Page 39 of Hell of a Mess

Thirty-Four

Luther

We stood back while Thaddeus waited at the front door of the Halsten residence. I’d liked my idea of breaking in and surrounding his ass, but this way had its perks. He was being blindsided by someone he believed was a friend.

You don’t make friends with the Mafia. Stupid fucker.

The door swung open, and the maid we’d been expecting appeared.

She nodded politely at Thaddeus. “Mr. Davidson,” she said in greeting and stepped back for him to enter.

That was our cue to step into her line of sight.

“I’ve brought some family with me,” he informed her. He waited until we were directly behind him to enter the house. “I’m assuming that Alpheus is waiting for me in the office,” he replied.

She nodded and dropped her gaze to stare at her feet.

“I’ll go get him, and we can gather in the living room,” Thaddeus said, then waved a hand in our direction. “If you’ll be so kind as to show them the way.”

The lady nodded again and glanced at us. She’d lost most of her color, and she was visibly trembling. “Right this way,” she said before turning to walk in the opposite direction of Thaddeus.

No one spoke as we made our way into a room with high ceilings and an elaborate fireplace that took up half the height of one wall with a roaring fire in it.

“What the fuck?” Bane muttered. “It’s March in Texas.”

“I guess sixty degrees is too much for him,” Gathe replied, sounding amused.

“Please get comfortable. I’m sure they will be here shortly,” the lady said and turned to leave.

“I’m afraid you aren’t leaving,” Linc told her. “Just yet,” he added.

She stared back at him, wide-eyed, and the pallor of her face only worsened.

“I need to know how many staff are on the grounds,” Linc said.

“Just me, the cook, and Eilene—she helps with the cleaning,” the woman stammered.

Linc nodded. “All in this house?”

“Yes.” Her voice was just above a whisper.

“All right, here is the thing…” He paused. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name. How rude of me.”

“Vessa, sir,” she said, then gulped in air.

“Vessa, do you know who Thaddeus Davidson is?”

She nodded. “Yes, sir. He’s been here many times.”

“Right, and do you know what he is?”

Her eyes darted around the room, and she looked like she might either pass out or throw up. “Yes,” she said softly. “I’ve heard the whispers and gossip, I mean. I don’t go spreading them though. Just heard them.”

Linc smiled as if they were having a friendly conversation. “Well, Vessa, the gossip is true. And I and the men with me, we are all part of that family.”

The fear in her eyes became full-blown terror.

“What I need from you is silence. Because, Vessa, I really don’t like to hurt innocent people.

And as far as I know, you’re not part of why we are here.

But I also protect mine. If you or any of the others here tonight feel the need to repeat what happens or what you see”—he paused and shook his head regretfully—“you’ll become an enemy, and then… well, you get the idea.”

She nodded frantically. “I won’t say anything. None of us will. We can leave.”

He shrugged. “Leave if you feel that you should, but don’t ever talk about it.”

“We won’t say anything, I swear it!”

“All right then. It was nice to meet you. I hope you have a lovely evening.”

She didn’t bother looking at anyone else before turning and fleeing the room.

“I think she might have shit her pants,” Forge said, scrunching his nose as if smelling something fowl.

Deep, fake laughter carried down the hallway.

“I don’t know what you mean, Thaddeus. You can’t expect me to just lie about my daughter. I’ve told you, like I told the Shephard man, that it is Dalia they are holding captive.”

Both men came into view, and it was clear from the expression on Alpheus’s face that he’d not been told we were all here. He tugged at his collar as he faltered in his steps.

“Oh, no, keep going,” Thaddeus told him.

I knew the moment his pistol was pressed to Alpheus’s back because the man tensed up and the first sign of fear glinted in his arrogant expression.

“What is the meaning of this?” he asked as he continued into the room, his eyes shifting nervously around as he mentally counted us.

There was thirteen, if you included Thaddeus.

“Thought it was time for a visit,” Linc said, stepping in front of the rest of us who had spread out around the room.

Forge had a miniature camera on the sunglasses he had sitting on his head, and Oz held one in his hand, not even trying to hide it, although you’d have to pay attention to realize what it was. They were each at a different angle in the room.

“Seeing as you keep threatening to bring in authorities to take Lace from us,” Linc finished.

“Whatever Dalia has told you is a lie. She’s a willful girl at times, and she wasn’t set on her marriage to Arun—”

“Dalia can’t speak. At least, when I visited her in her bedroom behind the bookcase the other night, she was silent. Comatose. But Lace? Now, she can talk,” I said, taking a step in his direction.

“We had our own man take her DNA and test it. The woman we have is not Dalia Halsten. Although you made her pretend to be. For what though? That’s really why we’re here. We want to know why,” Linc told him.

He let out a smug laugh, as if he had any upper hand in the situation. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Three of us were in Dalia’s room the other night,” Locke said. “We all saw her. Took photos. Videos even.”

Alpheus’s eyes went wide, and his face turned red. “That is breaking and entering! I will have you arrested! Do you know what I do to people who stand in my way?!” he shouted.

The click of several guns as they were all pulled out and pointed at him made me smirk. I hadn’t pulled mine out because I didn’t trust my finger not to slip and put this bastard six feet under.

