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She continued to study me. I let her see there was no judgment from my end. There would never be judgment from me.
She bit her lip and lifted a shoulder. “Or had someone beat him up. Maybe not you, personally, because yeah . . . but someone else.”
I gave a small nod, but still felt I needed to tread with care here. “After you posted his bail or before?”
“What do you mean?”
“How soon would you want that done, if you did?”
Her eyes got big, and she stopped picking at her pen. “You mean—”
I stifled a sigh. “This is what I do. I’m in the Mafia.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she jerked her head in a nod. “Right. Right. That’s kinda the foundation of what you do.” She looked away again, biting down on her lip once more. “I could handle seeing him when I posted his bail, if he was beaten up. Yes. That would help me. Before I posted his bail.”
A ball of tension unwound inside of me. “Done.” I began reaching for the door again.
“But, like—”
I stopped and turned back. Her eyes were still clouded over.
“Like—how beat up are we talking about? Still walking? Face all swollen up? Jaw broken? At least both his eyes swollen shut so he can’t see?”
She wasn’t hiding now. I liked this side of her. I cocked my head to the side. “We need him to be physically able to do what we need him to do.”
She waved that off, a sound of disgust coming out from her mouth. “Put him unconscious in the hospital and he’d still be able to be a rat on the street. Trust me. His abilities of rat-hood know no bounds.”
“Rat-hood?”
“You know what I mean. Slime of the earth. A weasel.” She was getting heated, throwing down her pen.
It bounced back up, hitting her on the chin.
“Agh!” One of her hands flailed for it, but the pen was gone. It eluded her grasp, rolling to the edge of the desk and falling to the carpet. It ended near her foot, and if I was starting to get to know Molly Easter, she was going to somehow kick it forward. It would careen off her desk and end up impaling itself in her leg.
I went forward and bent to pick it up. “I’ll have someone take care of him. When can you bail him out?”
She sighed, shoving her hands in her pockets. “Tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” I put her pen back into the cup with the others. I went to leave again, and I got halfway to the door, when—
“Do you—do you think I need to worry about the police coming again? You mentioned they might try to see my books or something.”
I tilted my chin down. “I don’t think so. The showdown that was going to happen already happened. Worthing gave me a heads-up that you called for them to come and question you on Sunday.”
“You knew that?” She went still.
“I did, but I don’t know why he did that. I know why he said he did, but I don’t believe it. At the end of the day, I’m still in a war against his family, so I need to use all my resources right now to find out who killed Justin and Kelly. That’s job number one.”
“Why are you being honest right now?”
“Because I made the decision at Pedro’s to be honest, thinking that would motivate you to help me better. Was I wrong?”
She shook her head, just slightly. “You were right. I wouldn’t have trusted you, and I wouldn’t have done anything you wanted.”
My mom. Her mom. It was a tangled shit show that I’d known about all my life, but she hadn’t. She was still processing.
I reached for the door. “I’ll have your father handled tonight, so bail him out tomorrow, sooner than later. And for what it’s worth, don’t think about what your father’s done to you when you see him. Think about Kelly. Justin. I’m aware that last Sunday would’ve been the night they used to come here.” She sucked in a breath. That was the emotion I needed her to utilize. “Use that. What you’re feeling right there, remember that feeling when you talk to him, and you’ll get him to do anything you want. Con him this time.”
My phone was ringing once more. I really needed to go, but I couldn’t deny there was a feeling inside of me. An itch to stay. An itch—she was the itch. She’d become my itch.
I left, answering my phone as I did. “Yes?”
I didn’t need to scratch that itch, at least not yet.
Trace was on the other end. “I need you at Katya.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MOLLY
I wasn’t drunk, but I wasn’t totally sober when I went to bail out my dad the next morning. I knew what Ashton said, use Kelly and Justin, only think about Justin and Kelly, but it was hard. So because I’d had a few shots, I had Pialto drive me.
