Bad Behavior (14 page)

“I guess Ashley wants Ben to come home. Anyway, Ben started asking me about
my
parents, and somehow Logan’s name came up.”

Grant was definitely paying attention now, and he appeared increasingly distressed.

“Ben kept asking me how I knew Logan, and I didn’t want to tell him, but he…he found out Logan was involved in my arrest.”

“You
told
him?” Grant glared at her. “That was incredibly stupid. What were you thinking?”

“I—I didn’t know what else to do! I couldn’t lie to him!”

“Now wait a minute, Grant,” Hunter said. “Did you ask Sophie not to tell Ben about Logan?”

He looked incredulous. “I thought it would be
obvious!
Here’s my nephew, grieving the death of his father, and you go and tarnish Logan’s name even more? Why the hell did you do that?”

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said, beginning to cry. It was too much for Ben
and
Grant to be angry with her in the same day. “I didn’t know what to tell him,” she sobbed.

“Ben was going to find out the truth some day,” Hunter pointed out.

Grant turned his glare toward the psychologist. “Why are you taking
her
side?”

Hunter was taken aback by Grant’s fury. “Because I think you’re being unfair to Sophie. She’s not responsible for what Logan did to her. Ben’s not responsible for his father’s actions either. He’s sixteen—he can handle the truth. He’ll get through this.”

Grant continued to breathe heavily, his mouth set in a tight line.

Hunter studied him carefully, wondering what had brought about this sudden, intense anger. “Grant, Sophie said you froze when you came into the kitchen. Why did you freeze?”

Abruptly Grant’s body language shifted from fury to fear.

“Why wouldn’t you talk to Sophie this morning?” Hunter asked.

Through her tears Sophie watched Grant’s face crumple as he scooted his body away from her, into the corner of the sofa. She could hear his breathing speed up, reminding her of his choking gulps for air as he emerged from his nightmares.

“I can’t,” Grant mumbled, feeling overwhelmed by flashes in his brain—Ben’s devastated blue eyes, sliced tomatoes on a plate, a shiny brass buckle, the smell of bacon grease…

“What do you see, Grant?” Hunter leaned forward and peered into Grant’s engulfed aquamarine eyes. “You’re having flashbacks? Was a memory triggered this morning?”

Sophie and Hunter watched with bated breath as Grant curled into himself.

“No,” he moaned, “I can’t.” His body shuddered, and he felt adrenaline course through his veins, freezing him in a state of utter agitation. The stinging sensation had returned to his backside.

“You’re safe here,” Hunter encouraged. “He can’t hurt you anymore. You can talk to us when you’re ready.”

For several moments the only sound in the office was Grant’s labored breathing, and thick tension reverberated through the room. Sophie’s throat burned with tears, watching him suffer.

Finally he broke.

“I was seven…”

Grant ran into the house, breathing hard. Logan had sent him to fetch the football, and Grant bit his lip as he fearfully studied the foyer’s closet door. He was still scared as hell of that closet, but Logan and their neighbor were waiting for him, and he couldn’t return empty-handed. Nervously he opened the door, kneeling and groping for the ball among the boots and other objects on the closet floor. He froze in place when he heard a commanding voice booming from the kitchen.

“Grant, is that you?
Vieni qui!”

Oh God. A sick feeling of dread coated his stomach. When his father spoke in Italian, he was typically drunk—drunk and full of rage. What was he doing home in the middle of the afternoon? Obediently following the order, Grant gulped and stood, walking on shaky legs into the kitchen.

Enzo lounged against the stove, cradling a tumbler in one hand. His glassy black eyes bored into his seven-year-old son as the boy gingerly came to stand near the kitchen table. Gesturing toward the counter, Enzo slurred, “Who the
fuck
left this messss?”

Glancing at the counter covered by an open bag of bread, sliced tomatoes on a plate, half a head of lettuce, and greasy bacon strips congealing on a paper towel, Grant’s eyes widened. Had Logan forgotten to put away their lunch? Their mother had asked him to do it before she went out to run errands.

“I—I don’t know,” Grant answered in a trembling voice.

With an exasperated sigh, Enzo set his drink down and began unbuckling his belt. “Can’t this goddamn family function when I’m not here?”

