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I leaned back and stared down at the liquor in my glass. The question should have been, when didn’t I care about Brooklyn? I hadn’t stopped, despite my confusing behavior. The truth was I was torn up about her missing and knowing in her mind I didn’t want her, didn’t care for her, didn’t need her. I looked up finally and met Oliver’s eye.
“It’s not sudden.”
Oliver slammed down his glass on my desk, alcohol sloshing onto the dark wood. I raised one eyebrow at his outburst and watched him.
“Maybe if you hadn’t been so good at making her believe you didn’t care, she would have stayed here!”
“We’re all at fault with the reasons Brooklyn chose to go back to Ash’s,”Gideon said quietly.
Not allowing himself to be deterred from his anger, Oliver didn’t acknowledge the words spoken.
“And what about her leaving here believing you slept with Missy, of all fucking people, Aiden!”
“I didn’t fuck Missy. And I never told Brooklyn I did,”I replied.
“Your lack of denial clearly was enough to push her into believing you did. Gideon had to convince her that Missy was nothing to any of us, all because you even allowed her to be near you at the club.”
“This isn’t helping, Oliver. Yelling at each other isn’t looking for Brooklyn. We need to work together, not fight among ourselves,”Jaxon said.
Gideon stood against the wall, nodding his agreement. Oliver was now pacing, but he didn’t continue to yell, so I assumed he agreed for the moment with Jaxon. I threw back the alcohol that was in my glass, wishing the burn in my gut to wash away everything we were facing. But I knew that nothing was going to be that easy. Setting down my glass, I turned to Jaxon, who was staring at the flash drives.
“What’s the first step, brother?”
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Jaxon
My finger hoveredover my father’s name on my phone screen. I knew what I needed to do, for Brooklyn, for my brothers. But I sat on my bed, frozen in a fear I hadn’t felt in years. Getting out from under my father’s control had been the freedom I had never dreamed of.
Growing up as the only child of Randy Stoller, I knew from a young age what was in my future. My father raised me on his own to be an obedient soldier. There was never the plan to have me as his successor, because my father was too egotistical to think he wouldn’t somehow live forever.
The last conversation we had rang loudly in my ears, as if it had just happened days before instead of years. Randy could barely catch his breath from laughing so hard at our plans to leave the business and start 4K. He all but promised we wouldn’t be successful without him. He had demanded to speak to me privately. Aiden wasn’t happy with leaving me alone with him, but it was the best way to get the situation over with.
“What do you think you’re about here, Jaxon?”Randy asked.
“I think that’s all pretty clear, Dad. We’re out. We want to go in a different direction, try something legit, clean up our lives.”
“Like your buddy Oliver? Who’s barely days out of rehab?”Randy had chuckled.
“Oliver isn’t any of your business,”I said, my eyes narrowing at his gibe.
Oliver had been struggling to detox on his own. Once he fell back for the last time, Aiden demanded he go into a voluntary treatment plan. We all agreed the only way we could really start over was if he was healthy.
“You’ll all be back. Oliver first, I’m sure. Then the rest of you. But ask yourself, Jaxon, will I allow you back in?”Randy asked.
There was a gleam in his eyes that made a shiver pass down my spine. Under the fatherly front he often tried to play when others were around, a cruel and evil man lived. I had no doubt he was already thinking of ways to bring the four of us down. Aiden had ensured we’d have enough to keep Randy off our back for some time.
I turned away from him and as I opened the door, I looked over my shoulder at him.“I won’t be seeing you again, Dad. Goodbye.”
Randy’s bellowing laugh had followed me down the dingy hallway of our apartment building. Aiden, Oliver and Gideon waited for me on the street, a cab already pulled to the curb. I nodded once to them and we all piled into the vehicle, leaving everything I had grown up with in the rearview and solidly in the past.
Over the years, we had tried to keep tabs on Randy and his enterprise. I couldn’t say I was surprised when local leaders of drug rings started to turn up dead. Somehow, my father was always far enough away that he was never mentioned as a suspect, but there was no doubt in my mind that his team had completed the hits.
Gideon had tried to put a tail on Randy once, only a few years after we left. The tail integrated into the lower levels of the business, just close enough to hear the talk of the dealers that worked for my father. By that time, my father had a number of police officers and city officials in his pocket. Users who were in debt to him, or wanted to protect his product line to ensure they could always get the product he offered.
When the contact from our man had stopped, my gut told me the man was dead. The answer to his disappearance came as a package to Club 4, the man’s tongue placed in tissue paper with a note from Randy. It read: Nice try, boys. We didn’t need a signature to know where it had come from. Gideon had compensated the man’s family handsomely and buried any questions that may have come up about his disappearance.
