Dark Secrets(43)

She took the USB and downloaded the file to save online. She made paper copies- one she kept in her locker at the gym, one she had vacuum sealed and buried, another she planted in a hole she discreetly made in the wall behind a desk at the local library.

Because through those papers, she found everything she needed to know.

She found the names of the men who had brutalized her family and herself. She found out who their boss was.

And when she was eighteen, she lifted her chin and charged into his legitimate business and demanded he not only hire her, but also pay for her mother's very expensive stay at a very nice mental hospital every month until she got better or passed on. She did so and got away with it not only because Vin didn't condone what had happened to her parents or herself and had dispatched of the men who did it, but because she had too much power to test, too many protocols in place for the event that something happened to her, too many cogs in a wheel that would guarantee Vin and his sons and every member of their organization would go away for life.

So she worked at Lam and she dangled incarceration over their heads for a decade.

Eventually, whether she liked to admit it or not, they had all become more than a con to her, they had grown on her. It didn't matter that she literally knew where all the bodies were buried. The longer she knew them, the more she realized that shit like what happened with her family didn't happen. It was an isolated incident. And Vin never once questioned her when the price changed for her mother's care or when she demanded a raise. She never again even had to mention that she had the files.

"You look like shit," she said from behind the bar as the front door opened, bringing in Anthony in a wrinkled suit, turning to lock the door again as he made his way to the bar.

She wasn't exaggerating either. He was pale and grayish in color. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He seemed sweaty and his clothes looked like he had slept or tossed and turned in them.

He dropped down on a stool in the corner of the bar. "Two fingers of anything," he said, his voice rough.

And she got it then.

He didn't drink the night before.

She felt like a traitor to recovery as she reached for a rocks glass and poured. But the fact of the matter was, if he didn't get his booze at Lam, he was going to go elsewhere. Besides, she knew enough about addiction to know you couldn't quit booze cold turkey. At least not when your habit was as bad as his. The withdrawal from alcohol, like withdrawal from Benzos or Opiates, could easily kill you if you didn't do it right.

And Anthony looked like he had one foot in the grave right then.

He took the glass and brought it to his lips, drinking half of it before setting it down and swirling the liquid around the glass.

Faith had turned away to go back to slicing fruit when his low, almost inaudible voice stopped her.

"You were so little then," he said, making her turn and look at him.

"Anthony, don't," she said, shaking her head.



       
         
       
        

"And so much softer. Sweeter. I ruined that. I made you hard and cold," he said, shaking his head at his liquor.

"This isn't going to do any good for either of us, Ant."

"I didn't know," he added. "You had to know I didn't know, right? I was just the wheel guy. I didn't know what they were going to do to your dad and your mom and you..."

"Stop," she demanded, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat.

They had never talked about it.

For ten years, she had seen him almost every day. And never once had either of them alluded to that night. Neither had acknowledged the night he walked in on her about to be raped and demanded they all leave right then and, being the son of their boss, they hopped to.

There were times in the beginning where she wanted to thank him, wanted to say she knew just how easily gang mentality could have won out and he would have went along with the rape, might have participated himself. It happened all the time.

But he hadn't.

He had stopped it.

She had wanted to say something but he always avoided her eye. And then pretty soon after, he fell into a bottle and became a dick.

"Coulda prevented it," he added, throwing back the rest of his drink and reaching for the bottle she had left on the bar a few inches away.

"Don't do this, Ant. It won't change anything."

"Saw that look on your busted face, Faith. Never could get it out. No matter how much of this shit I drank. I still see it at night."

She never really stopped to think that maybe he had guilt. Quite frankly, the alcohol made him completely intolerable ninety-nine point nine percent of the time so she didn't care to think about what was going on in his head. She certainly never imagined that his drinking was due, in part at least, to that night, to what he had seen, to what he thought he could have stopped.