The whooshing sound of the belt sliding out of the loops sliced through the air, sending Grant’s heart rate soaring.

The father’s words were menacing: “Clean it up.”

Without hesitating, Grant scrambled to the counter and had begun scooping up the lettuce when the belt striped his bottom. He almost dropped the lettuce from the force of the blow—and the searing pain burning his backside—but he managed to hold on, frantically taking the plate of tomatoes in his other hand.

“Wait!” his father commanded, causing Grant to halt once again. “I changed my mind. I want you to make me a sssandwich.”

Grant looked over his shoulder, momentarily confused by the change in orders, which earned him another lick of the belt.

“O-O-Okay!” the boy cried, unsteadily reaching to the cabinet above to extract a plate. His trembling hands reached into the bag of bread, drawing out two pieces and setting them on the plate.

His stomach dropped as he realized he was missing one ingredient. “Do you want m-m-mayonnaise?”

“
Certamente
,” Enzo replied.

Grant bit his lower lip as he reluctantly turned and walked toward the refrigerator, a path that unfortunately drew him closer to the belt-wielding drunk by the stove. Enzo managed to whip the leather at least five times before Grant returned to the counter, tightly gripping the jar of mayonnaise and attempting to prevent gathering tears from sliding down his cheeks. The belt stung so badly! His father’s drunken aim was off, and Grant already felt bruises forming on his stomach and thighs from the wayward tip of the belt.

As Grant unscrewed the lid, panting with fear, Enzo un-looped the belt from around his hand. Enzo was quiet for a few moments, and Grant could hear the clank of the gleaming brass buckle against the metal oven as it hung in his father’s hand.

“I made sandwiches for my father once too,” Enzo wistfully recalled. “I was about your age then.”

Grant tried not to make a sound as he began assembling the sandwich, and he waited for the next crack of the belt. Enzo’s voice seemed different now: not as deep, less confident, and the slur all but gone.

“I brought the sandwiches down to my father,” he said. “He and his men were in the basement. But they didn’t want the sandwiches right away. They wanted me to do something else first.”

Arranging the bacon strips on the bread, Grant had trouble breathing. His father had never spoken so many words to him at once.

“There was a man down there…tied up, tied to a chair, and, uh, gagged. His eyes—brown eyes—they locked on me. His eyes were terrified, and I couldn’t look away after I set down the sandwiches. But my dad and his buddies didn’t even notice the guy as he writhed in the chair, scraping it on the basement floor.”

The belt continued to dance in Enzo’s hands, turning and twisting. The buckle clanged a couple more times.

“Then my dad told me he had a job for me. And that’s when he brought out the gun.”

Grant held his breath and disobediently halted his sandwich production, but Enzo didn’t seem to notice. His story continued to spill out of him.

“He said, ‘Time for you to become a man. Shoot him three times.’ Then he put the gun in my hands.” Enzo laughed derisively. “I was such a fucking pussy back then. I begged my dad, ‘Don’t make me do it. Please, don’t make me do it. Please, don’t make me pull the trigger.’”

Utterly horrified, Grant shook so badly he could barely tear a lettuce leaf, but thankfully he’d stopped crying.

“My dad wasn’t having any of it—there was no way he’d let me defy him in front of his friends. He started unbuckling his belt, and I knew what waited for me if I didn’t do what he said. I shouted, ‘I’ll do it! I’ll shoot him!’ The guy in the chair looked even more terrified, and he started moaning, straining against the ropes. I held that cold metal in my hand, and I cocked the trigger…”

Grant turned to face his father.

Suddenly Enzo seemed to break out of his trance, and his cold black eyes narrowed at his younger son. “Did I say you could stop?” he growled.

His eyes as round as the plate he’d retrieved from the cupboard, Grant attempted to back up but the counter held him fast. Fear choked him, and he couldn’t get out one word.

Enzo swiftly interrupted the horrible silence by lunging forward, grasping Grant’s skinny elbow and spinning him around, wielding the long belt high above his head before whipping it down with vicious lashes.

