Chapter 19
Dalton
I was getting out of the gang today, the day after I confessed to Brittany about my criminal past. Today, I began the destruction of my darkness dwelling within, an extermination of my internal violence that I had fought ever since failing to defend and protect Talia’s life so many years ago. I would never be able to wash my slate clean, but I could live the amends for the violence I had perpetuated before, during, and even after I was locked away for six months.
I had never committed myself fully to a second chance, I told myself, and it was time to correct that mistake in my judgement. I would pay penance for every pain I had caused in the name of my perverse meting of justice. If they wanted to throw me in jail forever, then so be it, but I was going to put an end to Tribado, Tommy, and the gang I had been operating with to ‘protect’ others through violence.
As I walked myself to a police station, it occurred to me that my plan to escape this gang I had joined could forever bar me from gaining access to my money from my father. Could confessing my crimes disqualify me? Absolutely, but only if I was convicted for my involvement. If the cops agreed to my participation in bringing down the gang, then I could feasibly still gain access to the money by marrying before I was thirty. It made no sense to obsess over it, though—I didn’t give a damn about the money, anyway. I would be richer in different ways knowing I had put an end to the gang and put a straightjacket on the darkness I hid inside myself.
I signed several documents, and spoke to many authority figures until late into the evening. It was agreed that no charges would be pressed, and I was to be a witness against the leader of the gang and then put under protection. I declined the protection although they insisted, and I was given a handler who would help me in gathering intel the following week before I would assist them in capturing Tribado. I asked for police surveillance of my apartment building and Brittany, and although they couldn’t supply the latter they did park an unmarked car nearby. I asked Tommy to deliver me two envelopes that week, the first so I could join in on a job while wearing a recording device. The second envelope would be the job where the police would interject and put an end to Tribado’s gang once and for all.
I didn’t get a chance to participate in the second job.
At the first job, Tribado sat in the back of the car. With a sneer, he said, “Glad to have you along, asshole. We’re delivering a ‘permanent message.’”
I just stared at him. This was new. New was bad—if I wanted to take the gang down, I needed things to go like clockwork. The cops expected this to go just like I’d been telling them.
Tribado handed me a gun. I stared at it a long moment before taking it from him.
“What the hell is this for?” I said.
“You don’t ask questions. You do what I say.”
I hated this prick. So I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to tell me what to do as Tommy drove us to another part of town.
Tribado grinned, thinking he had me. “The rounds in there are for a punk who got away with the murder of a young girl. You go in. Apartment 3A. Shoot him. Come back out, get in the car.”
“We don’t kill people,” I said. “That was never what this was about.”
“It’s about what I say it’s about.” Tribado grabbed the gun from my hand and pointed it at me. “So, asshole, are you gonna do your job?”
It took everything I had not to punch the shit out of him. I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, I’ll do the job.”
Somehow, I’d have to not shoot the guy but make Tribado think I had.
Tommy parked the car in front of a shitty apartment building, the kind of place that made my complex look like a palace. I shoved the gun in my waistband, ignoring all common sense of gun safety. I had to look like I didn’t care, like this was routine. Tribado was watching.
Just as I knocked on the door to apartment 3A, the cops burst in. I recognized one of the officers who’d taken my statement. “You’re fine, Dalton,” she barked, her voice no-nonsense but still holding an element of compassion. “Hand me the gun—we’ve got everything under control. Tribado’s being read his rights downstairs.”
After passing over the gun, I sagged against the wall in relief. “What the hell happened?”
“Three other members of the gang reached out to testify. We have all we need.”
“So it’s over?” I asked.
“It’s over.” Then she grinned. “Well, we’ll need to get your statement and some more information from you on this recent development. But otherwise, yeah, it’s over. The gang is finished.”
It took a few hours before I was finally able to leave the chaos of the police department behind me for the day and return home. I hadn’t seen Brittany all week, and I was looking forward to seeing her for the first time since I’d told her about my involvement with Talia and her murderer.
A squad car dropped me off, and I shuffled into the complex, feeling weary. I knocked on Brittany’s door.
She opened it. “You look awful.”
At least she spoke to me, I thought to myself. That was more than I could have asked for.
