There’s pressure on Dad?
“Pressure from who?Who do you work for, Z?”
“I’m the one making demands here! Don’t you get it, Harp? I’m in the power position and it’s time you realize that. Silas has been meeting with a lawyer, drawing up papers like he’s been thinking about splitting the club between you and Caleb. You’re gonna go in there and convince him to give it 100% to you.”
“How do youknowall this?” I lean against the wall, baffled about all that’s been going on behind my back.
“His lawyer actually works for us, not that Silas knows it.”
Us. Who the fuck isus?
But he’s going on before I can ask again. “That ratfucker Caleb got himself some powerful friends, so we couldn’t go directly at him. And I was protecting you.”
He says it so pompously, but I happen to intimately know his shit lack of work ethic and substance abuse problems, so I doubt whatever reason the shadowy “us” had for not striking until now had anything to do with him.
There are bigger things at play around me—like an undercurrent in an ocean that I’m suddenly being swept away in, when I had no idea I’d been tossed in the deep end.
Holy shit, exactly how much of this life I’ve been living is a lie, and for how long?
“Who are you working for?” I ask again.
“Clearly not the trucking company,” Z says smugly, and I can tell he’s smoking a cigarette because the stale air of the closet is starting to cloud with cigarette smoke sneaking in underneath the door.
I shake my head. There’s about three guesses who he’s working for, really:
A local gang he got himself caught up with.
Or bosses from the gambling halls where he got into trouble last time.
Or a Motorcycle Club that sometimes lets idiots like him hang around when they need cannon fodder.
Oh shit. It clicks.
Cannon fodder like drivers willing to smuggle drugs over the border from Mexico hidden in their big rigs.
My face falls into my hands.
No wonder Z has kept such steady work in spite of being such a fuck-up. The real shocker is that he hasn’t gotten caught yet.
I cough, choking from the smoke.
“Z!” I pound the door, coughing again. “Let me out. The smoke! I need water.”
“IfI let you out, you’re gonna go have a talk with daddy and say exactly what I tell you. Is that understood?”
“Just let me out!” I turn back to the door and slam it with my feet again, right where it feels like he’s resting against it. He jumps. I can feel the startle in his body as he pounds the door back with a fist.
“If you aren’t nicer the next time I come back, I’ll leave you in here all week!” he shouts.
“Then I’ll die! People can only survive three days without water, you fucking dipshit.”
“Iknowthey can only survive three days without water,” he yells back.
“And only ten days without food,” I say. We both went hungry as kids, so I really thought he already knew the basics.
“Fine.” He sounds petulant. “I’ll bring you water.”
God. He really is just an idiot,I think in shock. I always assumed he was smarter because he got good grades sometimes back in school.