This time, it was Godfrey that stepped up and answered. “We started doing it a few years ago. My father said it was helping the family business,” he said bitterly. “It was easy enough at first. He would just give us a storage unit and we’d go shred shit. Most of the time, it was bank statements and contracts. Money laundering shit. Nothing major. The jobs he had us do were easy money, and by doing them, I got him off my back.”
I squinted at his choice of words. I’d always had my suspicions about Mr. Taylor and Godfrey’s relationship, but now I wondered even more. That was incredibly illegal. And to have his own son involved? That seemed downright dangerous. “So, what does that have to do with me?”
“We had one clean up job that we just couldn’t do,” Bonham said. I turned to look at him and my stomach dropped when I saw his dark green eyes. He was practically shaking with anger as he spoke. “Seven months ago, when we got to the storage unit, it was full of photos, of...of girls. Tied up. Gagged. Some of them...dead.”
The blood drained from my face. “What?”
“We couldn’t do it,” Luis explained with the shake of his head. “We couldn’t destroy that shit. Not something like that. But we couldn’t bring the evidence to the police, either. Not only would they arrest us for tampering with evidence, but it would ruin Godfrey’s family. Mr. Taylor would go to prison. We could go to prison. And then the gang doing all of this fucked up shit would still find a way to get away with it. That’s what happens in this world.”
“So what happened with the photos?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around everything.
“We’re not telling you. The less you know, the safer you are,” Rogue interrupted before anyone else could answer my question. Visions of being tortured into spilling information filtered through my mind.
“That guy at the train tracks said his name was Dean O’Banion. What did he want with me?”
“They must have finally figured out that we took it,” Godfrey answered grimly. “Honestly, I’m surprised it’s taken them this long.” He appeared unaffected as he spoke, but I saw the way his chest was heaving with barely constrained anger and hints of fear.
“And what did your father say about you stealing the evidence?” I asked.
Godfrey looked away. “He didn’t know.”
I rubbed my forehead, trying to sort through everything.
“We pushed you away right after we stole the evidence, because we knew that if they found out, you’d be in danger. We knew that they’d probably kill us and anyone close to us, and it was only a matter of time. My father’s clean up jobs have gotten worse and worse lately. So we took a vote,” Godfrey said, exchanging glances with the others. “We decided to push you away before shit hit the fan, and make sure everyone knew that you were nothing to us. Johnny Jack likes to punish his enemies by kidnapping girls close to them. We had to separate you from us publicly as much as possible,” Godfrey explained.
“How did he find out?” I asked.
Rogue and Godfrey shared a look. “I’ve been going through the evidence,” Rogue admitted. “A couple of weeks ago, I tried accessing the USB drive, thinking it would have more clues or photos with the members of Johnny Jack’s crew to incriminate them, but it must have pinged them, because O’Banion started sniffing around us more than ever, making shady comments and threats. He was there when I caught you smoking weed under the bleachers,” Rogue said, and my stomach tightened. “That’s why I had to get you out of there as quickly as possible.”
Well, good to know Rogue hadn’t just dumped trash on me because he was actually meeting with a girl. But still. I had maggots in my freaking bra.
“We kept trying to figure out a way to get the evidence into the right hands without getting ourselves killed or in trouble, but we’re stuck,” Godfrey explained.
“Why not turn it in anonymously?”
“Our DNA is all over it. We thought it was another burn and be done scenario. We were reckless. We can’t be sure that they won’t trace it back to us,” Rogue said, and immediately, my mind went back to the night he killed that man. They’d burned their clothes and disposed of his body. They weren’t fucking around.
My mind scrambled to keep up. From the way they explained things, it sounded like they’d been Mr. Taylor’s clean up crew for years. I hated the fact that they’d basically been forced into being criminals during their teenage years. And I’d never known. I’d never even had an inkling. I saw them everyday, hung out with them nearly every night, and they never said a word or let on that something like this was going on. If I’d known… Well, that was the thing. If I’d known, I would have tried to stop them or help them.
