Chapter 23

You know that moment when you close a cabinet door and you hear something fall? Yeah, that’s someone else’s problem.

-Fact of Life

Truth

Two hours later at the same hospital that Verity was in, I had a throw down with my president.

“I need fifteen minutes with him,” I argued with Big Papa and Aaron. “I won’t hurt him.”

“You better not,” Big Papa grumbled as he pushed up from his chair beside Beckett’s hospital bed. A bed that he was handcuffed to—at the wrists and ankles—a nearly similar situation to the one I’d found him in only two hours before. Though they’d left his dick and tongue alone.

Apparently, those weren’t the usual restraint methods that the hospital employed.

Aaron left, too. But only after receiving permission from me to leave Tank in Verity’s room while he ran up the road to have lunch with his wife.

Since he didn’t like leaving Tank in the car, and they were going into a semi-fancy restaurant, he’d decided it might be easier to leave Tank here.

“Don’t forget to give him water when you finally get back to Verity’s room,” Aaron said as he left.

I tipped an imaginary hat at him and turned back to the bed.

Beckett was awake and staring at me like one would a large pile of dog shit.

“What?” I asked, a smile overtaking my face. “Was there something that you wanted to talk about?”

He sneered.

“Tell me why,” I ordered.

Beckett smiled, and it took everything I had not to laugh at how ridiculous he sounded with a newly pierced hole in his tongue. “Why would I?”

That was followed up by a leer, and I clenched my fists tightly and bared my teeth.

I wanted to punch that smile off his face, but refrained. Barely.

The only thing keeping me in check was the promise I’d made to my president, after all.

“Because you’re not a coward. You’re an asshole, and a piece of shit, but you don’t run from shit like this. That would make you no better than a rodent…and we all know how much you hate being compared to rats.”

Beckett was phobic of rats. If there was one thing in this world that he was afraid of, rats were it. Something I’d be utilizing seeing as he was going to be spending a damn fair amount of time in the state penitentiary.

Though, he’d done that himself when he’d picked up that rifle and taken a shot at my woman. See, his bail prevented him from obtaining firearms, which was only a minor offense compared to his other offenses.

Like, oh…murder and attempted murder.

Unlucky for him, he’d left evidence behind, and now we had the weapon used in the attempted murder of my wife.

“Come on,” I cajoled. “Why don’t you just tell me for old time’s sake. Then we can reminisce on how much I hate you after you’re done explaining.”

Beckett turned his fat head away from me, causing a smile to overtake my mouth.

“Okay,” I said cheerfully. “The hard way it is.”

I walked over to his medicine pump that was feeding pain relief into his veins to keep him comfortable and started pressing buttons.

When I was sure it’d stopped sending the good stuff into his veins, I took a seat, pulled my phone out of my pocket and started reading the latest Jim Butcher book.

I’d read it over five times since it’d come out, so I wasn’t worried about stopping at a good part when he finally decided to start talking.

And I didn’t worry that he would. He was probably in some serious pain, and it wouldn’t be long before that pain would ramp back up on him.

I just had to sit here and wait.

***

It took him forty-five minutes.

The first indication that anything was wrong was the red that crept up his face to settle in his cheekbones, followed shortly by the tears.

The tears were my favorite part.

I nearly pulled my phone’s camera app up to take a picture, but I figured that would be pushing it.

“Fine!” he screamed.

My brows rose as I looked at him over my shoulder.

“You’re ready to talk?” I asked.

His grimace was obvious.

“Fix my pain meds, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he ordered thickly, his words rolling together as he spoke.

“Dick hurt?” I asked, pocketing my phone and standing up.

His refusal to answer was answer enough.

Grinning, I reached for the pillow that was behind his head, and yanked.

The jolt sent his body forward, and an audible groan left his mouth seconds later.

“No!” he sounded like he had a mouthful of cotton.

Grinning at him a tad bit manically, I placed the pillow down onto his crotch and started to put pressure down on it.

He squealed.

“Ready?”

He nodded jerkily, tears now coursing down his face uncontrollably.

“Okay then,” I left the pillow there and sat back down. “Enlighten me.”

He swallowed, then started to speak. I had to really concentrate to hear his words, but in the end, I got the gist.

“Your grandfather, my best friend, ruined me. Ruined my life,” he hiccupped. “It all started with him stealing your grandmother—my fiancé—out from under my nose while I was off fighting in the war.”

My eyes closed as a wave of nausea rolled over me.

“Then, throughout the years, he continued to take from me. I ruled these streets, and the whole fucking city, with an iron fist,” he snapped. “And slowly, ever so fucking slowly, he continued to take until I had no more income left. Yet, I still let him have his way. ‘Oh, Beck. You need to be a good man,’ the old bastard used to say to me. And then he gave me you…and then you ruined my operation.”

I had.

The moment I’d realized exactly what was going on, I’d contacted a few people who knew how to handle this kind of an operation, and they set about dismantling Beckett’s business, which apparently had ruined his business for a second time.

First my grandfather had done it by refusing to make the townspeople pay protection fees by offering them his own protection and then I’d taken away his other source of income.

He must have thought that we had set out to make that happen, but he couldn’t be more wrong. My grandfather had never, not one single time, spoken a harsh word about Elais Beckett. It’d been me who turned him in to the cops. It’d been me who’d dismantled his operation, and it’d been me who’d had my computer man, Jack, hack into Beckett’s account and deliver ten million dollars to the man’s family that I’d killed.

Had I had it in me to give, I’d have given it to him.

I hadn’t realized, at the time, that the man was mentally unstable. Had no clue that he’d been a vet with severe PTSD who was hell-bent on going out in a blaze of cop assisted suicide. He got me instead.

But that could’ve been me, coming back from deployment only to have bigger, emotional battles at home. So it was almost like shooting myself the day I found out all the things that’d been plaguing that poor man.

The man that I’d shot during the rescue of a small child who I was told he had kidnapped.

“Anything else you’d like to tell me?” I asked. “If you give it to me now, I won’t take it from you later.”

He must’ve understood my sincerity, because by the time he was done speaking, thirty minutes later, I’d gotten not just the confession of my grandfather, grandmother, and cousin’s murder, but also the attempted murder on Verity, and how he’d planned the whole thing.

I was spitting mad, but I left him there, almost the same way I had found him, and barely made it to the bathroom in time to lose my lunch.

Lucky for me, Big Papa hadn’t gone too far, and he’d heard the entire thing. Something he told me five minutes later when I finally emerged from the bathroom.

“You did good,” he said. “I’m happy that you didn’t try to kill him.”

I wasn’t.

But I also wasn’t a killer…at least not anymore.

That didn’t mean that I didn’t want to go in there and skin him alive with my bare hands.

“Do you mind watching over Verity for a few minutes while I go home, change, and feed the cat?

The cat that I’d forgotten about in the last couple of hours.

I’d called my neighbor and told her not to bother going over today because we’d be back by nightfall. But that was before Verity’s head had nearly been blown apart, and I’d forgotten about everything but her.

Big Papa nodded.

“Yeah, I can do that,” he said, offering me his hand. “Maybe grab some food while you’re out.”

Was I hungry?

Yes. Yes, I was.

Would I eat?

No, probably not.

I nodded at Big Papa anyway, though. What he didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt him.