Page 27 of King of Cruelty

“But I...” Vance fell silent, slumping on his window seat. All the righteous indignation whooshed out of him, leaving nothing behind but a puppet with its strings cut.

“What else is in this folder?” Sunny asked, clicking around on all the documents.

“It’s the... proof the... accountant... gave me...” Vance’s voice got smaller and smaller.

“Fake,” Sunny dropped, pulling up a pdf of account information and scrolling through. “Fake. Terrible fake. Fake. For fuck’s sake, my name is misspelled,” he burst out, smacking the screen. “This is the French spelling of my name, not the Italian spelling. I’ve taken a few hits to the head, but I still know how to spell my fucking name, Hollywell!” Sunny threw the pencil cup at him, making the man burst into tears. “What is wrong with you? Someone hands you a pile of manufacturedbullshit, and just like that, you hop on board the train to aiding and abetting murder.”

“I—I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t give me that. It was you, wasn’t it? You put the trackers in our clothes, letting those bastards know exactly where my niece was. They almost killed her, Vance!” Sunny ripped out his phone and shoved his screensaver in Vance’s face. Of course it was a big, cheesing, adorable photo of Tricky—his favorite girl. “This is who you wanted dead? Huh!? She your hated Merchant enemy too!?”

Vance took one look and wailed louder, sinking on the floor smashing his fists against his forehead. If Sunny was going for complete emotional castration, he nailed it.

I just shook my head at the pathetic mess that used to be Vance Hollywell, director of the great Caddell House. For all his wide-eyed shock and wet-his-pants bleating, Hollywell wasn’t this stupid. If he had bothered to hold thisproofunder the slightest bit of scrutiny, he’d have seen for himself it was a load of garbage.

But the fact is he didn’t bother looking deeper because he plain didn’t want to. This accountant handed him all of his assumptions and prejudices wrapped in a bow. The Merchants were bad guys doing what bad guys do, so therefore, he was perfectly justified in doing whatever it took to get them out of Caddell House forever. That it also gave him a handy excuse to skip over the twenty million-dollar buyout was the cream on top.

Like I clocked the minute I met him, Vance Hollywell is a cheapskate.

My eyes narrowed, lighting on something as Vance blubbered to Sunny, swearing up and down that he didn’t know anyone would get hurt, especially not an innocent little girl.

“Then what did you think would happen?” I sliced in, dropping down on the vacant chair and squinting at the screen.A PO box address tucked away at the bottom of the bank accounts taunted me, tickling a memory dancing out of reach. “When the Brotherhood approached you about the trackers, what did they say?”

“He—he said— They needed them to follow you to all of your hideouts and stashes—prove the Merchants were connected to criminal activity. It was all to gather evidence to finally put you on trial, I swear,” he cried. “I didn’t know anything about any bombings!”

“Why would they need to follow us around for evidence ifthatwas your supposed evidence?” Sunny gestured to the computer. “Why didn’t you just turn your proof of embezzling over to the police? Why didn’t that forensic accountant make you?”

“He said there would be a huge scandal!” Vance climbed up on his knees, near pleading with Sunny. “He told me he’d seen a million of these cases play out in court, and even if you ended up in jail, the Caddell name would be forever tainted with the stink of theft and dirty money. We’re buried under too many scandals and lawsuits already. We can’t afford to lose the few clients we still have.”

“Batavia,” I whispered, still staring at that address.

“And let me guess,” Sunny went on. “After feeding you that load of bullshit, he gave you the number of someone who could clean the whole mess up without a scandal coming anywhere near Caddell.”

Vance bobbed his head, spittle coating his cheek. “Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know anyone would get hurt!”

“How could you not know? Why didn’t you see that this whole thing was shady right off the bat? You got in bed with criminals because you wanted to get out of bed with criminals!”Sunny shouted, seizing his collar. “Tell me how that makes sense in your small little mind!”

“Because they weren’t!” Vance shrieked. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! I didn’t know they were dirty! I didn’t know! Dwyer didn’t send me to a darkened corner in a back-alley bar! He gave me the number of two detectives who he promised would handle my case discreetly!

“I thought I was working with the cops. I thought they were undercover and—”

“Using you to illegally surveille suspects and ensure their case was kicked out of court as quickly as their asses were out of the police force?” Sunny finished, tone dead.

Vance broke down, wailing on the floor under the force of his immense greed, naivety, and stupidity.

“Batavia... Batavia...”

Scoffing, Sunny turned his back on the sad act soaking his shoes. His gaze sharpened on me. “Sugar Bum? What’s wrong?”

“Sunny, I... I think there’s more to this,” I said slowly. “Much more.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Vance finds out there’s something not adding up in the accounts and he just happens to hire a forensic accountant that fronts for the Brotherhood, giving them the access they’ve been praying for to build their money-printing machine?”

“Babe, this money-printing-machine thing is an insider you’ve got with someone else,” he said, dropping down next to me. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Oh, right, of course. Basically, it’s when the key to everything you’ve ever wanted just falls into your lap one day. There’s no way that happened here. There’s just no wayVancejust happened to them. All of this had to be a setup from the beginning. A setup that’s been years in the making.

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