“Why would your Daddy want to involve you guys in this?” I asked incredulously.
“My father is a controlling dick,” Godfrey immediately answered. “I don’t know how his mind works. Maybe he gets off on putting us in danger. But Rogue, Luis, and Bonham should’ve never been involved. The fuckers tracked me down one day and made me tell them where I kept sneaking off to. After that, they insisted on helping me.”
My heart swelled a little at that. People often thought that the Heirs were narcissistic assholes, but when it came to each other, they were loyal and fierce.
“I never knew,” I said quietly, feeling guilty for being a shitty friend and not realizing.
“We made sure of that, Babe,” Luis said. “From the beginning, we were careful not to drag you into that shit.”
I didn’t point out that I was dragged into it now, whether they liked it or not.
“So, that O’Banion guy wanted to scare you all by threatening me,” I said levelly. “He wanted to show you that he could have taken me.” The fear I felt at that realization didn’t really sink in yet, but I knew it would. Probably at night when I tried to sleep.
“Yeah,” Rogue answered, his intense, dark eyes watching me.
I swallowed and looked away from him to pick at my nails. “You have their evidence, and they want it back,” I said, more to myself than to them. “They’re running a sex slave operation, kidnapping girls, hurting them, killing them, selling them…” My voice choked up, and when I felt the bed dip beside me, I knew it was Rogue, but he didn’t touch me. He didn’t wrap his arm around me or pull me close, even though I could tell by the way his hand dug into his knee that he wanted to.
I couldn’t sort through my emotions. I could barely breathe. There was an ocean of dangerous what-ifs that poured down my throat and filled my lungs with sodden shock. I was going to drown in my own turmoil.
“Is there anything else?” I asked, my voice sounding empty even to my own ears.
“That’s the gist of it,” Bonham answered quietly.
I nodded and stood, and Rogue got to his feet with me. “I’m gonna go home,” I said.
“You should stay here,” Rogue immediately said, but I shook my head. He once more went to reach out to touch me, but dropped his hand at the last second and curled it into a ball. “If you don’t want to stay here, then stay with one of them. Please, Scar.”
“No. I want to sleep in my own bed. I want to think.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Godfrey told me as I sidestepped around them to head for the door.
“I’m not being stupid,” I snapped. “I just found out that my four best friends have been illegally destroying evidence for years, and they didn’t tell me. I just found out that y’all are in serious trouble with Savannah’s worst gang, and that I might be kidnapped, and you might be killed. This morning y’all still hated me, and now I find out that you just faked it. I need a fucking minute to process.”
I reached the door, turned the handle, and let myself out. Not one of them tried to stop me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Once again, I tried to sleep, but my thoughts were too heavy to relax. I circled thoughts of the guy’s words in my head over and over, dissecting their story and trying to make sense of it all. It all made me angry. Angry with Mr. Taylor for exploiting the He
irs. Furious with my best friends for not trusting me with this sooner.
And then there was the ultimate fury—I was pissed off at myself. I should have noticed, somehow. I should have seen the signs, known that something was up long before it got to this. How could they have been living this double life for so long without me knowing? Did I even know them at all?
I was starting to think that I didn’t.
Even in the height of their cruelty, I still had a sense of who they were. I wrapped their personalities up like secrets meant only for me, and told myself that this was just one portion of a bigger equation.
It was nearly two in the morning when I heard a knock on my window. That familiar cadence of knuckles on glass made my heart stop for a moment. It had been so long since any of the guys had tried sneaking into my bedroom at night, but I didn’t even have to turn my attention to the large double window by my loveseat to know who was there.
I squeezed my eyes shut, pretending to ignore the insistent knocking, but feeling that familiar tug to go to them all the same. “Scar, open up or I’ll ring the doorbell,” Bonham Brodie said through the glass.
