Covet - Eve Vaughn Page 0,58

of you. And I promise I’ll be here every step of the way.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and had lunch in the cafeteria. I was exhausted by the time I made it home, but it was a good kind of tired.

I didn’t have to go into work until later tomorrow afternoon, so I spent the rest of the day cleaning my apartment. At night when I settled down with in front of the television with dinner in hand, I flipped through the channels stopping on a cable news network when I recognized someone on the screen. A doctor was being led out of his private practice in handcuffs by police. Doctor arrested in the biggest prescription drug scandal in recent medical history.

It was Kenny’s former doctor.

Chapter Eighteen

Nick

“I’m in trouble.”

I’d been expecting this since I’d learned the news. As soon as I’d learned the connection between some random doctor and my brother, I’d felt a sinking feeling deep in my gut. For the past two months, every free moment I had, I scoured the internet for information on Dr. Gregory Laski. At first it had just been another news story that I didn’t pay much attention to, but once the national networks picked it up, it spread like wildfire making the story difficult for me to ignore.

I then realized the name sounded familiar, especially since it was local. I couldn’t pinpoint where I’d heard this name before or why it nagged me so much. It came to me suddenly. I had been in the meeting with a few clients, and I randomly shouted “Kenny.” They stared at me as if I had two heads, so I quickly steered the meeting back on track. The doctor’s connection to my brother, however, remained in the back of my head, so much so that I’d gone straight to my mother’ house after work.

I was almost certain that man had been Kenny’s doctor since he was a child, and my mother swore by him. She always said that she never trusted anyone as much as she trusted Dr. Laski because he was the only one who knew how to treat Kenny properly. According to the news, the man basically ran a drug mill for addicts and anyone who needed anything prescribed to them without a proper examination. Apparently, he wrote hundreds of prescriptions a day. What I couldn’t understand was why my mother would take Kenny to someone like him.

I didn’t bother knocking when I arrived at my mother’s house. Instead, I used the key I had to get in just in case an emergency came up. I couldn’t think of anything more important than this at the moment.

When I walked in, the place looked like as if it had been ransacked. There were knick knacks and decorations all over the floor. Paintings had been pulled off the wall off. It seemed as if a pack of wild animals had come through.

But the most surprising sight was my mother sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of wine. It clearly wasn’t her first of either, judging from the empty carton at her feet and the bottle at her feet. Her hair was unkempt and was a disorganized nest around her head. Her face was barren of makeup, and she appeared several years older than she actually was. To top it off, she wore a stained track suit. In all my years, I’d never seen her in a state like this. Hell, I didn’t even know she smoked.

Even as I stood there and stared, she didn’t acknowledge my presence. “Mom!”

She didn’t even flinch. Instead, she took a long drag of her cigarette and kept her gaze focused straight ahead.

I started picking up the debris laying around her feet and discarded it in the trash before returning to her side. “Mom.” I plucked the cigarette out of her hand and flicked it into the plate on the table she was apparently using as a makeshift ashtray.

“What’s the matter?”

She didn’t answer right away, and I didn’t think she would, but then she broke into tears. “You blame me for this, don’t you? You think this is all my fault, and I’m going to lose you too. I won’t have anyone.”

My instinct was to take her into my arms and offer her comfort, but I wanted answers. I patted her on the back and waited silently for her to calm down.

However, the longer it went on, her hysteria increased. Her sobs became