I’d never been to Nixon’s apartment.
I had to call back to the house to get the address from the security staff, and parking the car on the side of the road outside his building felt like arriving at a stranger’s home.
Unsettling in more than one way.
I’d never even thought about coming here. Over a decade of working together, of friendship, and I’d never seen this building.
Granted, he hadn’t lived in this building the entire time we’d worked together. He just moved into this place a few years back. And he spent so much time working for me, in my home, that he had a room perpetually made up there for his use whenever he should need it.
To my knowledge, he used it often.
Nixon called me ‘brother’ and yet I didn’t even know where he laid his head most nights.
I took the stairs to the top floor of the lavish condo building, a ball of iron in my gut. I needed to draw it out, use the exertion to clear my mind before I got to his suite.
The penthouse.
I paid him well. Always had. But perhaps not penthouse condo well. Not in this area of the city. Where else was he skimming off the top?
Why couldn’t he have asked for more. For him, I would have given it freely.
I had waited five years before I wore the crown. It had been that long with Nixon already. I had been in his shoes and succession wasn’t always so cut and dry. It was certain, but only as certain as the king’s life. An accident killed Frank. If that hadn’t happened, I would still be in Nixon’s position.
Did he wish me dead? Did he think I’d had enough time sitting on the throne at the Monroe Estate?
Did he fancy it his turn?
I was getting ahead of myself.
I needed proof. Something more than words from an old man and clever girl.
Nixon’s door had been left unlocked after the cops designated it a scene of a crime.
I organized the arrest, wanting him out of the way, and without warning.
He was too much of a flight risk to allow free rein and if he was compromised, it was hard to say how many of my other men were too.
He had to be cut off completely.
I pushed into the condo, feeling slow where I used to feel sharp. Sluggish.
When Thane died I remembered losing hours daily, just staring into space, blank. His loss had carved the hole in my chest just a little wider. Made the edges jagged again after years spent smoothing them into something sufferable.
When the empty feeling wasn’t there, dragging me down like the bony fingers of a skeleton from the grave, there was anger. Red-hot, it burned in my chest, giving me a hair-trigger temper that I’d spent a decade learning to control.
The emptiness happened when my mom left, too. Once I came to terms with the fact she’d never return.
This felt like that.
Like Nixon was dead. Like I was fucking burying him.
A chill ran over my skin as I looked around the open living room and kitchen area.
It was sparsely decorated, and furnished with simple, elegant dark wooden pieces and leather furniture. Even in that austerity, I could feel him, see his touch in the orientation of the TV remote, tucked between two couch cushions right next to where he probably liked to sit.
All those years of friendship, brotherhood and I felt like I was crossing a line entering into his space without his knowledge.
I tightened up, determined not to let the familiarity that I had with him cloud my judgment. Proof would be the final nail in the coffin but thinking about finding what I looked for made me want to shed my skin like a snake.
A lurking uncertainty still tingled around my ears. I was trained to be ready for the worst and so I was, at all times. It’s what had made me the feared and respected king of a multi-statewide crime syndicate.
I found my feet carrying me into the kitchen instead of somewhere more obvious. I was stalling.
In the sink, there was an empty mug. On the marble countertop, a full pot of coffee. Cold and untouched.
He was in here when they came to get them.
I walked out of the kitchen past a couple of bedrooms, finding the biggest one, the master. Pushing in, my pulse thudded in my ears. A brown leather bag lay on the bed. Next to it facedown was his phone.
I picked the phone up, finding it code-locked. This was his personal phone, the one he always used. If I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, I would have a secondary phone. I didn’t approve of it, but if that was his game, I hoped he was at least playing it smart.
I picked up the bag, emptying its contents onto the bed and sure enough, another phone fell out of its depths.
His burner. An older flip model cell.
I went directly to the messages, seeing chats with only about five different people. None of the phone numbers were saved, but a quick search of the term body turned up the chat he had with the undertaker.
Seeing the words he typed, and phone calls he made hardened his betrayal into crystalline fact. Listening to the most recent voicemail from one Gerard Snow just cemented it.
Don’t. Get. Involved.
I never should’ve trusted him. Never should’ve…
Fuck.
Rage simmered over me, raising the small hairs on my arms, my neck, making my breaths come so hard and heavy it was a fucking marvel they didn’t smoke.
I searched the other chats, scrolling furiously to see what else he had done. Wanting to flay the open wound of his betrayal wider, get all the cutting done at once.
Satisfied that I’d examined everything to be seen in the ancient mobile, I tossed it to the feather down comforter and rifled through the other items from the bag.
A white sheet printed with lines of small text caught my eye. It was folded tight, small. One of those electronic manual leaflets. I picked it up, about to throw it in the trash can by the wall when I saw the box resting there atop the pile of receipts and bottle caps.
The words wireless Wi-Fi camera were printed in prominent black letters along its side, striking me like a slap to the face. I snatched the box from the trash bin, wondering how long it’d been there.
Reducing myself to a fucking dumpster diver, I fingered through the papers, finding a receipt for the camera not far down into the pile. It was bought weeks ago. Over a month.
The breach at Delirium.
No.
He wouldn’t.
I fought not to see it all coming together.
The pictures leaked online. The security breach.
It had to be someone who frequented the club. I thought it was a client, but why not the muscle? Nix had free rein in there. He came and went as he pleased, some nights as the hired muscle when we needed an extra man, other nights just to walk through, being my eyes and ears, representing my interests. Showing my patrons that though I wasn’t there myself, my eyes were everywhere. All seeing.
I crushed the box between my fingers.
The next hour passed in a blur. I turned his apartment upside down looking for more. Footage, notes, fucking anything that would implicate him.
There was no more room for denial. Now that the ship was going down, I would make sure it sunk into an abyss deeper than Mariana trench.
My feet dragged, weary by the time I’d had my way with every pillow, every drawer, every nook and cranny.
I jammed the elevator button, Nix’s computer tucked under one arm for processing. The whole thing was fucking decrypted, way beyond my skill to unravel.
My jaw clenched so tightly I could hear the protesting of my own teeth as I waited in the vacant corridor as the elevator soared up all thirty floors.
Why, Nix?
Why?
Fucking bastard.
He made this choice for me.
He acted, knowing the consequences.
His fault. His fucking fault. Not mine.
It had happened once when Thane was alive and he dealt the killing blow himself. I remembered it clearly. Thane pulling me out of bed, dragging me to the front foyer, where one of his confidants, a man named Toby, knelt on the parquet floor. He was beaten to a bloody pulp and looked nothing like the same man who fetched bones for Opie and brought me candies from town.
“This is what a traitor looks like, son,” Thane had said. “Wearing the face of a friend.”
Toby had begged then, but not for long before Thane planted a bullet between his eyes.
He’d knelt in front of me afterward, staring into my watery eyes long and hard. “We don’t cry for traitors, Ruarc. We shed tears for no one.”
I’d held them in, forcing the burning in my throat to abate until it was gone entirely.
“Now, tell me how traitors should be dealt with.”
“Swiftly,” I replied, even toned, reciting the words he’d drilled into me for the last three years.
“And…” he prodded.
“And without mercy.”