Grant screamed; he’d never felt such intense pain before. Through his terror he realized the thumping clang he heard was the wasp-like sting of the belt buckle, which was normally held in his father’s hand during thrashings but this time was free at the working end of the belt. The pain took his breath away, and Grant squeezed his eyes shut, beyond the point of begging or sobbing.

Finally Enzo stumbled out of the kitchen, following a path blurred by his own tears.

Grant stood alone in the kitchen, rooted in place, feeling warm, sticky blood flow down the inside of his trousers. This day would scar him for the rest of his life.

“Lo came to find me there in the kitchen later,” Grant said in the same robotic voice he’d used to tell the entire story, still looking down at his feet. “I hadn’t moved an inch. He kept asking me what had happened, until he saw blood on my shoe. I fought him when he tried to take my pants down, but he was stronger than me, and when he saw what my dad had done, he started crying. He never cried. I hated to hear him cry, all because of me.”

Finally daring to look up, Grant was seized by guilt when he saw tears streaming down Sophie’s face. Though his cheeks were dry, Hunter appeared equally distressed.

Clearing his throat, Hunter quietly asked, “How are you feeling, Grant?”

He gave a weary sigh. “Tired.”

Hunter gestured to Grant’s curled-up body position, his knees near his chin with his arms wrapped around his legs. “How about you put your feet on the floor?” he suggested.

Giving the psychologist a strange look, Grant complied. “Yes, sir.”

Sophie finally found her voice, which was throaty from crying.

“Is that what you’ve been having nightmares about, Grant? You wake up saying ‘Don’t make me do it.’ Is that what you’re remembering?”

He nodded.

“That was an awful story your father told you,” Hunter said. “Did he, um, did your father ever make
you
pull the trigger, Grant?”

“I don’t think so,” he immediately replied.

Sophie let out a breath.

“Still,” Hunter resumed, “that story was very instructive, wasn’t it? His threat of making you kill somebody, just like his father had done to him, was quite effective for keeping you in line. That threat…” he frowned angrily “…along with his belt. You had no choice but to obey him.”

Grant felt a warm hand on his arm, and he looked down to find Sophie’s tender hold on his elbow. He gazed into her glassy eyes, which poured their love into him.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I’d be having nightmares too if that happened to me as a child.”

Her eyes held his gaze as she slowly drifted her hand down his arm, toward the back pocket of his jeans.

His heart pounded and his breath faltered. “Don’t,” he said in a strangled cry, but she didn’t stop until her hand rested on the scar, hidden beneath his jeans. As he felt her comforting touch on his throbbing skin, he knew he was about to weep.

“Don’t,” he whimpered again, while she softly crawled into his space, snaking her arm up his back and wrapping her body around his. He couldn’t fight anymore, so he responded by clasping his arms around her, shifting his weight so she was almost in his lap.

They clung onto each other in a suffocating embrace, both sobbing quietly, until he finally relaxed into her body with a deep, shuddering release.

Hunter said nothing.

Eventually they let go of each other and shyly resumed a sitting position, with Sophie closer to Grant’s side than before. She snatched a few tissues from the box and handed him one.

“I guess we need to go,” Sophie announced after looking at her watch.

“Yes, our time is up,” Hunter said. “But I don’t like ending so abruptly. I’m concerned about you both. I’d like to schedule another session this week, to check in on how things are going after today’s intensity. Are you available tomorrow?”

“Great,” Grant replied flatly. “Two sessions in one week—aren’t we lucky?”

Hunter shared a smirk with Sophie, pleased to hear Grant denigrating therapy. He was returning to his old self.

The journey would be a long and painful one, but he could make it. Hunter hoped
both
Grant and Sophie would make it back.

“Madsen, you got that anti-corrosion spray I told you to buy?”

“Yes, sir.” Grant peeked inside his shopping bag to double-check his purchase as he adeptly crossed over the gunwale onto the deck of the ship. Since he’d come directly to work from that grueling therapy session, he was rather surprised he’d remembered to make the shopping trip at all. However, for some reason, he felt lighter and more focused than he had in years.

“And how ’bout the fuel stabilizer?” Roger added, glaring suspiciously.

“Got that too.”

Disappointed by the missed opportunity to chew out an incompetent employee, Roger grunted, “Good, then.” He could hardly describe Grant Madsen as incompetent.

