Page 17 of Reckless At Raleigh High
“He asked you to keep an eye on me?”
Zander laughs, letting his head fall back onto the couch. “He didn’t say much of anything about it. Just grunted on the other end of the line. He didn’t tell me to do shit. I had your back because we were friends, man. For real. That had nothing to do with Jack.”
I don’t know if I can believe him. It all seems a little too coincidental to me. I don’t have the emotional wherewithal to unpack unimportant bullshit friend stuff at the moment, though. I just need to figure out what Jack’s game is and put an immediate stop to it. Because there is some sort of game here. There has to be. “And now? You show up at my place of work? You’re enrolled at the same school as me? This is all because we’re friends and you wanted to come hang out? I don’t buy it.”
“I told you why I came to Raleigh,” Zander replies wearily. “Q owed Monty a favor. He wanted me to register at Raleigh and figure out who’s been taking a chunk out of his coke business ever since that stuck-up Kacey bitch got sent away. That’s it. The end. Jack was never even near this deal. There’s bad blood between him and Monty. As far as I was aware, you couldn’t pay Jack to come to Raleigh, no matter how much you offered him.”
“So then what? He just shows up out of nowhere of his own volition one day? That’s a load of shit.”
“Like you said, man. You buried your little brother yesterday. He was Ben’s fath—”
I hurl the beer can across the room, roaring at the top of my lungs. “I WISH—”
Deep breath. Take a deep breath,mi amore. That’s it. Shhhhh. Breathe….
I pause second, waiting for the tidal wave of anger to subside. “Iwishpeople would stop calling him that. Giacomo wasnotBen’s father. He’s not my father, either. He’s a scum sucking piece of trash that uses and abuses things until he breaks them. He never cared about us before. He didn’t give a shit about us when my mom died. He didn’t care about us when we were thrown into the foster care system. There’s no fucking way in hell he showed up yesterday because he was affected by Ben’s death. So, don’t give me that ‘he was Ben’s father’bullshit. It won’t fucking wash.”
Zander lets out an exasperated sigh. “What the hell do I know, man? I’m just doing what I’m fucking told, trying not to get my ass handed to me by dudes with way more clout than me. My dad kicked it three months before I was even born, so allthis,” he says, gesturing angrily at me, “makes no fucking sense to me anyway. I’m sorry about Ben. I know how bad you wanted him to come stay with you. For what it’s worth, I know you’d have taken awesome care of him. But I don’t know anything about Jack coming here. I don’t keep tabs on the man. I was hoping things’d be cool with us if I came here. So long as you don’t try and snap my neck again, I still think that’d be dope. But that is literally all I got for you right now.”
I swallow, regretting that I hurled my beer across the room. Feeling atinybit bad that Pabst Blue Ribbon is currently running down my old living room wall.
However, this is all grade-A bullshit.
Zander sounds genuine. I mostly believe what he’s just told me, but even if it is all true, that still means he spent six months in juvie with me, knowing way more about me than he let on. He knew where Giacomo was when I didn’t. I bitched, and I griped, and I told him things about my family that I hadn’t told anybody before, and he didn’t say a fucking word. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have the opportunity. I mean, all we did was hang out all day, lifting weights and sparring, for fuck’s sake.
I twist the tire iron around in my hand, watching it spin as I run my tongue over my teeth. After a second, I stop it abruptly, jumping to my feet. “Fair enough.”
Zander follows me with his eyes as I make my way to the door. “That’s it? Fair enough? Where the fuck are you going, man? I feel like you need a zanny or something.”
“I don’t need azanny,” I spit. “I need to make sure Jack’s fucks off back to wherever the hell he came from.”
* * *
Monty and my father arenotfriends.
That’s what Zander said.
When he petitioned to become my legal guardian, Monty told me he owed it to Jack to look out for me, which means Monty’s been lying to me, keeping secrets…
My temper’s on a high simmer as I slam through the entrance into the Rock. For a Saturday, the place is uncharacteristically quiet. Barely anyone hanging out by the pool tables. The booths in the back by the rear bar are all empty, which is super weird.
Paulie, the bar tender, looks like he’s seen a ghost when he clocks me storming toward the ‘employees only’ entrance that leads to Monty’s office. “Alex, man! What are you doing here? Boss said you were gonna be off for a couple of weeks?”
I flip him the bird and a cutting grin at the same time, then enjoy watching him trying to figure out the greeting as I push open the door and disappear through it into the dark hallway beyond.
“Alex!ALEX!”The door opens again and Paul calls after me. “Hang back, brother. He’s got someone in there with him. Alex, are you listeni—”
No, I’mnotlistening. The moment I saw the other gleaming black Camaro out in the parking lot, I knew my sneaky bastard of a father had shown up here, bad blood or no. If my sperm donor’s having a tête-à-tête with the boss, then I want to know what the fuck they’re talking about. I’msodone with this bullshit. Dispensing with formality I don’t bother to knock, barging right into Monty’s office…only to find Monty pinned face-down on his desk by a man who most definitely isnotmy father.
The guy’s head whips up, and I’m met with the cold, dead eyes of a killer. I don’t even think. I fucking duck, because that’s what my fight or flight reflex screams at me to do. There’s a swiftthunkoverhead, followed by the sharp, juddering sound of wobbling metal, and…holy fucking shit…I look up and there’s a mean-looking serrated hunting knife buried an inch deep in the staff notice board, right where my head was a moment ago.
“Wait, wait, wait! Fuck’s sake!” Monty hollers. “Relax, okay! He’s just a fucking kid. Alex, get the fuck out of here. NOW!” There’s genuine concern in his voice. For a split second, I almost believe that he does actually care about me and this hasn’t all been some kind of game to him.
The guy grinding Monty’s head into his computer keyboard hasn’t even blinked. He’s a monster of a dude, built like a line-backer. I’ve been confronted with some dangerous motherfuckers in my time, but this guy looks like he’d put a bullet between my eyes without even flinching.
“Zeth! Zeth, I mean it, man. Just…don’t. Alex, get back in the bar and wait for me there.”
Hmm. What to do, what to do. Part of me wants to bolt down the hall and get the fuck out of here. But then there’s the part of me that’s craving chaos and destruction. The part of me that’s still reeling from everything that’s happened recently. It’s the dangerous part of me that wants to break open like rotten fruit and bleed out all of my pain, spilling my tangled guts out onto the earth…
