CHAPTER 20
Tessa stared at Lucas with murderous eyes as the luxury car bumped along the unpaved road leading to the gang’s farmhouse. She thought of Atticus and how angered he looked as Lucas took her from him. She sat on the cool leather seat across from Lucas, her hands bound behind her back. All she wanted was to lunge across at him and wrap her hands around his neck, draining the life from him.
But instead, she sat helplessly, two gang members flanking her, her former love sitting across from her in the cab of the car with a silver gun in one hand and a drink in the other.
“I can’t believe that you’ve done all of this,” she said, her voice a hiss.
“You can’t believe that I’ve done what, exactly?” asked Lucas through a grim smile. “That I was able to go from a starving artist to a drug kingpin?”
“Among other things,” said Tessa. “How you could live a double-life and still look me in the eyes would be another.”
“It was easy. You and I had been growing apart for years,” he said, the car making a slow turn on the road towards the property that she had visited where she learned that Lucas was cheating on her. “But you didn’t even seem to notice it until it became blindingly obvious.”
“What’re you talking about?” asked Tessa, her eyes flicking towards the ramshackle settlements that had cropped up along the road since the last time she’d been there.
“I’d been getting more and more into this world for the last year, why do you think I’d been abandoning my art? I started by hanging out with these guys after drinks at the bar. It just kinda grew from there. Turns out I’ve got something of a knack for this business.”
“A ‘knack?’” asked Tessa, feeling as though she were talking to someone she’d never met before.
“Yep. Making connections, distributing, supervision, production- all that. These guys were small-timers until they found me. I was able to do for their business in the last few months what they’d been unable to do in the last two years. They just needed someone with a little imagination.”
“You must be very proud of all this,” said Tessa, gesturing towards the road that led to the compound, the fields on both sides strewn with vagrants and junkies eking out meager existences for the sole purpose of being near the meth lab.
“Cost of doing business,” he said, seemingly immune to the sight of the human misery around him. “This town was on the brink of collapse anyway, it just needed a little push to finish the process.”
“But why?” asked Tessa.
Lucas’s eyes narrowed.
“Because I was tired of our boring life, nothing happening day in and day out. I wanted excitement, while you wanted nothing but the same things every day.”
“So, you thought this was the way out.”
“It was the way out.”
The farmhouse grew closer, another party raging out front, just like the one that Tessa ventured into the night she found Lucas.
“I did this for us, by the way,” said Lucas, looking out the window at the party on the lawn. “You have no idea how much money I’ve been able to make so quickly. I was going to buy the life that we’d always wanted.”
“Is that why you cheated on me?” asked Tessa, not buying his altruistic explanations.
“Hey, when you’re the head of a meth empire you end up getting a lot of attention. You say ‘no’ 49 times, on the 50th, you’re gonna crack.”
Tessa glared at Lucas.
“Besides, that’s all over now. Once we, well, I’ll tell you about the rest of the plan later, but now that you’re here back by my side where you belong, away from those bear freaks, we can get back it just being you and me.”
“’Bear freaks’?” demanded Tessa. “You don’t know the first thing about them.”
“I know that they’re standing in the way of me expanding my market. Do you have any idea how many labs this crew has lost to them over the last few years? Too many, that’s for damn sure.”
The car attracted a crowd as it pulled through the party towards the stretch of land behind the large farmhouse. The crowd was comprised of everyone from junkie hangers-on to teenage groupies to tough-looking gang members, all recognizing the car as Lucas’s, all wanting to discuss business with him…business of one form or another.
“And these yokels here in Branlen all figured they were forest spirits or some crazy shit like that. They needed someone with half a brain to realize that there was something weird going on with that compound that the Swift boys owned, something probably connected to what was going on in the woods. Needless to say, one of my first orders of business was to wipe them off the map. And when I found out that they were loaded, well, so much the better.”
“You’re a monster,” said Tessa, her eyes narrowed.
“No,” said Lucas as the car pulled into what appeared to be a recently installed garage. “The monsters are those…animals out there.”
He pointed towards the general direction of the compound.
“They’re beasts, they kill because they can’t help it. It’s part of their nature. And I don’t know what Atticus or the rest of them told you, but they’ll kill you in time.”
“You’re wrong.”
Lucas shrugged.
“Maybe, maybe not. Either way, my plan seems to be going off without a hitch. The pack should be wiped out by now, with the exception of Atticus, who’ll be helpfully depositing his millions into the designated account any minute now.”
The car came to a stop and the driver killed the engine.
“And you’ll be right where you should be, at my side. With the money and power I’ve earned for us, we can do anything. We can even start that family you’ve always wanted.”
Thoughts of a wanting a family flooded back into Tessa’s mind. It was true, starting a family was a journey that she’d always imagined going on with Lucas. But as the years went on, the idea grew more and more distant, until it was only a shadow of a thought. She’d felt that they’d grown so accustomed to their lives as they were that there was simply no room for a baby. But now that Lucas spoke the words aloud, she realized that the love that she had felt for Lucas had simply faded over time, and with it, the desire to start a family with him. And as she grew older, on some level she felt that family was just something that was never going to happen for her.
But now that things were the way they were now, the idea of carrying Lucas’s child brought a feeling of sickness to Tessa’s stomach.
“I’ll never start a family with you,” said Tessa, her eyes narrow, her glare as sharp as blades.
But Lucas only smiled in response, a sly, knowing smile.
“We’ll see about that.”
The driver, a reedy man in a button-up shirt of blue silk and a pair of jeans embellished with rhinestones opened the doors and led the two out of the car, the pair of gang members following close behind. That familiar thumping bass, the same one that she’d heard that night weeks ago, filled her ears. Tessa wanted nothing more than to leave, to never see this horrible place or its hundreds of wasted, junkie inhabitants ever again. But as Lucas took her arm in his grip, she knew that this wasn’t possible.
“Come with me, Tess,” he said, flashing a toothy smiled as he gazed at her with narrowed eyes.
The driver opened the door from the garage, leading to a small, dark, hallway. The volume of the party increased as they reached the end, and once they did, the driver, flashing a smile of his own, opened the door. Beyond was a crowd of parties, dancing to the music, their bodies filling all available space of the farmhouse. But once Lucas entered with Tessa at his side, all eyes nearby fell upon them.
The crowd held still for a moment, as if confirming what they were seeing, before bursting into wild cheering. To Tessa, they seemed to be celebrating Lucas’s return, and she surmised that he must’ve told them that when he came back his business with the Swifts would be long-finished.
Lucas held up a hand, a smile on his face. The crowd continued cheering and Tessa’s gaze swept upon the jubilant masses, noting that each face seemed to be stricken by the effects of meth abuse in its own way. Some were pock-marked, some were red-eyed, some were prematurely-aged. But all looked terrible.
“They’re celebrating us,” said Lucas, yelling to Tessa over the crowd. “I told them that when I returned with you at my side, it would mean that we’d won.”
Horror crept through the Tessa as she looked over the crowd.
“Don’t you get it?” he asked, yelling louder. “These are your people, I’m their king. And you’re my queen.”
Tessa felt as though she wanted to drop to her knees and scream. It was hell that Lucas promised her, a horrible reign over a court of the damned.