Just as I thought, several police officers appear from inside to cut the boys off. I’m already way ahead of them, looking young and cute and relatively innocent. In a world that treats me like shit for who and what I am, I am more than willing to take advantage of that where I can.
I shove through the doors even as I hear one of the officers refer to Crown by name.
“Calder. Didn’t think you had the balls to show up here,” he says, but I don’t hear the rest of the statement because I’m already inside the building.
There’s a single room with a reception area, and multiple hallways that lead off of it.
I slip right past the metal detector without setting it off and then pause.
I don’t see Ms. Briggs, and that scares the shit out of me.
“Can I help you?” a woman behind the desk asks, standing up and peering through the bulletproof glass to look at me.
“I’m looking for my dad …” I start, biting my lower lip and yanking my phone out. I’m about to text Beast to let him know I’m here when he appears in the hallway with Cat right behind him.
Oh, boy, if I could describe the look on that man’s face …
He might very well kill me if I weren’t about to save his fucking life.
The door to the women’s restroom opens on my right, and I turn, throwing myself into Ms. Briggs so hard that we both end up on the tile floor. Her head cracks hard against it, hard enough that the gun she’s holding slips out of her hand.
I don’t touch it because I sure as shit am not about to be seen inside a police station holding a weapon of any sort.
Instead, I release the woman as quickly as I grabbed her, kicking the gun beneath one of the stalls as Beast waits just inside the bathroom door. Honestly, he was probably only a millisecond behind me. I realize as I watch Ms. Briggs curl into a ball and start to sob that he might have been able to stop her all on his own.
I almost feel like an idiot for coming down here in the first place.
It takes me a second to realize what, exactly, it is that Ms. Briggs is moaning. It’s Carol. She’s saying Carol over and over and over again. Jesus Christ. Bile rises in my throat, and even though I know that it was the mafia that killed Carol, it was partially my fault, too.
If I hadn’t snuck out, this woman’s daughter might still be alive.
I squat down beside her and try to keep my voice as even and as calm as I can.
“I need you to get up right now and walk yourself out of these doors,” I tell her, trying to keep my cool. Cat will kill this woman if he gets the chance. Her best hope is to leave quickly and get the fuck out of this town. “If you don’t,” I whisper, leaning in as close as I can, “you’re going to die.”
The woman doesn’t seem to care. She’s completely shattered. Looking at her now, I can see that this was an easy mark for Alvise to manipulate. He probably fed her some bullshit lie about the club, about Cat, about how it was us that killed her daughter when it was the other way around. Wouldn’t take much, I don’t think. A chance for revenge, maybe even for money. It would be pretty obvious at this point to Ms. Briggs that nobody is looking for Carol. Nobody cares.
“Wife, get up,” Beast warns, and I can tell from his tone of voice that he means now. But I don’t want Carol’s mom to die because she was manipulated. That’s not fucking fair. I know life isn’t fucking fair, but still … She deserves better than that.
“Please stand up,” I beg her, but she doesn’t move. She just lays there and cries, and I get so frustrated that I grab her by the hair and yank her into a sitting position. I’d rather be mean now and see her live than try to be nice and watch her die. “You need to run.”
“He killed my baby,” she sobs, and I slap her as hard as I can, the sound ringing in the close confines of the bathroom. The woman doesn’t stop crying but at the very least, she looks at me, her eyes big and blue and so reminiscent of her daughter’s that I’m suddenly inundated with all of these random ass memories of a girl I barely knew but went to school with for years.
If I’m not careful, it’s my empathy that’s going to get me killed.
“Whatever you think you know, it’s bullshit,” I grind out, grabbing her by the front of her shirt and yanking her close to me. “Get up and run. Not just out of this police station but far, far away.”
