His Light in the Dark

by L. A. Fiore

  In my living room a few nights later, I was going through one of the boxes from my dad’s office. As much as I hated that I had to, it was time for me to let go of him too and a part of letting go was getting rid of his things. Luckily this box held nothing sentimental, just receipts and orders from the shop.

  It was while I looked through the box that I found one of those accordion folders. Nothing could have prepared me for what I found inside that folder; pictures, and all of them were of pale-hair. I knew my dad had been wary of him, but why would he have a folder filled with snapshots of him? Scanning through the pictures, my heart stopped and all the air left my lungs at one in particular: pale-hair and he was chatting, quite amicably, with Cole. The Cole I knew was as wary of pale-hair as Dad had been and certainly wouldn’t be chatting him up. The ugly thought popped into my head before I could shut it down. Was Cole on Stein’s payroll too? Carter Stein had wanted my dad’s garage and now, after his death, owned it. My gut was telling me there was an explanation for the photo, one that Cole could easily explain, but the longer I studied the picture the angrier I grew. He knew more about the night my dad died than he was saying, proven by the fact that he had showed up before the cops. After Dad died, he never made any attempt to talk about it, to share with me what he knew. And with this photo, clearly there was even more to his involvement than I thought. So why did he remain silent? The obvious answer, that he hadn’t just been a bystander to what had happened to my dad, was too heinous to contemplate. And yet, he had worked for my dad, had very little money, and now he worked at Tickled Ivories. Did he work at the club or did he own it? He had the only office and all the employees treated him as someone important. So if he did own it, how the hell had he managed that? There was an obvious answer, one that had revulsion filling me.

  If it was true, did my dad know that Cole had sold him out? To experience that kind of betrayal, especially from someone he had brought into his small, tight circle, was an unbearable thought. All those late nights when I was younger, trips out of the house that my dad no doubt had made with Cole—the one who claimed to have his back. Was it possible that one of those trips had been the one that led to his death?

  Tears pooled in my eyes thinking about those final moments. He would have fought, to the very end he would have fought. But there had to be a moment when he knew he wasn’t going to survive it. What ran through his head? Wiping at my eyes, the pain in my chest was suffocating as fury battled sorrow because damn it, Cole couldn’t have been a party to that and yet I needed to hear him say it.

  Grabbing the picture, I left my house and made the twenty-minute trip to Tickled Ivories. Ignoring my words that I wouldn’t invade his privacy again, I didn’t even knock when I entered Cole’s office; I just walked in. He was alone, sitting behind his desk.

  I slammed the picture down in front of him. “Tell me you weren’t a part of it.”

  Cole stood, his face alarming, but I was too wrapped up in my own pain to fear his reaction.

  “He loved you, so please tell me you weren’t a part of his death.”

  Cole moved from around his desk to stand just in front of me. “You think I was involved in your dad’s death?”

  “I didn’t, but I believe that man was and you look awfully chummy with him.”

  “It’s not what it looks like.”

  “Explain it. And goddamn it, Cole, if you don’t give me a fucking answer I will hunt down that man and ask him.”

  Fury rolled across Cole’s face in response to my threat, but resignation burned there too. “When I first got out of juvie, I worked for him.”

  Couldn’t control my revulsion to that news. “You worked for that man?” And then clarity came. “The day in the alley, your time as a collector, you were working for him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that? Was that taken during your time collecting?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who took it?”

  Sharing was over; I could see that in the set of his jaw. Frustration, anger and fear had the next words tumbling from my mouth. “I trusted you solely because my dad did and I never had a reason to doubt that trust, but my dad is dead and even though you know more about it than you’re saying, you’ve made no attempt to share what you know. Now a picture comes to light of you with a man I know intimidated my dad at the request of his boss, Carter Stein. The man who wanted my dad’s garage and now owns it. I lost my dad and his legacy and you, a kid who worked for my dad, now own a very profitable and popular nightclub, which had to have cost a pretty penny. You won’t explain any of it and blind trust doesn’t work for me anymore because look where it got my dad. I want to believe you had nothing to do with Dad’s death, but you are making that very hard.”

