Alexander

“I told you. Sara Jane called me, but I didn’t answer it—”

“Why not?” Brown asks from across the table. “Why would you not answer your wife’s call?”

“Have you answered every call your wife ever made to you?”

His belly shakes when he laughs. “I avoid her like the plague. If it’s not ‘get your ass home,’ it’s ‘stop at the store,’ so point taken.”

Langley cracks a smile.

I don’t.

Fucker.

Leaning in, Langley asks, “Chad Daughtry called you next, but you didn’t answer his call either. Why?”

“I rarely answer my phone. My friends know to text me. I’m not an overly chatty guy.”

“We’ve noticed,” Brown says. I hear the air leave through his nose as he looks down at the questions before him. “And Shelly Delano? She called next. Seems like a lot of people wanted to get hold of you.” He scribbles on a pad, mumbling to himself, “Avoided call.”

“I didn’t avoid her call.”

“True,” Langley replies. “You answered Ms. Delano’s call. Why?”

“Because she had never called me before, so I thought something had happened.”

“It had,” Langley says, tapping the eraser of a pencil on the metal table. He scratches his head. “What I can’t seem to figure out is how Ms. Delano knew something had happened.”

“She didn’t. She was calling—”

The top of Quincy’s hand presses to my arm. I stop talking, and my lawyer says, “It is not my client’s responsibility to answer why Ms. Delano called Mr. Kingwood. That would be a question for her to answer. Please move this along.”

The feet of Officer Brown’s chair come down from his tilted back angle and he leans forward, mimicking Langley’s position. I almost laugh. Short. Tall. Fat. Slim. Angry. Happy. I think this is where they start the good-cop/bad-cop act, or maybe that’s what they’ve been doing all along.

Brown says, “Picture this. A woman is somehow beaten and shot—”

“You’ll maintain respect for Mr. Kingwood’s wife, or we’ll end this discussion right now,” Quincy cuts in.

“It’s funny how you keep calling it a discussion,” Brown snarls. “A kid is dead and Mrs. Kingwood barely survived. I would think your client would be more than willing to help in any way that could lead us to the perp. Or maybe he has something to hide, maybe this doting husband bit was an act all along and we’ve been asking him the wrong questions.”

I’m on my feet, the metal chair falling backward. Slamming my palms flat in front of them, I play their game. “Act? Husband bit? Are you fucking accusing me of setting this up?”

Quincy is next to me, his hands pushing me to the side. “We’re done here.” He takes the back of my arm, forcing me to the door. Calling over his shoulder, he says, “If you have more questions, you can call my office to schedule a meeting.”

Just before the door shuts, Brown shouts, “The truth always comes out, Kingwood.”

Keeping my eyes down, anger rages inside me. Quincy whispers under his breath, “Keep walking and don’t look up.”

I look up to find a station of police officers staring at me. I should be used to it—the kid who became a billionaire overnight. Sensational in every way and then you add my connection to the attack on Sara Jane and Chad—I’m a detective’s dream come true. They’d love to take me down. To claim the headline and get a key to the city for bringing a criminal to justice. If only they had that kind of drive when it came to my mother’s death.

We walk out of the police station and to our cars, which are parked next to each other. I hear Quincy mutter, “They think they can treat innocent citizens like shit. Assholes.”

Innocent?

I’ve never been innocent. Innocent was Sara Jane and Chad. I try to avoid the spiral of self-loathing, but at the end of the day, I know I’m guilty. From the moment I set my eyes on Sara Jane that rainy Tuesday over four years ago, I took and took from her.

I fucked around in prep school—smoking, drugs, sex, partying. That’s what we all did. I wasn’t unique. In a school full of spoiled rich kids, the guys wanted to be my friend and the girls wanted me to fuck them. Among the wealthy, Kingwood reigned supreme in business and social circles. I wasn’t oblivious to the attention, often told how much I looked like my dad and my mom—both considered striking amongst the most beautiful. My mom. She had striking blue eyes. I was a fool for believing I was her son based on a similar trait I heard so often.

Friends came easy. Girls came when I let them. Power made me blind to what I was becoming—empty. Until Sara Jane. Which is why I couldn’t stay away.

