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I tugged on shorts and shoes, looked around for my cigarettes, not even knowing where they were because I hadn’t had one for a while. Once I had the pack and a lighter, I went outside.
It was still warm, the sky dark and clear, filled with never-ending stars. I inhaled the first drag into my lungs, not sure why I did this. Almost immediately I snuffed it out, and the second I did, I heard the snap of a twig in the woods and my phone buzzed with a notification from the cameras.
My head whipped around, eyes scanning the area, just as Frank Hunt stepped out of the trees.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” My whole body was so damn tight, it was hard to control myself, hard to breathe around the anger throbbing in my veins. Somehow, I was still moving through it, toward Frank, and willing to do anything to protect the two people I loved.
“Why so angry?” He held up his hands. “I’m not armed, and I’m here alone. I’m tired of fighting with you, is all. I was thinking we could come to some kind of truce.” He was smoking and had a flashlight in his hand that I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it hadn’t been on? The floodlights around the house were glowing brightly, though.
“Fuck your truce.”
“Were you always this angry?” he mocked. “Though I guess prison will do that to a guy. You should have been more careful so you didn’t get caught.”
Caught for something I hadn’t done? I should have run from a dying man like his son? My mind and body weren’t on the same wavelength, my arm swinging forward, my fist connecting with his face. Frank’s head knocked back, his body stumbling before he spit blood and laughed. “I’ll give you that one. Hit me again, and you’re a dead man.” There was a coldness to his voice that felt like spider legs running down my spine. He wasn’t joking. I didn’t doubt that.
“Get the hell off my property.” I turned, heading for the house.
I only made it a few steps when he said, “You wanna earn your freedom back from me?”
“I’m free of you. I don’t owe you shit.”
“That’s not how I see it. We did a lot for you over the years, took you in and treated you like our own. Everything you know, everything you have, including that will of steel, is because of me. I’ve got a proposition for you. Do this for me, and you have my word that we’ll leave you the fuck alone.”
“No.” The firm word was a concrete wall that he couldn’t climb. There wasn’t a part of me that trusted Frank.
“You don’t even know what it is yet.”
“I don’t have to.” I began walking again.
“Well, damn. That sucks. I’d hate for something to happen to Ms. Betsy because of choices her grandson made, or hell, what would happen if Parrish somehow got involved in the shit we have going down? He could get tangled up with the wrong man or the law…you just never know.”
I turned and lunged for him again. Before I could reach him, Bill, Rex, and his friend Les were there, the four of them surrounding me. No way could I take them all. There was also no way I would call for Parrish’s help. I’d let them kill me before he got dragged into this.
“Don’t threaten Parrish or my grandma, or it’ll be the last thing you do. And Parrish would never get involved in your shit.”
“No…that’s true. He’s too much of a pussy for that, but then, look how easy it is to go to prison for something you didn’t do.”
Fire scorched my insides, turning everything to ash. He would frame Parrish. That’s what he was saying. If I didn’t do what he wanted, he would hurt Grandma, and Parrish would end up taking the fall for something he didn’t do.
No way would I ever let that happen. If I went back to prison, so be it, but Parrish was never setting a foot there. “Why are you doing this? Why do you like torturing me?”
Frank shrugged. “Because I can and because it’s fun. This is your fault, Riven. All you had to do was play nice when you got out, be our friend again, work with us. That’s all I wanted. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
I sighed, knowing there was no way out of this, and though there was a chance he was bullshitting me, I couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk Grandma or Parrish. “What do you want me to do?”
Rex’s hand slammed down on my shoulder like we were friends again, while Frank said, “That’s my boy.”
As a kid, I lived to hear that from him, the only father figure I’d had. Now I hated it.