  “Fuck, Mia. You honestly think I could have hurt your dad?”

  “When it comes to you, I don’t know what I think anymore. You’re a stranger, you’ve made it so you are nothing but a stranger to me.” I glanced around his office. “And one who finds himself suddenly doing really well.”

  He reached for me, but I jerked away from his touch. “Stay the fuck away from me.”

  Leaving his office, I called Kevin because we were both out of our depths in this nightmare. The call went right into voicemail. “Kevin, it’s Mia. You need to stop looking into my dad’s death. I don’t think it’s safe. Call me.”

  Sleep wouldn’t come, heartsore and sick over my confrontation earlier with Cole, had me tossing and turning. The banging at my door nearly had me falling out of bed. My entire body froze, all but my eyes that shot to the clock on my nightstand. It was almost two in the morning. Who the hell would be pounding down my door at this hour? I reached for my phone to dial 9-1-1, but my fingers stilled when I heard that raspy, deep voice.

  “Mia, open the fucking door.”

  Outrage, fury, indignation should have been my first reaction, but it was pleasure that whipped through me—so fast and powerfully that my legs weren’t steady as I walked to the door. It was only after checking the peephole and seeing a very livid Cole standing there that fear crept up to invade pleasure. As soon as I pulled the door open, he pushed past me and slammed the door behind him.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You went to the police and have them digging around in your dad's case? Have you lost your fucking mind?” He stepped closer and instinctively, I stepped back. “You have no idea what you’re messing around in.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “Your dad didn’t want you anywhere near it. Fucking Christ.”

  Standing in my dad’s house, watching as Cole paced the living room like a caged panther, I could see the boy he had been, the troubled teen he became, the man who had repeatedly had my dad’s back, the same man who had come to me on the night my dad died and held me as I completely broke down. I may not know much about Cole now, but what I did know was loyalty wasn’t a badge of honor to him; loyalty was a way of life, his way of life. “I don’t really believe you were a part of what happened to Dad, but I know you know more than you’re saying. Please tell me.”

  He stopped pacing and leveled me with eyes burning with too many emotions to discern.

  “Talk to me, Cole.”

  Pacing again, his temper spiked. “I told him this would happen. He didn’t fucking listen.”

  “What would happen?”

  “You, you’re too damn curious for your own good.”

  Calm settled over me, even as fear licked down my spine. I had already resigned myself to step away from the situation, but there was still a part of me that wanted to fight, that felt like I had to. “I lost my dad. I loved my dad more than anyone and I lost him. There is absolutely no way I’ll sit back and play nice when whoever killed him is still out there.”

  “Are you listening to yourself? Whoever killed him, so what makes you think they won’t fucking kill you too if they find out you’re sticking your nose into their shit?”

  Hearing him put it so simply, yeah terror fill
ed me and yet I still refused to relent. “They killed my dad.”

  His fist clenched so tightly the muscles were standing out in stark contrast to the paling skin. His angry gaze settled on me. For a minute we just stared across the room at each other.

  “I’m sorry about earlier. I do trust you.”

  “You shouldn’t.” He moved into me, his body tense with his rage. “Do you want to know why I walked out of your dorm that night?”

  Even though the anger coming from him wasn’t directed at me, my body braced anyway.

  “You called me perfect. I’m not perfect, far from it. You want to romanticize what happened with my dad, I got beaten one too many times and finally defended myself. The truth of it was I knew I could hurt him if I put my hands on him and I wanted to hurt him, wanted to kill him. It wasn’t self-defense. That’s why they threw me in juvie. Is that too much for you? Well there’s more. How perfect is it that I became my father but far worse because I inflicted pain on others for money. You saw me that day. For the right price, I’d break bones and crack skulls. I even did a little breaking and entering; I can pick a lock in my sleep. Have I been pulling you close and pushing you away? Fuck yeah. I want you. Want to claim you in every imaginable way and if I did that, I’d be dimming the purity and beauty that draws me to you like a fucking beacon. Me staying away from you is for you, so you can find a good life with a good man and it’s the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done but for you, for Mace, I owe you that.”