Quincy pulls his keys from his pocket. “Don’t even think about them. They’re grasping. They’ve got jack shit on you, Alex . . .”

“Yeah. Jack shit.” I barely hear a word he says.

Quincy pats me on the back. “Don’t stress. You’ve given your statement, so let me worry about them. If they harass you, call me. If they come to the house, call me. Don’t talk to them. I’ll schedule her formal statement and see if I can get it taken at the estate instead of downtown.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Don’t let Sara Jane talk to them without me being present though. Got it?”

“Got it.” I shake his hand and we get in our cars.

I open the door to my new Mercedes AMG GT S, admiring it. Quincy says, “Nice car.”

“A present for myself.”

“What are you celebrating?”

The right side of my mouth lifts high. “Becoming a billionaire at twenty-three.”

His casual attitude disappears. Rubbing his chin, he says, “Guess that’s worth celebrating.” He walks to his car. “Congrats are in order, I guess.”

Nodding, I dip down into the sleek leather seat and close the door. I know what he’s thinking. I sound callous, but I’ve earned this money from the death of my father.

I didn’t kill him.

He made that decision.

He chose me to carry the Kingwood torch. He chose how to live his life just like he chose his death. Quincy doesn’t know when my father looked at me, disappointment was obvious in his eyes. He doesn’t know how jealous my father was for my mother’s affection and made me compete for her attention. Or that he stole me from a woman he fucked and left for dead. No, he doesn’t know when Alexander Kingwood III stared into my eyes, his only son, his only flesh and blood, he only saw his own failures through the death of my mother. He treated me with such disdain that almost three months after his death, I spent his money on something as shallow as he was. I stroke the fine leather of the steering wheel and the craftsmanship of the gearshift.

What Quincy and everyone else now knows is that I’m the sole heir to a huge empire, an empire I’ve spent the last two months selling off much like Nastas’s car—sold off for its parts.

I shift and accelerate, weaving through traffic because fuck those cops. Fuck Nastas O’Hare and Connor Johnson. Fuck them and the hell they came from, the hell I plan to send them both back to.

Calling Cruise on Bluetooth, I wait until he answers before I start in on my laundry list of stuff we need to follow up on.

“What’s up, King?”

“Where do we stand with Connor?” He’s quiet, withholding information. “What did you find out, Cruise?”

“O’Hare and Johnson were texting right before the attack. There was also one phone call between them.”

“They were waiting for her. How did they know she was coming back?” His sigh fills the car. “Tell me,” I say, my fingers tightening around the steering wheel.

“Just like we found her, they found her. One of their guys saw her at a gas station and called Johnson. It was just bad timing. The worst fucking timing. Johnson texted O’Hare her ETA. O’Hare didn’t even have to wait an hour.”

My gut twists. If Johnson had gotten to her . . . Jason didn’t see this guy coming. Fuck. “Either way—”

“She was always going to be their target. What was the last text?”

“Johnson texted O’Hare when she passed the train tracks. A few minutes later it went down around the bend in the road.”

I’m seething. Firefly was coming back to me. She was coming back to me with our baby and these fucks destroyed her innocence, her intentions, her good inside. I slam my fist on the wheel. “Fuck!”

“Jason tailed Johnson home. Wife. Two kids. One son. Fifteen. A daughter.” He pauses then says, “Nineteen. Goes to university with us.”

Red is all I see, but I also see an opportunity to destroy him just like he tried to destroy me. “Where is Jason?”

“I don’t know.”

“Get hold of him and meet me at the penthouse.”

“Not the manor?”

“No. I’ll be on Lexington Boulevard in ten.”

When I reach downtown, the sun has ducked behind the tallest buildings, but peeks out as I drive through intersections. I pull into the garage and park in one of my assigned spots. The elevator drags, but when I reach the penthouse, the doors open and the light shines in through the wall of windows.

I expect to see Chad at his desk, typing on the computer. Shelly should be flitting about—carefree from worries. Cruise should be by my side or already waiting on the couch. But they’re not.

It’s quiet here. Too quiet.

