by Natalie Dean
Silas chose his next words carefully. He had been harboring thoughts for a while, sure. Uncertainty even. But it was another thing entirely to voice them to the heir of his dad’s empire. The so-called leader of the next generation.
And yet, he found his mouth opening and words were slowly slipping out.
“Have you ever wanted more than what Dad sees for us?”
There, they were out, and they hung there, heavy in the air. An accusation, a question, a worry. All of them and none of them. Silas felt the skin along his arms and the back of his neck prickle. He was never one to rock the boat. He made evaluations and did what his dad asked of him. He was smart, but not smart enough to be a decision man.
Solomon was quiet again, for an impossible time before he cleared his throat. “Why do you ask that?”
Ugh. That was not a good answer. Silas hadn’t lived twenty-eight years on the earth to not know what that was. “Ah, nothing. Just one of those thought exercises from online. Never mind. It wasn’t important.”
But Solomon’s jaw was tensing like he wasn’t dismissing it at all. Silas tried to return to working, wishing he had never said anything. But then it was his brother who was speaking, much to his surprise.
“Honestly? Yes. Lately, it seems to me that we’ve become a lot more like the Pharisees in the Bible and a whole lot less like Jesus.”
Oh.
That was… something Silas had not expected.
At all.
He swallowed, his gaze flicking up to his brother before returning to the tools scattered around him. “That’s a pretty heavy charge there. Being some of the bad guys of the Bible.”
“I know. But I’m trying to figure out how to change it.”
“Is that why the tension has been amping up between you and Dad lately?”
“Has it?” Solomon answered drolly. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Right. Well, uh, good luck with that.”
“Thanks, Silas. And let’s… let’s keep this conversation between the two of us. Brother to brother.”
“Yeah,” Silas said, breathing shakily. “That sounds like a good idea.”
Solomon nodded, and then they were back to work. Silas tried to let the matter go, to return to the contentment that he had been feeling from working with his hands. But his mind kept returning to what his brother had said.
Teddy clearly saw his family as the bad guys. Those gang members had. And now his own brother. How many people could share the same opinion without it being true?
And if it was true, where did that leave Silas?
8
Theodora
Teddy woke up from a haze of nightmares, soaked in sweat and feeling like she hadn’t rested at all. With a grumble, she kicked off her mountain of blankets and headed for the bathroom.
Normally she was a night showerer, using the spray to rinse away the trials and dirt of the day so she could slip into bed for a refreshing sleep. But she felt both clammy and overheated, her head spinning from the last of her dreams that were fading from her memory with every moment.
It was the day of her brother’s arraignment. She was going to see her brother again. She hadn’t gone two full days without seeing him in years, and she missed him. She worried about him. What if Mr. Cartwright had arranged for something to happen while he was behind bars?
That thought made her stomach churn and she paused in front of the toilet, wondering if she was going to be sick. Why did Roman have to punch the guy? He had been protecting her, but she wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t worth any of it.
No use thinking that. What was done was done, and she needed to get dressed and out of the house before she went insane.
Teddy went about her morning routine robotically, not allowing herself to think. But when she headed toward the kitchen to brew herself some coffee, she was surprised to see that a full breakfast was waiting for her.
“Hey there, sweet pea,” Andre said, already sitting at the table and sipping a cup of coffee. “How’re you feeling?”
“About how you’d expect,” she said with a sigh, crossing to the coffee pot. “You were up early to make all of this.”
“Well, I guess you could say that I was having trouble sleeping.”
She nodded and sat across from him at the table. “I get that.” She looked over the food, but she couldn’t hide the frown on her face.
“What’s wrong, sweet pea?”
“I… I think I’m too upset to eat. I feel like I have rocks in my stomach.”
“Fair enough. You know I made all this, and I couldn’t so much as get a pancake down.”
There was a quiver to his wan smile and Teddy reached across the table, intertwining her fingers with his. They were old digits, long with thick knuckles, callouses built on top of callouses. They were the fingers that had helped care for her for fourteen years.
“How about we pack up enough to feed Roman once he’s released and put the rest in the fridge? I bet they ain’t giving him square meals in there,” Teddy said.
Andre smiled gratefully, his white teeth striking against his umber skin. “That’s an idea. Let’s do that.”
She nodded, and together they tried to act like everything was normal as the minutes ticked away. As it were, they still headed out obnoxiously early, neither of them willing to wait in the house a moment longer. Just a couple more hours, and they would be reunited again. Her family would be safe.
Relatively.
They made it to the courthouse in good time, but Teddy had never expected to get hung up in the metal detector line. First of all, both of the lines were painfully slow, with the machines giving off false beeps and people seeming to forget that they were wearing metal jewelry or a belt. But when it finally got to her and Andre, it seemed like the thing would not stop going off.
“Do you have any metal on your person?” one of the guards asked.
