Wild Aces (31 page)

“No. I’m good. But let’s get comfortable first.” I lifted her off the counter and carried her to the couch, setting her on the cushion next to mine.

The second page was a list of all the foster homes I’d stayed at over the years. “Jeffrey, Holland, Larry…” I said, my voice drifting off as I read the names faster than my mouth could keep up. All the fuckers who had beaten my ass were on there, faces I’d see when I closed my eyes but names I hadn’t thought about in a long time.

“There are so many,” she whispered. “More than I realized.”

I counted cards, and I ran statistics in my head, but that was one number I didn’t want to know. One I hadn’t kept track of as a kid.

I flipped the page, and it showed the information about my adoption—Vera’s name and address, the date all the paperwork was processed. I turned to the next page to find a report from a hospital where I’d had my forehead stitched up.

“There was glass found inside the laceration,” Brea read. “Oh my God…and traces of crack residue was found on the glass.”

It said an emergency contact had been called. The contact had come to the hospital and confirmed abuse, and I was then taken into custody.

“Jesus, Trapper, were you at your mom’s house when it happened?”

“I don’t know.” I looked at her and then back at the papers. “I knew about the cut and the stitches, but I didn’t know any of the rest.” The next page had Cody’s name on it, his last known address, his date of birth and death. I flipped through the rest of the pages. “Everything else is about Cody.”

“That’s really strange,” she said. “He’s usually so good at finding everything.”

“Maybe there’s nothing else to find.” I handed her the stack. “You want to look through this part? I’m going to go grab some water.”

“Sure…I’m sorry.”

I brushed my scruff over her cheek before I kissed it. “Don’t be. You tried your best. You can’t help that there’s nothing out there on me.” I walked over to the sink and splashed cold water on my face. I knew her hacker friend would come through at some point, but I didn’t think he’d come up with almost nothing. Either it was a relief or just fucking sad.

“Trapper, come here,” she called from the living room.

I wiped my face and sat next to her on the couch, looking at the paper she held in front of me.

“This is all about the attorney Cody’s parents hired to adopt him.”

I read past the attorney’s bio and learned that Cody’s parents had paid $150,000 for the adoption. A copy of the check was attached. The attorney was rumored to have a ninety-five percent success rate in finding babies for her clients. There was an interview from a birth mother who claimed the attorney had given her less money than promised. Brea’s friend included a few similar stories, which drew the conclusion that her business was based on buying off mothers for their children and for their silence. It sounded similar to what I did. When he researched the attorney, she turned out to be another dead end; she’d passed away almost ten years ago.

“If she accepted a check from Cody’s parents, it sounds like she ran things legally,” Brea said.

“Or she made things appear that way. With a success rate that high, she had other connections—sure connections, not just birth moms who changed their minds all the time.”

She threw her arm around me and moved in closer. “I thought we were going to get all the answers. Now, I just feel like I have even more questions.”

“I know.” I leaned my cheek against her face. “I really wish I knew what the hell Cody was thinking about when he was driving that day.”

“You know, I have some of his things here. Even some of his notes and paperwork. We could go through them, if you think it would help.”

“Doubt it could hurt, but are you sure you want to do that? Those might be some memories you don’t want to see.”

She took a deep breath and led me to her office. “It’s time for me to get past it, I think.”

She reached into the back of the closet and pushed out a box. It was much bigger than I thought it would be.

“This is everything that he left at my place. There are notes scattered all throughout the inside.”

I stared at it, knowing everything in that box would bring me closer to my brother. I should have been able to hold his things and feel him and recall so many memories. But I had nothing. It was the most overwhelming emotion and the biggest goddamn letdown. What I wouldn’t give to have him standing here instead of all his stuff.

I lifted the lid and pushed aside the clothes and the boots. The small scraps of paper were all underneath. Brea was right. They were everywhere, at least forty of them with names and colors and details written on each.

“He left them all over my apartment,” she said. “Like he’d get some random thought and have to write it down.”

I tried to pile them all up and read every one. “Nothing is standing out to me, not even a number or a date.”

“Try the notebook.” She took it out from the bottom and handed it to me. “There might be more in there.”

I flipped through the pages. None of it seemed to be in order, just names, random thoughts, street addresses. It was giving me access to his mind—a mind that functioned nothing like mine. His handwriting didn’t look like mine either. More differences. I turned the pages, scanning them quicker and quicker, until I finally saw something I recognized.

“Brea…” I showed her the paper. “That’s my social security number and the address at Aced.”

Her eyes went wide, and her mouth opened.

“Do me a favor; look through that stack of papers again that your friend sent over, and tell me if anything seems off to you.”

“I’m on it.”

I turned another page and found a bunch of words written in a circle, all connected by arrows.

JULY 12TH, HOSPITAL RECORDS, EMERGENCY CONTACT, CO-SIGNED LEASE, OD, AUTOPSY, BLOOD MATCH.

“I think he figured it out.” I showed her the paper. “Whatever the hell all this means, I think it has something to do with me.”

Her eyes traveled around the circle. “That’s your birth date, and he found your hospital records and saw that an emergency contact was called, but I don’t get the rest.”

“Yeah, the rest makes no sense.” I stared at the words—
co-signed lease, OD, autopsy, blood match
—and repeated them in my head. What the hell was Cody thinking when he wrote these all down, and how were they all connected?

“I have something,” she said. “I didn’t see it earlier; it must have been stuck to the paper behind it. Do you know who C. Pilarski is?”

I slowly glanced up and took the paper from her hand. “That son of a bitch.” It was the number that had been listed as my emergency contact. It was no longer in service, but it had been registered to a C. Pilarski.

