“Holy shit,” Nick mumbles as I work to straighten out the wheel. “You really do have a death wish, don’t you?”
What I have is exactly twenty-four minutes to get home.
I fumble for my phone, but it’s gone, flung from my lap into that dead space between the seat and the center console, the black hole where crumbs and crumpled receipts go to die. I keep my eyes on the road and dig my hand in, but I don’t get very far. My hand is too big, the slot too tight.
Nick bats my hand away. “You drive. I’ll dig out the phone.”
Meanwhile, Jade and the guy are still talking.
“If Cam were here, he’d tell you this day was coming. I swore I would take back what he took from me, plus attorney fees and interest. I told him I’m not some wimpy asshole he can push around. That money is rightfully mine.”
I freeze, my fists clenching the wheel because a memory is taking shape in my head. Last year, January, in the courthouse parking deck. I was headed to my truck when he stepped out from behind a stairwell, thirty minutes after the gavel had come down on my side. I won. He lost. A Fulton County Superior Court judge agreed I didn’t owe him a penny.
Is that what this is about? The Oakhurst shop that fell through?
“Motherfucker.” I bounce on the leather bucket seat, my muscles jolting with pent-up energy. “That motherfucking fucker.”
Nick drags the phone onto the middle console, and I grab it and hang a sharp right onto a side street, skidding to a stop. I squint at the image of this asshole’s covered face, zooming in until it fills my screen.
Nick leans over the console, craning his neck. “What? Do you know this guy or something?”
“Oh yeah.” I stare at the masked man and the fuzzy edges of his face, and suddenly all the puzzle pieces fall into place. Storming my house, holding my family hostage, clocking my wife in the face. “You better believe I know who this asshole is.”
I also know what today is about—and it’s not money.
This isn’t about money at all.
T H E I N T E R V I E W
Juanita: What is your relationship with Maxim Petrakis?
Cam: Who?
Juanita: Maxim Petrakis. He’s the owner of a number of strip clubs in town, a man who moonlights as a loan shark and criminal matchmaker. The Greek mob version of Match.com, though you won’t find that job description on his website, by the way. That’s just the word on the street. According to the police, his only transgression is speeding.
Cam: Never heard of him.
Juanita: There’s a picture of the two of you looking pretty chummy on the celebrity wall at Club at Chops. Slicked-back silver hair, impeccable dresser, big smoker.
Cam: Now that you mention it, I think I may have cooked for him a couple of times.
Juanita: But you’ve never borrowed money from him.
Cam: I’m pretty sure loan-sharking is illegal, Juanita.
Juanita: So that’s a no?
Cam: [smiles]
Juanita: Two people said they saw you jogging across the parking lot of his Cheshire Bridge club on August 6. One claims it was late afternoon, the other says it was more like dinnertime. That puts you there an hour, maybe more before you were supposed to deliver three-quarters of a million dollars to your Buckhead home.
Cam: We’ve already established I was desperate.
Juanita: Desperate enough to borrow three quarters of a million from a known loan shark?
Cam: Sure. I would have robbed a bank if I’d thought about it while they were still open.
Juanita: So you were there.
Cam: I was a lot of places. The whole afternoon is a blur.
Juanita: [sighing] Did you or did you not go to Maxim Petrakis’s strip club on the afternoon of August 6 and ask him for a loan?
Cam: I can promise you this, I don’t owe Maxim Petrakis a penny.
J A D E
6:36 p.m.
The Android chirps from somewhere deep in the man’s pocket, and my frustration feels limitless. An interruption, and right when we were getting somewhere. I bear down on the ground below my feet and concentrate on the two words he just used: attorney fees. I latch on to them like a pit bull.
“So you and Cam were litigating something—what?”
My voice wobbles with a hammer throbbing in my cheek, with fear of the force of his backhand. I glance at Beatrix, watching silently from her recliner next to mine, her hands sticking out from the duct-tape bonds in tight, hard fists.
The man watches me from the other side of the coffee table.
“You’d think I would have learned. After everything that I’d heard from his former chefs and partners, I should have known Cam would pull some kind of dirty tricks. I should have known he’d find the biggest shark in town and sic him on my lawyer. He crushed us, found somebody who could win on might rather than merit.” The stupid phone chirps again, and he reaches down to unbutton the flap on his cargo pants, his eyes flashing. “And it wasn’t just me he took down. He took down my whole family.”