“Yes.”
“How?”
My uncle sighed as he looked back down at the file. His muscles tensed, his eyes staring at something in particular, or maybe it was nothing at all. I couldn’t tell. When he opened his mouth again, his tone wasn’t as cold as before. It was on the brink of devastation, if I had to guess. “Judge Stallard’s mother, Anne, used to run a group home for girls.”
Silence stretched around us, and my patience began to run thin as he continued staring down at the file that was half closed. But then he began again. His gaze found mine, and his jaw was set like a thick line of steel. “You know how your father donates and makes his charitable dues as a front for what he truly does? How he sways people and misleads them into thinking he’s a charitable man with a good heart?”
I scoffed before nodding.
“Well, your grandfather did the same. You know this, I’m sure.” I said nothing, and he continued after leaning back in the chair that creaked against his weight. “One of the places he donated to was Anne’s group home. They’d take in juveniles who were to serve time in a detention center for a crime they’d committed, but instead of going to prison, they’d go to the group home as a type of punishment. They’d work for free and ride out their sentences that way. Like therapy for young women going down the wrong path. The court would decide if it was the right place for these girls, or sometimes they’d just end up sending them to prison or jail if their age allowed.”
“Okay…” I thought for a moment. “And this has to do with Gemma’s uncle, how? How are you connected?”
He swallowed so roughly it sounded like the pencils that sat at the end of his desk were being forced down his throat. “I had a friend, a good friend. A young woman. We were your age at the time.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “A friend?”
He ignored me. “She got into some trouble. Judge Stallard was the judge on her case.” He thought for a moment. “It was one of his first cases. He was a young judge. I remember that much. He’d been given the job after his father had passed from a heart attack.”
Now we were getting somewhere.
“Long story short, Judge Stallard sent my friend to his mother’s group home as a favor to our family. With the ties your grandfather had with them, it wasn’t hard to sway his decision. It was a well-known group home until recently, actually. Judge Stallard’s mother, Anne, had a stroke, and the group home was shut down.”
It didn’t take long for things to click in my fucked-up brain. “So that’s why he said you owed him. Because they took in your…friend? Saved her from what? A few months in jail?”
He grunted. “Try a few years in prison.”
Okay, moving on. “So that’s how you and Gemma?
??s uncle are connected. What doesn’t make sense to me is why he was at the Covens and why Gemma seemed to know what it was—or at least recognized it.”
He licked his lips. “From what I’ve learned as of late, Judge Stallard is not a good man. He’s hiding things about Gemma, has ties with the police force in the city, and there have been many rumors floating around about the group home that I’m pretty sure Gemma came from.” He paused, opening the file again. “My theory is that Judge Stallard runs the Covens. He is definitely affiliated in one way or another.” He looked up at me. “I’m thinking he sends criminals there instead of jail. He deems them insane during the trial, sends them to the psychiatric unit, and from there...”
“From there what? He’s there making these criminals even more unworthy of living? Molding them into men like the ones my father has working underneath him? Filling the world with more murderers? What?”
“Yes, Isaiah. That’s exactly what I think.” His voice was too calm for my liking. “People like your father pay good money for the men created in that sinful place. If Judge Stallard is the one sending men there, he’s likely to be a multimillionaire.”
My anger was back, and my heart was slamming against my chest. I knew what went on underneath the floors of that psychiatric hospital. I knew the horrors and spine-stiffening pain that could be inflicted within those dark rooms. I knew how they took men and broke their spirit just enough to brainwash them into thinking they were part of a brotherhood. A family of sorts.
A family of sick murderers and women beaters.
They were weak men.
Each and every last one of them hanging on the promises of strength, power, and wealth.
All by the hands of men like my father and Bain’s. Judge Stallard, too.
“And Gemma?” I finally asked as I undug my nails from the leather seat.
“Now that is a mystery I have yet to unfold. But if she’s been living with a man like Judge Stallard for most of her life…” He flipped a page forward and scanned something. “At least from a young age, given what I can find... But if she’s been living with a man capable of sending people to the Covens, I can’t even imagine the things she has seen or heard.” He shut the file. “I think she may have been born there.”
My brows were crowded. “Where? The Covens?”
“There or maybe at the group home. I suspect that a girl at the group home got pregnant, or was pregnant, and Anne took care of the baby.” He raised a brow. “Well…babies, in this case.”
“What?” I asked hesitantly.
“Oh, yes. She didn’t tell you? Gemma has a twin brother.”