“No,” Teddy answered for the third time, her arms extended from her sides as the officer scanned her with one of those wand-things.
“Are you sure, ma’am? Piercings? Even wire in your bra could set these off.”
Teddy bit her tongue. She’d gone through metal detectors plenty and knew enough to wear a sports bra. She’d learned that lesson in high school when she’d attempted to wear something fancy to be like one of the popular girls, but the size of the support in her underthings had set off the detector again and again until she’d had to have a pat-down by a school counselor.
“No, I have no piercings, not even my ears, and I’m not wearing an underwire.”
“Alright, ma’am. I’m still getting a positive here.”
“That’s so strange,” Teddy remarked dryly, looking over to Andre, who was receiving similar treatment. “Especially since it keeps beeping at a different area of my body every time.”
“What was that?”
Teddy affixed the blandest look that she could onto her face. “I noticed your thumb is by a very distinct button on the side. Could it be that you’re accidentally brushing the test-button as you move? I once did the same thing with one of my readers on a car I was working on. I was so embarrassed.”
The officer was quiet for a very long moment, giving her a hard look. She just continued smiling on blithely like she wasn’t accusing him of anything. Which she most definitely was. She was just smart about it.
“Oh, maybe that’s what’s happening. Let me try that.” He changed his grip on the wand and, what a surprise, it didn’t beep. “Well, would you look at that. You can gather your things and go, ma’am.”
“Thanks. And would you be a darling and check if your coworker is accidentally doing the same thing to my father?” She kept it saccharine. Sweet. She could play the part if she had to; she just tried not to most of the time.
The guard looked from her to Andre and back, and she could see the dozens of thoughts flitting behind his eyes. “Your father?”
“Yes, father. Why do you ask?”
“Uh, no reason. I’ll go do that.”
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“Thanks. I appreciate you more than you know.”
The guard walked off and soon enough, she and Andre were finally able to move on, shoving their things hastily into their pockets as they headed toward the elevator.
“How much time did that waste?” Andre grumbled, looking like he was holding back his irritation.
“Forty-five minutes,” Teddy answered him, trying to pull back the bite in her tone. “But it’s alright. We’re still early.”
“Yeah, good thing we left when we did.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“You’re not the only one,” Teddy muttered under her breath. She had this feeling that the incident with the metal detectors was not an accident. But acknowledging that it wasn’t had a whole bunch of very scary implications that she didn’t want to think about. Like how much power the Cartwright man might have or how big the business he represented actually was.
They finally reached the elevator they had been directed to and headed up, but when they exited and approached another choke point where a worker was, she had that same feeling of something being wrong again.
“We’re here for the arraignment of Roman Parker.”
The woman looked down at her list, flipping through a couple pages, her brow furrowing until she made a clicking noise with her tongue.
“I’m sorry, but that was bumped to earlier today. That ended about twenty minutes ago.”
Teddy stared at her. “What? What happened? What do we even do now?”
“Take the elevator down two floors. There will be a clerk who will tell you what his bail has been set at and arrange for payment of it.”
“Really? Another line?”
“I think you’ll find we have a lot of those here,” the woman said, flashing them a smile. Teddy could tell that she was trying to use humor to ease the situation, but it didn’t really work.
“Thanks,” she managed to say not too bitterly, and then it was off to yet another line.
It didn’t take long for them to find where they were supposed to go, but there was a long, long stretch of people all standing there, looking like they were in various stages of stress.
Oh great.
Teddy spoke up, “Hey, so this is going to take longer than we thought. Why don’t you go move the car or pay the meter again, and I’ll take care of this?”
“You sure?” Andre asked, looking like he was getting more and more flustered. “That’ll take a while. Especially if they give me trouble on re-entry again.”
Teddy flashed him a crooked smile. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not under any illusion that this’ll be quick.”
He looked to the long line then back to her before nodding appreciatively. “Alright then. Sounds like a plan. I’ll be back.”
“I’ll be here,” she said, heaving a sigh. “I’ll definitely be here.”
He went off and she took her place at the end of the line, pulling her phone out. Unfortunately, there was hardly any reception at all, so even just looking at memes or social media was taking ages. Not exactly enough to distract her from all of the stress and worry building in her middle.
It was hard to say exactly how much time passed by, especially since she had her thumb over the clock on her phone so she wouldn’t keep staring at it. But Andre was still gone by the time she made it to the front of the line. They must have been giving him a real hard time at the metal detector.
Ugh.
But it was easy enough to hand over her ID and explain who she was looking for and that she wanted to pay his bail. If the woman thought anything about her stating their familiar relation, she didn’t say so. But that was probably because she was saying something completely impossible.
“Roman Parker’s bail has been set at five hundred thousand dollars. Will you be paying that with check or debit?”
Teddy blinked at her. Then blinked some more. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Roman Parker’s bail has been set at five hundred thousand dollars. How would you like to pay for that? If you would like to put something else up as collateral, we will need you to come back.”
