Chapter 14: Deposit

Wells pressed the speaker button and set the phone face up on the desk between us.

He leaned back in his chair.

"Say that again," he said. "My florist's here. She should hear it from you."

There was a pause on the line.

Then Kellan's father laughed, short and dry.

"Fine. Miss Pomeroy. You've had your fun. Take the video down and call off the bank, and nobody gets hurt."

"Somebody already got hurt," I said. "She's dead. It was her money."

"It was a family arrangement between your mother and Larissa. It's none of the public's business."

Wells picked up a pen.

He started clicking it.

"Here's my answer," he said. "No."

"Excuse me?"

"She can put your company's name on a billboard on I-95. It's her mother's money. I don't run her mouth. I run weddings."

"Then you don't run mine."

"Okay."

"And the thirty thousand?"

"Sue me for it," Wells said. "Bring a lawyer who likes stairs. We're over a laundromat."

The line went quiet for so long I thought he'd hung up.

"You have until five o'clock, Mr. Bradshaw," Kellan's father said. "Think about your sister's kids."

Then he did hang up.

Wells put the pen down very carefully.

"He said your sister's kids," I said.

"I heard him."

"Wells. You spent that deposit. The rent. The restorer."

"I know what I spent."

"Where are you going to get thirty thousand dollars by Monday?"

"I'll sell the van."

"The van's worth nine thousand on a good day. I sold a car this spring. I know the number."

"Then I'll sell the van and a kidney."

"Stop it."

He stood up and went to the window.

The el went by outside, and the whole room shook.

"I'm not making you take your video down," he said, to the glass. "I'm not doing that. Don't ask me to."

I didn't ask him.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Power Showed Me His Cheating An Hour Earlier from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.