Forget Me Not

Chapter 4

CHAPTER

FOUR

ARIS

“Aris! We have to get to the gym. Now!” Dad bellows as he pokes his head into my doorway, snapping his fingers at me. “Don’t be a slowpoke, Berlynn’s in trouble.”

“Trouble?” I ask, yanking my keys out of my drawer and shoving them in my pocket as I rush toward the door. “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”

“The kind that has Marcus McKinnys stamp all over it,” he hisses through a clamped jaw. “The kind that’s fixing to get ugly.”

Holding out my arm, I stop him in his tracks and twist around on my feet and sprint back into my office where I grab the file folder where I’ve been stuffing my research on Marcus and quickly make my way back over to him. “Insurance,” I tell Dad as we pick up the pace and head out of the building that houses our firm.

“You mean blackmail,” Dad teases.

“I would never,” I state, clutching my chest in mock aghast.

“You would. But nevertheless, we have to do this the legal way,” Dad berates, looking at me out of his peripheral.

“There’s always loopholes and ways to skirt around the law, Dad. You know it as well as I do,” I scold, returning his narrow eyed scorn.

Once we’re buckled into my matte, black and chrome BMW X5, I back out of my spot like a NASCAR driver leaving the pit. Blackjack, my reliable Beemer, has a lot of power underneath her hood and she’s never done me wrong when I’ve needed her most—like now. As we glide in and out of traffic, Dad grabs the file folder and begins examining the contents inside. He whistles a few times and shakes his head. “Looks like my old partner is up to no good… again.”

“That’s the intel Garrick has been gathering for me on the sly,” I confess. “I’ve been paying him out of pocket and not using company funds. He’s been working on it between cases. And I’m fucking glad that I had the forethought to have him followed during his nightly excursions.”

“I’ve always told you to follow your intuitions. And I’ve never been more grateful for you doing so,” Dad says, slapping the folder shut. “I always knew Marcus was slime. But he’s fantastic in a courtroom so I let a lot of his get rich quick schemes go. Nowadays, I’m wishing I’d been paying better attention to his extra-curricular activities.”

Thinking back on the various conversations Dad and I have had throughout the years, I can recall many times he told me to follow my gut, that it’d never steer me wrong, and he was right, it hasn’t. He and I have had several knock down drag out fights, mainly over my future, but now that I’ve matured, I know that he’s always had my best interest at heart. He knew, don’t ask me how, that this path would be rewarding for me.

Clearing my throat, I voice the thoughts that have been ruminating through my brain out loud. “I'm not sure if I've ever told you how grateful I am for you pushing me. I always thought you were trying to control me, but now, I see that you somehow knew this was what I needed to do in life. That it would somehow free me from the chains that have always tried to hold me back. I guess that old saying is true, father knows best.”

Dad chuckles before saying, “You always loved to be artistic, no matter what the canvas was you were drawing, but math… not so much, and you’d have thrown a fit and quit the first time a measurement didn’t line up or someone questioned the integrity of your work.”

I laugh along with him because nothing else he could say would be closer to the truth. Math and I, we have a love-hate relationship. I love to hate it and it loves to torment me. Out of the four of us growing up, Berkley is the only one who could make an equation his bitch.

Nine times out of ten, he either helped me with my homework, or gave up and did it for me so I’d pass. Luckily for us, our teachers were drawn in by our magnetism and didn’t want to upset our parents due to the funding they gave the school that helped keep them afloat, so we always passed, regardless of how poorly our test scores actually were.

I have the basic concepts down.

Addition.

Subtraction.

Division.

Multiplication.

