Dirty Playboy - Alex Wolf Page 0,92

Career criminal, con man, but worse than that, abusive, manipulative, used his son, Dominic, for some shady purposes from a very young age. Groomed him to follow in his family footsteps. Dominic didn’t know anything else. Everything he learned, he learned on the street, and I imagine there were some serious social issues when your only companion is a violent, manipulating, woman-hater criminal teaching you about life.” Covington’s eyes flick over to mine, and his eyes soften. “He pretty much broke down in front of me.”

My heart breaks just imagining it, everything he’s been through. Is that why he deflects any serious conversations with humor? Is that why he is the way everyone else says he is? He grew up with nothing but that, and it was his way of pushing anyone away he might’ve developed a meaningful relationship with? No wonder he never wanted to talk about his past. There are so many questions I have, but all I can do is listen because I want to know everything.

“When he was older, his dad involved him in a jewelry heist. It was big money for them, relatively speaking. Seven figures. You know how abusive people are. They gaslight, they manipulate. His father would praise him sometimes, make promises, partially keep them, then shame Dominic if he questioned anything. Threaten to cut ties. Threaten to turn himself in or kill himself and leave Dominic fatherless with nobody. Did these things when he was still a child. It was fucking toxic, and I’ve seen some shit in my life, trust me. Anyway… they got caught, by some fluke, Dominic didn’t know exactly how. But he was supposed to be looking out, and a security guard was there who wasn’t scheduled to be, after they’d done their homework and cased the place for months. Dominic watched them put his father in custody, and he thought his dad would want him to get away, so he ran and escaped.”

“Wow.” This is all crazy. How did he hold onto all this and not tell me? Why couldn’t he even tell me his name?

Because you would run a background check on his real name. Don’t act like you never looked into the name Rick Lawrence. You’re a freaking paralegal.

I can’t get over the fact that every time he smiled at me, did something nice for me, volunteered at the church, up there in his brain, all of this was constantly circling the waters, plaguing him. He smiled through all of it. A lot of things start to click into place. Little things that didn’t add up to much on their own but now fit a large overall arc to his story.

“Instead of protecting him like a good father would…”

There’s more? Unbelievable.

“His father told the police everything. Told them he wasn’t alone, that his son had escaped. Told them where they could find him. Where he hung out. He wanted Dominic in prison with him, suffering alongside him, for whatever sick reason. Dominic told me he learned all this from an associate of theirs and he fled town. Moved to Chicago. He and his father had connections to various people who provided services, and he changed his identity. Switched up his appearance a little. Decided he had to be someone completely new and leave everything else in the past. He looked at it as a new beginning. He could be whatever he wanted. His skills were limited to being a hustler, a criminal. A PI was the logical decision.”

I stare down at the floor, partially relieved, partially deflated. “I wish he would’ve told me.”

“You have to look at this overall, beyond you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means if you look at the story as a whole, and boil down everything about Rick or Dominic or whatever, you can discern the answers to why he’s behaving the way he is, why he’s making the choices he is. I’m not saying they’re correct, but they’re for the right reasons.”

My head is such a jumbled mess right now, so many thoughts and emotions, I just want him to stop speaking in riddles and tell me what he thinks. “Just say what you’re saying, please. I’m exhausted with all this.”

“I told you he was arrested with his father again, right?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“And he came to me before that and told me all this.”

“I get that.”

“He wants to put his past to bed. His father found him and wanted him to break in and steal from me, information that he would get