“Who?” Brea asked. “What are you talking about?”

“C. Pilarski stands for Charlene Pilarski. She’s Roman’s fucking wife.”

Her hand went over her mouth. “Oh my God. You don’t think…”

“The hospital wasn’t trying to get in touch with Charlene; they were trying to get in touch with Roman, and there’s only one way they would have had his number.”

She took the paper out of my hand. “Okay, let’s think this through before there’s any freaking out.”

It was too fucking late for that.

“Cody came across you somehow. Let’s just say, he saw you on TV playing in a poker tournament. He then found your hospital records, and from there, he tracked down Roman and his wife. The next thing on the list is a co-signed lease.”

“Roman doesn’t have a lease on his house or on Aced. He owns both. He must have co-signed a lease for someone else.”

“Maybe it was for your mom?”

I reached over to the desk and picked up the notebook she had placed there, flipping to the next page.
Missy Harmon
was written at the top, and around this circle was,
Mother
,
accidental acute crack cocaine toxicity
, and her address, all connected by arrows.

“Brea…” I looked up from the notebook.

“I know.” She held me as she glared into my eyes. “It’s making sense, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“Your mom died from a crack overdose.”

“And it was her crack pipe that cut me.”

“So then, Cody must have looked up her autopsy report.”

“Yeah, and he saw that her blood type matched his and mine.”

My birth mother’s name was Missy Harmon. As for my father…fuck.

“There’s more,” I said, pointing to the notebook. The paper was so thin, I could almost see what was written on the next page. But I knew what it said even before Brea showed it to me.

“Trapper…” Her eyes turned soft. Emotional.

They confirmed what I feared.

In the center of the sheet, traced over and over at least four times, were three words connected by an arrow.

ROMAN PILARSKI. FATHER.

“I spent all those years in those shitholes. I went through all that abuse. That whole time, I had wondered why in the hell no one cared about me enough to come in and save me, and my father—Roman—had known about me the entire time. He’d gone to the hospital when I was just a baby and told them there was abuse, so they took me into custody.”

“But he came for you when you were twelve, didn’t he? I mean, Vera had to be sent by Roman, I would think.”

I’d always thought meeting Vera at that bus stop a few weeks before she had adopted me was just a coincidence. But there was no chance in hell that was true now. I wondered how she had recognized me and why it was Vera who had done Roman’s dirty work.

“I have to get out of here.” I pulled away from her, backing out of the office. “I have to go talk to him.” I found my jacket and rushed to the door.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

I turned around, my hand on the knob, letting her give me one brief kiss. “It makes me real happy that you want to come, but I have to do this on my own.”

It felt like I’d been doing everything on my own, and the people who claimed to love me had done nothing but lie to me for half of my life.

I couldn’t wait to hear their reasoning.

Brea

My townhouse turned silent after Trapper closed the door. He was off to confront his father with everything we’d learned.

Meanwhile, my parents were still in the dark about all of this. They knew I was dating someone named Trapper; they knew what his voice sounded like, as they had called a few times while we were together and heard him in the background. They knew I really cared about him. But they didn’t know he was connected to Cody. They didn’t know that when they saw the new man in my life, he would look just like the man I’d lost. I’d been putting off that conversation. It was easier to just not tell them, stay in my little Trapper world where we hung out at one of our places when I wasn’t at work and ordered in. And we had the most phenomenal, earth-shattering sex. Constantly. But it had been two full weeks of that, and my feelings for Trapper were so much stronger now, and I was too close to my family to not tell them the truth.

I grabbed my phone, and as I cuddled into the corner of the couch, I glanced toward the coffee table. It was the same table that had been in my old apartment. Back then, there had been a framed picture of Cody and me sitting on it. It was a photo of us in a downtown bar, wearing sombreros and drinking margaritas. Now, a short square vase sat there with a bunch of fake tulips. The memory of us was still there, but unlike all the other times, it wasn’t tugging on me. It was just reminding me that it existed.

“Just one more,” I slurred, holding my empty glass up to Cody’s face, accidentally hitting him in the nose with it. “Oh my Gawwwwwd, I’m so sorry.”

He covered his nose and wrapped his other arm around me. “Kiss it. I’m in pain.”

When he leaned down to give me his nose, I moved forward at the same time, and our noses collided.

“Ow!” we both yelled.

“No more margaritas,” he added.

“No-more-margaritas,” I repeated, all my words blending together.

“How about some chips and salsa? I need to get some food in you.”

“Yummy.” I clasped my hand around his and smeared my lips against his cheek in an attempt to kiss it. “And guacamole.”

“And some steak fajitas.” He led me over to a booth on the far end of the bar and waved over a waitress, repeating everything I wanted to her.

“Lots of steak fajitas,” I emphasized.

“Got it. Anything else?”

Cody looked at me and winked. “Fried ice cream with chocolate sauce and extra whipped cream.”

“For dessert?” the waitress asked.

“No, for dinner. Just bring it all at the same time,” he said.

She laughed. “No problem.”

I slapped my hands on top of his and squeezed his fingers, my face smiling so hard that it hurt. “That was sexy.”

“Did I get it right?”

“Oh, yeah, you got it all right. Chocolate with dinner is my faaaavorite.”

“I know, Brea. I know.”

He knew me so well. Knew what I loved and what made me smile. He also knew how to make me cry. But my life wasn’t about Cody anymore or the memories we shared together. They would always be there, and I could recall them whenever I wanted. They just didn’t own me. They didn’t drag me into that drab dark place of despair. Instead, they reminded me of a wonderful period in my life. And when I thought of where I was now, I wasn’t filled with guilt or shame. I was filled with the most incredible amount of love.