They worked together seamlessly, preparing the ship for winter storage.

“It’s weird that we only have a few cruises left,” Grant mused.

“Yeah.” Roger sighed. “The end of summer always makes me kind of bummed.” He thought about the architectural bus tours that would employ him again soon. “Come every winter, I gotta start working for the man again. But in the summer,
I
get to be the man.”

Grant chuckled. “God help the poor sap who has to be your boss.”

“At least I don’t have some pussy singing job,” Roger jabbed.

Grant blushed. “Hey, I’ll be working for the man too.”

“Yeah, a
rich
man. Alex Remington’s loaded, I hear.”

“I wonder what a big spender like him was doing taking your crappy cruise?”

Roger’s eyes narrowed. “We may have only one more day, but it’s never too late to fire your ass!”

Grant nodded, suppressing a smile.

Resuming their cleaning, Grant’s tone became more serious. “I wanted to, uh, thank you, Rog. Thanks for hiring Sophie and me right out of prison. Most people wouldn’t have given us a chance.”

Roger shrugged, uncomfortable. “Well, your uncle vouched for you.” He paused. “And Joe was right—you
have
been my best employee.” Doling out such a compliment seemed to nearly kill him, and Roger was quick to recover. “Jesus, Madsen! Watch the anti-mildew stuff—you’re spilling it!”

Grant righted the bottle. “Sorry, sir.” He felt the vibration of his phone in his pocket and nervously eyed his boss. “Is it okay if I take this call?”

“Go ahead, Frank Sinatra. It’s probably your agent wanting to book you for Vegas.”

Grinning, Grant answered the phone, but his smile abruptly vanished.

“Please tell me Ben is with you!” Ashley said frantically.

“No, he’s at school.”

“No, he’s not!” she shrieked. “His school called me—he’s not there! He’s missing! How could you let this happen?”

Grant’s heart pounded as he recalled Ben’s hasty departure that morning. Why hadn’t he realized something was wrong? Grant grimaced. He’d been too wrapped up in his own problems to worry about his nephew. Some uncle he’d turned out to be.

“I’m sorry, Ashley. Don’t worry. I’ll find him. I will.”

He closed the phone with a sense of dread, knowing exactly where Ben was hiding. The one place Grant had expressly forbidden him to go. The one place Sophie had begged him not to visit. A place a man on parole was prohibited from visiting. He took a deep breath and met Roger’s worried eyes.

***

“You sure Grant’s uncle is out of town?” Angelo rasped. He certainly didn’t want Joe Madsen anywhere near the compound on this glorious day: the day his great-nephew had finally returned to him.

Ben carefully studied his great-uncle, whose pallid complexion and wheezing breaths worried him. “Pretty sure,” he responded, nervously darting his eyes around the guest bedroom—his bedroom. He hoped his great-uncle couldn’t detect that he’d been crying all morning. That would be entirely uncool.

“Okay,
ragazzo
, then I guess it’s all right if you get your stuff back.” He cocked his head toward the dresser. “It’s in the top drawer.”

Exhaling with relief, Ben crossed the room and yanked the drawer open, pushing aside rolled-up socks and lifting the false bottom of the drawer to reveal a fat bag of weed next to a stack of rolling papers.

Angelo smiled warmly at the delight on the boy’s face as he took the contraband to his bed, laying out the marijuana in front of him.

As Ben scooted onto the bed, he was suddenly torn. Part of him sought the high and part of him dreaded the low. Part of him couldn’t wait to smoke away all the painful memories of his no-good father, and part of him was seized by guilt for even being here, knowing Uncle Grant had clearly warned him not to come.
I won’t let you self-destruct like your dad. I won’t do it. I won’t…

“Tell me about my dad,” Ben implored, gazing up at his great-uncle.

Angelo frowned, suddenly feeling weak. He backed into a chair and gratefully sat, coughing a few times. “Your dad?” he wheezed, glancing at the unopened bag of marijuana. “What do you want to hear?”

“Anything—I don’t know. Something good about him?”

The tremble in the boy’s voice was unmistakable, and Angelo felt a stab of tenderness. He eyed Benjamin intently. Though Logan had been physically more imposing at this age, he and his son shared particular quirks, like a palpable intensity and their brooding furrow of the brow.

