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My Forever Heaven. I backtrack, rounding the corner, running into the hard body of Penn.
“Where’s Ani? Her ankle monitor has been deactivated.”
I hold up her necklace; Penn knows Anisten’s collar. “She’d never take this off, Penn.”
It’s when I know she’s been taken from me.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN
Iwake to laughter but it’s not the ha-ha type. It’s laced with a darkness. “You’re fucking stupid, boy. Why the hell would you take her? We were in the wind.” The two voices are easy to understand. The man with the high-pitched voice sounds almost delirious, but I recognize the voice of the other person. I know it too well, it haunts me now, and it’s haunted me since I joined the firm.
“We weren’t in the wind, Daddy dearest.” The man who is on edge with the frenzied tone becomes further unhinged with each syllable he utters. “They made the connection,” he continues. “They have Tawny, and in time she’ll sing like a bird, and Arthur and Leonard are stupid enough to think they can go to the cops without dealing with the consequences. Anyway, you’d been ready to get even with this bitch for years.” He pauses and in my mind I imagine he’s pointing to me but my face is turned from them. “Anyway, Dad, it was fate the bitch was involved with that asshole who has taken everything from me.”
I’m against the cold floor, my head foggy and the last thing I remember had been a rag over my mouth and nose that knocked me out.
“You’re as fucking stupid as your mother.” The voice I know too well is pushing the other man who is already currently unbalanced. “I should have known you’d turn out to be a bumbling idiot like her and that man who raised you.”
There’s silence, but it doesn’t help my head, with a throbbing ache in the middle of my temple.
“I say we fucking kill the cunt now.” The man who doesn’t have his wits about him is vulgar with his words.
Is this how it all ends for me?
“You can’t keep killing people. Harry Lane and his wife were leaving the country. I’d made sure he would remain quiet.” The voice I know too well continues. “No son of mine could be this stupid. Fuck, Garrett, we, too, had an escape plan.”
The deranged man’s voice raises, his pitch higher and higher with each word he speaks. “You always think the worst of me, you have since I was a boy. Answer me this? Who built a million-dollar company from the ground up, asshole?” Though I’m unfamiliar with the voice, with what Penn revealed, this is Garrett Greene, who I’ve met once.
“You act as if I should be a proud father. If it weren’t for me feeding information on Luciano De Santos’s company, you’d be broke and in jail.”
I keep my eyes closed, no reason to let them know I’m listening to their confession.
“Oh, yeah, Dad, like you were doing it from the bottom of your heart. You got quite the compensation.”
“You listen to me, Garrett Mann, if you go down, I’m not going down with you.” This now seems as if it’s become a stand-off between father and son.
“Goddamnit, you son of a bitch. I’ve never been a Mann, you made sure of that, you motherfucker. You left me with Mom and that asshole who pushed me around for years, Jeffery.”
Jeffery begins to laugh and I’ve heard his maniacal merriment before. “Your mom was a slut and took you from me. If you need to blame anyone, it’s her, not me.”
Garrett Greene is delusional, holding on by a thread, and his father, the man I know as Jeffery Mann, is baiting him. In this exchange, I’ll become the innocent bystander, never to take on the last name of De Santos.
* * *
It could be minutes or hours that have passed by. Time doesn’t make sense, not when my body is face-down in a bare office. No one knows I’m awake, because I keep the façade up with my eyes closed most of the time. When their footsteps fade and they aren’t near me, I try to take in my surroundings if given a chance to run.
Every once in a while I hear the occasional argument between father and son, but Garrett tends to speak out loud, more to himself, than his dad.
“He was threatening me, you know. That fucker Harry Lane, asking for the money now. We don’t have it, not until the lawsuit has been decided.”
“Would you shut up!” Jeffery screams from another end of the office space. He’s not near me, and they seem to be on opposite sides of the room as they both yell and shout.
“I didn’t mean to kill Harry’s wife. She walked in on me after I shot him, and I couldn’t let her just walk away. It’s a shame she was in the dark. She thought he was taking her on a second honeymoon.” My heart breaks at this image. His poor innocent wife didn’t deserve it.
“I said to shut up. You really are the stupidest motherfucker on this planet.” Jeffery is as blunt to his son, as he’s been with anyone who pisses him off in this world.
“I can speak if I want to speak.” Garrett is quiet for a few minutes. “What are you doing, old man?” he calls out, finally after a long period of silence.
“I’m attempting to come up with a plan since you fucked up my original one, son.”
