Page 133 of The Trust We Broke
The man’s hand drops away from Shade’s foot, and I tip my chin for Shade to release him.
Granger looks over at Adam, and then, his breath becomes thready. “And now, your club took my son. Looks like we’re even.”
Wraith’s face wrinkles in disgust. “He was a grown fucking man who knew what he was doing.”
Lucy stumbles a little, and I guide her to the bed. “Sit there, Bug.”
“No. I want to ask him some questions,” she says.
I’m proud of her for finding her courage. If she’s going to exist in my world, she’s going to need to be able to do that.
“Go,” I say.
“Why did you help my father set Grudge up, Granger?”
Granger closes his eyes and presses his hand to his wound. “Because he paid me a lot of money to do it.” He smiles sadly.
He takes a breath. It rattles.
Then, another.
“Who pretended to be Grudge?”
Granger wheezes but shakes his head.
My knees crack as I crouch in front of Granger. “We know what the price is for this life. As men. As brothers. Yet, you’ve done nothing but go after our women. The only way to set this straight is to make sure you can’t do this again. But don’t worry, once we kill you, we’ll throw the two of you in the same hole.”
Sweat beads on his forehead, and he’s already gray. Death will be forthcoming.
“No,” Lucy’s mom says. “The gun that shot Adam. Is it registered to you?”
“Why?” I ask.
She looks at Lucy. “Do you really love this man?”
Lucy looks at me with tears in her eyes and a steely confidence in us that makes me feel a million feet tall. “With all that I am.”
She looks back to me. “Clean the gun, press it into Adam’s hand, then hand it to me,” she says.
“What?” I ask.
“The gun that killed Granger was his own, from a fight with Lucy, right? And you killed Adam with that one. If you clean it, remove all traces of your fingerprints on it, can’t you put Adam’s fingerprints on it, and then, mine? I fought Adam for his and won.”
I shake my head. “I can’t let you take the fall for this, even if it is defending your home.”
Lucy’s mom stands. “My family owes you, Zach. It’s time you let us pay you back.”
36
GRUDGE
Forty-eight hours later, exhaustion wraps around me like an ill-fitting jacket, pinching in all the wrong places. The kind of tired that isn’t just in the muscles but buried deep in the bones and soul.
But when I finally close the door to Lucy’s bedroom in the bakery apartment, some of that pressure in my chest eases. The quiet, the dim light, and the scent of her perfume lingering in the air pulls at something old and aching inside me.
“Did you see how fast Wren moves around that computer of theirs?” Lucy says, already tugging her sweater over her head. “Made me feel seasick watching them.”
I guess that was how Wren, the genius that they are, were able to get the majority of the money back into our account and clean any reference the transactions ever happened.
