Page 68 of Deep (Chicago Underground 8)
Really, even the supposed good guys talked about me as if I didn’t have a voice. Except his worry didn’t make sense. Why would he be worried about me telling someone? Wouldn’t he want me to tell what had happened here? Surely he would report all of this to the police when we left.
Unless he had some reason to want this secret. Unless what Philip said about the warrant was true.
“She won’t tell,” Philip said softly. “Not if you give me what I need.”
The judge seemed to crumple. “It wasn’t a bribe. God.”
Philip crouched and placed his hand on the judge’s shoulder, almost commiserating man to man, as if it wasn’t his order that had sent the judge tumbling to the floor in the first place. “This is how it ends.”
“Blackmail.” The judge took a shuddering breath. “My grandson. He starts college in the fall. I couldn’t let his life be ruined. He’s so young.”
“Who?”
“Barnes. That fucker. He told me…” He shut his eyes, looking pained. “He gave me instructions.”
Barnes—I remembered the cop from the dorm hallway, the one so determined to arrest Philip. His dark wrinkled face and white hair would have looked grandfatherly without the almost violent determination in his eyes.
Philip didn’t look impressed. “He has been after me for years. What changed?”
The judge met his gaze directly. “I don’t know. I swear it. I only know that someone bankrolled him. Someone gave him the…leverage he needed to secure my cooperation. There were…pictures.”
I sensed Philip’s disappointment, though he didn’t show it. “You’ll call it off,” he said softly.
“Yes, yes,” the judge babbled, and then winced when Philip squeezed his shoulder tightly.
“Wait,” I said, pulling Philip’s arm. “He told you what you wanted to know. He’s revoking the warrant. You got what you needed. Don’t hurt him.”
Philip wasn’t moved by my pulling or my pleas, but he said to the judge, “Tell her what the pictures were of. Tell her what your grandson does for fun.”
The judge turned white. He glanced at me, and in his eyes I saw a flicker of malevolence. “He has sex with girls. Like any boy his age.”
The hand on his shoulder must have squeezed harder, because his mouth tightened in pain and his whole body jerked.
“Okay,” he gasped. “She was drunk. Maybe he’d slipped her a pill. She was tied up. God, I don’t know why he does it, okay? He had the best of everything. Money. Education. I don’t know why he hurts them.”
I stared at him in horror. I’d been nervous about Philip coming here, threatening him, because the man was a judge. He was supposed to be one of the good guys. Even if he’d taken some kind of a bribe to sign the warrant, we all knew Philip was a criminal—with or without evidence. I could have still respected him.
But this? This was disgusting, horrible. This was subhuman. His grandson hurt women, raped them, but his judge of a grandfather protected him? He did illegal things just to keep his monster grandson out of jail—and going to college? He would be one of the fresh-faced freshman around campus next year. No one would know how dark he was inside.
And I realized then what Philip had been trying to tell me in his own way. This was the real reason he’d brought me here. There was no good and bad, not in this city. No clean hands. There was only money and violence—and Philip remained on top by using both to his advantage.
There would never be room in his life for love, for kindness. Those things were only weaknesses. They would only ruin him, the same way money and violence had ruined me. Steel bars, he had said. That was all he was made of. It was a cold embrace but a strong one. And he would never let me leave.
Chapter Thirty-One
THE RIDE HOME was silent. Philip didn’t seem inclined to speak, and I wasn’t sure what I could even say. My mind was held captive by images of the judge on the ground, looking pathetic and weak—and of the flash of malevolence in his eyes.
It was just like that moment in the penthouse years ago, the dark realization that wolves wore sheep clothing. It had shocked me then. I’d spent years after that trying to understand it, to accept it—studying sociology as if it could explain it. As if I could somehow find the difference between good and evil. And what I’d seen earlier tonight was the same thing, the same gory underside—flipping a rock over and exposing the worms holding it up.
There was no difference between good and evil.
There were two sides to every person: the one we showed the world and the one we hid.
Philip pulled the car into the garage and stilled the engine. I sat there staring at the blank wall in front of me—closed in bulletproof glass, in sheetrock, in brick. Protected on all sides by sturdy materials, but I couldn’t feel safe. I never felt safe.
“Kitten?”
Distantly I heard the car door opposite me. Time seemed to swim around me, and then Philip was at my door, opening it, gently leading me out. He took me by the hand, and I came willingly—I had nowhere else to go. That was the story of my life. No one else to trust.
