Hard Bastard(29)

It wasn’t like I was fucking soft. I just didn’t fuck up women when I didn’t need to. And I especially wasn’t going to hurt Sadie, no matter what these bastards asked me to do.

So I sat there and I drank, smiling and laughing and sharing stories like we always fucking did, but my mind was somewhere else.

One thing was nagging at me. What did Alex mean when he said someone was going to do it, and sooner than I thought? It was a weird thing to say in that moment, and I was having a hard time trying to place exactly what he meant. I wanted to go back and ask him, but I knew that I couldn’t. It would be way too obvious if I turned the conversation back to that.

I was going to have to do something else, and soon, otherwise something bad was going to happen to Sadie.





Chapter 11





Sadie





My eyes felt heavy and my shoulders hurt from hunching over the laptop. There was a single lamp on and my glasses felt heavy. I was wearing sweats, a t-shirt, and a messy bun on the top of my head. Files and folders were spread out all around me, cases from years ago, anything that had to do with the Russian mob that had invaded Ashertown.

It went way deeper than I could have guessed. Politicians were bribed, cops were bribed, heck, everyone was bribed. Ashertown was corrupt down to the core, a rotten town full of rotten criminals.

I had no clue how bad it was when I was a kid. Frankly, probably not many people realize the full extent of all this shit and how far back it all went. I was one of the ones that wanted to uncover it all, and that was incredibly dangerous.

Just like back in Seattle, I got phone calls. They were always from men and always threatening me. I reported them all to the police, and they even patrolled around the hotel every day just to make sure nobody was hanging around, but they didn’t really do anything about it. I didn’t really expect them to, considering the massive amounts of money that was probably flowing through their office from the mobsters. They made way more money by turning a blind eye to my peril than they did by helping.

As far as I could tell, I only had one way out of all this. And that was by going all the way, by following through, by getting some convictions and forcing people in the town to finally stand up and say enough is enough. Otherwise, the mafia was just going to bury me like they buried all their other problems over the years.

For example, back in the eighties there was a reporter named Michael Leeway. He wrote a three-part series on the mafia in Ashertown, connecting corrupt politicians and other civil servants to money coming from obvious mob fronts. Michael disappeared two days after the third part was published and his body was never found.

That was just one example of many. On their own, each disappearance didn’t amount to much, but when you put them all side by side and really looked at the timeline of what was happening, it was absolutely staggering.

That was all I did with myself ever since Gage left my hotel room that night. I went to work, I did my research, I prepared my case, and I slept. I didn’t go out, I didn’t have friends, and I didn’t linger anywhere that wasn’t safe. I worked and that was it.

I missed him. I hated to admit it, hated that I felt it, but I did. I missed Gage and wished I hadn’t sent him away because I knew that he could make me feel good in a time when nothing else was really working.

But I couldn’t get involved with that. I couldn’t. It was just insane for me to want the one guy that I absolutely shouldn’t want. He worked for the mob, and the mob was my biggest problem. I didn’t even know if he would want to see me, even if I could get past everything that was keeping us apart.

Still, his words kept ringing in my mind. Even when I was my worst, when the threats were particularly bad and fear spiked through my body, I kept remembering what he said. Gage would never let them hurt me, even if I didn’t want to see him.

He didn’t owe me that, and it was insane of me to think that he was actually going to follow through. But I couldn’t help picturing his strong arms wrapped around my body, that smirk of his plastered on his face. He’d kiss my ear the way he did, fingers tracing circles around my hipbones.

Those were just silly fantasies by a silly girl, and I didn’t have time for them. I was trying to win a case against a serious man with serious backers, and it felt like everyone in town was against me.

Even Rick wasn’t as helpful as I thought he’d be. After the initial hearing, he handed over everything that I’d need and left me to it. He assigned me some law clerks to help out, but he basically ignored my calls and had his secretaries turn me away when I tried to talk to him face to face. It was like he was trying to throw me under the bus.