Page 8 of Centering Kaos

I’ve always had an explosive temper. When I was a child, my folks would go out with my aunts and uncles, leaving all of us kids together in one house. They only had two rules: no deaths and no breaking shit. You’d think they’d be easy rules to follow, but we were a rowdy bunch, with more energy than brain cells. Once, a couple of my cousins were wrestling and knocked over a table lamp, shattering it. I was on the other side of the table, and both those assholes tried to pin the blame on me.

To be fair, whenever something broke, I was usually guilty, but this time, I didn’t do it. Determined to make them eat their bullshit accusations, I attacked. The lot of us were rolling around on the floor throwing punches when my three older brothers intervened. They tackled me and trapped me in the coat closet. They intended to let me out as soon as I chilled out, but being locked up for a crime I hadn’t committed flipped a switch inside of me. I couldn’t turn it off. The longer I stayed locked up, the harder I raged.

By the time our parents returned, I’d torn the shit out of that closet.

I was so riled up the adults had to keep me restrained. They tried to unravel the truth about what had happened, but in the end, the facts didn’t matter. We all got our asses beat and were sent to bed. After that, my cousins slept with one eye open every time they stayed the night. The fuckers knew I’d be gunning for them, and I was. My revenge came after months of plotting and preparing. With a low voltage electric wire slipped into our swimming pool at the perfect time, I taught both my cousins and my brothers a lesson about fucking with me.

My oldest brother, Gregory, still complained about occasional numbness in his fingers and toes.

To be honest, it was a wonder any of us survived childhood.

So yeah, I knew what it was like to lose my temper. But no matter how pissed I got, I’d never laid a hand on a woman in anger. Not even close.

Naomi turned on me, her expression reflecting the fury I felt. “You want to know the most fucked up part of this whole thing?” Before I could respond, she answered her own question. “If Matt hadn’t caught Tina looking at those pictures, she never would have said a word. Her husband would still be out there beating the shit out of his paid side piece and coming home to her like he was a respectable family man.”

Emily looked worried, but I couldn’t tell if her concern was for Tina or Naomi. “We don’t know that for sure.”

Naomi threw her hands up. “We sure as hell do!”

“Is Tina a doormat?” I asked. She hadn’t seemed like a pushover when she was staring into my soul, trying to figure out why I was so interested in her son. She’d protected Dylan, pushing back about letting me coach him. “Didn’t seem that way to me.”

“No, she’s…” Emily snapped her mouth closed.

“It’s complicated,” Naomi added.

“And that’s not our story to tell, Kaos. We’re only sharing case information with you because we have a plan, and we need your help.” Emily’s gaze turned pleading. “Will you help us?”

“You don’t even have to ask.” They couldn’t take me off this case if they tried. I was fully roused now. I had questions and concerns and was ready and willing to take down the bastard. Rolling my head from side to side, I worked out the kinks like I used to before I took the ice. “Just tell me what I need to do.”

Emily removed a packet from her file and set it on the table. “Matt Parker is dangerous.”

My gaze slid back to the photo. “Obviously. How did she get the marks around her neck?”

Naomi stopped pacing long enough to answer. “Fucker jumped her outside of her workplace. Threatened to kill her if she doesn’t come back to him.”

“Why isn’t he in jail?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s an upstanding citizen,” Naomi sneered. “A smart one, too. No witnesses, no evidence other than the bruises they can’t pin on him, and he had an alibi. The cops think it was some random attacker who was interrupted before he could rape her.”

“But that photo,” I argued. “You said Matt has a box of them.”

Emily frowned. “Tina pocketed the one before she moved out, but there’s nothing to tie it to Matt.”

“But you said the woman’s a prostitute. What if we find her?”

“It’s pointless to even look for her. She won’t talk,” Emily replied. “Trust me. No local prostitute would dream of taking the stand against her john. Prostitution is still illegal here, and it’d be the end of her career, if not her life.”

“There has to be a way to nail his ass,” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust.

“Not for that,” Emily said, picking up the picture and tucking it back into her file. “People are still innocent until proven guilty, and without evidence or witnesses we have no case.”

Naomi leaned over Emily’s shoulder. “I feel for the hooker, I really do, but we can’t forget what Matt did to our girl.” Plucking another photo from the file, she handed it to me.

Tina. This one was her; I would bet my life on it. One eye was swollen shut, but the other was unmistakable. Her lip was busted, and a fist-sized bruise covered the right side of her jaw. Naomi added a second photo to the first. This one was a torso shot. Tina wore a sports bra and boy shorts, but almost every inch of her exposed skin was covered in bruises.

“Holy shit,” I swore.

“Yeah. That’s what he did when he caught her with her hand in that box of photos.” Naomi picked up another picture, studied it, and then flipped it around to show me. A blond-haired, blue-eyed man wearing a business suit. He looked like the average corporate Joe, medium build, friendly smile. The man even had a fucking dimple on full display. “Meet Matt. He’s got the predator mullet going on. Hard-working family man on top, abusive sexual deviant just beneath the skin.”

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