I shot up in bed and marched over to the window, frowning when I saw him balancing with one foot on the branch of the old sycamore outside our house. It always drove me crazy how they climbed that tree. One slip, and they could fall and snap their necks. Little did I know that falling from a tree was the least of my worries. Recklessness was in their nature.
I slid up the window and crossed my arms over my chest when the cool air licked at my skin. I was wearing my sleep shorts and a tank top that did little to hide my body, but I wasn’t bothered. Bonham and the others had seen much more of me than this.
“You gonna invite me in, Scarlett?” he asked with a smirk, showing off his adorable chin dimple as he leaned his head in while licking his lips.
“You gonna give me an option? Or is this another one of the Heir’s fucked up ways of making decisions for me?”
Bonham’s face fell into a frown, and just as I’d predicted, he jumped from the branch to the windowsill and came into my room anyways. He stepped into me and immediately enveloped me in a hug. He smelled like mint and aftershave, and although I didn’t wrap my own arms around his strong back, he still held onto me, swaying our bodies slightly as he whispered in my ear. “Come on, Scar. I know you’re mad, but I haven’t had a good hug from you in ages, and I could really use one right now.”
Damn manipulative asshole. My hand raised of its own volition, and I patted his shoulder with my fingertips twice before he finally let me go. After taking off his sneakers, he adjusted the drawstring on his sweats before padding barefoot to my bed with a cool swagger that didn’t match the nerve-wracking day we’d had. He plopped onto the mattress and propped his head up on one hand while staring at me, patting the spot beside him with a smile. “Come on, Scar. Come cuddle with me and pretend not to be angry for a minute.”
I rolled my eyes and joined him, not because I particularly found his patronizing and dismissive tone appropriate, considering everything he’d put me through, but because I was too tired to say no to comfort. I’d spent many nights cuddled up next to Bonham, and he’d always made me feel protected and loved. I shifted under the heavy comforter and turned to face him, taking in his boyish smile, glowing against my nightlight.
“I can’t believe you still sleep with the nightlight I bought you,” he joked before stroking my cheek tenderly.
I still remember the day he showed up at my doorstep with it in a pretty bag that his mother’s assistant packaged for him, thinking that I was Bonham’s crush. We were both seven, and I admitted to him that I was scared of the dark during a game of truth or dare on the playground.
Nostalgia was bittersweet, once again reminding me of how perfect everything was until they all turned on me. Those memories didn’t coincide with how they’d treated me for the last several months. “I can’t believe you called me an Heir Chaser,” I growled. I was still upset about that. Bonham’s face darkened and he scooted closer to me, brushing his nose against mine for an eskimo kiss.
“You and I both know that us Heirs have been chasing after you since the day we met. Not being around you was torture, Scar. Not being there to beat up the people that hurt you, not being the one to comfort you…” he swallowed hard. “Being the ones responsible for your pain—it was horrible. The first time Godfrey called you a Trash Whore at school, Rogue dragged him out the back of the cafeteria and sucker punched him in the gut until he puked by the dumpsters.”
My eyebrows raised in surprise. I remembered that day. I remembered being in the cafeteria, having no one to sit with, and Godfrey walking by with Stephanie on his arm. She and the other girls had been calling me that for weeks, but it was the first time that one of them had done it, too. “You’d started that little nickname,” I reminded Bonham.
He nodded slowly, watching my face. “We did all of those shitty things because we had to. If Johnny Jack’s people found out about you…” he shook his head, his eyes growing somber. “We thought that if everyone knew how much we despised you, you’d be safe once everything came to light,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’m shameless enough to steal it from you.”
I didn’t realize that tears were falling down my cheeks until he swiped one before it could land on my lip, hovering his finger over my pout before leaning forward to kiss my forehead. “You hurt me, Bonham. All of you did. And I feel like I don’t know who y’all are anymore.”