Teddy continued to stare at her, feeling like the world was spinning off in impossible directions. “I’m sorry… you’re telling me that my brother’s bail is set at half a million dollars?”
“Yes, that is correct. Do you still wish to put up for his release?”
Teddy didn’t answer her, instead stumbling away, her mind rushing.
Five hundred thousand dollars.
One half of a million.
What?
She stood there in the middle of things, just staring, feeling like she was sputtering out and that she needed to be jump-started. What the hell was going on!? That couldn’t be true. What had her brother even been charged with?
“Oh, fancy seeing you here, Ms. Parker.”
The unfortunately familiar voice drew her attention. She forced herself back to reality to see Smarmy McSmarmer right in front of her, otherwise known as Mr. Cartwright.
“What are you doing here?” she ground out, her fists curling at her sides. She wanted to punch him; she really did. But she’d at least learned enough from what was happening with her brother not to do that.
But he waved the question away with his long, spindly hand. “Does it matter?” he said with a grin before continuing on. “I couldn’t help but overhear what happened at that window. You know, this has all been such a mess. I hate to see a family taken apart, so how about I just take care of the bail for you?”
It felt like every cell in Teddy’s body jumped at once, and she had to school her features to stay neutral. “And what would you want in return?”
“Who said I would want anything at all?”
“People like you don’t give away a half a million dollars for free.”
He laughed—an oily, gross sound that made Teddy’s skin crawl. She wanted to take a shower again, if only to cleanse herself of his greed. “Fair enough. I think a fair trade would be your family signing over the property. Then, once the trial’s all wrapped up, you can keep the refund of the bail and we’ll all go our separate ways, right as rain.”
Of course.
Of freaking course.
Teddy’s temper ramped up again. “You conniving snake of a man,” she hissed so gutturally she wasn’t surprised when he shot her a confused look.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
She took a step closer, keeping her hands down but crowding his chest. She didn’t care that he was taller than her. “I said you conniving snake of a man,” she spat even louder. “You set us up, and now you think you can sweep in and manipulate us so your greedy little fingers can snatch up everything you wanted.”
The man swallowed, his eyes flicking about uncertainly, like he had thought she was too dumb to catch his obvious ruse. “Need I remind you it was your brother who hit me.”
“Don’t play the victim. You insulted my dead mother and me on our family property. And now you’re using all the connections you have with all your other fellow rats to try to win. But you won’t. You don’t have half of what you need to take on me and my family. You can manipulate and twist and lie and bribe, but we’re not gonna fold to you or anyone like you. You got that?”
Her finger was poking into his chest, and he was staring down at her with a mix of frustration and maybe something else. Fear? Respect? Incredulousness? It didn’t matter.
“Look, I understand you might be overly emotional right now,” he said, seeming to recover. He reached into his pocket, and the next thing she knew, he was sliding a card into her curled hand. “Why don’t you process things, and then call me when that pride of yours simmers down.”
She pulled her lips back from her teeth as if she were going to snarl, but he was already walking away, back to his usual swagger, which really made her want to deck him.
But she didn’t. Instead, her phone rang. She answered it, her father’s voice crackling from the poor reception.
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“Hey, they wouldn’t let me in, so I brought the car around. Is everything handled? Do you have Roman?”
“I…” She looked down at the card in her hand and swallowed. “There’s been a delay. You should go on back home and make sure everything’s going good at the shop. I’ll take care of things here.”
“Are you sure? You can’t be having fun in there.”
“I’m not. But if you’re stuck outside, you might as well keep yourself occupied.”
“Fair enough, sweet pea. Let me know if anything comes up. I’ll head back up here after I get a few things done at the shop.”
“Of course. Love you, Dad.”
“Love you too.”
She hung up and shoved her phone into her pocket. But as she did, she felt something else in there. Pulling it out, she saw it was the business card of that handsome, rich man whose car she had fixed. She’d forgotten entirely about it and almost about him with everything that had been happening.
Huh… he had said if her family ever needed anything…
No. That was just trading one shark for another. Just because he was pretty didn’t mean he didn’t want to dismantle everything she loved.
Then again… did she really have a choice?
9
Silas
Silas was in the middle of helping Mom sow her late seedlings in her garden when his personal cell phone rang. He could count on one hand the number of people who had access to that information, so he looked at his phone curiously.
It was an unknown number, but local. What did that mean?
He stopped working to answer the call. Sure, curiosity might have killed the cat, but at least satisfaction had brought it back.
“Hello?” he asked curiously.
“Hi. Mr. Miller?”
It was a woman’s voice. For some reason that surprised him, along with the fact that he somewhat recognized it. A sort of vague familiarity that tugged at the back of his brain but offered no actual information.
“Who is this?”
“Teddy. Teddy Parker.”
“Teddy Parker?”
“From the mechanic shop. The baseball bat?”