The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2) (18 page)

Pete visibly backed off, wisely remembering not to dig any further, because I didn’t spill information on my personal life with anyone. Vic was another story; he was like a father to me, and knew every dirty detail.
 

For the first time in my life, Nikki was something I wanted to keep to myself.

From his office to the right of the two-level foyer, Vic spotted me. He stood upright from his desk and walked over to me, wearing a smile so bright, he nearly blinded me. “Ethan!” He outstretched his arms, expecting me to give him a hug. I avoided it because he would always kiss me on my cheeks like a foreigner. “Marriage running you haggard the second time around, eh? We won’t discuss how much it hurts my feelings to know I was left off the guest list for the very important event.”

“My wife prefers not to be around too many strangers,” I explained.

His eyes lit up at my use of the word
wife
.

I’d never used the term when referring to Estelle. She never felt like my wife to me. She felt like…property. An unruly, rapidly depreciating piece of shit property. She wasn’t always that way. She was a strong-willed, smart-mouthed woman before she met me. One month with me, and her parents wanted to send her to rehab, a mental health facility, thrust her back into the church, and put a hold on her trust.
 

I’d lied to Nikki when I said Estelle came to me the same way I had left her; she didn’t need to know the truth. Estelle had a drinking problem, but it was the worst of what she came to me with. Women always came to me with a mask of sanity. When I was done with them, the mask was torn away, showing the disfigured, insane ugliness hidden behind pretty faces and false overconfidence.

“What are you drinking?” Vic asked, heading to the living room and directing over his shoulder for me to follow him to his bar. “What’s your pleasure? I’ve got a few girls upstairs waiting for you.”

“Not tonight.”
Not ever again
.

“Shit, son. I know you don’t want me to meet her, but the way you’re going about, I have to meet the woman who stole a heart no one knew you had.”

“We’re having a family, Vic,” I admitted.

“No, shit,” he said as if he expected sunshine and got rain instead.

I squared my shoulders, trying not to show him it was a big deal, by not making it a big deal. “You went out of your way to summon me here,” I said, referring to the way he sent Pete to stalk me and confront me at Casper’s wedding. “I’m here. Tell me, why am I here?”

“You were missed.” He toasted the air and downed whatever was in his glass. His drink was likely bourbon. He was the one who turned me on to Van Winkle; at 107 proof, it was nothing to joke around with. “I’ve summoned you a few times before through more subtle methods, but you didn’t respond. You got married and forgot about this old man. My more aggressive measure got your consideration. You came this time.”

“That’s because I had to make sure you were still ugly.”

He laughed. “Money makes me look like you, pretty boy. Sit.” Walking over to the couch, he sat down and rested his arms on the backrests like he was a king. “Stay a while.”

“I can’t.” I checked out my watch to drive a point home, but was redirected when I realized Nikki hadn’t checked in with me. After the incident with Preston, I directed her to leave the anti-theft alarm on at all times and check in with me every hour. She dutifully obeyed that is, up until three hours ago. Made me think something was going wrong with the baby again. Her pregnancy was high risk due to the abnormal amount of blood inside her uterus. I had good reasons for the concern.

His face dropped. “I insist.”

I rubbed the back of my neck and sat in the club chair across from him. “I think I know what this is about.”

“Are you concerned?”

“No.”

He glared at me, before the corners of his mouth curled upward. “You’re lying to me. Must be in dire straits.”

“Did your godson say something to you?”

“Piece of shit hasn’t said anything. I’m still Victor Mejía. I know everything the Feds know and many things they don’t. Problem like this? My godson can’t do anything. If Preston needs to scratch his ass, he calls me to ask for permission. You’re educated, Eric. You know better than to run to Preston if you need something. Cut out the middle man and stop avoiding me. I have work for you—it’ll be as it was. Like old times, my boy, like old times. Could use you around here again. Permanently and full-time.”

I hadn’t done work for him since I was a teenager. Sure, I attended the meetings and pretended to be engaged. Avoidance and misdirection were my modus operandi. It carried me through—up until I quit working for him when I went to med school. My relationship with Vic changed after med school. He became the connection to the drugs I needed for the clients of Suicide Angels—nothing fucking more.
 

“Because you would want me to do too many things I don’t care to do,” I replied.

“I haven’t forgotten who you were, Eric. Does your girl know what that tattoo truly stands for? You could’ve gotten it removed, but you didn’t. Loyalty. You are still representing for the crew who brought you through it all—even though you left them for bigger things.”

A crew that was once under contract to do Vic’s bidding. When the money came in from Eamon after his death, some of the members who were loyal to Eamon turned on me. Dom and Vic got them off my back. Every single member who stood against me is dead. Pete, Dom, and I are the only ones left of the original members.
 

“Howard Sr. can’t get all the credit for helping you,” he reminded me. “I’m the one who really helped you when shit hit the fan.”
 

“And I paid back the debt.”

“You know a debt is never really paid. Considering I’ve granted you many more favors—keeping the pigs from sniffing around Tamala and Estelle’s”—he arched his fingers in the air—“suicide. I could call it all in, my boy. How about you tell me what my godson asked you for? I know it was something.”

I never asked him for a single favor. I didn’t tell him about what went down with Estelle, either. The sneaky bastard had a bad habit of keeping tabs on me by having me followed. I called him on it once; he said he did it to protect me, but I knew better. “Doesn’t matter what he wants. He’s not getting it.”