A memory instantly came to mind, and Angelo was surprised by the wave of sadness that accompanied it. “Your dad,” he said with a faint smile, “was the best prankster around.”

“He was?” Ben’s typically jaded tone was now full of wonder.

Angelo chuckled. “This one time, when he was about…hmm, how old was he? Let’s see, Carlo was eight, so Logan must have been ten—yeah, that’s right. And Grant was still small, maybe five or so. The boys were down in the basement, and me and Anna Maria were playing poker with Enzo and Karita. When Enzo got a phone call from one of our guys, I went to get a refill, and I noticed how damn quiet it was in the basement.”

He looked at Ben sternly. “You don’t have brothers, but let me tell you, when a group of boys gets together to hang out, they are
never
quiet. I knew something was up. So I snuck downstairs. I couldn’t find the boys anywhere, but then I saw them in the bathroom.” Angelo shook his head disdainfully, a hint of mirth in his gravelly voice. “Logan had wrapped Carlo’s head in a towel. It looked like a fucking turban or something, and he was dabbing some sort of lotion on Carlo’s forehead. Grant was watching them both with his mouth hung open.”

“What was my dad doing?”

Angelo chuckled. “They’d found Anna Maria’s hair removal cream, and somehow Logan had convinced Carlo to try it on his eyebrows. How he persuaded him to do that, I’ll never know. When I discovered what they were doing, I yelled at them—those idiots—sometimes eyebrows don’t grow back. I shoved Carlo’s head under the sink to rinse off that crap, but we were too late. Those damn brows were history. Carlo was bawling his head off, and when I got a good look at him, he was the freakiest thing you’ve ever seen. Without eyebrows he looked like a fucking alien.”

Angelo shook his head some more, laughing disdainfully.

“His eyebrows grew back though, right?”

“Yeah, lucky for him, the dipshit.”

“Were you mad?” Ben asked.

“Nah, I’m sure Carlo had done something to provoke Logan. Those two fought constantly, unless Enzo intervened.”

“Was Grandpa mad?”

This quickly wiped the smile off Angelo’s face.

“We didn’t tell Enzo.”

“Why not?”

Angelo sighed. He knew what his brother had done to those boys. He’d even witnessed Enzo whipping Logan once, and it was not a memory he cherished.

“He was really strict with his sons,” he said. Angelo looked zoned out, trapped in the past.

A knock on the door interrupted his memories.

“What?” he called weakly.

Tank stuck his head in the door. “Uh, boss? Taylor is here for you.”

Angelo’s eyes widened in alarm, and he quickly searched Ben’s face for any signs of recognition, but Ben simply dipped his head, now focused on rolling a joint.

“In the hallway, Tank!” Angelo roared, managing to push himself up and off the chair without the bodyguard’s offered assistance. Once Ben’s door shut securely behind them, he turned to Tank with an icy glare. “I told you not to use that name around Ben! The boy lives with Taylor’s daughter, for fuck’s sake!”

“Sorry, boss. I forgot. But your man Taylor completely freaked out when we grabbed him, and he hasn’t settled down since. He looks like he’s about to cry, the pussy. I don’t want him to rabbit on us—you gotta get down there.”

“Fuck,” Angelo muttered, walking as quickly as he could toward the stairwell.

Inside the bedroom, Ben stood with his ear flush to the door.
Sophie’s father is here? Why?

Silently Ben turned the knob and slunk down the hallway, stealthily following the sound of the men’s footfalls.

Angelo slowly entered the tension-filled study, his wizened black eyes taking in everything at once. A man with graying brown hair and a classy business suit sat slumped in the easy chair, with Mario’s controlling paw resting on his shoulder. Angelo noticed another of his men in the corner, and the thug nodded as he caught his boss’s eye. Angelo returned his attention to Taylor, whose frightened blue eyes stared back at him.

After a few painful coughs, Angelo attempted a smile. “Welcome, Mr. Taylor. I assume my men weren’t too rough bringing you in?”

Barely hearing the question over the pounding of his heart, Will tremulously asked, “Why am I here?”

