Demming by Avril Ashton
Two
“So you’re back.”
Demming took in his mother as she leaned onto the kitchen island, a cup of tea clasped in her hands. They stood opposite each other, him still in his clothes from the day before, his mother in a belted floral dressing gown that dragged against the floor when she walked.
After that meeting with Asamoah’s son the day before, he’d driven to Roslyn to check on his mother but found the place empty. He could have gone back to his own condo in Brooklyn, but exhaustion had him in its grip and made it impossible for him to do anything other than collapse onto the couch down in the basement. He hadn’t opened his eyes again until he heard footsteps overhead.
Those were the first words his mother spoke upon seeing him, though her green eyes, much like his, lit up with joy and relief behind her large black-framed cat-eye glasses. But she looked tired—no, not tired. Weary. That was a different thing, wasn’t it? Fiona Demming’s silver hair hung past her shoulders. She was fifty-six and sometimes she looked more like his sister than his mother. But other times, like now, she wore every single one of her years. Her face and body were rounder, softer, but she was still the most beautiful woman he knew.
They’d been the same age, his parents. Had the same birthday too. His dad called them soul mates and when he died, Demming watched as a huge piece of his mother broke off and crawled into that grave with him. She’d never been the same. The strength she possessed to carry on after losing her partner the way she did, he couldn’t imagine it, and everything he did, every single thing, was for her.
She didn’t like that.
“Where were you this time?” she asked after taking a sip of her tea.
“You know I’m not going to tell you that.” She asked every time he returned from a job and he always gave her the same response. “Where’s Bryce?”
His twenty-year-old brother was born ten years after Demming and had been spoiled rotten. Their parents treated him as a gift and he’d taken that and run with it, milking it for all it was worth. Demming had no patience for his antics, though he knew his brother meant no harm. He just remained oblivious to certain things. Like the fact that while he’d been allowed the freedom to be selfish, Demming never had the same opportunity.
His mother shrugged her shoulders at the question. “You brother hardly comes around. I haven’t seen him in days. He’s either with his friends or with that girl he’s seeing.” From the way her features twisted up as if she’d tasted something sour, Fiona didn’t care for Bryce’s girlfriend, whoever she was.
“And school?” Demming was paying hefty tuition for Bryce to study economics and math at Columbia University. When his mother held his gaze and didn’t answer his query, he blew out a breath, running agitated fingers through his hair. “Damn it.”
“You need to talk to him, Sawyer.”
“I do that every time I come home, Mom.” There was always something he had to straighten Bryce out about. “But he doesn’t listen to me. You know that.”
“Because you’re never around,” she shot back. “You’re always off somewhere on another job. You’re like a stranger to—to him.”
And to her. But she wouldn’t say it. She didn’t like what he did, how he did it, but some part of her understood why. She’d withdrawn after her husband’s death, taking to her bed in her grief, and left an ill-prepared Demming to handle Bryce, their home, and all the worries that came with it. It had been a task he’d been ill-equipped to handle. When money became an issue, he’d had to do whatever was necessary. It hadn’t been his first choice, becoming a mercenary. But it paid the bills.
Years later, his mother had apologized profusely to him for abandoning him, but he’d never needed it.
As he studied her, her expression softened. “Sawyer, please. You don’t have to do any of it anymore. We don’t need—”
“I need to get to my place, shower, and handle some business.” He went to her, pulling her into his arms and kissing her cheek. She was one of his only comforts and he eased away reluctantly as she clung to him. “I’ll talk to Bryce. I promise.”
She released him, but her expression was pensive as she searched his face. “When do I see you again?”
“I’m home for now,” he said as he walked to the door. “No planned jobs.” Not until he got what Asamoah had taken from them.
He drove from Long Island to his condo in Cobble Hill, jumping into the shower the moment he got there. He was still tired, but not as much as the day before. Either way, he had business to deal with that didn’t include falling back into bed no matter how inviting it looked. He hardly ever spent any time at his loft and that, along with a team of housekeepers, kept his place clean and spotless.
