I walked through the bar and took a seat next to Jax. He slid a glass of Scotch to me and I took a swig, the smooth rich malt burning my throat as I swallowed.
‘So, what did you find out for me?’ I asked him.
‘Martin Carmichael was a marine. Worked his way up to petty officer and left at the age of fifty-one with a stellar record. He opened his own butchers store in Brooklyn, did a lot for his local community. He ran the store until he died twelve years later in a car accident.’
‘And Alana’s grandmother?’
‘Beverly Carmichael was a high school teacher. She left her job when she was fifty-one too and never went back to work.
‘She left to raise Alana?’ I asked as I downed the rest of my whisky.
Jax nodded. ‘Yup. She was heavily involved with the church and did a lot for the local homeless shelter and soup kitchen. But she never had paid employment again. She died two years after her husband.’
‘How?’
‘Cancer.’
I grimaced as I thought about Alana losing the two people she had been raised by so close together and at such a difficult age too. ‘Why didn’t any of this come up before?’
‘Well, before, you looked into Alana yourself and you didn’t ask me to,’ he said with a grin.
I scowled at him and he laughed. ‘The official story is that Alana was very close to her grandparents and so she stayed with them a lot while her parents travelled around the country. But, the truth is she lived with them permanently from the age of one. The reason that’s such a well kept secret is because she lived in a small, close knit neighborhood, and her grandparents were very well thought of. They treated Alana like their daughter and though everyone knew that she wasn’t, they weren’t going to question it. Martin and Beverly Carmichael were pillars of the community and from what I could gather, they had very little money because they helped out so many local families. Martin’s shop made little profit because he kept his prices so low for people to afford to eat well.’
‘Wow,’ I shook my head. ‘So, Alana’s childhood was nothing like I imagined then? Nothing like what her bios would have people believe?’
‘Nope. At least not until she was fourteen. Then she went to live with her folks. Went to a fancy private school and then on to college before she started working on her father’s campaign.’
I was about to reply when I became aware of someone sitting next to me. Jax rolled his eyes and I turned in my seat to see Kiera Bennett sitting beside me.
‘Hi, Alejandro,’ she purred. ‘It’s not often we see you in here these days. That new wife of yours got you on a short leash?’ she fluttered her eyelashes.
I should have smiled gracefully and given her some vague answer, but I remembered the horrible shit she and Michaela had said about Alana a few weeks earlier.
‘Not at all,’ I leaned in close to her ear. ‘But, you see, I don’t think I’ve ever been with a woman who I actually enjoyed spending time with before. I could fuck her every single second of every day, and I still wouldn’t spend enough time with her. So, do me a favor, take your fake tits and your fake smile and get the fuck away from me.’
She blinked at me, but then she slipped off her stool and walked away. I turned back to Jax and he grinned at me. ‘Ouch!’ he said with a laugh.
‘She deserved it,’ I said with a shrug.
‘I don’t doubt it, amigo.’
‘Now, tell me, is there anything else I need to know about Alana?’
‘Not a lot to know. Seems she was quite a popular kid when she lived in Brooklyn, but then once she moved to Manhattan, her father made sure she was kept too busy for friends and all the other normal stuff teenagers do. She became a cog in the Carmichael administration machine.’
I shook my head. ‘Foster Carmichael is a Cabrón!’ I snarled. ‘He’s done nothing but manipulate and use Alana for her whole life.’
Jax nodded his head. ‘That’s politicians for you,’ he said as he downed his Scotch. ‘You fancy another, amigo?’
I shook my head. ‘No. It’s late. I need to get home.’
Jax patted me on the back. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
