Hawk (A Stepbrother Romance #3)(41)

The big bald man snorts. “Amish drug-”

“Careful,” the man in the pinstripe suit says. “The walls have ears.”

No one is looking at me but somehow I feel the attention of the entire meeting seems to fall on me. The thin man looks at me.

“I still don’t see why you felt the need to bring her,” he says.

Tom shrugs. “It’s time she got involved in the family business. I’ll be putting her in charge of some of the logistics soon.”

“How do we know she can be trusted?”

Tom looks at me. “I trust her. Things were bumpy when she was younger but you know teenagers. She’s a perfectly dutiful daughter, now.”

The thin man gives me an appraising look. It feels like he’s stripping my clothes off.

“I’ll be taking my leave,” the man in the pinstripe suit says.

The others nod, as if that’s a signal. Half the food is left uneaten. The big man watches me the whole time he slips into his coat and adjusts it to hide the bulge from his gun. They all walk out together, back into the restaurant. I slip my chair a few inches further from Tom now that I have more room.

He grabs my arm. His fingers press into my flesh.

“Don’t be alarmed, sweetie. They’re suspicious by nature.”

“Tom,” I say softly.”They were talking about-”

His voice is cold. “We both know what they were talking about.”

He lets go of my arm, leaving soft marks in my skin that fade out slowly. I gulp down the rest of my Shirley Temple. Tom snaps his fingers and the waitress brings me another one.

“Bring her some ginger ice cream.”

The waitress nods.

“It’s a specialty here,” Tom says. He’s quiet until she’s out of earshot and then says, “Do I take it you don’t approve of this?”

“I…. I don’t… I…”

“I didn’t think you’d understand, sweetie. It’s difficult to get your head around. I came to an understanding, though, when Katzenberg came to me about doing some work for him, and made it clear that I had a choice between accepting his offer and finding many vital avenues of business closed to me.”

“What understanding?”

“The world is full of good men and bad men. Good men think they can stop the bad men, but they can’t. There are always more. One bad man goes away and another steps up to take his spot in the whole thing, and it just goes on and on and on, round and round and round. So good men can fight a pointless fight, or give the bad men what they want.”

“Are you a good man?”

“What do you think, honey?”

I shiver. “Of course you are.”

“I am. When I work with the bad men, I keep them under control. That’s why the baldheaded man was looking at you, dear. He’s a procurer, in addition to moving narcotics. A fleshmonger. Do you know what that means?”

The question must be rhetorical. He answers before I even open my mouth.

“He sells girls. Girls younger than you. Runaways, mostly. Sometimes they abduct girls who won’t be missed. They take them places, and train them. Virgins sell for the most money, they get moved overseas. Less valuable ones end up in places like the one out in Port Carol, f*cking truckers for twenty bucks a pop all night until they overdose on heroin.”

He says it so matter-of-factly, like he’s discussing the logistics of concrete deliveries for his construction business. I shudder.

“They bring them in from foreign countries, too. Mostly Eastern Europe, sometimes poorer girls from Germany or France. They promise them good high paying jobs in the States, and when they get here the good high paying job is in a brothel and they don’t get to keep any of the money they make. Deplorable, really.”

He adds his moral judgement with all the conviction of a man condemning a baseball coach he doesn’t like. After another bite of meatloaf, he goes on.

“I’m not going to have that in my, ah, territory. Once I work my way up the ladder, I’ll be able to tone things down. Not put a stop to it. I can’t, you see. I can make sure it’s clean, the girls are treated well, they have a chance to get out. If I stamp it out completely, someone else will take over, someone who doesn’t care if they die in a cargo box on their way to wherever or get f*cked to death in some shitty honk-tonky trucker dive. The world isn’t going to run out of girls any time soon, sweetheart. Our bald friend, see, he isn’t like you and me.”

Hearing Tom lump me in with himself sickens me. I feel like I’m going to puke turkey club all over my lap.

How can this creature be Hawk’s father?

The waitress carries out a plate with two scoops of ice cream sitting in in the middle and sets it in front of me. I take a long spoon and slowly begin choking down bites. It’s rich and creamy and very good, and I want to spit it in his face.

“How is that?”

“Good.”

“Good. As I was saying, our friend isn’t like me, hon. He needs someone like me to regulate him, moderate him. Now, I know what you’re thinking, what about the drugs? Drugs hurt people, yes?”

I keep still, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

“People hurt themselves. The thing is, I can keep people safe if I have my hand on the tiller. There won’t be shootouts and robberies. People will get the drugs one way or another, even if they have to make them on their own. My way, people get their fix and they don’t get robbed or shot or blow themselves up with a meth lab in the basement. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”