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“As much as I didn’t want to hurt her, I was as down with the plan as anyone else, until we were actually executing it. And for the record, taking her upstairs to screw wasn’t my idea. I was just happy to oblige when it was suggested. Furthermore, I’ll hold my hands up right now and say that I was not prepared for what a sucker punch in the gut it would be to watch her go through that. I’m big enough to admit that it hurt me to hurt her.” More than I wanted to admit, even to myself.
“I set off those sprinklers as a knee-jerk reaction, to end both our misery—hers and mine. It wasn’t some evil plan to bring Cygnus down. If you don’t respect or trust me enough to know that’s not how I roll with my friends, and brothers, I would have hoped that you’d at least have credited me with more brains than that. If one goes down, we all go down. I know that as well as anyone. Why would I do that to myself?”
“I have no fucking idea why people do half the shit they do, so you’re asking the wrong person. I mean, you don’t strike me as the stupidly self-destructive type, but then some of those dudes who’ve carried out mass shootings didn’t seem like that kind to friends and family, either, until they’d gone and done it.”
What the fuck? “Did you just compare me to the sick psychos who open fire on innocent people?”
“I guess I did. Sorry. I can see how that’s not exactly a fair parallel to draw.” He had the decency to at least look and sound sorry. Had Xavier done the same thing, there was no way he’d have apologized for it, even if he knew he was grossly in the wrong. It just wasn’t his MO.
“Damned straight it’s not fair, and it’s definitely not accurate. Not even close, in fact.”
“You’re quiet Kane, what’s your take on all this?” Drew shot him a curious glance as he spoke.
Kane said nothing for the longest time, looking first at his hands, then at the ceiling as though the answer to the question lay somewhere between the two.
“I think he did the right thing.”
What? He had the attention of everyone in the room.
“What the fuck?” Drew was getting angrier by the minute. Though they were vastly different in many ways, sometimes he and Xavier were more alike than either of them would care to admit.
“I was trying to stay out of it, because I knew my opinion would be unpopular, but the fact is, although what he did has shat on us all from a great height, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the exact same thing in his position if it was someone I had feelings for.”
“Are you for fucking real, right now? If we make it out of all this without going to jail, we might need to seriously rethink the structure of this organization, especially the Northern Star. This is fucked. You’re a bunch of poison vipers.”
Kane raised his hands in surrender. “Wait a minute, just hear me out. All I’m saying is that, like he said, this wasn’t just some random act of sabotage. He did what he did for a reason. At the end of the day, you two have your girls, but you can’t look me in the eye and tell me that you wouldn’t have done what he did—either before you got it together, or now. Both of you would set the world alight in an instant, and not look back, if it was to protect the women you love. He was just doing the same. If I ever get to that stage in my life, you’d better know now, I would too.”
“Thanks man, I appreciate the support. And they’re all great points, except I didn’t say I love her.”
“Come on, man, wake up and smell the double-shot caramel mocha latte. You didn’t need to say the words.”
Xavier had been uncharacteristically quiet for a while, which was always a worry. He’d started off the conversation, but was now hanging back, letting the others have their say, which was totally unlike him. I shot a furtive glance his way, only to find him glaring right back at me. Had he been watching me that whole time? That was fucking weird.
“Okay, so even if I concede that he had his reasons, and that there was some validity to those motivations, that still leaves us with the problem that we’ve been working hard to solve, that he made much worse. Now, not only is ‘Lois’ still very much in the picture, but she also still has a whole lot of intel on us—files, photos, all that shit. Even worse, if she chooses to go to the police at any point, she can add attempted kidnapping and extortion to the list of charges against us. Put that together with what she thinks she saw that night, and the only way any of us will make it out of jail will be in our government-issue coffin.” That was a nice image to ponder.
“Not only that, but now she knows she’s dealing with a bunch of wannabe gangsta pussies who are too chicken shit to deliver on their empty threats. So even in the unlikely event that we could have come up with another idea as strong and effective as this one—which I highly doubt—she would have every right to laugh in our faces when we tried to execute it.” He had a point.
“I know I fucking would if someone pulled that lame-ass shit on me. As far as she’s concerned, we’re just a bunch of sad little boys playing dress up, and pretending to be tough, using a bunch of glee club props.”
“Even with today’s fiasco, there’s no way she thinks that of us. After what she saw that night, she knows we’re the real deal, that has to be why she peed herself. She knows what we’re capable of, and was terrified she was about to be our next victim.”
“Well, then we pussied out, and now she has to have worked out that the collar was fake, so you do the math. It was fucking Amateur Hour out there. It’s an embarrassment. If word gets out, we’ll be laughing stocks.” A little egg on our faces was the absolute least of my worries, but I kept that sparkling gem to myself.
“Not only that, but we’ve shown our hand, so from a negotiating perspective, we have nowhere to go. She’ll ignore whatever we come to her with now, and I won’t blame her. I’d do the same thing if confronted by the bunch of jokers she now thinks we are.” I really thought he was exaggerating the issue, but wasn’t stupid enough to express that viewpoint aloud, either.
“Listen. We all know that there are three versions of every story—version A, version B, and the truth. Or in this case, our version, her version, and the law’s version. Our version is that we knew that the collar was fake, and we were using it as a way to manipulate her into doing what we wanted. Her truth is that we were all set to make her do what we wanted, or blow her head off, and the only reason we didn’t was because we were interrupted by the fire alarm.”
“For all she knows, we took the collar off because having been interrupted by the sprinkler, we didn’t want to leave any evidence behind, once the building was swarming with people. She may not have assumed it was fake as fuck. She might even think that we’re planning on coming for her again to finish the job. She’s probably more terrified now with the specter of this hanging over her head than she had been when it was all going down.” I sincerely hoped not.
The thought made me feel sick. I couldn’t understand why the other guys didn’t see the situation the same way. I looked at each of them, trying to get a read on what they were thinking or feeling. There was a mixed bag of emotions in the room, for sure.
Chapter 31
Bear
“The legal side of the story is that perception is reality. Just like how when someone holds up a bank or a convenience store with a cucumber or chair-leg stuffed in their hoody, legally, it counts as armed robbery because the person being held up believes it to be a sawn-off shotgun, and acts accordingly.
“By the same logic, from a legal perspective we attempted coercion because although we knew it was all fake, thanks to the skills of our resident electronics and engineering expert.” I nodded to Fox. “She clearly had no idea, and as a result, would have behaved as though her life was in danger, because she truly believed it was. She peed her fucking pants for god’s sakes.”