I walk to the window and cross my arms over my chest. It used to make me feel powerful to stand here, to have a crew supporting my every move, helping me strategize my next. But after all that’s happened and talking with Firefly about power, I’ve lost the high I once felt. The absence of the lives that filled this room is overpowering.

Chad is gone.

One of my best friends is gone.

Because of me.

Because I didn’t answer my damn phone.

He was good. Through and through, he was good. Never asked for anything other than a steady job so he could afford a better life for him and Shelly one day.

The ring comes to mind.

I ribbed him over it. Teased him, not because it was small. Nah, I know that doesn’t matter. Being the assholes we are, Cruise and I teased him for wanting to be married so young, and now he’ll never marry at all. I’ve pushed away these feelings, putting my thoughts, my efforts into Sara Jane. But standing here, in this space, his space, it finally sinks in. Squatting, I press my elbows into my knees and drop my head into my hands, allowing myself the five minutes of silence that I need to recognize this new reality for what it is.

Chad is gone. Forever.

Shelly is alone. Forever.

Sara Jane will never be that same girl she once was, the one who would stand up to me when no one else would. The one who used to look at me like I hung the damn moon in the night sky just to steal a kiss beneath it. She will always know what it’s like to be treated as a pawn between father and son, to be touched in violence for revenge. To be beaten and shot for debts she knows nothing about.

How do I look her in the eyes and conceal so many truths? How did I coerce Shelly to stop being selfish and visit her friend when she is grieving the love of her life? I held Sara Jane while she cried from fear that she might have lost her best friend. And I only cared about making her smile again. How can I attend Chad’s funeral, knowing it all could have been prevented if I would have just answered my fucking phone?

“King.”

I keep my back to Cruise and move to wipe my face with my hands, but I’ve not shed any tears. What kind of monster have I become that I did all of those things without remorse or regret hanging in my heart? What have I become? My father? “What?”

“It’s okay.”

When I turn around, I’m met with a hardened stare, one that’s developed over the years the deeper we got into this mess. “Remember when your parents thought you worked in an office?”

“Yeah. They still do.”

“Maybe you should.”

My remark seems to confuse him. His head tilts as he goes to the table where his computer is set up. “Why would I do that?”

I will sound weak, but I don’t care. “I don’t want to lose another friend.”

That draws his eyes back to me. Resting his elbows on the glass top, he sighs. “I don’t know why he went.”

“Because Chad was good. Sara Jane was in trouble, and Chad knew it. He went because I didn’t.”

Turning the bill of his hat to the back, he says, “Your phone never rang. I know you want to blame yourself, but this time, you can’t. You would have answered.”

“My phone didn’t ring because I was chasing dead-end leads. We are no closer to getting answers than we were three years ago when we started this . . .” I flip some papers on his desk. As they float to the floor, I add, “Maybe it’s time to stop this search.”

“Maybe you need to grieve and get it out of your system. Stop holding back.”

“Is that how you feel about Chad? Is that what he deserves? Is that how I should feel if you’re next? Just grieve and move on?”

“Fuck you, Alex.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I’ve stood by you long before this fucking catastrophe, and I’ll be here when it’s blown over. There’s no going back. There’s not a time in the past where it was better. It was just different. Chad was my friend too, but if we give up the search now, then he died in vain. Fuck that. His life meant something. It will always matter. So if you need to clear your head to get back into the game, then do it. But I won’t let you discount his life by walking away.”

Impressive speech, though I won’t tell him that. He had the nerve to get personal and call me Alex. There’s no way I’m letting his ego inflate any larger. “I’m not walking away.”

He sits down and starts typing. “Johnson’s daughter will be down on the square tonight. She works the bar three nights a week.”

Sitting down on the couch, I shake my head. “I’m not messing with his kids or his wife.”

“His partner beat and shot Sara Jane.”

The image of her blurs my better judgment. I squeeze my eyes, trying to force the memory to go away. When I reopen them, I say, “No kids. Johnson pays. We’re moving forward.”

Cruise comes around and sits across from me. He smiles and holds his hand out. I fist-bump him and he says, “The King has spoken. Good to have you back.”

I’m not sure I’m really back, but he’s right. I won’t let Chad’s death mean nothing. I won’t let Sara Jane suffer for a mess I created. “It’s good to be back.”