“It’ll be handled, Dad,” Georgia replied, managing to sound both conciliatory and annoyed.
It’d be handled, my sister offering me up as Shade property.
Oh yes, I was so done with my family.
Tommy shut the door behind us and I let him walk me five feet down the hall before I tried to twist my arm free.
His grip tightened to the point of pain, and in surprise, my head shot to the side and back to look up at him.
He’d never touched me like that.
“Tom, let me go,” I hissed, twisting now not only to get loose but against the pain.
“Shut the fuck up, Liv,” he clipped angrily, not letting go but now manhandling me toward my old office and in.
Everything was still there except my personal effects. The décor. The furniture. Nothing had changed.
And I would find, in short order, that was agonizingly correct.
Nothing had changed.
Not.
One.
Thing.
Tommy pulled me in several feet, let me go and shut the door.
He turned to me and I braced in shock when I saw his face was a mask of fury.
“Are you fuckin’ stupid?” he whispered, his tone harsh with rage.
“You know,” I returned conversationally, “I don’t need you to be ticked, Tommy. My father striking me four times to push the point home about Dustin Cul—”
Suddenly, he rushed me.
I scurried back, hit a chair, hit a table and hit wall, Tommy pinning me there with his body and his anger.
“I’m not talking about Culver, Liv. I’m talkin’ about Nick Sebring.”
Fear slamming through me, I stopped breathing.
“Yeah,” he bit off. “Harry told me.”
Oh God.
Harry?
I didn’t have to verbalize the question. Tommy was more than ready to give me the answer.
“Taught you how to take the tracker off your car. Taught you how to spot a tail,” Tommy explained. “Seein’ as it’s comin’ clear you got shit for brains, never occurred to you, he taught you how to spot a tail, he’d know how to tail you without you spotting him.”
“But why would he even do that?” I asked quietly, unable to make my voice even a normal volume.
“For money. For me,” he ground out, jerking a thumb at himself miraculously in the minimal space he’d allowed. “For us,” he went on.
I shook my head. “Us?”
“Fuck, Liv, do you pay attention at all?” he asked.
Apparently, I didn’t.
But I thought I did.
“Tom, I—”
“Your sister is taking over,” he said low, getting even closer to do it. “Your dad’s goin’ down, Liv. She’s maneuvered him right out. He’s been so taken up with findin’ new sources of horse and blow, comin’ up with crazy-ass bullshit schemes like marryin’ his daughter to some asshole he’s convinced is gonna be the next fuckin’ president, for fuck’s sake. Not to mention, generally fucking things up doin’ stupid shit, like gettin’ caught up in that human trafficking bullshit that almost brought us all down. He didn’t see it.”
There was a lot there, none of which I got to process because Tommy was still speaking.
“Now, when Georgia’s in charge of things, and she will be and she will be soon, things’ll change. And those things changing means I get you. You get me. She gets Gill. Your dad gets ousted however she’s got planned to oust him and she’s got plans, Liv. Make no mistake about that. She is not fuckin’ around. Not anymore.”
I stared up at him, lips parted, frozen in disbelief.
This went on for too long and I knew that when Tommy clipped out, “You wanna snap out of it?”
“You get me?” I asked.
He moved away half a step and tossed both hands up in exasperation. “Fuck, Liv, what do you think I’ve been eatin’ shit for the last six years?”
I could not believe this.
“Your wife is pregnant,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, and when I dump the bitch, the kid’ll still be mine. He’ll be raised half the time by you and me, which might suck, but kids deal with that shit all the time. He’ll be good.”
I could not believe this!
“When you dump the bitch?” I asked.
“Liv, I’m in love,” he pointed a finger less than an inch from my face, “with you. We’re gonna make kids. You’re gonna do whatever you do at David’s office. I’m gonna run Georgia’s crew. And it’s all gonna be the way we wanted it to be.”
“If it’s all gonna be the way we wanted it to be, Tommy, how is my cousin pregnant?”
He shrugged.
Yes.
Shrugged.
Then he explained, “It took Georgia longer than she expected. I kept ridin’ her ass. She told me she’d deliver. I saw the fruits of her labors, they came slow, but I saw them so I trusted her. In the meantime, your dad kept givin’ me a load of shit for not knockin’ up my wife. The bitch I got at home was also givin’ me shit. To shut them down, keep a lid on it, make them think I was still cowed and to give Georgia time to do what she needed to do, I knocked her up.”
Was I once in love with this man?