Hmm.
Stealing cash, even from a piece of shit like her uncle, doesn’t sound like the good girl Layla is, but it does sound like something Zoey would do.
“Because of them, I’m in deep with Big Tony since half of that money was his. I should have called the cops on them,” the stupid shit for brains adds.
I’m two seconds away from kicking some sense into him and making it clear that in no way, shape, or form will he call the cops on my girls when I take a step back to get my bearings.
I still need to get some information out of this human excrement on how I can track the girls down, and I can’t get that if he’s all banged up.
“What’s the name of their social worker?”
“What?” he blurts, wiping his tears away.
I slap him across the face, my knuckles doing a fine job of splitting his lip.
“I said, you worthless piece of shit, what is the name of their social worker? Are you deaf as well as stupid?”
“I . . . Uh . . . I . . .”
“Talk, motherfucker!”
“It’s Berry. Viola Berry!” he spits out in a panic.
“Now, was that so hard?” I snarl, storing the name away for later as I lean down to his level. “This is how this shit is going to go. You’re going to forget the girls ever existed. I don’t want you or anyone in your family to make any contact with them, and if I hear that you called the cops or tried to reach out to them in any way, then you’ll get a visit from me, and it won’t go as nicely as this one did. Believe me, you don’t want to make me mad.”
He nods pathetically, snot, blood, and tears now covering his beet-red face.
Not wanting to spend a second longer with this filth, I turn my back on the asshole and walk to my car. Good thing, too, since I have half a mind to end the fucker and wipe him off the face of the earth. I barely spent more than ten minutes with him, and I already know that living with that piece of trash must have been hell for my girls, especially my Layla. A guy like that probably looked at my girl and got a hard-on just watching her walk through his house.
I white knuckle my steering wheel, imagining all the ways he might have made my girl’s life miserable.
I should have killed the fucker.
I would have, too, if I wasn’t so desperate to find out where my girls are right now.
I turn on my car and speed dial the one man I know who can get me what I want and shed some light on where the girls could be at this precise second.
“Hale!” I shout the minute I hear him answer the phone.
“Alaric?” he retorts, his deep, rough voice indicating he’s just woken up. “What time is it?”
Fuck my life.
It’s way past three, and this fucker is still asleep.
Not surprising, since he likes to do most of his work at night, but I need him fucking alert.
Stat.
“It’s time for you to wake the fuck up and get to work.”
“You always did have the worst bedside manner. What do you want?” He yawns, making me crack my neck from side to side with his nonchalance.
“I need you to hack into child services and find out whatever you can about Viola Berry’s case load. I need an address or contact about one of her files. Layla and Zoey Johnson. You got that?” I bark out, speeding back into the city.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. When do you need it by?”
“Yesterday.”