His intense concentration relaxes and he waves his hand like all this is nothing. “The girl is here,” he says. Whatever calculation he has made changes everything in his energy. “Bravo, nephew. You have shaped the situation so that your desired outcome is likely. This is why I believe in you.”
“Yes, she’s here,” Carter says from behind me as he enters the briefing room. The motherfucker couldn’t stay away despite my demand. “And she needs to stay here under the full protection of the organization.”
Lucius glares at his oldest friend, emotionless, as if he has barely registered his presence. “So now the organization is of value to you, Carter? You only come home when it rains. My mother would have called you a meal-time mutt.”
“What do you want me to say?” Carter asks. “That you’re right? That you’ve always been right? That I fucked up? It is what is. You’re right, Lucius. Is that better? There’s place for calculation and there’s place for daring. We’re different. That’s it. Is that what you want to hear?”
Lucius glances to the side with a darkness that even gives me a chill.
Carter waits for him to turn his eyes back to him. “I’ve done things for you,” Carter continues. “Things you could only ask me to do. I did them and I’ll take them to my grave, you know that.”
The room becomes silent. Whatever happens is going to happen between them. The two men that started everything.
“Enough,” Lucius says, almost docile. “I don’t want no fucking war with Bronson. Protecting your daughter immediately equates to us actively protecting you.”
Carter pulls the chair closest to Lucius out to sit. “That’s unfortunate. This is my fuckup, but the water’s run under the bridge. Jaxson’s telling you the truth. The word is out.”
“I am sure it is,” Lucius says. “And I am sure I am looking at the source.”
Carter nods. “Turning the situation toward a desired result,” Carter says. “That’s something all three of us have in common.”
Lucius has limited options. He can throw us to the wolves and begin the long process of repairing his reputation with just about everyone in the underworld, or he could do as we ask and basically challenge the Bronsons in the most direct way possible.
“Annabel loved Ella,” Carter says. “She wouldn’t want you to just throw her to the wind.”
“Leave my sister out of this,” Lucius says, standing up suddenly. “You took advantage of me. Both of you. Any help I give will come with conditions.”
“Of course it will,” I say, a little more than suspicious.
“This thing you have for Carter’s girl has got to stop. Nothing good can come from it, Jack.”
“On that we agree,” Carter says. Of course he would say that. The bastard.
Holy fuck, every time I turn my head, someone wants me to give Ella up.
“This again,” I say. “Have either of you selfish old bastards ever been in love? Could you ever walk away from it?”
“In our work, that kind of love always leads to tragedy,” my uncle says. “Carter is not stable. He won’t stop playing his games, Jack. Ella will always be a target because of him and she’ll never agree to you being part of the organization. Our work is dangerous. She knows that.”
I simmer while I resist the urge to pull my gun out and blow both these assholes away right here and right now.
“Kid,” Carter says. “You’ve already lied to her twice. That will never stop. Trust me, I know. I’ve been there. And I don’t want what happened to my wife to happen to my daughter.”
“Fuck,” I say under my breath. The air compresses in my lungs.
“That’s my condition, Jack, and it’s not negotiable. Take it or leave it. And this time, I’ll make sure you don’t lie to me. You will put an end to it or I will talk to Ella and wipe all the lies away.”
“You make sure she’s safe,” I say. “Not just now, but forever, and I will let her go. You have my word.”
I want to strangle my uncle with my bare hands. Everything that could hurt and ache, does.
“Ella’s too vulnerable right now,” Carter says. “Wait a day or two before you break the news to her.”
I don’t remember doing it, but I must have gotten up and walked through the door. Nobody stopped me. I’m walking down a corridor. I don’t know where I’m going. I just go. Without Ella in my life there is no life. I am just an empty body floating through meaningless space and time, marching toward nothing much at all. And, yet, it’s a price I’m willing to pay to save her.