  Reeling from his confession, I had no words but he wasn’t done. “Call off your boy.”

  Confusion furrowed my brow at the change of subject. “Bruce?”

  “Call him off.”

  Though my mind was a jumble of questions stirred by his confession, I couldn’t focus on any of them and instead asked, “How are you involved in all of this?”

  “I'm someone who knows that no good will come if you continue down this path.”

  Concentrating on a subject that was crystal clear, I said, “So I’m supposed to just let it go that my dad was murdered.”

  “You’re supposed to stay out of it, to live and be happy just like your dad wanted, like how he planned for.”

  He couldn’t honestly expect me to do that, to just let it go. And then he went for the jugular. “All he wanted was you safe. If you die, it makes his death in vain.”

  He couldn’t have made a more compelling point. My heart ached because I wanted those who hurt my dad to pay and yet, making them pay wouldn’t bring him back. He wanted my health and happiness above all else. How could I not honor that final wish?

  “I’ll call Bruce in the morning.”

  Cole headed for the door but to look at him you wouldn’t know that I had just agreed to his demands. “Why do you wear my necklace?”

  It was the first time I had ever seen him move in a way that wasn’t deliberate. His feet actually missed a step and his shoulders tensed. He didn’t look at me, but I heard him just the same. “Because it was given to me by an angel.” And then he pulled open the door and walked out of my life, just like I had asked of him.

  As much as I wanted to call him back, to run after him, all I could do was stand there as his words slammed around in my head. He thought he had become his father; he couldn’t be more wrong.

  Slamming my car door closed, I wanted to punch the fucking steering wheel; hell I’d like to rip the fucker right from the car. Peeling from the curb in front of Mace’s house, I drove the route that had become entirely too familiar in the past five years. The present situation was a goddamn clusterfuck and the fact that it ended with Mace being killed, was not something I intended to let slide.

  Mia was another problem; she was just too fucking trusting. Poking her nose into shit she should be staying way the hell away from. It didn’t help that she looked the way she did. So fucking clueless to the effect she had on guys, so subtlety—while she was digging around for trouble—wasn’t going to happen. Mace should have sent her away a long time ago, for his sanity and mine.

  Pulling into the way too familiar parking lot, I climbed from the car and headed for the back entrance. The team was there, just as I knew they would be. As soon as I stepped into the command center, Bruce Knox turned to me. I’d met Bruce after juvie, a beat cop who had tried to intimidate me a few times. Meeting up with him again when he co-captained the little league team with Mace had been a surprise, but he was a good cop, most of the time. He’d been brought onto the team after Mace’s death; he had a personal connection to Mace that Terence thought might aid in figuring out what really happened the night Mace died. He looked contrite, the fucker should. Encouraging Mia’s curiosity instead of shutting that shit down because he was thinking with his fucking dick and not his head.

  “Hey, Cole.”

  “Stay on that side of the room Knox since I’m still entertaining the idea of decorating that wall with your face.”

  “You talk to her?”

  “Yeah, and as far as she knows, you’ll be stepping back because she asked you to. Be clear you’re stepping back because there’s nothing to the claim or she won’t let it go. You find Kevin?”

  “He’s in the wind.”

  Arrogant prick and the fact that Mia slept with the bastard, that he had tasted something she had once offered first to me, had my rage inching up to a dangerous level. “You asked for our help, we gave it to you and it ended with Mace dying. So what’s keeping me helping you?”

  It was Terence who answered. “You want the ones responsible for Mace’s death just as badly as I do.”

