Page 78 of Perfect Sin
My fists clench. He’s not exactly wrong about what someone like Gerrick might think when they see the unique beauty my wife embodies, but he’s messed in the head if he thinks for a second I would ever let him get his hands on her. There’s no limit to the carnage I will rain down on anyone who tries to hurt her.
We sit in angry silence waiting for Gerrick to arrive. I’m surprised when he shows up alone. He’s different than the two times we met with him at his club. There he was Martin Gerrick, mythical crime lord, but in front of us stands a man who’s tired from the evil he’s seen and participated in. Whoever we are seeing now is the man behind the myth.
“You must be the FBI agent,” he greets Holbrook, surprising him by extending his hand.
“You must be the crime lord,” Holbrook says, accepting the handshake.
Gerrick drops down into an empty chair. “I must be,” he sighs. “For now at least.”
“We’re going to get real here, so let me start by introducing myself. My real name is David Neville. Not a very awe-inducing moniker, I know. I was a stupid kid, and an even dumber young adult. I moved up through the ranks of the Chicago mob.”
Ted leans forward, his eyes narrowing. “I’ve never heard of you.”
“You wouldn’t have,” Gerrick, or I guess Neville, confirms. “I was low-level, working under some guys who were working for your dad before he was the head of the family. We were small time back then, running guns, drugs, and laundering money for the bigger operations of the organization. I was sent west years before Ted Sr. met your mom. I didn’t ask questions then, honestly I’d considered myself pretty morally ambivalent. It turned out I did have a limit.”
Lucien crosses his arms over his chest. “Yeah? Selling guns to murderers and drugs to kids wasn’t it?”
Neville shrugs. “Someone was going to do it, and it brought a lot of money to the organization. I never thought about the right or wrong of it. Until I showed up here in California and walked into a warehouse full of frightened women, shackled, dirty, and starving. That’s the moment I found my soul.”
“I can tell. You became the largest human trafficker in the U.S.,” Ted scoffs.
“Did I?” Neville asks, smirking at us.
“What are you trying to say,” Holbrook cuts through the bullshit.
“I knew this had to end. I wasn’t in a position to save those women then, so I started paying attention like I never had before. I played the game, made myself indispensable, and when the moment arose, I made sure the boss had an accident, removing him from the equation. Then,” he points at Ted, “you took out the boss, breaking up the entire organization in one night. I made my move and took over the trafficking operation.”
“You aren’t helping yourself here,” Holbrook states flatly.
“I’m getting there,” Neville says. “I took over and quietly halted the flesh trade. I’m not a saint, and I won’t pretend to be. I’m going to be honest with you, even though there’s a Fed listening, my business isn’t totally on the up and up. I skirt the law when I need to. Now it’s more operating businesses without all the proper permits and fudging the books as I fold more and more of my portfolio on the right side of the law. I got out of running guns and drugs a long time ago.”
“I’m not hearing anything that would motivate me to fight for a deal for you,” Holbrook interrupts.
“If that’s how you feel when I’m done telling you everything, I’ll accept that. Lord knows I deserve whatever consequences come my way.”
Holbrook nods. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“At first the only thing I did was stop selling women myself. I didn’t have people doing it for me either. What was left of O’Brian’s organization was out of the trafficking business. Then, about ten years ago I met a woman. She was hidden away, to be used when her captor felt inclined to visit her. She’s beautiful, and still has so much capacity to love despite the horrors she’s endured. That was the moment I knew that it wasn’t enough to just leave the racket. I had to bring it down.”
He looks at Raven, and a rock falls to my stomach. He’s assessing her, and Holbrook’s warning blares in my head.
Neville notices my reaction. “It isn’t what you think. I think you’ll understand better if you just meet her.”
“She’s here?” Holbrook asks. He sits ramrod straight, and his nostrils flare as if he’s expecting something ground shaking to occur.
Neville nods. “She’s in the car. I wanted to feel you all out before I introduced you. She’s delicate. She hasn’t been around a lot of people. She’s got a lot of social anxiety caused by the years she was abused.”
“Bring her in,” I say. My voice sounds flat even to my own ears. It’s always hard for me to meet other people who’ve experienced the same things I have. I see victims when I meet them, but it’s hard to put myself in the same category.
Without discussing it further, he gets up and heads out the door. We all sit in quiet contemplation, working through the story he’s unfolded for us. It isn’t long before he returns. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a carbon copy of Lucien and Raven walking through the front door.
“What is happening?” Lucien demands.
She takes a tentative step towards us, and Raven grabs hold of my arm. Her voice is quiet when she speaks, but it holds the same raspy quality as Raven’s. “Hi, my name is Natalie.”
Lucien sucks in a breath. We never told Raven about the birth certificate we found on our last trip Damien sent us on. At the time the existence of a birth mother they’d never been told about was a theory. There was no way to verify if the document we found was real or a ploy the fat bastard cooked up to fuck with Damien.
Until now, that is. It seems all the proof we need is standing right in front of us. Of course, a paternity test would give definitive answers, but seeing her in person, it’s hard to imagine she’s not their real mother.