“What are you doing here, Mackenzie?” He sounded bored as he asked, like taking time away from his cell for our little chat was an inconvenience to him.
“I’m here because of this,” I said, slapping the folder I’d gotten from Mr. Pruett on the metal table and sliding it across to him. “Oh, and this is just a sample of everything I have on you.” I grinned as he opened the folder. “I also have flash drives, videos, voice recordings, you name it. So just in case you think you can cover all this shit up this time, you might want to reconsider.”
“And who’s this guy?” Lance asked with a chin lift in Mr. Pruett’s direction, still trying to act nonchalant even as he flipped through page after page of all his dirty little secrets.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I laughed. “I forgot to introduce you. Mr. Pruett, this is my ex, the woman beater. Lance, this is Bradford Pruett, my attorney.” He blanched at the mention of his name, and right then, I knew he was aware of exactly who Mr. Pruett was. “I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He’s Reginald Spaulding’s cousin. You know, your boss? They’re very close. Mr. Pruett also has copies of all of this, as well. So you see, this is no longer your word against mine. It’s your word against his,” I said with a flick of my thumb in my attorney’s direction. I had to swallow down my laughter at the finger wave Mr. Pruett gave to Lance.
“Who do you think everyone at Spaulding, Jefferies, & Dunn would believe then?”
“Trust me, boy, my connections make yours look like child’s play,” the old man said. “Don’t let the small town fool you. For every high-up official you think you have in your corner, I have four more who are even higher. I am not a man you want to go up against.”
Wow! In the short amount of time I’d known Mr. Pruett, I’d thought of him as a kind, softly spoken man. I never thought he was capable of being intimidating. I was happily proven wrong.
Lance’s throat bobbed as he swallowed audibly, the tension finally beginning to show on his face as he turned back to me. “What do you want?”
Leaning forward, I braced my hands on the cold metal table and stared him down. I would never cower to this man again. “I want you to disappear from my life and my children’s lives for good. I want you to go back to Ohio and leave us alone. Don’t call. Don’t write. Don’t ever show up in Cloverleaf again. If I even so much as think you could be lurking around, I’m going to your boss and the police with everything I have, and I do mean everything. That includes Mr. Pruett’s unwavering support.”
“Unwavering,” Mr. Pruett emphasized.
“If you leave me and the kids alone, not only will all of this go away,” I told him, waving my hand at the folder in front of him, “but I won’t press charges against you for the attack in the parking lot of my work. You’ll get to leave here no worse for the wear. Well…I mean, aside from the broken nose and fucked-up face. But your life will still be perfectly intact.”
Lance leaned back in his chair and clasped his cuffed hands in front of him. “And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“What are you getting from all of this?”
A shit-eating grin stretched across my lips. “I get to go home knowing I never have to see your face again. I get to enjoy the fact that you have a pregnant woman out there, hell bent on destroying you for leaving her.”
At that, his eyes grew to the size of salad plates.
“That’s right. You know Gloria? The woman who kindly gave me all this stellar information? She’s knocked up. Oh, and she’s out for blood, Lance, so you might want to watch your back. Looks like you found your match with that one. I hope you two will be happy together.”
“Gloria. That fuckin’ slut,” Lance hissed to himself through clenched teeth.
“There’s one more thing I want from you before I go.”
“Oh?” he asked sarcastically. “And what the hell could that be?”
I pulled one document from my bag, along with a pen and slid them over to him. “Sign it.”
He scanned the papers before looking back up to me. “Are you fucking kidding me? They’re my kids. I’m not signing over my rights!”
Placing my hands on the table, I calmly stood until I was leaning over, hissing in his face.
“You will sign over your rights to those children. Don’t sit here and act like you give a shit about either of them because we both know you don’t. Give them a chance at a good life, Lance.”
“So, what?” he sneered. “You want that fucking redneck back there to play daddy to my kids? I don’t think so.”