Beard Up(60)

        

The next photo filled the screen. This one, she was on her belly. She was up on her pudgy little elbows and she was looking at the camera that was positioned behind her. Her legs were slightly parted, and you could also see her privates.

It continued like this, over and over again, picture after picture.

At one point, a picture came up with Sienna playing with white frosting. She was sitting up on her butt, legs spread in front of her, and she had a cupcake in her hands. White frosting was smeared all over her, and she had a satisfied grin on her face as she leaned forward, mouth open wide, to get a bite of frosting.

"Awwww," one of the men said. "She's a cutie."

I closed my eyes.

The picture scrolled to the next photo.

"This photo, along with the other thirty-two photos, were found in my daughter's room," I said with zero emotion. "Mina and I didn't take them."

The room went absolutely silent.

"My father abducted Sienna in the middle of the night, while Mina and I slept. I didn't even know that it'd happened. When Mina went to work, I went into Sienna's bedroom to get her ready for daycare when I found those pictures, printed out for me to see, in the crib next to her."

A low growl came from somewhere down the table from me.

"They don't look that bad, until you pair the photos together with the fact that my father is a fuckin' sick mother fucker," I growled.

"He just wanted you to know that he had her long enough to take all of these photos?" Cleo asked, all anger gone from his voice.

"That," I nodded my head and turned to him. "And the fact that he's the head of a criminal organization known for abducting kids and then selling them to sick people, just like him, who have a secret fetish for young children."

The room went absolutely wired.

"I, of course, didn't know how deep my father's sickness went. I just knew that right before I ‘died,'" I said, making air quotes in the air. "My father wanted me to work for him. Wanted me to use my job at BPD to help smooth a few things over for him while he continued to run his business." I cleared my throat. "I refused. Multiple times. The day I died, though? Yeah, that was the day that I got a picture of my wife taken through the scope of a rifle. That was the day that I knew my father was going to kill my wife if I didn't finally cooperate with him. So I agreed."

Cleo's eyes went sharp and ruthless.

I tugged my shirt off and stood.

"These weren't a lie," I said to him. "These scars? They were the burns that you saw when I was carried out of that building." 

All eyes went to my chest.

It was even more fucked up than my face.

Scars from my many burns, skin grafts, and lung transplant littered the hard expanse of my chest.

"They killed some guy whose only crime was to be an organ match with me-and I still haven't figured out how they could've found that out-to give me his lungs. They nursed me back to health in a state of the art facility in the basement of my childhood home."

"You were dead." That was from Torren.

I looked to him.

"I was. Clinically. Twice," I said. "But I was brought back in the ambulance. All the CPR y'all did … it saved my life."

My eyes, all the thanks that I could fit into them, were aimed at the man who'd pulled me out of that burning building.

"Your parents aren't God. How the hell did they get away with all of this?"

That came from Kettle, who'd been silent up until now.

I reached for my shirt and slipped it back on over my head.

"I can answer that one," Lynn finally chimed in. "The Morrisons are trust fund babies. They had millions to do whatever they fucking pleased with, and they used it to commit some petty crimes when they were younger. Van Morrison, Tunnel's father, is the scum of the Earth who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. He got what he wanted and he was never told no."

I snorted. That was the damn truth.

"Candace, well she would do anything for her husband; lie, cheat, steal. It was all of no consequence to her when it came to anything that Van wanted," Lynn continued. "Bribe a police officer? No problem. Hold a doctor's family hostage? No biggie. She'd do it for him. Kill a judge just so they could get who they wanted, who had the same ideals as them, on the bench? Done. Multiple times."

My parents were sick fucks.

"If Van named it, Candace made it happen," Lynn said finally. "Right now, we believe that there are four judges, just as many police officers, and hundreds of other people in their operation that make what they do run smoothly. They are the heads of the largest organized crime syndicate in the south right now."