Page 50 of Free to Judge
Maybe if we’d had that chance all those years ago before my life changed, when we first bumped up against each other, maybe things would have been different. This heat between us could have fully ignited. Before I can follow the water down the drain in a puddle of regret, an alarm beeps on my phone. Blindly, I reach my hand out of the shower and drag it in.
Cursing, I scrub off quickly before turning the tap off. The little firebrand is on the move. Judging by the speed, she’s on foot.
What I don’t know is if she took an agent with her and I can’t leave her unprotected.
Not when she’s somehow buried herself in something I thought long dead—my heart.
Showing up in Kalie’s neighborhood isn’t the brightest of ideas in the light of day. Still, I know I need to lay eyes on her—to make certain she’s safe.Damn, Declan. You should take your own advice before you arbitrarily endanger her by showing up at her home,I curse myself.
Still, my heart pounds in fear when I realize she hasn’t returned to her home. I’ve already reconned her property and there’s no sign of life inside. Fear and anger swirl together in my brain.
I’m going to give her a tongue lashing for worrying me.
Please let her just be out with her agent.
God, what if something happened to her after I offloaded all my crap onto her shoulders?I’m not certain I could live with myself. But Kalie did more than listen; she asked. She lanced out thepain I didn’t even realize was still festering beneath scabbed over wounds.
The engine of my car throbs through the steering wheel beneath my fingers as if it too understands the problem.
I know I shouldn’t be here. I have places to be, things to do. But there’s no way I’ll be able to focus until I know she’s safe. Just then, my Bluetooth rings. My heart leaps but crashes when I realize it’s not her, but Sal. I answer with a snap, “What?”
“Declan, we have problems.” That’s when Sal launches into the litany of issues that have already gone to shit this morning. Some of his crew were arrested overnight after being caught booting a shipment of cars. There was a brawl at the strip club in the wee hours of the morning. The worst part is that he wants me to come with him and the enforcer whose job it is to collect from a string of mom-and-pop shops in Bridgeport because they haven’t paid on time for protection.
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I growl, “I get why you’re calling me about the first two, but what the hell does the third have to do with me?”
Sal’s confusion is evident. “Well, they signed a contract.”
“Is it an enforceable one?” I demand coldly. Before he can answer, I interject, “That means there are no clauses for physical retribution in the event of failure to pay, no interest rate hikes that fall outside federal guidelines. So help me God, if you’ve done either of those and expect me to defend it in court, you will lose. Tell me right now if you can lose any more of your crew to concrete cages before you ask me to go with you to Bridgeport.”
He’s silent for a minute. “Right. Why don’t you focus on the first two issues?”
“That sounds like a better idea. Christ, I’m not your Don, not anywhere close. What the fuck do you expect me to do?”
That’s when he floors me by saying, “Well, since you, the boys and I were talkin’ bout how things are really lookin’ up. Maybe we want you to step in—just until you get the bosses cleared.”
“Right. And even if I wanted to entertain that idea, you know the second they did, they’d chop off my head,” I reply.
“No job is without risks. In fact, did you hear bomb threats have been called in to credit card agencies?”
At this point, I’m rocking myself back and forth in the car in anticipation. “For the love of all that’s holy, please tell me if it was any of you who did that?” He may think I’m desperate for him to say “no,” but in my head, I’m pleading for him to give me an affirmative response.
“Nah, it was posted as something that happened on the Mafia Reddit channel.”
Hearing that, my mind short circuits. I literally can’t form words. When my brain resets, I shout, “There’s a channel on Reddit for the mob and you idiots are on it sharing…no. Don’t tell me. I want plausible deniability.”
Sal chuckles. “Gotcha.”
I glare up at the speaker. “This isn’t funny.”
“Lighten up a little, Declan. You need to get laid.”
With those words, an image of Kalie floats through my mind. Smart, sassy, intelligent—exactly the kind of woman who does it for me. Vaguely, I make a non-committal response.
We talk for a few more minutes about the fuck ups from yesterday’s work and I promise I’ll see if anything can be done. After hanging up on him with a grunt, I reach out to the Darien Police Department. Since it’s the weekend, I’m not surprised Sal’s guys won’t be arraigned until Monday. Which frees up my time to go back to what I was doing previously—staring up Kalie’s street.
I have hundreds of hours of work to plow through before Monday. Numerous cases to look at. Motions to tweak to be just off enough to be thrown out by a judge. Discovery filings that are accurate but filed just past their deadline. Instead, none of that seems to matter as I keep staring up the street at Kalie’s home, wondering where the hell she took off to.
I lean my head back against the headrest, closing my eyes for a brief second. Her reaction to what I told her about Tanya is at the forefront of it all. The pure emotions that flickered across her face for a woman she didn’t know. The way her natural compassion shone through before she offered me a safe place to grieve without judgment.
