But I looked away.
Bet you didn’t know the money sitting in your trust fund was built on the backs of sex slaves.
Even though I haven’t touched my trust in years, a layer of grime sits on my soul knowing anything in my life contributed to the pain of those girls. Guilt makes me shiver. I couldn’t even give them the courtesy of witnessing what had been done to them while I sat in my fancy dress trying to get my millions back.