She had a friendly demeanor toward me, and even though I expected her to hold me at arm’s length, she gave me a hug when she saw me respectably keeping my distance. “It’s good to see you again, friend,” she said, stepping back.
“It’s great to see you, too.” I peeked past her down the hall to see if there were any other tenants in the courtyard at the end of the hallway. “Can we talk?”
She hesitated at first, visibly weighing the decision. “I have a few minutes I guess,” she said, guardedly, and let her expression take on one of those smiles someone gives to when they recognize nostalgia and something that has been lost taking on a new form that only they can recognize.
I motioned for her to follow me to the courtyard, and we sat next to each other on a bench near the lavender I had planted when she had first moved in.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I knew it was my father calling for the fifth time today. I had missed a scheduled meeting with his assistant during my cooperation with the police and he was no doubt furious at me. He would be even more furious when I revealed to him how I had been spending my time with a gang and only today had been a tool in removing the gang from operation. I turned off my phone without answering, wanting to devote my full attention to Brittany.
“I’ve fixed what I had to fix, and if we’re still going to be friends, I must tell you this.”
“Dalton.” Brittany put a hand on my shoulder before I could continue. “I don’t care about your past. In fact, it makes me happy to know what you did. We’re still friends, no matter what. I don’t trust you...yet, but I do feel safe around you.” She looked down at her feet, contemplating her next words, but I interrupted her.
“That may change after I tell you this.”
She looked into my eyes, and I poured everything out to her. I told her about my first few months out of jail when my father had set me up with my second chance. I told her about all the anger I carried around about Talia’s death and the constant injustice I heard about in the world where bad people continued to get away with hurting good people, people they claimed to love. Then I confessed a lie that I had even been telling myself since leaving jail.
“August and Mariah Jones are not my real parents.” The words were clunky in my mouth since I had spent every waking moment since they had taken me in forgetting about my true parents and assimilating to the family that now supported me. “Mariah Jones had been a dear friend of my mother’s, and my mom had entrusted her and August with my inheritance. This was while I was still in jail, and my mother was dying at the time. My father died when I was very young, and my mother became very ill also when I was young and couldn’t take care of me. August and Mariah raised me, and when my real mother heard about what I’d done and how I’d been sent to jail, she redacted the rules with my P.O. governing how I would receive my inheritance when I turned thirty years old, an age predetermined by my father when I was seven. My father was murdered—and they never caught the killer.”
Brittany’s eyes got wide, and she gave a soft gasp.
I had to stop and take a deep breath. I hadn’t thought about any of this in so long, the stale emotions were beginning to freshen. “Ever since he died, I’ve been obsessed with protecting the people I care about. Yet I failed Talia, and it was right when I was released from jail where I was kept for that failure when my mother died. I had no one left, so I decided to join a gang with the purpose of protecting those in need.”
“Oh, Dalton,” she said, her eyes welling with sympathy.
“It gets worse,” I said. “Slowly the gang became something else and I no longer wanted to be any part of the new monster it had grown into. I said I had no one left to protect, no one left that I cared about, but that all changed when I met you. I went to the police and everything is resolved now. And it’s because of you, Brittany.”
Her gaze was open and empathetic, and it spurred me on. I continued, “You give me purpose, you make me a better man, and I want to support you how and when you want me to, whenever you need me. I can see your father is forcing his support on you. I want to be here for you only if you want me, and if you want me I will give you everything. I know I can trust you, you’ve got this brightness in you that no one can quell, a brightness I know Talia is proud of, wherever she is. You’re exuding all this brightness, and it would kill me if your light was extinguished. If you’ll let me, I want to be a friend when you need one, and a man you can rely on.”
A solitary tear pushed its way to the bottom of my eye and crawled down my cheek. Brittany reached up to brush it away, her hand lingering against my face for a moment. Her soft fingers quivered as we locked eyes. Before she responded, she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and then bit down on her lower lip, still staring into my eyes and piercing me, making me drown in their freckled blueness. Her lips parted slightly, and I watched as she took in a sharp breath and held it, her breasts pushed out as she brought her hand from my cheek to my knee.