Page 47 of Cash

“Huh?” Jules didn’t budge back a single step, and he frowned down at Brick.

“Okay, maybe not me exactly, but here! My house!” Brick shoved Jules again. “Come on, Jules! You knew those assholes would come back here looking for you!

Jules hummed. “I mean, it was a distinct possibility.”

“How the fuck could you do that to me?” Brick demanded. “You promised no criminaling in front of me, remember?”

“I didn’t actually intend to do said criminaling in front of you. And technically, the criminaling was a total accident—”

“Lying to me wasn’t!” Brick snapped angrily.

“I did not lie.” Jules looked particularly proud of himself and crossed his arms.

“Withholding the truth is the same thing!”

“No, it’s not.” Jules paused. “Right?”

“It’s the same.” Brick planted his hands on his hips. “I know I said that I didn’t want to know anything about the whole criminaling gig, but start talking.”

“I don’t think that’s such—”

“Now!” Brick glared. “Tell me why you’re really here, why those guys are trying to kill you, and oh! Maybe explain why the cop just so happened to know your brother and had a secret message for you?”

Jules scratched his chin slowly, seeming to consider Brick’s words with a lot of thought before he said, “Question.”

“What?” Brick blinked. “A question for me? Seriously?”

“Is this a trick?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you didn’t wanna know nothin’ about what I was doin’. So, if I tell you, does that mean I broke another rule or what?”

Brick sighed haggardly. “No. I really want to know now. And I really, really want a drink.”

“Come on.” Jules put his hand on Brick’s shoulder. “You’re probably gonna need a few.”

Jules found a bottle of wine and poured heavily into a big glass for Brick. He kept the rest of the bottle for himself. He sat Brick down on the couch, waiting to speak while Brick chugged his glass.

Wordlessly, Brick thrust out his glass for a refill.

“I came down here to help my family,” Jules said as he poured. “Somebody took somethin’ from us. Somethin’ very, very important. I cannot express just how fuckin’ important this somethin’ is. It’s protected, in a way, but somebody could eventually figure out how to un-protect it, and that would be bad.”

“Okay, very vague, whatever.” Brick rolled his eyes. “That’s it? They took this very important thing?”

“Not just that.” Jules narrowed his eyes, and a wave of anger twisted his face. His eyes were getting damp, and the hard lines of his expression softened as they melted into anguish. “They hurt my sister takin’ it. Almost killed her and a member of our family that was with her.”

“Shit.”

Even though Brick was angry with Jules for his deception, he hated to see him so upset. He knew how much his family, especially his sister, meant to him, and he laid a hand on Jules’s leg.

Jules seemed to snap out of the emotional decline, clearing his throat before taking a few swigs from the bottle. “So, uh, I told my brother I’d handle this personally. He’s got his own shit goin’ on. But he’s got a big reach, all right? And we got connections, business sorta connections, with people down here.”

“Like the detective?” Brick asked.

“Well, his boss anyway. Maybe his boss’s boss.”

“That’s why you weren’t worried about calling the cops.”

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