“It’s your wife he wants, eh? Simple-minded piece of shit. He always has been. He’s not like us. We don’t politely ask for what we want. We take it and make it ours by any fucking means at our disposal. You should worry about your cousin, Ethan. Thing about a man under Fed care? He becomes a grape. Pressed the right way, he’ll make the sweetest tasting wine for the pigs to drink. It’s a flood of nectar that will attract the hornets…it will touch more than just him. It will touch you and your family. I know you, son.” Lifting his tumbler from the table, he pointed his glass at me. His new trainee immediately ran over and refilled his glass with bourbon. The speed at which she did so almost made her trip over her own feet.
 

I could see it in her eyes—the level to which she’d been broken. She was in the final stage before Vic pressed the only boundary she had left. If she didn’t allow it to happen, Vic would make her disappear like every single woman that once stood in her place.

“Shit job at the hospital is wearing you thin. You’re too good to be a servant to the ungrateful masses. You should be living like a prince.”

“Uh huh,” I replied, becoming downright bored. Money was a means to an end. But it would never be my foundation. Some of the richest people were the most mentally fucked up. I knew that firsthand. It didn’t solve anything. It only amplified what people tried to hide. Case in point: every woman I played the game with came from money.

He could tell he’d lost my interest and tried to use his new toy to distract me; it didn’t work. “She’s that beautiful, huh?” Vic asked, disappointed.
 

He insulted me again, because he knew I only fucked with beautiful women. Nikki was something more.
Goddamn
. Sometimes I don’t recognize the man she turns me into. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t want to be reminded of him. “You know I won’t talk about it.”

“You arrogant bastard,” he laughed. “What is it you need, so I can do something for you?”

“I’m going to kill your godson,” I said inexpressively. “I’m giving you the courtesy of forewarning you. Usually, I wouldn’t.”

He barely blinked as he studied my face. I had a small hint of hope he might actually play along. “And why would I let you kill him, unless I would gain something better? Or say, he did something to warrant a permanent departure from this world?”

I sat up straight, waiting for the punch line.
 

He snapped at the people in the room, directing them to leave. Like good little minions, they did as told and closed the door. Lifting up from the couch with a little trouble, he began to walk through the house. Catching the hint, I trailed his path. He opened the doors to his back yard, directing me to follow him by nodding over his shoulder.

Suddenly, it dawned on me. The change of scenery and the performance play with words? I didn’t have to worry about Roy the most, because someone else put the Feds on his trail. There could only be one—the one who was bent on fucking me over lately. Preston. He was the reason my cousin was in jail. The worthless snitch probably told them enough to get Roy in custody, but not enough for the Feds to come after me. He was withholding information on me, because either he couldn’t get proof, or he wanted to fuck with me.
 

Guess I bashed him in the head one too many times, because obviously he wasn’t thinking clearly.

Vic and I took a walk to his property line, stopping shy of the start of the forest lining the border of his yard.

“Preston is talking to the Feds?” I asked, eying the pristine green, primed for a round of golf. “You know this for sure?”

“Don’t doubt my connections, son.”

“Not that I lack sympathy, because he’s the son of a good friend of yours and all, but why haven’t
you
done anything?”

“We all need a card to bluff with, don’t we?” He stared at the trees, looking as though he halfway expected someone to come running out of them.

Here I thought my life with Nikki would be simpler—my kind of simple—after I got rid of the characters primed for padded walls. I was dead wrong. My past was permanently tied to me, and now it was trying to pull me under. I didn’t believe in karma, but hell if mine hadn’t been shit lately.
 

“My godson? He’s fucking with us. Short-sighted son-of-a-bitch still has a misguided vendetta against you over a piece of tail. He won’t do a thing. No matter how angry he is, he’s still scared shitless of you. You put the fear of God in him, son. Give it time to work itself out.”

“Obviously wasn’t strong enough,” I mumbled. I could’ve solved my problem with a few words. If I gave Victor any inkling about his godson’s sexual orientation, he would’ve acted on impulse. He was old-school in the worst of ways. Preston was mine to kill, and he wouldn’t go out that way. “I can’t be patient. After I give you time to sit on it, then what?”

“Don’t you worry about it, son. He’ll disappear. Exactly how he’ll disappear won’t be discussed.” He spit a wad of phlegm on the ground. “A man damn near blood to me is found to be a rat? I can guarantee those blood ties mean very little. You know that well. We do what we have to do to protect what’s ours.” Switching gears, he hit me on the shoulder and curled his lips. “Sure you won’t partake in getting your dick wet?”

His answer wasn’t good enough for me, because Preston had the balls to mention wanting to fuck my wife. “I’m good…again.”

“I mean it. I’d like to meet her.” He grabbed my cheeks in both of his hands and gave me a hard slap. “You are like a son to me, which makes her my daughter-in-law. She’s carrying my grandchild. We have to meet.”

It didn’t matter what he wanted, there was no way in hell I’d ever let him meet Nikki.

I WAS PREPARED FOR a shit storm when I got home. Instead, I was greeted with a mess in the kitchen and a half drank bottle of wine on the living room table. The heat radiating from my body couldn’t be ignored. I didn’t need this shit today.
 

Before I could call out her name, a giggling woman came down the hall alongside the kitchen.

I kept looking forward, but for some reason, it comes back around to stop me dead in my tracks. “April,” I snarled.