Perched outside the study in the foyer, Ben cautiously leaned forward, straining to hear the conversation.

Tank guided Angelo to a chair across from their captive, and the don collapsed into it. “We have a matter to discuss,” Angelo rasped. “A while back you refused to pay your friendly neighborhood watch contribution. And now you’re overpaying. I want to know why.”

Will met his steely glare but said nothing, fully cognizant of the three burly goons surrounding him.

***

“You made it, sir.” The relief in Grant’s voice was palpable.

“You’re lucky I was able to leave the office,” Jerry Stone growled. “So, where’re we going?”

Grant pointed down the tree-lined Gold Coast street, strewn with fallen leaves. “The Barberi compound’s a couple of blocks from here.” They began walking at a brisk pace.

“You sure your nephew is in there?”

Clenching his teeth, Grant nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s where Ben went the last time he got disturbing news about his dad.”

“What happened this time?”

“He found out Logan was responsible for Sophie going to prison.”

They forged ahead, and Jerry noticed Grant wasn’t loping along with his usual cat-like grace. Instead, he seemed tense, almost ferocious.

“I don’t care how upset Ben was—I told him not to go to Angelo’s!” Grant suddenly snarled. “It’s the one place I ordered him not to go to. He’s purposely defying me.”

As Grant’s hands balled into fists, Jerry more clearly understood Dr. Hayes’ progress reports, which noted that Grant had been working on significant anger-management issues. Jerry had once seen Grant explode in anger—when Marilyn had informed him he was the prime suspect for his brother’s murder (quite an understandable reaction)—but other than that, he’d seen only a docile respectfulness from the young man. Grant’s atypical aggressiveness alerted Jerry’s instincts, and he put out an arm to stop him.

“Maybe you need to calm down before we get there,” Jerry suggested.

“We don’t have time to waste!” Grant protested.

“What are you so worried about? Your nephew has been to the Barberi compound before and come out of it okay.”

“
Okay?”
Grant fumed. “He’s becoming an addict, just like his dad! Every time Ben gets under their influence, I lose him a little more. He’s probably in there right now, lighting up a joint, just like I warned him not to do—I’m…I’m gonna kill him!”

Jerry took a step closer and grabbed Grant’s arm with a firm grip.

“You will not
touch
that boy,” he said in a low voice. “He’s a minor, and you will not lay one hand on him, got it?”

Grant’s lips parted, and he stood stock-still, suddenly aware of his own behavior as well as the officer’s implied threat—cross Jerry and suddenly he could be violating his parole. He took a deep breath and willfully unfurled his fists.

Studying him intently, Jerry added, “
If
that kid is in there, I’ll take care of it, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

Satisfied that Grant was back under control, Jerry dropped his arm and they turned the corner, immediately dwarfed by the massive homes lining the streets.

“Ben is not his father,” Jerry said. “There’s still time to save him.”

Grant’s throat tightened, and all he could manage was a nod and a soft “Yes, sir.”

***

“Please, I’ll—I’ll do whatever you want,” Will Taylor promised, warily looking back and forth from Angelo to Tank.

Out in the hallway, Ben frowned. Why was Sophie’s dad so scared?

“What I want,” Angelo slowly enunciated, “is an answer. Why are you fucking around with your payments? Do you want your business to go under?”

“No!” Will shouted before more carefully adding, “Please. I was foolish back then. I—I thought I didn’t need to pay for protection. But I learned my lesson. I paid extra as a sign of my goodwill and respect. I’ll do anything you want—just please don’t hurt Sophie any more.”

Sophie?
How was she part of this? Ben’s forehead creased.

Angelo also felt quite perplexed, but he showed nothing. After Grant had shot and killed Carlo in a north-side apartment, Angelo naturally had ordered his men to investigate. They’d discovered that the apartment was leased by Kirsten Holland, a friend of Sophie Taylor. They’d also then discovered the romantic relationship between Grant and Sophie, and they now knew the two lived together—along with Ben currently, since the teenager was dumped there by his mother. But how any of that related to Will Taylor’s protection payments was still a puzzle to Angelo.

“I assure you Carlo acted on his own that night in August,” Angelo said. “I did not order him to threaten your daughter.”