His face turned ashen as he took a step back, and the gun behind him, pressing into his spine, had him freezing.

“What is it you want? Hush money? I can pay you whatever your price is.”

The pompous bastard thought his money could shut us up.

“I’m afraid that this doesn’t have a price tag on it,” Linc said, then nodded his head toward Mal.

“That man right there? He’s family. And Lace is his biological daughter.

He wants vengeance. He’d love nothing more than to put a bullet in your head right now and take you out of this world.

But we need information, and I’m going to do my best to keep him from killing you.

But you need to stop with the bullshit and tell us why you’ve had Lace act like her sister for all these years.

Just so you’d have a daughter to marry off for money?

Claiming your daughter drowned with her mother, then locking her in a basement until the day came that you could use her for your gain—what monster does that? ”

“I didn’t lock my daughter in a basement!” he said with a mock look of horror on his face.

“No, you locked mine in one,” Mal snarled.

“The girl you saw in the bedroom isn’t Dalia,” he said, shaking his head. “Dalia is a beautiful woman and uses her beauty to control men, persuade them.”

I was done. It took only a few long strides, and I was in front of the son of a bitch with my Glock pressed between his eyes as I seethed.

“I’ve been told I can’t kill you,” I told him, then leaned down close to his ear.

“But I don’t follow the fucking rules. I want your blood on my hands, you sick motherfucker.

So, say one more goddamn word about Lace, call her Dalia one more time, and I will blow your brains all over this tacky-ass living room. ”

“Luther,” Linc said as if he were talking to an uncontrollable child, “we agreed you wouldn’t do this.”

I let out a sadistic laugh. “I changed my mind,” I replied as I glared at the man. “I saw the basement. The cardboard she slept on. I loathe every breath you take.”

His breathing was coming in fast and short, and there was no color left in his face.

“Might be a good time to start confessing,” Thaddeus warned him.

“Okay,” he said. “It was Dalia in the room. She…” He let out a sob.

“She has a severe psychiatric condition. It was diagnosed when she was younger, but she only got worse. None of the medications they tried helped. They wanted to admit her. I couldn’t have that.

She was my daughter. Mine.” His eyes darted toward Mal, then quickly away.

“She had a life ahead of her, one I had planned for her. But she began growing more and more uncontrollable. She would go from a catatonic state to hysterical. I hired a nurse to stay with her, but she wasn’t always able to control her.

One night, she sprinted from the house.” He stopped and sobbed again.

“She got on a horse and was thrown. Her head hit a large rock. I thought we were going to lose her. And we did in a way. But I believed she’d come back to us.

I was just going to use Lassandra as long as it was necessary.

Not let the world know what had come of my beautiful girl. ”

“Lace,” I said, interrupting him. “Lace was seven when her mother drowned. Seven when you told the world that she’d drowned too.”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“WHY?!” I shouted when he didn’t say more.

“Be-because I was afraid she’d tell someone. Tell them that her mother had been having an affair. I couldn’t let her ruin her sister’s life.”

“Back away, Luther,” Linc ordered as my body twitched from the rage hammering through me. “LUTHER!”

“He’ll pay, Luther. But not yet.” Mal’s tone sounded as if he was struggling to contain his sanity.

“I’ll see you bleed out, watch the light go from your eyes, after I’ve carved you up, listened to you scream,” I told him before taking my gun from his head and lowering it as I took a step back.

“Now, what you’re going to do is tell us the story from beginning to end. All of it. Or I’m going to let Luther carry out his plan for you,” Linc said calmly.

“Dalia has been promised to Arun Al-Bahrani, and his father is a powerful man. If she—Lassandra—doesn’t marry him, he’ll seek his vengeance on me and all of you,” Alpheus warned.

One of the Louisiana boys chuckled, and I could see Forge grinning from the corner of my eye.

“Let him come on back to Southern soil, and we’ll see who seeks their vengeance,” I told him. “That’s another bastard I want to carve up.”

“I can’t pay him back the money they gave me up front for Dalia!” he cried. “I don’t have it.”

“Why did he give you money for Dalia?” Linc asked.

“Arun has a lover. A male lover. His father is against it and refuses to allow him to take over without a wife. One who comes from wealth and a family in the oil industry. One he can be proud of.”

“Luther, Mal,” Linc said, “the two of you can step outside. Watch the perimeter with the others. We will finish up in here.”

“I want to stay and hear him admit what he did,” I argued.

Linc sighed and shook his head. “We need this recorded, and we can’t have you storming into the scene, putting a gun to his head every time he says shit you can’t handle. Same goes for Mal.”

“Then I should go too,” Locke said. “If Luther hadn’t done it, I would have.”

Linc nodded. “All right. Then all three of you.”

I wanted to stay, but I also knew we needed him to talk, and his truths might be more than I could handle sanely.

I stared at the bastard as he fidgeted nervously, watching me. I eased my fury with the fact that, one day, I’d kill him brutally.

“Before I go, I want to hear you call her by her name,” I told him.

“Lassandra,” he choked out as if it was painful to even say.

I shook my head. “No, fucker. The name she wants to be called. The one her momma called her.”

He winced at the mention of her mother. “Lace.”