Page 33 of The Trust We Broke
Midtown Rebels Motorcycle Club.
My heart lurches in my chest.
Didn’t know the lawyer had a pretty daughter.
There isn’t any other explanation. My father was familiar with the Midtown Rebels in some way. And they are very familiar with him.
Grudge’s words from last night come rushing back to me.
It’s a fucking warning, Luce. One of those bastards walked into Wraith’s home and murdered his wife and kid. You think they’ll blink coming after you?
My father’s heart attack and stroke were an accident. I’m not sure how the Rebels could ever have manufactured the timing of those events.
But there’s a very real chance they may want me to provide whatever services or payments my father was doing for them. I try to see if I can make sense of exactly what that is from the notebook, but it’s going to take me a while to decode and untangle the content.
A loud bang outside my father’s private office makes me jump, and I quickly shove the papers back in the drawer and kick it shut. My heart races as I stand and head to the door, unlock it, and pull it open.
As I do, Nancy appears at the top of the stairs that lead from the reception area. She’s pink-cheeked, her hair windblown.“Hey. Morning, Lucy. Sorry about that. The wind snatched the front door out of my hand.”
I glance toward the staircase and realize that, as a habit of my job, I’m trying to figure out if Nancy could have climbed the stairs in the time it took me to hide the files and open the door.
Shaking off the flutter of fear, I smile. “Morning, Nancy. Catching up on some work?”
She nods. “Somehow, all my admin got away from me. Thought I would just pop in and get on top of the list. You?”
I like Nancy. At least, I think I do. My gut tells me she’s not involved in whatever my father is, not least because she’s a woman. But I lie anyway. “I have some client work from back home I’m trying to keep moving.”
“Well, I won’t keep you. Don’t stay too late.”
I smile. “Just another hour, maybe.”
I close the door and lock it before returning to the desk. It takes a moment to pull everything out of the drawer again. The first of the manilla envelopes seems to contain email threads and wire transfer receipts. My guess is that the companies are dummy corporations, making them harder to trace, but not impossible.
I’m scanning everything quickly to get a sense of what is there, but I’ll need to sit down and go line-for-line, extracting every clue from it.
There’s also a sealed file with a note that sayssentencing packet.
Could that be Zach’s? I reach to slip my fingers beneath the lip of the envelope to open it but pause for a second. Once I do, my father will know someone has been through the contents of his hidden drawer.
Someone hammers on the office door.
“Lucy?” It’s a deep voice, likely one of my father’s associates.
“One second,” I say, shoving everything, including the phone, into my tote bag, even as my hands shake.
I hurry to the door and unlock it. Standing just outside is Adam, my father’s junior associate.
“Nancy mentioned you were here. You locked the door?” he asked.
“Common practice at my current firm to ensure confidentiality,” I say, making up an excuse on the fly. “You don’t do that here?”
He shakes his head. “What are you doing here on a Saturday?”
“Client work from my own firm.” I smile as my heart races and sweat gathers under my arms. “And I needed to pick up some things to take to the hospital to see my father.”
Visiting him was not in my plans for the day, and I’ll have to decide whether I now feel obliged to go or not.
“Oh, right.”