Done with the shower, he dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and walked barefoot to his kitchen, opening up the fridge and staring inside. Lana, his regular housekeeper, kept up with his groceries, keeping his fridge and cupboards stocked with the basics, though he didn’t really cook. Any home-cooked meals came from his mother. He grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and made his way to his home office. Whenever he did come home, he spent most of his time in there, oftentimes sleeping on the pullout sofa.
The condo was originally two bedrooms, but he’d converted the second bedroom into his office.
He sat at his desk and guzzled half the bottle of water before powering up his laptop. He had some research to do on Hart Taylor-Asamoah. A month ago, the elder Asamoah was the CEO of the company. Now Junior had taken his place.
Why?
As he surfed the internet, his cell phone vibrated on his desk and he picked up without checking the caller’s identity. “Yeah.”
“Someone’s doing a deep dive into you and the company.”
He sat back upon hearing the familiar voice. Billy was the ultimate hacker, untouchable and invisible. The best in the business. Demming had lucked out getting him on his team. Billy knew his shit, so Demming didn’t doubt his words. “Who’s looking?”
“Someone good enough to find some things…if we want them to.”
Hart Asamoah had to be behind it. Demming smiled. “Okay.”
Billy grunted in his ear. “Okay, what?”
“He wants to know about Sawyer Demming. Let him find what he’s searching for.” Hart didn’t appear to have any idea of his father’s fucked-up dealings with the Larchmont property. He hadn’t recognized Demming’s name, which meant the old man hadn’t told him Demming would come calling. Explained the meeting that hadn’t been on Hart’s radar. Maybe it was time to bring Junior up to speed. Normally, he—well, Billy—made sure to keep Demming off anyone’s radar. He didn’t want people knowing who he was, especially when his job sometimes entailed doing unsavory things to and for unsavory characters.
“What do you want them to find?”
Not what Demming did, but… “My past. It involves him, anyway. So yeah, he can have that. The company is all above board, so nothing to keep hidden there.” He’d created and named his investment company after his parents and funneled much of the money he made into investing in real estate, digital currency, and stocks. All of it to ensure his family was never left penniless as they’d been before. It wasn’t as if his mother took advantage of his wealth, though.
He hung up with Billy and stared unseeing at his laptop screen.
Being a mercenary had its drawbacks. He kept that part of himself away from his mother and brother because he dealt with the worst of the worst and he didn’t want that shit falling back on who he loved most. Very few people knew the identities of the men who made up his Freelancers crew and he preferred it that way. So Hart could have his people search as much as he wanted, but Demming wasn’t about to offer up that part of his life to him.
He hated that he even had to allow Junior to learn about his past at all, but it was necessary if he wanted Larchmont. He kept seeing the genuine confusion in Hart’s eyes when he offered to buy the property. The frustration when Demming refused to take no for an answer. He had that effect on people, but on Hart it was something…different. Something genuine.
He leaned back, rubbing his chin.
He couldn’t afford to be soft. He had a plan and he’d get that building no matter the cost. His mother’s birthday was coming up and he wanted to gift her the thing she and his father had worked so hard to build.
They’d been a young family, his parents, having Demming at eighteen. They’d struggled. He remembered that. He remembered his father working long hours and the general sense of unhappiness that had filled their home. Arthur worked whatever job he could in order to provide, but it had never been enough. They couldn’t ever make ends meet. Until Fiona encouraged him to try his hand at the one thing he loved, making jewelry.
They begged and borrowed and mortgaged themselves to the hilt to start that business. It was even harder then, Fiona had confessed to Demming later, but his father was happier. The family was happier. Little by little, the business grew as word of mouth spread about the man selling his gorgeous custom-made jewelry out of his house. Business got better, they started making actual money and expanded to rent a store at 1845 Larchmont—a large space with a showroom in the front and the workroom in the back.
Demming remembered those moments too. The light in his father’s eyes, the pride on his mother’s face. She’d started working with him in the store while he created his pieces in the back. They made enough to buy the property from the owner, but they hadn’t been rich, not by any means. Only happier. Less stressed.
