The Rebel of Raleigh High (Raleigh Rebels #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,72

being fawned over in the hospital, poor, saintly, selfless member of the community that he was. I was put before a judge. Told me I had to spend the summer break in juvie and do six months' community service after that. Once I got out of juvie, I was expecting to be sent to another shitty foster home, but that's when Monty showed up.”

“Monty?” I haven’t heard him mention the name before.

Alex nods. “Montgomery Richard Cohen the Third. He owns The Rock. He was friends with my dad back in the day. He read about me beating the shit out of Gary in the Hoquiam Gazette and petitioned the county clerk’s office to take me once I was released.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Said he owed my father a debt, and he supposed it’d been paid now.”

“So you went to live with him?”

“Only for a few months. The county did a couple of random drive-bys to make sure I was behaving myself and sleeping where I was supposed to be sleeping. Once they signed off on all my paperwork, Monty gave me the keys to my place now, and I've been living there ever since.”

“At the Salton Ash Park?”

“You missed a word out of the title, Silver,” he says ruefully. “The Salton Ash Trailer Park. I’m not ashamed. No need to skirt around it.”

A prickle of shame bites at me, making my cheeks burn, because that's precisely what I did do. “Sorry. I don’t even know why I did that.”

He gives me a slow, almost sad smile. “Sure you do. You live in a big house with a wraparound porch and a manicured lawn out front. You have both your parents. You get to scream at your brother every morning because his bedroom is the room next to yours and he's annoying the shit out of you. Whereas I live alone in a doublewide on a gravel plot, and I have to fight for the chance to spend enough time with my brother that he might get the chance to annoy me.”

I slump against the cushion, feeling like a grade-A asshole. “You’re right,” I murmur. “I’m s—”

“Don't apologize. I'm not sorry. I have freedom now. I can go where I want. Do what I want. Be who I want. And believe me, my place right now is a dramatic step up from Gary's basement. Which brings me back to my morose story. I always planned to pay Gary a visit, to let him know how much I appreciated his care and attention one last time, but I got caught up working for Monty and trying to settle back in at Bellingham, and time kinda got away from me. And then, one morning, Monty chucks the newspaper at me, and there it is on the front page.” He holds up his hands, framing the imaginary headline. “'Officer Feldman, dedicated civil servant of Grays Harbor County, killed following denied parole appeal hearing.' He'd been escorting someone from the courthouse when a group of guys in ski masks jumped out of a van and shot him in the chest. Killed instantly. They were rescuing their buddy. As far as I know, they got away with it, too. Ironically, Gary was buried in the cemetery on the far side of this lake. When he got out of hospital after the beating I gave him, the fucker went to the detention center where I was being held and told them I'd stolen a piece of his jewelry. They let him rifle through my shit, and he took the only thing he knew mattered to me.”

“Which was?”

He tugs down the neck of his t-shirt, closing his hand around the small golden medallion hanging around his throat. “My mom’s St. Christopher. Gary knew I never took it off, but that I would have had to surrender it at the center, so he took it to hurt me. Then he died, and I was determined to get it back. I went to his place and tossed it, but it wasn’t there. I knew the asshole wouldn’t have sold it or given it away. It was the one thing he had over me, and I knew for a fact the sick fuck would have coveted it because of what it meant to me. So I went and dug him up. And low and behold, there it was, clasped tight in his greedy, dead little hand. A cop found me pissing on him and Tazed me. And that is how I ended up at