Page 62 of Resurrect Me

“That’s a fucking lie, Solomon,” he says. “I know about your little operation. What do you call yourselves? The Delinquents? The Degenerates?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say and climb the last two steps. There’s no door at the top of the stairs and Declan nudges me to the left.

“Okay, play coy. That’s just fucking fine,” he mutters.

The stark contrast between the dark, musty basement we just left and the elaborate, elegant office we are entering grabs my attention. There are bookshelves that line the walls, from floorto ceiling, and chandeliers at either end of the room. Ornate, high piled red rugs cover half of the marble floors. And…there’s a desk in the center of the room. With a chair turned away from us. Someone’s sitting in it, facing the window.

“There you are, Solomon,” a woman’s serpentine voice coos. “I knew you’d come sooner or later.”

The chair spins around on its axis and she faces me. The CEO, the leader of The Org…my mother-in-law, Judith H. Beckner.

“It’s not Solomon anymore, Judith,” I hiss. “And you are no longer Judy.”

“I’m not?” She sticks out her bottom lip. “Why do you say that?”

“You’re not the person I thought you were.”

Declan still stands behind me, the gun wrenched into my spine.

“You can go, Governor,” she says. “I can handle him.”

Declan hesitates but lowers the gun and says, “I’ll stand right outside the door, Ma’am. Just call. And I’ll fucking end him.”

“Like you ended him before?” She releases a cold, harsh giggle that sounds straight from Hell. “Please, Declan. We both know you’re a pussy. And you don’t have the balls to kill…or the strength…to kill Solomon.”

“That’s not my name,” I growl. “How could you do this to your family, Judith? To your daughter? To your grandchildren?”

“Do what?” She snaps. Her feet plant on the floor and she rises from her leather tufted throne. “Give them a legacy? Protect them from annihilation? What exactly am I doing to them, Solomon?”

“That’s a fucking joke, Judith,” I chuckle snidely. “Your daughter wasn’t just abducted once, but twice. By your own men. I don’t call that protecting her.”

“She wasn’t abducted. Tacy went willingly, Sol. Didn’t you know your wife, your sweet little Tacy, is a cold-blooded killer? Hasn’t she told you about the men she killed when she was only seventeen? The blood bath she created?”

“I know about the incident, yes. But she’s not cold-blooded. And she most certainly didn’t go willingly into her captor’s basement. Tied to a fucking pole and made to piss in a bucket beneath her.”

“Well…that wasn’t supposed to happen,” Judith says and produces a key from the desk drawer. “You and I both know in this business, things can go awry in a hurry.”

“In this business?” I keep my hands at my sides. But I’m thinking of the blade I have hidden in my boot. “I’m not in any business the likes of yours.”

Judith chortles and dangles the key in front of her. “Do you know what this is, Solomon? This is the key to the city. No, the Mayor doesn’t have it. Neither does the Governor. I have it. I own this city. I own the state. And soon, I’ll own the country.”

“You plan on running for president, Judith? No one would vote in an old bag like you.”

“I don’t have to be in the spotlight to be in charge. It doesn’t work that way. I have others who are my face. Which is how it’s always been in this country. The president doesn’t run things, Solomon. The Org does.”

“So, Dickhead Declan has no real power, for instance?”

“Declan Harvey should have been Governor from the jump,” she hisses. “But you had to be the good guy and get in the fucking way.”

She’s dancing around my questions. The intense heat of anger threatens a dark metamorphosis within me. But I can’t let it overpower me. Too much anger and I’ll totally lose control. And I can’t lose control right now. I must stay as calm as possible and think of a way out of this. Where are my men? Where are The Rebellis?

“Are you going to kill me or what, Judith? Enough of the fucking games.”

“I’m not going to kill you…yet,” she says. “I need you to convince Tacy to join the family business. She is, after all, my successor.”

I let out a howl of laughter that nearly shakes the crystals dangling from the chandeliers. “Oh Judith, you never were a comedian but that was pretty funny.”

She scowls at me, throws the key back in the drawer, and I hear the click of a gun. She holds it at me and says, “I’ll bet you’re getting used to this, aren’t you, Solomon?”

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