“Where did you get this?” Tammy asked. The color had drained from her face, and from Randall’s as well.

Zack was out of breath from tussling with the wildcat in his arms, but in a winded voice he said, “Remember how we used to joke that Swinger knew everything that went on around here before it even happened and how we sometimes wondered if he was taping our conversations?”

“Oh my God, he had cameras in all the rooms?”

“Yeah, all of them, even your precious ‘suite,’ Mona.”

“Randall, he used me. He made me do those things, horrible things…” Mona tried.

“Shut up, Mona!” Randall barked at her, not taking his eyes from the screen.

“Did you know he was taping you too, Mona? I’ll bet you didn’t,” Zack said. “Funny, the tapes were right there in the safe under the floor in your room.”

“You broke into my safe?” she accused.

Zack laughed. “I didn’t have to break in, Mona. I remembered the combination from when I was a kid and my father trusted me.” That was a lie. First, Zack hadn’t been the one to get into the safe. He’d sent Skeeter as soon as he and Tammy had Mona and Randall down in the meeting room and distracted. And second, Swinger never trusted him. Zack just happened to be there one night when Swinger was drunk off his ass and he wanted to brag about how fucking smart he was. He told Zack about a burglary he’d taken part in, without the knowledge of the club, or Mona. He was holding onto the jewelry until it wasn’t so hot, and safe to fence. Zack was no expert on jewelry, but Swinger had told him it was worth tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Swinger didn’t remember any of it the next day and after a while Zack just assumed he’d either gotten rid of the jewels, or told someone else about them in a drunken stupor and been relieved of them the way the original owners were. Zack been shocked when Skeeter told him they were still there in a leather case among the tapes. “Obviously, he didn’t trust you enough to even tell you the safe was there,” he told Mona.

“I knew it was there!”

“Really? Then you’re a fucking idiot for not getting rid of those videos.” And the jewelry.

“Let go of me!” she hissed at him.

“I’m going to put you down in that chair and you’re going to stay put. If you move, I might just let one of these guys shoot you. If you’ll notice from the looks on their faces, none of them would mind.” Zack dumped her down into one of the chairs and, with crocodile tears that Zack was almost impressed by, she looked around at the men in the room and going from bitch to abused woman in an instant she said, “None of you know what that man put me through, the things he made me do! He was a devil and he threatened to kill me if I didn’t do what he said…”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but was this the same man that you loved so much, you were willing to have Randall start a war to avenge his death?” Tammy asked.

“You don’t get to judge me,” Mona said. “You have no idea what my life has been like. You’ve always been a fucking little princess. I’ve had to scratch and claw and beg for everything I’ve ever had in my life and I’ve been used by every man I’ve come into contact with…”

“Mona!” Randall snapped. “Shut up!” She stopped talking and for a few seconds there was nothing but blessed silence, but then Zack heard his mother’s voice again and this time it was coming from the laptop. She was talking to whichever man she was in bed with, coercing him into coming over to the dark side and siding with Swinger to get rid of Randall and anyone else in the club that wasn’t willing to do exactly what Swinger wanted them to do. Whoever she was talking to seemed to be objecting to the club involving themselves in Eddie’s human trafficking business, so Mona told him to look at it as cleaning up the “vermin” on the streets of San Antonio and shipping them off to some island to make use of “the only thing they had to offer.” Zack tasted bile in the back of his throat as they all listened to her talk. He couldn’t even look over at her to see how she was taking it; he was afraid he might kill her himself. He was further sickened by the fact that his father was evil enough to pimp his mother out in order to reel in his backers, but even sicker was the fact that Mona’s only regret was getting caught.

Zack had taken a chance, telling Skeeter to talk to his stepfather about the tapes. He had no idea if Swinger had also bugged that “suite,” but knowing his father the way he did, it had been a safe bet that he hadn’t even trusted Mona. He didn’t even want to imagine his father watching Mona do the things she did to manipulate these men. “It’s Malcolm,” Randall said, startling Zack out of his reverie.

“What?”

“That was the most recent video,” Malice said, speaking for the first time. “There are lots of others, but I thought that was the most significant one. Malcolm refused to be manipulated. He was going to tell you, Randall, he just never got a chance before they killed him.”

Tammy let out a heart-wrenching sob. “You bitch! Malcolm was a good man!” Tammy started toward Mona, but Randall stopped her. He gave her a pleading look and then with the sound of authority in his voice that Zack hadn’t heard from him since before Swinger died, he looked at his lieutenant and said, “Get her out of here. Let her pack what she can carry and then escort her out of the county. Leave her with whatever cash she has, but take any credit cards out of her wallet; they stay here. Let the front gates know that if she’s seen back on the grounds, they can consider it trespassing and consider her hostile.”

Mona gasped. “Randall, please…you can’t just turn me out! What am I going to do? How am I going to take care of myself?” She was sobbing now and Zack thought it was probably genuine sorrow…for herself.

“From what I just saw on these tapes, you should be able to get by just fine. Whores are always in demand.”

She gasped again, louder this time. “I’m not a whore!”

“Could have fooled me,” Randall said. “Get her out of here, now!”

“Zack! Zackie…I’m your mother. Please, help me!”

There was so much Zack could have said, but nothing that would have made a difference. She was as dead to him as Swinger was and sadly, having her out of his life for good would only be a relief. She continued to scream and yell for him, and when she realized that wasn’t working, she once again cursed him and wished he were the one that was dead. He could see a crowd in the great room, gathering to watch the show as she was dragged through. It would give the club something to talk about for years and he was glad he wouldn’t be around to hear it. He looked back at Randall once the door was closed and it was quiet again. “What about Gunner and the Skulls?”

Randall looked up at Tammy, sadly. “I’ll leave him be, as long as he’s good to you.” He watched his daughter for several seconds. He looked like he expected her to thank him, or hug him…or something. Instead, Tammy picked up her backpack and looked at Zack.

“Are you ready to head out? I have a long drive home.”