Deep (Chicago Underground #8)(52)

Marcus dragged the man out from behind the desk by the lapels of his suit, hopelessly crushing and tearing the fabric in his iron grip.

The judge gasped and growled with frightened indignation. “How dare you? Do you know who I am?”

Philip took a small step forward, and that was their cue—the men tossed the judge onto the floor like a sack of garbage. He tumbled and cried out in pain as his knee twisted. He landed awkwardly on his ass in the middle of a rug that probably cost as much as a car.

The judge glared up at Philip, clearly struggling to maintain his bravado. “You have no right.”

“I have every right,” Philip said, almost mild in tone. His relaxed manner was in sharp contrast to the judge’s bristling anger and fear. “When a judge signs an illegal warrant, I have a right to know why.”

“Illegal?” A trembling sneer. “How dare you question me? How would you know—”

“It’s my business to know the law,” Philip said. “Just like it’s yours. And I know as well as you do that the warrant is bunk, that the arrest would never stand. There isn’t enough evidence. There isn’t any evidence. No judge would have granted it based on its merits, so you must have had another reason. What was it?”

“Now see here. If you’re so sure it wouldn’t hold up, why not arrange a meeting with the DA?”

“Is that what you wanted?” Philip asked calmly. “For me to settle this calmly and peaceably and no one would ever have to know about the bribes you took.”

“Bribes?” he gasped. “I would never—”

“The fact remains that someone wanted to see me in handcuffs. They wanted me incapacitated, unable to protect what is mine.” He sent me a meaningful look, and the judge seemed to notice me there for the first time.

The judge’s eyes widened as if suddenly more afraid by the presence of a young woman than by dangerous men. “You brought someone here? She’ll tell. How are you going to keep this quiet now?”

Really, even the supposed good guys talked about me as if I didn’t have a voice. Except his worry didn’t make sense. Why would he be worried about me telling someone? Wouldn’t he want me to tell what had happened here? Surely he would report all of this to the police when we left.

Unless he had some reason to want this secret. Unless what Philip said about the warrant was true.

“She won’t tell,” Philip said softly. “Not if you give me what I need.”

The judge seemed to crumple. “It wasn’t a bribe. God.”

Philip crouched and placed his hand on the judge’s shoulder, almost commiserating man to man, as if it wasn’t his order that had sent the judge tumbling to the floor in the first place. “This is how it ends.”

“Blackmail.” The judge took a shuddering breath. “My grandson. He starts college in the fall. I couldn’t let his life be ruined. He’s so young.”

“Who?”

“Barnes. That f*cker. He told me…” He shut his eyes, looking pained. “He gave me instructions.”

Barnes—I remembered the cop from the dorm hallway, the one so determined to arrest Philip. His dark wrinkled face and white hair would have looked grandfatherly without the almost violent determination in his eyes.

Philip didn’t look impressed. “He has been after me for years. What changed?”

The judge met his gaze directly. “I don’t know. I swear it. I only know that someone bankrolled him. Someone gave him the…leverage he needed to secure my cooperation. There were…pictures.”

I sensed Philip’s disappointment, though he didn’t show it. “You’ll call it off,” he said softly.

“Yes, yes,” the judge babbled, and then winced when Philip squeezed his shoulder tightly.

“Wait,” I said, pulling Philip’s arm. “He told you what you wanted to know. He’s revoking the warrant. You got what you needed. Don’t hurt him.”

Philip wasn’t moved by my pulling or my pleas, but he said to the judge, “Tell her what the pictures were of. Tell her what your grandson does for fun.”

The judge turned white. He glanced at me, and in his eyes I saw a flicker of malevolence. “He has sex with girls. Like any boy his age.”

The hand on his shoulder must have squeezed harder, because his mouth tightened in pain and his whole body jerked.

“Okay,” he gasped. “She was drunk. Maybe he’d slipped her a pill. She was tied up. God, I don’t know why he does it, okay? He had the best of everything. Money. Education. I don’t know why he hurts them.”

I stared at him in horror. I’d been nervous about Philip coming here, threatening him, because the man was a judge. He was supposed to be one of the good guys. Even if he’d taken some kind of a bribe to sign the warrant, we all knew Philip was a criminal—with or without evidence. I could have still respected him.

But this? This was disgusting, horrible. This was subhuman. His grandson hurt women, raped them, but his judge of a grandfather protected him? He did illegal things just to keep his monster grandson out of jail—and going to college? He would be one of the fresh-faced freshman around campus next year. No one would know how dark he was inside.

And I realized then what Philip had been trying to tell me in his own way. This was the real reason he’d brought me here. There was no good and bad, not in this city. No clean hands. There was only money and violence—and Philip remained on top by using both to his advantage.