Page 110 of Petty's Crime

He looks at me sharply. “Doesn’t seem right to let her walk away.”

The painkillers are clearing the throbbing from my head, enough for me to get my brain to work. “I may have an idea, Prez.”

“Well tell me about it on the way to the hospital.” Red gestures toward the stairs.

“You coming with me?” I’d assumed I’d hitch a ride with Meat.

His face screws up. “Feel I failed our client in some ways. RoseLyn wanted her parents kept out of it for the very reason Rufus is now lying in a hospital bed. I’m partly responsible. Perhaps we should never have brought him down to the basement.”

“He wanted to see Thorne,” I remind him. “And it may not have been Thorne’s attack that caused his heart to give out. It was stressful enough, him finding out that his daughter had been in danger, and then discovering she knew she wasn’t really theirs.”

He raises a brow. “She is, in all that matters.”

She is, and I know she’ll come to see that in time.

Red grabs the keys to one of the SUVs and opens the passenger door so I can ease myself inside. With every twinge going through me, I think more on the plan I’ve come up with to deal with Britney. As he drives us to the hospital, I fill him in on the details.

It’s got obvious flaws which he’s quick to point out. “It’s not a permanent answer.”

“Nah, but it gives me a few years. By then, hopefully, she’ll be sensible enough not to fuck with me again.”

Red dips his head. “At least she won’t have the benefit of using your marriage against you, as you’ll be divorced, that’s for sure. I still think it would be better to dispose of her for good.”

Grimacing, I admit, “I can’t have that on my conscience, Prez. Even if I wasn’t the one pulling the trigger.”

He shakes his head, but even without the weight of a father’s influence, I’m not certain it would be easy for him either. Men are fair game. They fuck up, they end up underground. It goes against the grain for us all to bury a woman, even if they’ve hurt one of us. And RoseLyn was cut up enough about what happened to Saul. I’ll never tell her the details about Thorne, but she’ll suspect, and that by itself will be hard for her to deal with. I don’t think she’d ever forgive me if Britney, too, met her demise. For her, it will be enough that Brit is gone from our lives.

Red manages to park, then chuckles as I carefully get out. “Want me to get a wheelchair?”

I growl at him and try my best to stand straight without wincing, then pace myself as we steadily approach the door. Red’s already texted Owl who’s waiting for us, and who leads us up to the floor where those who need critical care are taken. I take that as meaning Rufus is still hanging on, and hope that he stays that way.

In the waiting room, RoseLyn is seated by her mother. It’s hard to read anything on their faces as I approach, so I have to ask to get any answers.

“How’s he doing?”

Standing, RoseLyn takes my arm and leads me to the quieter corner. Her face twists as she tells me, “It was touch and go in the ambulance. His heart stopped but they managed to get it restarted. They’re doing bypass surgery now. If that’s successful, the prognosis looks positive.”

Red’s by my side. “If you need any help with the bills, let me know.”

“His insurance should cover most of it, and Red, it wasn’t your fault.” She grimaces. “If I hadn’t gotten myself kidnapped, then he’d never have had the worry that I had gone missing. And,” she swallows a sob, “maybe I’d have calmed down before talking about the adoption. If I hadn’t given him reason to come here, he’d never have met Thorne.”

“Hey, this isn’t down to you,” I tell, her reading between the lines. “Your dad probably needed the surgery for some time. Anything could have pushed him over, and at least we were fast getting him treatment.”

“If you want to blame anyone, blame Saul and Thorne. Hell, blame the Devils as we should have protected you better.” Red’s eyes narrow at her.

“I ran because I couldn’t handle what you did to Saul.” She bites her lip. “It was down to me.”

“Not you,” Red interjects. “We thought the danger ended with Saul. We took our eye off the ball too, sweetheart.”

There had been so many clues that there wasn’t one schizophrenic person after her, but two different people, and we’d ignored them all. Had we given more thought to it, then even if I wasn’t capable, someone would have had eyes on her after she’d left the club.

Would it have been better if she’d never met Thorne and had had the ugly truth of his life laid out for her? The idea that they could easily have lived each other’s lives must be disturbing for her.

“I hate Thorne,” she spits out. “I hate what he’d done to Daddy.”

“You don’t have to worry about him anymore.” When she sends me a sharp look, I know she’s joining the dots, but the confirmation and truth I’ll always keep from her. “He was beyond redemption. He’d had everything stacked against him from the start. Fuck knows how his brain was screwed from how he reacted to the drugs your birth mom imbibed while she was pregnant. Then there’s his abusive and twisted upbringing.” Wincing, I admit to her, “I know how hard it is to shake off the shackles of your past life, and in his case, Thorne had no hopes to recover. He was an angry, sick-in-the-brain man.”

“Was,” she picks up. “Past tense.” She bites her lip and shoots a look toward her distraught mother. Then says, half to herself, “But he was my brother.” Then to me she adds, “Why aren’t I more upset?”

---