Usually, he’ll keep talking right over me until I’m cowed by the sheer quantity of his words and love bombing.
But now that I’ve seen the truth of him and he knows it, that bullshit won’t work anymore. So now when I put up a boundary, suddenly he’s respecting it.
Because he knows he’s lost his power over me.
I’m on this side of the glass and he’s on that side.
I let the silence sit.
I let him wait in it.
And then I say, “What thefuckare you doing here?”
“Harp, just let me explain—I wasn’t in my right mind, I?—”
“Who is Senior?” I cut him off.
That lands differently than the conversation he came prepared for. I watch him recalibrate cautiously.
“The President of the MC I work for.”
“There it is.” The words come out quiet, and quiet is worse than loud sometimes. “First true thing you’ve said to me in I don’t know how long.”
His eyes come up to mine. I let him find them this time because I want him to see that I’m not shaking.
“Look, I found a way to make it all right. All you’ve gotta do is come sign this thing, Harp?—”
“If he wants the Dungeon, have Senior’s lawyers send over the paperwork. We’re happy to sign whatever he wants.” I step back and prepare to close the door in his face.
“It’s not about the stupid fucking club!” Frustration cracks through Z before he can stop it, and he winces—from his own volume or from his injuries, I’m not sure. I’ve almost got the door shut when he says, “It’s about Bruiser.”
I yank the door back open, my veins turning to fucking ice.
Any lingering conditioned compassion for this man is officially dead and gone. My voice goes cold as I ask, “What does my son have to do with any of this?”
Z’s shoulders drop. And it’s not the usual calculated smallness he does when he wants me to soften.
“I swear I didn’t know,” he starts.
“Tell me what you do know.Now.”
He breathes out. “Senior’s not just my boss. He’s your uncle. Him and Silas are brothers.”
His head lifts, watching me for a reaction.
I give him nothing, even though my head is spinning with the information.
He keeps going. “Their dad left them this property, I guess—land somewhere up in Idaho where Senior’s son built a mountain compound. I’m not supposed to know about it, but people talk.
“It’s like a cult up there on the mountain or something. The MC funnels them money, then launders money that comes from them to clean it up. I guess your grandpa was some paranoid backwoods mountain hick who wrote in his will that everything is passed down through male heirs only.”
He pauses. “And Senior’s got this son, Brutus. But Brutus doesn’t have any sons. Which means if something happens to Brutus, the line reverts back to Silas’s branch.”
I hear it coming before he finishes the sentence.
“And Silas’s male heir,” I conclude for him, “is Bruiser.”
“Yeah,” Z expels a loud breath. “Your nine-year-old kid is the legal failsafe to everything Senior and his kid have spent their whole lives building.”