  “And I thought that was Stein. You’ve got shit on him—hell I handed half of it to you—so why is he still walking around a free man?”

  “Circumstantial and he’s got an alibi that covers him for Mace’s death.” Terence sounded as annoyed by that as I felt.

  Rubbing a hand over my head, I felt really fucking tired. When Mace approached me a few years back about helping him locate someone, who the hell could have imagined the shitload of suck that was just waiting to fall on our heads. We opened a can of fucking worms; got pulled into an existing PPD investigation ferreting out information on the corruption happening in the neighborhood. Mace was hesitant because of Mia, but in the end he knew the work we were doing would ultimately make the neighborhood safe again. Every time we worked, it was together. I had had his back and he had had mine except the night he died. How the signals got crossed, I didn’t know, but by the time I learned he had gone out on his own, Terence had called to tell me Mace was dead. That was the hardest fucking night of my life. Telling Mia her dad was gone, nothing can prepare you to witness as a person’s world crumbles.

  My attention shifted to Terence. “So what happens now?”

  “We have to focus on Stein and I think the way to him is through his hired muscle. We’ve got enough on Donny to put him away. Let’s put the pressure on him since I don’t think it’ll take much to get him to talk.”

  Donny Alfonsi, the pale-hair guy who Mia was smart to be wary of, was a real choirboy. He’d slit his own mother’s throat if the price were right. I had witnessed first-hand exactly what the man was capable of. We all knew he was the one to take out Mace, at the command of Stein, but we couldn’t pin it on him. That really burned. The charges the cops could bring against him were nothing next to Mace’s murder, and even still the fuck would be behind bars for a really long time.

  “You going to apply the pressure?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. Call me if you need me.”

  I didn’t wait for Terence to respond and walked from the room. I’d focus on Tickled Ivories since when this was done, that’s all I’d have left. Mia’s suspicions about how I had afforded the place were valid, though it stung like hell to know she had entertained the idea that I had something to do with Mace’s death. I may have failed him, but I would never have hurt him.

  I wasn’t really sure how she’d feel knowing the truth behind the club, that it ha
d been her dad who had fronted me the money. He had wanted to diversify and so he had become my silent partner. I’d have never been able to pull it off without him and when that bastard died, he left me his shares. I owned the fucking club out right and all it cost was the loss of the man I thought of as a father.

  Keying into my house, I dropped them on the kitchen counter and walked to the fridge for a beer. Popping the top, I drank half of it down. After juvie, I lived in a shithole, and though I’d made serious dough working for Donny, I hadn’t given a shit about anything back then, hence the shithole. After I started at Mace’s garage, I bought a place in the old neighborhood. I kept it neat and sparse. Hated having too much around me because it reminded me of the animal I had lived with and the pigsty I had grown up in. Thinking of him brought the image of his eyes right before he’d start in on the beatings. He had gotten off on it, hammering his fists into me. Sick fuck.

  Even though I liked my space, I couldn’t deny the appeal of the Donati home, a place I had been lucky enough to call home for three years. Pictures that Mia had drawn when she was little hung from the walls, shoes that she or Mace had stepped out of had always littered the living room or kitchen. And Mia, like Mace had been, was just like her home. Warm and welcoming. I’d never forget those years I’d spent with them. There had been no hesitation, nothing held back, they brought me in and treated me as one of them. Never had it before or since, the way Mia looked at me, like I mattered to her. The first time I’d ever been hugged in my life was when she threw herself in my arms because I had agreed to watch that fucking mermaid movie. That feeling of belonging was like crack, a person could grow very addicted. Hell, I was addicted to her, craved her company above all others, but I never wanted to see the look in her eyes that I’d seen from too many people in my life; the look that I was no better than the shit on their shoes. I reasoned that I kept my distance for her safety, but—if I was being completely truthful—limiting my exposure to her kept her from seeing the man I’d become after life had beaten the innocence out of me.