“You know who I am. You’ve always known. It’s why this whole thing was so fucking hard. You kept having faith in us, despite it all. I don’t deserve your friendship, but you’re one of the few people in this town who doesn’t try to use my back to climb the social ladder or use my parent’s influence to boost your own ego. You call me on my shit. You fight back.”
“I could have handled the truth,” I said with a sniffle.
Bonham leaned back and threaded his fingers through mine. “But don’t you get it? We couldn’t handle it. We care about you. Hell, Rogue is in love with you.” My heart skipped a beat at that. “This wasn’t about us trusting you with our secrets or trusting that you could take it in stride. This was about us being too scared, too fucking terrified to lose you. We panicked when we took that evidence, Scar. And we immediately pushed you away to try and keep you safe.”
Another knock on the window drew my attention away from Bonham, and I laughed when I saw Luis juggling a bottle of my favorite champagne and chocolate outside. I ran to the window and thrust it open, and he laughed when he spotted Bonham.
“Seems I’m not the only one with the idea to comfort our girl,” he said before losing his sneakers and belly flopping onto the mattress, holding the champagne and chocolate over his head as he settled opposite Bonham. I couldn’t help it. I smiled. Luis's playful personality was infectious.
“You don’t play fair, Luis Salvador. Bringing me my favorite stuff,” I said, trying to sound stern despite my grin.
“If you want, I’ll just keep this to myself?”
I let out a little giggle and then closed the window before doing a running jump onto the mattress. I settled between them as Luis popped the bottle open and Bonham opened the box of fine dark chocolate.
“Temporary truce, then tomorrow I’ll go back to pretending to hate you again,” I said before taking a big swig of the bubbly sweet liquid, straight from the bottle.
“Deal,” they both replied simultaneously.
I felt the bubbles in my stomach and licked the chocolate off my fingers as a nice buzz made my anxiousness ebb away into exhaustion. We passed it around a few times, all three of us probably remembering how many times we used to do this. Once, when we were sophomores, I’d just had a gymnastics competition and I’d flubbed my routine. I’d been so anxious that day, and my nerves got to me. I nearly fell off the beam. I couldn’t even bear to look at my coach’s disappointed face.
I’d
been so upset, that I went straight home instead of going with the guys to dinner. So they ended up bringing dinner to me. Bonham and Luis had snuck into my bedroom that night and kidnapped me into Rogue’s car, where Rogue and Godfrey waited. Rogue drove us right back to the gym, by then empty and dark. They guys made a makeshift picnic right there on the mats. We ate spaghetti with plastic forks and passed around four bottles of cheap champagne until I got the nerve to get back on the beam, way too drunk, and nailed my routine. I still remember the way that Rogue had looked at me. I knew by the secretive smile he gave me that it had been his idea. He knew that I’d needed to get back on that beam right away, or I might have doubted myself forever.
Taking another swig, I stole looks at Luis and Bonham, feeling the bubbles go straight to my head. This was nice. Normal, almost. It was almost like the last several months had never happened. Except they did. I had the internal scars to prove it. “I just want to know, why was it so easy for you? It physically hurts me to think of y’all in pain or suffering. Did it bother you at all? To be so mean to me?” I asked, settling back on the pillows between them.
“Of course it bothered us,” Luis said before wrapping his arms around me, hugging me tightly while Bonham stole the bottle of champagne and set it on the nightstand. I’d had enough. “You know what really bothered me though? I’ve been meaning to tell you, but I just don’t know how to begin.”
My brow dipped in response to Luis's ominous tone. How much more could I honestly handle? He let out a shaky breath before stroking my hair. “Scar, that haircut you got five months ago? With the bangs? It was a bad decision. It physically pained me to look at you.”
I snorted before playfully slapping his arm. “You dick! You know I make poor hair decisions when I’m sad!”
“Remember that time that she tried to go blonde and did it herself?” Bonham asked with a shudder.
“Oh God, it was after her grandmother died. She looked like she dipped her hair in bright yellow paint,” Luis added.
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