“I have no intention of hurting him.”
“Then why are you bringing him here? I don’t understand.” The thought of Ryan walking into danger speared me in the heart. I had to make sure he wasn’t in any peril. Had to keep him safe. Had to get back to him—to the man I loved. “Hasn’t he been through enough? Hasn’t his brother been through enough? His whole damned family? Can’t this all just end?”
My father regarded me. Something in his eyes changed. At least I think it did. His eyes weren’t actually his eyes. They were that eerie blue fakeness.
But I couldn’t deny I’d seen something. A…softening? I blinked. Then again. Theodore Mathias could never soften. I’d imagined it.
“Unfortunately, some things never end, daughter. Even when you want them to.”
It had been a softening. My father was showing a rare morsel of remorse. I hadn’t known he had it in him.
“You’re wrong. This can end.”
“Not well.”
I wasn’t going to lie to him. “Not without you spending the rest of your life in prison. That’s true.”
His eyes went icy. “I assure you I’ll never go to prison. I’m a hell of a lot smarter than Larry Wade.”
I didn’t doubt it.
“Speaking of Wade, why did you have him knocked off? He never rolled over on you. Not once. The Steels and I offered him everything.”
“What makes you think I had anything to do with his death?”
“Just a hunch, Theo.”
“I don’t expect you to believe anything I say, Ruby, but I didn’t have Larry Wade killed. And I didn’t have Tom Simpson killed.”
“I know that. Tom Simpson committed suicide.”
“Without any help from me.”
“Without any help from anyone.” I rubbed my tight temples. “You know damned well Simpson killed himself. Jonah witnessed it and saw the coroner take the body. This one was identified, and he’s actually dead.”
“Simpson may have pulled the trigger that put the bullet in his own brain, but someone else was behind it. Someone else wanted him dead, and it wasn’t me. It doesn’t matter. You’ll believe what you want to believe, no matter what I tell you.”
“True. Because you’re a lying psychopath. That’s why I don’t believe you.”
He sighed. Or at least I thought it was a sigh. Hard to tell with him. “Would you believe I never meant for anything to go as far as it did?”
I rubbed my eyes. They wanted to close so badly. “No, I wouldn’t. Because if you’d never meant for it to go so far, you wouldn’t have raped Gina. Or Talon. Or Colin Morse.”
“Not that this will change your mind about me, but I never touched Colin Morse. He was Tom’s bitch. I was against that one. Not only is Morse’s father a loose cannon, but we have no market for adult men. Tom had acquired the taste over the years and couldn’t help himself.”
I rubbed my forehead, trying to ease the invisible rubber band around it. “Oh my God. Couldn’t help himself? Do you ever actually listen to the words that come out of your mouth?”
“Tom was worse that way than I was. It was an urge with him. A compulsion. I told you once he was an amateur and I meant it. He had no control. Murdering his nephew and then slicing him up in front of the Steel boy was Tom’s idea, not mine. He was the true monster of the three of us, no matter what you might have heard.”
“Sure, blame the dead guy.” I scoffed.
“I’m not blaming anyone. But Tom was what he was. He was convinced he was immortal, could do whatever he pleased and get away with it, all while keeping up his beautiful family life as mayor of Snow Creek. He was devoid of emotion. He was truly cold-hearted.”
Cold-hearted. Ryan and his brothers had referred to Tom as an ice man. Apparently they hadn’t been far off. I resisted the urge to shudder. I’d never meet the man, and I was damned glad of it.
“And what… Colin Morse just stumbled into his path one day?”
“Essentially, yes. Morse was in Snow Creek, trying to bait the Steel brothers one evening before Talon was due in court. Tom witnessed the exchange and followed him. He took him later that night. He figured the Steels would be blamed for the disappearance. He kept him holed up for a few weeks until Jonah Steel found him.” My father shook his head. “The man never learned. I was pissed off. I should have let Jonah Steel beat the shit out of Simpson, maybe even kill him, but I felt guilty and went back for him. I got him out of there before the cops came.”
“I have a hard time believing you’ve ever felt anything slightly akin to guilt.”
He removed his mask, and his unruly black hair fell around his olive-skinned face. “Tom was a friend. A brother. I couldn’t let him go down. Not like that. Not for something as stupid as kidnapping Colin Morse.”
“You couldn’t let him go down for torturing and raping an innocent man? That was big of you.”
“I don’t expect you to understand about our brotherhood. That’s what the future lawmakers really were. A brotherhood.”
“A brotherhood? What about Wendy Madigan?”
“She’s a different story.”
“Meaning?”
“She was brilliant, in a way. Actually, in many ways. She had a way of getting us caught up in things that we had no business being caught up in. Tom was the first to succumb.”
“Please.” I rolled my eyes.
“I’m serious. Tom was greedy. That greed was what did him in at the end. Like I said, he thought he was immortal. He’d gotten away with literally everything for so long he figured he’d never get caught. I was never that na?ve. I never stayed anywhere long enough to get caught, and I used a lot of names.”
Nothing I didn’t already know. “So you were careful. And you stayed away from adult men because they weren’t part of your market. Am I really hearing this? It’s all about the market?”
“Well, there is a market for adult men. But the company we provide for isn’t interested in that particular commodity.”
“Commodity? These are fucking people, Theo! God, what made you so sick in the head?”
“Everyone needs to make a living.”
“Seriously? Making a living is one thing. Why the torture? Why the rape? Why not leave that to someone else?”
He had no answer for me. Or if he did, he kept it to himself. I eyed him. His features went slightly rigid.
“You know what it is? You fucking enjoy it. You enjoy exerting power and control over those weaker than you are. That’s why the women, the little kids. It’s not sexual at all for you, is it?”
He didn’t answer again, and I was just as glad. I didn’t want to know why he did it. I didn’t want to get any more inside his twisted head than I already was.
“There are things you don’t understand.”
“These are things I don’t want to understand.”
“None of this was ever planned.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“We were forced into a lot of it.”
“Still don’t believe you.”
“At times, we were stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
This was going nowhere fast, and my eyelids were drooping. The old velour couch was beginning to feel soft under me. God, what I’d do for a bed. “Just tell me why you brought me here.”
“I already did. You will lure the Steels here, right into my trap.”
“Damn it! You said you wouldn’t hurt them.”
“I won’t. Not if they play their cards right. Their father owes me something. And I intend to collect.”
Chapter Nine
Ryan
Raj showed up around four a.m. to relieve me, but I had no intention of going anywhere. I filled him in on the GPS coordinates and our new route.
“If there’s land there, it’s probably privately owned,” he said. “Have you looked at a map? If the island’s a decent size, it will show up on a map of the area.”
“We haven’t looked at a map. But whether anything shows up or not, we’re going.” I scratched the back of my neck. “There’s land there. Owned by Mathias or some other degenerate, no doubt.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“It’s a clue. Left by my father. It has to be.”