I excelled in all of those skills. However, the very second you add in some letters and equations, all bets are off. And don’t even get me started on the bullshit of when a train pulls in at a station at X time and takes off at C time, what time did the passengers disembark—that got my papers shredded by the amount of times I used my eraser so I could start over from scratch. It was all useless information that clogged my brain and made my eyes cross. I think it’s unsolvable and a way for schools to make their students pay for tutoring sessions… to my chagrin, my parents spent an abhorrent amount of their fortune trying to get me to understand that derisory bullshit, which never happened. To this day, it’s a trigger for me and I end up having a bonfire that contains any sort of mathematical paragraph needing to be solved.

Once we park in the elite gym’s lot, we quickly jump out and charge toward the building. With no desk clerk in sight, we use the electronic combination provided to us as silent partners and enter. Dad leads me up a set of stairs where we walk into a fanfare of yelling. All of it coming from Marcus McKinny who’s trying to get a reaction out of his daughter who’s standing as still as a statue, staring at the poster hung up on the wall.

Dad takes up his lawyer pose, hands laced together in front of him with his feet shoulder length apart. Me being me, quickly strides into the room, standing beside Berlynn as if no time has passed, and stand shoulder to shoulder with her. She startles at my close proximity, and when she sees who is directly beside her, her eyes widen and my name becomes a whisper on her lips. “Aris? What are you doing here?”

“Dad and I were called in to take out the trash,” I answer, not hiding my disdain for the asshole by being quiet when I say it. “Literally.”

“Oh,” she says in an astounded tone. “Okay then.”

“What’s he threatening you with, Berlynn?”

“You name it, if it’s important to me, he’s threatening it,” she professes, a soured look plastered on her face.

“Berkley?” I take a guess.

“Always,” she conveys. “Somehow, it hasn’t crossed his mind that he disowned us and I have legal guardianship, granted to me by a judge, over my brother as well as his medical care. Mr. McKinny has come to the conclusion that I don’t have the time nor the finances to see that he’s properly taken care of.”

I snort in response and say, “That’s a load of horse shit. And the timing is convenient for him that suddenly he wants to take responsibility for his son.”

“That it is,” she agrees. “Our inheritance is due to be released in a few weeks.”

“I know,” I murmur, conscious of the date of their birth as well, if not better, as I know mine and Addison’s. “We won’t let him get away with this. We’ve been fortunate to have stopped his previous attempts at gaining access to y’all’s inheritance, but somehow, this didn’t catch our inside guy’s attention. Something I’ll be checking up on once I make it back to the office.”

“Marcus!” My dad snaps, losing his usually well-maintained temper. If my dad’s mad, you don’t always know it because he’s typically as cool as a cucumber but Marcus has a way of getting under his skin. “Enough. There’s an entire staff at the hospital that heard your tirade loud and clear when you disowned your children. You did so legally too if memory serves considering I was made their proxy by the courts.”

“Mind your own business, Ross!” Marcus yells, pointing his finger at my dad who simply smiles back at him. “This is my family, not yours.”

Dad, not one to be deterred when he’s on a roll, picks up as if he’d never been interrupted in the first place. “You don’t have a leg to stand on and you know it so you’re here using your brawn to gain access to their impending inheritance. It’s not going to happen seeing as I’m their conservator until they’re thirty. You are aware that there’s a clause in the decree stating that you and Lucinda are never to touch a cent of their money, right? So no matter how much muscle you bring with you, you’ll never receive a dime from them. You’re broke, you’ve lost everything, so now you’re going to try and steal from your children, right? Guess what, it isn’t happening. If anything befalls me before they reach their thirtieth birthday, I have an entire line of lawyers who’ve willingly tossed their names into the pot to make sure you never touch a penny of what is rightfully theirs. Didn’t know that, did you? No judge in this jurisdiction will even look at a case you bring before them. You’ve ruined your reputation and nobody is willing to step up and put their names on the dockets for you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ross. I have allies willing to help me. Help my children.” Dad chuckles at Marcus’s misconceptions, waving his hand through the air as if he’s found the statement hilarious.

