Page 39 of Demise

I shrug. “Do you know where David is?” I ask Johnny.

He shakes his head.

“Carson, do you know?”

“Haven’t seen him,” he says.

Moretti exhales drastically and shakes his head. “Okay,” he says. “I see what you’re doing here. What’d he do, huh? Slap you around a bit? Told you to piss off one too many times? Huh? Tell me.”

“He was fucking little girls,” Johnny says.

Moretti lifts a brow, running a hand down his face. “Stupid motherfucker.” He grabs a cigar from his box on the desk. “Where is he?” He strikes a match.

“River,” I say.

“Dead?” he asks, stopping midway from lighting his smoke.

I nod.

“Christ,” he says. “So now I have to pay the cops off to fuck around somewhere else. You couldn’t have just beaten him? Taught him a lesson?”

“I think we taught him a lesson,” I say.

It just goes to show you how much greed can ruin a person.

I shake my head, taking a left at the red light. I’m caught up on the murders the pigs were talking about now also. Simon set Sweep up, asking for his help to take care of two guys who were robbing his drug dealers.

“It’s our fault,” I murmur, roughly scrubbing a hand across my lips. We got too far out. I clench my jaw. We shouldn’t have even gone to Atlanta. “We should have stayed here.” I hit my closed fist against the wheel. We had everythinghere, but that was another one of Moretti’s ideas.

I look out at the road ahead as I leave the south side of Postings and head for the north, Sweep and my conversation replaying in my mind.

“They want you to rat, Bones. They want you to help them frame Moretti. They’ve been watching him in Atlanta with that foreign man, Ruel. They know something is going on, they just can’t get close enough to prove it, and you know if they got Simon by the balls, then they got you for drug trafficking.”

My jaw tightens. How did I not think about that? I’ve been too caught up, not focused enough. Worried about Bexley, worried if Trig really killed my brother and tried to kill us.

Fuck.

“You’re no rat and Moretti has done a lot for us both. We don’t know for certain what he’s up to.”

It’s the most I’ve heard the man speak in all my life. Sweep’s a dying breed. The kind that’ll do anything for you. The kind that doesn’t speak unless he’s got something important to say. He holds anyone’s attention listening because it’s a rarity.

“I ain’t gonna ask you to rat for me. Trig might, but not me. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life; prison is the least I deserve. I’ll do my time like a man. You do what your conscience tells you to.”

And that’s all he had to say about that.

He left my apartment, and he left me with a sadness in my chest I can’t shake.

After several more stop lights, I’m pulling up to Bexley’s home. I kill the engine and head to her front porch, knocking on the door.

The door opens, and she stands in front of me. I can smell the freshness from her shower drifting off her body. Her hair’s wet. The t-shirt she wears is worn, and black sweatpants cover her legs. Her lips are turned down, her eyes tired.

“Long day,” she says.

“Long day,” I reply, feeling the exact same. “Can I come in?”

She nods and moves to the side so I can walk past her. A fire is going in the fireplace and the TV is on low. There’s a cup of something steaming on the table and a bowl of popcorn.

“Movie night?” I hear the door click shut.

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