Page 90 of The Sweetheart
“This is where you live?” Kai asked incredulously as they pulled up to a luxury high-rise in Yorkville.
Katie unbuckled her seatbelt and poked her head between Myles and Kai in the front seat. “For now. Daddy said he wants to move out of the city when I’m finished with my master’s next year. Text me later, okay?”
“For sure.” Kai nodded, and she kissed him on the cheek before turning to do the same to Myles and scooting out of the backseat. They waited until the doorman let her inside before pulling away.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going now?”
Myles cracked a grin. “You’ll know soon enough.”
Twenty minutes later, they fell onto a route that Kai had taken great pains to avoid. The closer, they got the faster his heart raced.
“What are we doing here?” Kai’s voice was hoarse when they pulled onto a street Kai hadn’t stepped foot on in eight years.
Myles pulled to a stop further up the street, but from where they were, they had a very clear view of his grandmother’s oldhouse. So many terrible emotions bubbled to the surface: grief, sorrow… fear.
Why would Nolan have him come here and not be with him? Why didn’t he know how hard this would be?
“Hey,” Myles said softly, turning towards him. “Don’t freak out. You don’t have to go in there. Nolan just wanted you to see what happens next.”
“What?” Kai choked out.
“Justice,” Myles said with malevolent satisfaction.
Kai’s head swivelled forward, looking around, anxiously waiting for something to happen.
“Nolan reached out to Noah around the time that you left. Remember him from the gala?” Kai nodded, swallowing the questions that crowded onto his tongue.
“Noah works for a private investigator that we sometimes use for… different things. Nolan wanted to know everything about your uncle and the lawyer, Barney Allston, just to stack the deck in our favour.”
As Myles spoke, Noah and a man that Kai didn’t recognize approached the front door of the house, Noah holding a manila envelope. The other man was taller than Noah, almost twice as broad across his muscled shoulders, dressed in black trousers and a button-down shirt. He had a distinct not-to-be-fucked-with aura about him that Kai could see even from where they sat.
“That’s Drew Stanton. He’s taking what happened to you very personally.” Myles chuckled.
“Why? I don’t even know him.”
“He has several nieces and nephews, and he takes his role as their uncle extremely seriously. As far as he’s concerned, what happened to you is one of the worst kinds of betrayals. Nolan had to make it clear that he wasn’t allowed to use excessive force. Unfortunately.”
Kai’s nails bit into his palms as his uncle opened the front door. His hair had greyed quite a bit and he’d definitely gained some weight, but he was so familiar to Kai that he was immediately thrown back to the last time he’d seen him, just like that, on his grandmother’s front porch. The memory played alongside the present as he watched the three men chat briefly. A cold sweat broke out across his skin, making him shiver despite the heat outside.
He hated this. He felt sick just seeing the man. Anger and grief warred inside him as every terrible thing that had ever happened to him did battle with the life that should have been his. Every time he’d been treated cruelly, had his belongings thrown out as garbage, been robbed and beaten and touched against his will, because his body had so often been the only commodity he had. Every time he’d been scorned, told to move along, had coffee and food thrown at him. All of that had happened because of that man.
He couldn’t hear what was being said from where they sat, but Kai saw his uncle’s momentary alarm before he got angry. He tried to slam the door, but Noah put a hand to stop it from closing. Whatever was said next made his uncle step back from the door, letting it swing freely so that the two men could enter.
They’d been silent while they watched the exchange, but as soon as the door closed, behind them Myles resumed his story.
“Anyway, we ended up getting a lot more than we expected. It turns out that they were friends in high school and eventually went to college together. When your grandmother needed a lawyer for her will, he got the referral.”
Myles reclined his seat, propping one arm behind his head, but looking over his sunglasses at Kai. “Barney, by the way, is also a piece of shit and an absolute coward. As soon as he was confronted with what we had on him, he folded like wet tissue. Gave up your grandmother’s will and spilled so much shit onyour uncle that if the cops get him, he’ll be spending his twilight years in a jail cell.”
“I don’t understand,” Kai said, bewildered even as his brain latched on to the part where they had the will. Shouldn’t that have been it? He felt like this story was taking a winding road and he really just needed Myles to get to the point. Myles was staring out the windshield towards his grandmother’s house again. “I thought we just needed the will.”
“That’s true. Landon was willing to take the matter to court and was confident that we would be successful, but that takes time. Nolan wasn’t willing to give your uncle any more of that. He decided on a more nuclear option.”
“This is the nuclear option?”
“It turns out that stealing from you was just one thing in a long list of terrible shit your uncle has done. Do you know where your uncle works?”
“Yeah, some old age home. I don’t know where.”
