“You. Fuck it,” I cursed as I realized that Marty was behind it.
“Nice to see you as well.” He grinned at me evilly. “It’s been a while.”
“What do you want?”
“I thought I warned you that if you steal cars in River Valley, they go to me or you don’t steal. I even had my man tell you when he bought the Toyota to not fuck with me. I thought you understood what the deal was.”
“I didn’t agree to that.” I squared my shoulders.
“I think you need to learn a lesson.” He laughed. “You don’t mess with me.”
“Why? You messed with me and my family!” I shouted at him. “Why should we let you get away with not paying us properly? Do you think I’m going to steal cars and take a quarter of the money? This is a free market, Marty, I can do what I fucking want.”
“You’re costing me money, Logan. I don’t like it when that happens.” He stepped towards me. “And neither does my boss. You have screwed us over one too many times. Your dad knew the deal. He stole the car, brought it to me right away, and took whatever money he got. He was grateful and happy. You’re just a greedy little boy. You’ve been causing way too much trouble. I tried to give you a warning, but you fucked up one too many times, and now my boss is ready to take you down.”
“Huh?” I looked at him puzzled. “What are you talking about? What boss?”
“Logan,” Vincent hissed at me, but I was too busy staring Marty down to turn towards him.
“You’re a bully, Marty. Give me my money and fucking leave us alone.” I walked towards him, ready to take him by the scruff of his collar. I was surprised that he didn’t have his henchmen there. There was nothing to stop me from beating him up. And after him, I would beat up Joey. I knew he was a sorry motherfucker. I would get both of them so black and blue that they wouldn’t pull this shit again with anyone, then I would steal the money and leave town. “Where the fuck is the money?” I shouted at Marty. “Give it to me now before we take this down a very bad road.”
“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, Logan.” Another voice came from the left of me, and I turned around to see who had spoken. The voice sounded slightly familiar but I couldn’t place it. As I turned and saw who was there, the blood drained from my face, and I couldn’t say a word.
“It’s nice to see you again,” he cackled while staring at me with evil eyes. “Well, I can’t really lie, it’s not that nice seeing you again.”
“The feeling is mutual,” I finally spoke up, and took a deep breath as my head started spinning. What was the mayor doing here? I looked at Vincent and his face reflected the shock that was on my own. I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I felt like I was in a bad dream and there was nothing I could do to escape the impending danger I saw coming.
“You can go now, Joey.” The mayor smiled at the traitor casually. “Thanks for your help.”
I turned to look at him and he shrugged. “Traitor,” I hissed at him, wanting to kill him. My brain was screaming at me, I told you not to trust him. I told you not to trust him.
“You brought it on yourself.” He looked back at me with a hard expression.
“What do you want?” I turned back to the mayor, unable to stop the hatred spewing from my eyes. In that moment, I wished I had a gun because I would have shot him without thinking of the consequences.
“I want you and your family to leave River Valley. I don’t want you to call my daughter again, and you must never see her again.” His voice was cold, and I saw his upper lip twitch slightly. I realized that more than anything, he was mad about me seeing Maddie. This wasn’t about the cars or selling them to Marty; this was about me not being good enough for his little girl. As I stared at him, I realized that we had one thing in common. We both loved Maddie with all of our hearts. The only problem was that he was an evil bastard as well.
“That’s not going to happen.” I stared back at him, not moving. “I love Maddie, I will not stop talking to her or seeing her, unless she tells me not to.”
“Then I will call the police and tell them to come and collect you and your brother.” The mayor pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I will have you arrested for grand theft auto and for assault.”
“You won’t do that,” I called his bluff. “You have no leg to stand on. I haven’t assaulted anyone, and you set up the theft. I’ll have you go down as a co-conspirator. I will tell them that you knew what Marty has been up to.”
“I don’t think you get it, Martelli.” The mayor looked at me pompously. “Marty isn’t up to anything. He works for me. I run this town. How do you think you were able to steal so many cars without the police coming after you?”
“Marty has connections?” I frowned and looked at Marty, who stood there looking small and insignificant. Why hadn’t it struck me before? It was unlikely that Marty was in charge of the whole endeavor. I had never questioned what my dad had said about Marty having the police connections. “You have no connections, do you?” I felt my shoulders slump as I looked at him. “You’ve been working for the mayor from the beginning.” I shook my head as it all started coming together. My dad had started stealing cars because he had no other options and Marty had approached him. But if Marty had been working for the mayor this whole time, it meant that it was the mayor who had told Marty to contact me dad. “So you set my dad up on purpose?” I frowned as I realized the truth about the situation. I stared at the mayor as I spoke to him. “You set this whole thing up from the beginning, didn’t you? From when you were kids? That was your whole plan.”
“I’ll tell you this, you’re a lot smarter than your dad.” The mayor laughed heartily while he stared at me with cold eyes. “My father was in this business for years. He told me I needed to recruit someone to help with the business. I was friends with your dad. He was poor. I figured I had the perfect guy. I didn’t anticipate him becoming a loser, though. How is your drunk of a father, by the way?”
“Don’t you ever—” I moved forward to go and hit him, but Vincent grabbed my arm and stopped me.
“It wasn’t easy.” The mayor looked at us with a baffled expression. “I thought he would have jumped at the chance to make some extra money, what with him having none. But he wasn’t interested in hearing about any of my schemes. He just wanted to go to college, get a degree, and find a good job.
“So why did you have to take that away from him?” The words fell out-of-my mouth. What sort of evil person would deliberately do that to someone else?
“He stole the woman I loved.” His expression changed. “From the moment, I laid eyes on your mother, I knew. She was the one for me. She was my everything. And then your dad stole her, and I begged her to take me back. I told her I’m rich, I have the money, I can take care of her. And she said to me she didn’t care. Money meant nothing to her. She loved your dad and wanted to see where it went with him. Well, I took care of that.” He laughed bitterly. “She never had to worry about having too much money or that she was with him for anything but love.”
“How could you do that? You had Maddie’s mother.”
“Ha, I never loved her.” He shook his head. “She gave me Maddie, who is the light of my life. But I’ve never loved her or felt the same passion as I did for your mom.”
“You’re an evil man.” I stepped towards him unseeing but ready to hurt. My heart sagged with pain and the thirst for revenge and I wanted to make him cry out. I wanted to hear him scream for my forgiveness. I wanted to make him pay. Vincent must have seen the look in my eyes because he reached forward and grabbed my shoulders. I tried to push him off of me, and he tightened his grip. “Let me go,” I growled at him and his eyes pleaded with me to stop.
The mayor looked at us both in disgust and was about to step forward when his phone rang. He frowned and pulled it out and answered it.
“Hello, dear, what is it? I’m busy.” His face paled and I saw him look at me quickly. “They took Maddie? What? How much? Don’t call the police yet.” He hung up and faced me, his face as white as a sheet. “What have you done with Maddie?”
“What are you talking about?” I felt faint as I stared at him. All my worst fears were coming true and I was scared to hear what he was going to say. All of my anger and hatred faded as worry seeped into my heart. I was scared that he was going to tell me that something bad had happened to Maddie.
“Maddie has been kidnapped.” His voice cracked. “They want me to deliver a million dollars for her safe recovery. They called my wife.” He looked away from me. “They said they would kill her if I didn’t give them the money.”
“Who took her?” I heard the words but they didn’t seem like they were coming out of my mouth. I had a bad feeling that I knew who had taken her. Everything around me seemed like it was spinning out of control, and all I could think was, what had I done?