“Allies, Marcus?” Dad asks, tsking. “No. What you have are loan sharks on your ass who know that you don’t have a dollar to your name, but your kids will shortly. You need to be a man, stand on your own two feet and not live off Berkley and Berlynn’s future. Move on, preferably to another country, and start over. I’ll even give you the plane tickets as a gift if it’ll get you out of my town. Maybe you’ll be able to put a roof over your wife’s head in a foreign country if nobody knows who you are and what maliciousness you’re capable of.”

A proud yet venomous grin crosses my face when my dad all but lays out his pathetic life and how low Marcus has fallen. Marcus’s face turns crimson, you can metaphorically see the steam billowing from his ears. He’s been called out for the scum he is and he doesn’t have any way of arguing against it because he’s not going to win. Over fifty people will have to be laid six feet under before he can worm his way into Berkley and Berlynn’s accounts.

“If Dad hasn’t inspired you to flee, maybe this will,” I say as I step forward and toss the heavy folder onto the table where it lands with a thump. “You can keep that, it’s my backup copy. I have several in different locations and with different firms for insurance purposes. If you keep this up, I’ll drop it off at the district attorney’s office and let them prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”

Marcus thumbs through it, his body stiffening more with each page turned. “You’ve been holding onto this for a while now, haven’t you? Waiting for the right opportunity to try and belittle me. Each one of these instances can be explained, so why are you showing your hand?”

“They can be explained?” I ask, tilting my head to the side. “Marcus, you’re part of the drug trade now, that can’t be excused. You also were seen with Tamara Whitehorn who disappeared from Vegas after she was spotted with you and Lucinda in a casino. Where did she go? Where is she Marcus?”

He opens and shuts his mouth numerous times, moving his eyes to where he’s not looking at me because if he answers, he’ll implicate himself and his wife. Getting more pissed with each second he’s silent, I continue showing my hand by saying, “Only, Tamara, she’s not the only one missing after being seen in your company, is she? That’s only the icing on the cake in your hands, Marcus. I have much more that will be sent to the FBI if you don’t get your shit and get the fuck out of here. And when I say out of here, I mean if I ever see your face again, I will make sure you’re sentenced to do the remainder of your life behind bars.”

“This isn’t over,” Marcus spews, pointing an accusatory finger between Dad and me.

“It’s over,” I rebut.

“Let me know if you want to take me up on my offer. It may save your life if they can’t find you,” Dad states, crossing his arms across his chest as his once upon a time friend, shoulder checks him as he stomps out of the conference room, his detail on his heels. Neither of them look happy at what they've learned today. But as I said, this is only a small amount of ammunition I have on him.

“That was too easy. He left without much of an argument. It makes me uneasy. This may have been a test to find out what we know about him,” Dad says, sighing.

“That’s okay, Dad, because what I showed him is only a small pebble in the pond. If I were to release everything I have, it’d cause a ripple effect that I’d prefer not come about.” And that’s the God’s honest truth.

“Tell me more about these missing people my parents were last seen with,” Berlynn interrupts, tears in her eyes as she chews on her bottom lip.

“Shit,” I whisper as I watch those tears break free and fall down her cheeks. “We’re looking for them, Berlynn. I promise you. For now, he’s gotten away with it, but once we locate them, he’s going down.”

“That’s good to hear, but I want to know more, Aris,” she argues.

Fuck my life. I do not want her involved in this. Even the men I’ve hired are wary about the outcome and know that they’ll have a life or death fight on their hands once they’ve infiltrated the conglomerate.

“Absolutely not,” I hiss, shaking my head.

“Don’t hiss at me, Aris. You’re not a rattlesnake. Tell me.” She stubbornly stomps her foot and I know that I’ll never know a moment of peace until I give her some sort of bread crumb.

“Dammit, Berlynn!” I thunder. “This isn’t something you can get involved with. It’s dangerous and if something happens to you, who takes care of Berkley?”

“Like you, I have a long list of people willing to watch over him if something were to happen to me. Now, stop stalling and tell me!”