The Damaged (The Insiders Trilogy #2) - Tijan by Tijan

Maybe it was a point I didn’t need to fight about. I still didn’t know how I felt about it. I was assuming I’d watch, over the next day, to see, and then think on it. But I really didn’t need to think on it. They were moving forward, and anything I had to say wouldn’t be heard anyway. So yes. I was just going to keep quiet and observe, then pick up the pieces if or when it fell apart.

I’d decide then if I’d hate my father or not.

“Okay. So…” Subject change. I heard her get more businesslike. “Tell me what’s going on. Why are we out here?”

I knew what she was asking.

“We’re up here because I wanted to hear about whatever’s going on with you.”

I was being a smartass.

Her face went flat. She cocked it to the side. “Don’t smart me. I’m not asking why we’re in your room, and you know it.”

I laughed. “We came out here to distract Matt. We found out Quinn was in contact with someone he knows, and if we stayed in Chicago, he would’ve done something stupid.”

At the mention of Quinn, Chrissy Hayes’s flare came back, full force.

There was a tic on the side of her neck, and her vein was sticking out. My mother just became the Terminator.

“Mom?” I was treading lightly here.

She growled, a full, bearlike growl, and shot to her feet. She began pacing. “I hate that bitch. You don’t know, Bailey. You have no idea. The games she plays with those two little ones, I could just wring her neck.”

I sat back.

Not good.

“She’s playing games?”

She kept pacing. “Calling them collect, only talking to them if they answer. Marie came back last week. I still don’t know why she was sent away. He won’t say, and no one else is talking—Marie either—but if she answers, or Theresa, the bitch hangs up. That was when she was still in the county jail. Now she’s out, it’s a whole lot worse. She’s calling to question them about homework, what they’re eating, when they’re going to bed. Who they see during the week. She’s not questioning them in a mom way. She’s interrogating them to control them. She found out Ser’s private tutoring with that other Quinn, two-point-oh, was canceled and she blew a lid. She started yelling at Seraphina, not at Peter. I was in the room when she took the call, and Ser folded. These big tears came to her eyes and she went to her knees, Bailey. Her knees. If I ever wanted to murder someone, it’d be Quinn.”

Ser on her knees and crying was going to haunt me forever.

I had questions, fervent and panicked and slightly hysterical questions, though I knew they could be for another night. Like why was Peter allowing this? What were the conditions of the case where she could call her children? What were his lawyers doing to get her back behind bars?

But this.

It hit me, rocking me in place.

This was why Calhoun had posted her bail, to set her free on her family and the little ones. To hit us where we would bleed the most.

He was a bastard, a dirty fucking ruthless and calculating bastard. Mom wanted Quinn, and I wanted him.

“I’m sorry.”

She pffted at me, still pacing and flicking her wrist in my direction. “Not your fault. So not your fault. It’s all hers. And your father, I keep telling him the divorce needs to be done now, but it’s not happening. She was going to sign. He told me it was done, and then nothing. She changed her mind, and now her lawyers are playing all these games. And the trial. Don’t get me started on that, either.”

“Wait. Trial?”

I suddenly got serious—very, very serious.

“Chrissy.” I stood slowly from the bed. “What’s happening with the trial?”

It was my trial, about me, and why did she know and I didn’t?

A wave of panic started to push in, but I held firm. I shoved it back. I wouldn’t let myself go there, not here, not with my family here.

She stopped, her face going white. “Dios mío,” she whispered. “I messed up.”

I pulled out my phone, bringing up the news websites, but there was nothing. There was no mention of Quinn and a pending trial date.

I blacked my screen and gripped my phone tight. “I thought trials like that take forever.”

Chrissy wasn’t talking. She stopped. She was only staring at me.

That panic was pushing back, crawling inside of me again.

I swallowed over a knot. “Mom.”

But then there was a tentative knock at the door, right before it opened, and Seraphina stepped inside. She was holding her iPad, an uncertain expression on her face. She’d changed clothes so she was in leggings and a large sweatshirt. Her hair had been braided behind her, too, with a few wisps falling to frame her face.

She looked so beautiful, like a real angel.

“Can I—Did I give you enough time?” Her eyes were darting between Chrissy and me.

I wanted to ask for more time. I needed to know about Quinn. But I saw how Seraphina’s hand had bunched her sleeve over both hands. One sleeve slipped half-down on the iPad, over the corner. The other hand was wringing the doorknob.

She bit down on her lip.

My time could wait.

I held open my arms. “Now is perfect. Come here. I want to hug you again, and then you need to tell me everything about your friends and school.”