Until Emmanuel Asamoah came calling. He wanted to buy the entire property and rebuild something bigger, grander. All the other tenants took the money he offered and ran. Except for Demming’s father, who laughed in his face. Asamoah got a judge to declare Arthur’s purchase of his store illegal, reverting ownership back to the original owner who promptly signed it over to Asamoah. And all of that happened in a court ruling Arthur hadn’t been alerted or invited to.
His lawyer told him of that decision while he was in the middle of dinner and Arthur rushed out, to confront Asamoah maybe. He’d died that night, run off the road by a semi. Demming had been twenty-two at the time, in college and hanging with friends when he got the call.
Fiona couldn’t handle the business by herself. She didn’t want to. Demming couldn’t do anything but watch helplessly as his parents’ dream died. They went back to struggling because the life insurance payout was a joke. He had to drop out of school to help out. Too many nights he’d listened to his mother cry herself to sleep, and he’d vowed he would get his family’s business back. Take them back to the time when his mother smiled, when pride filled her eyes.
A neighbor’s flyer for a missing dog had caught his eye. Well, the words “monetary reward” caught his eye and he’d needed money so desperately that he’d scoured the neighborhood in search of said dog, turning amateur sleuth. It took him two days to figure out that the dog owner’s boyfriend had opened the gate and deliberately let the animal out because he didn’t like it barking all the time. The dog ran off and they never found it, but Demming still got paid and the boyfriend got kicked to the curb.
That neighbor referred her friend to him when her car windows got busted out. He solved that too. That earned him another referral. Then another. With each case, he upped his price. Word of mouth had him making enough money to pay the mortgage. He was doing good until a little girl went missing and everyone looked to him as if he wasn’t just a punk kid trying to feed his family. Still, a lot of money was involved and he couldn’t say no.
He found the little girl in a basement where she’d wandered after chasing a ball.
Two months after that, he came home to find two men in suits in his living room.
He’d been working for Renzo Vega and Dane “Dutch” Hutchins ever since. They were the most dangerous FBI agents he’d ever met, not that he’d met a lot. But those two, if they hadn’t flashed badges he’d have taken them for the bad guys. Which they were to a lot of people. But they’d made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, funded him when he was solo, and then helped him find the men that now made up his Freelancers crew.
Their missions weren’t all altruistic. Hell, not nearly enough of it was. Sometimes they stole from one wealthy motherfucker and gave to another just-as-wealthy motherfucker, but sometimes they helped find missing, sentimental things. And then there were the times when Renzo pulled them in to help him fight the sex trafficking that was so rampant nowadays, especially down in Atlanta where Renzo was based. It gratified Demming so much whenever they did those deeds because then they were putting marks in their good column.
Maybe reclaiming ownership of the property that once belonged to his father would be another mark in the good column.
Asamoah had built a mixed-use development on the land where the jewelry store once stood; it was three levels, commercial on the first and residential on the top two. Demming wanted that property. It represented everything his father had died trying to prevent. It represented his mother’s heartache and all their struggles.
It would be a gift for his mother’s fifty-seventh birthday. It would be his father’s birthday as well. And she could do whatever she wanted with it. He’d thought at first to get revenge on Asamoah for what he’d done, but he didn’t care about that. Karma would handle men like him. In the ten years he’d been doing mercenary work, he’d amassed an insane amount of money. All the things he’d seen and done was to ensure his mother didn’t have to struggle, that Bryce didn’t have to listen to her cry in her bed as Demming did.
Because even now, he couldn’t stop hearing those shattered sobs.
He’d bought his mother a home in Roslyn, Long Island, the moment he could. He’d ensured Bryce went to the best school because in the end, money talked. He wanted to eradicate the words struggle and need from his family’s life.
He didn’t care what his mother did with Larchmont. She could burn it the fuck down for all he cared. He just wanted her name on the deed. Wanted her to know she once again owned what had been stripped from her, what had been the cause of so much pain.
Whatever she wanted to do with it, he’d let her. But first, he had to make sure Hart didn’t stand in his way like his father had. The first and only time he’d met with Emmanuel Asamoah, he’d had Demming escorted out of the building once he reminded him of what he’d done, the damage he’d caused to Demming’s family.
All Demming wanted was to make his old man proud.
Getting his hands on that property was a start.
