I did it thinking how easy it was getting used to living clean. Just walking down the hall, it felt like the grime of the place in all its incarnations was settling on me, clogging my pores, making it hard to breathe.
Gill nor any of our other boys were outside Dad’s door but I heard voices inside.
I knocked.
I received no reply. Not a “come in.” Not a “go away.”
I was early for our two thirty meeting, but not that early, so I expected Georgia was in there, maybe Gill, Tommy, Miguel, whoever, and they were just waiting for me.
What I did know was that if Dad didn’t want me in, I’d get a “go away.”
I turned the handle and walked in.
I stopped dead at what I saw, thankful that a lifetime of training blanked my face and any telltale line of my body.
“Come in, Olivia, this won’t take long,” Dad said irritably, his hand waving at me, his eyes annoyed and on the man sitting in front of him.
I didn’t want to go in.
But I needed to go in and not only because Dad was waving at me.
So I went in.
The man sitting in front of Dad looked at me. His eyes slid down the length of my body in a way that exacerbated the feel of filth coating me and he turned back to Dad.
“I’m done waiting, Vincent,” Drake Nair declared, dismissing me.
Drake Nair.
I knew the man and part of what I knew was that he would disappear.
Then resurface.
As far as I knew, he’d disappeared for some time.
Now he was back.
I wasn’t the only one who knew Drake Nair. Everyone in Denver knew Drake Nair.
Everyone in Denver knew he wasn’t that bright, but he was wealthy, and rich men, smart or dumb, could pay to get a job done.
They also knew he was a slimy weasel.
And last, everyone in Denver knew Drake Nair hated Knight Sebring.
I did not keep tabs because Nick was just a name for me back then, but I still knew it had to be years since I last heard of anything happening in the Sebring/Nair war.
Word was, Nair played dirty (not surprisingly).
But Knight Sebring had always prevailed.
I didn’t know much of what it was about, outside Knight and Nair were once partners and then they were not.
I just knew with Nair’s latest lengthy disappearance the bad blood seemed to have died down.
But now I had a very bad feeling mostly because I had no idea my father knew Drake Nair and I didn’t like him, his history, his hatred of Knight Sebring and the coincidence this all was right now sitting in my father’s office.
“You’re a fool, you go after that again,” Dad told him.