Found my weak spot.
Exploited the one thing he could to get me to agree to whatever he wanted if he left my boys alone.
"What do you want with them?" Charlie asked, tone still steel, but I heard something underneath it that I wasn't sure I had ever truly heard there, not in almost twenty years together.
"I want you to make them suffer."
My brows knitted, my head shaking. "What?"
"You love your kids. Think you are so superior to the crimes that gave you the lifestyle you enjoy so much. Figure you want good things for them. Especially those more sensitive two."
I didn't have to ask who he meant.
Eli and Hunter.
What surprised me most was that he had picked up on such things. Especially after the brutal beating he had taken at the former's hands.
He'd been watching us.
For how long, I had no idea.
But often and close.
Enough to know the personalities of our kids, what they were and were not suited for, what we as their parents wanted for them.
"And?" Charlie asked, his hand nearly crushing mine.
"And I think they need a little push into the family business."
"What?" I asked, brows drawing down. "That's their decision." One Ryan and Shane had practically made already. But the others, they had their own fates to decide.
"Not anymore. Now it's mine. And through you."
"And if we say no?" Charlie asked.
"If you say no, if one of them opts out, they all take a bullet. And you get to live to bury them into the ground."
I knew better than to ask if he was serious, if there was another option. Michael was not the sort to bend.
"And you will be employing Leon here," Michael went on, actually snapping his damn fingers, making a man walk in from the back, tall, strong in his black suit, with dead brown eyes, and an asinine goatee.
"As?" Charlie asked, voice rough. Because he knew we were fucked. Because it didn't matter how much of a reputation Charlie had built over the years, his was a small operation. From the sounds of things, Michael was amassing an army that would put our father's to shame.
We stood no chance moving against him.
We knew that.
And, worse yet, he knew that we knew that.
This was grating on Charlie.
It had to hurt his pride.
As a businessman.
As a man in general.
As a father who had no way to protect his children against this bastard.
"An enforcer, of course. To make sure everything is done to standard."
To standard.
Even I knew what that meant.
The boys would get no special treatment.
They were expected to be ruled by an iron fist.
And, worse yet, he expected Charlie to partake in the ugliest practice in the criminal underbelly.
A beat-in.
He wanted us to beat-in our own goddamn children.
What's worse... we had no choice.Charlie - 28 yearsIt shook out.
Eventually.
The guilt slipped away as the boys began to flourish, made names for themselves, eventually started using their money to invest in legitimate businesses that took up a lot of their time, the loansharking becoming only a part of their lives, not the whole thing like it had to be for me for a while at the beginning.
Leon had been a constant, annoying presence that I could never turn my back on, could never trip up in front of.
All the while, Michael just kept amassing his fortune, his army.
But he kept his distance. Just using his spy to make sure we kept up our end of the deal.
Everything was fine.
Until Hunt disappeared.
We'd been sick at first, unable to get in touch with him, not sure if we had done something that had pissed off Michael after all, that he was making good on his threats.
It wasn't until we went to his place to find his closets empty that we finally understood.
He'd had enough.
Never having been meant for the lifestyle, he was drowning, suffocating, losing himself.
And he had finally had it.
And ran off.
"Charlie..." Helen's voice called, airy and thick somehow at the same time, giving me a gut-punch.
Because we were both thinking the same thing.
If Hunt was gone, Michael would think we were fucking with the deal.
He would put a bullet in Ryan, Eli, Mark, and Shane's heads for it.
"I know, baby," I said, wrapping an arm around her, pulling her close. "We'll play this close to the vest. Have the boys try to find him. Tell Leon he's sick or out of town on a job."
"If we don't find him quickly..."
"I know," I agreed, sucking in a breath. "I think it's time to tell the boys."
"About Leon?"
"About it all. It's time they knew. It's their lives that are at stake, after all."
I knew she didn't want them to know.
It was the only thing she had truly put her foot down about in our marriage, uncompromising, unwilling to listen to opposing arguments.
She was terrified of the boys thinking differently of her. For killing her father. For framing her brother. Then for lying about it.