Breaking Conviction by Greer Rivers
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Do you have to be so fuckin’ loud?” Phoenix grumbled curses under his breath and Naomi just snorted.
“I’m makin’ y’all breakfast. It’s not my fault basic cookin’ is loud and it’s certainly not my problem that you gave yourself a damn hangover.” She maybe, not so accidentally, allowed the sheet pan to clatter against the oven rungs after turning the thick-cut bacon over.
“Fuckin’ A, dude. Goddamn.”
“Language,” Naomi tried to use her best ‘mom voice’ to reprimand him.
“Oops, shit, sorry. Forgot about the kid.”
“She’s not here. It’s just fun messin’ with you. I told Thea’s teachers that we’re back from ‘vacation’ and dropped her off this morning so I can get some work done. Wes said Dean’s at his office today, so I figured I’d take her there late and pick her up early, just on the off chance Dean decides to pick his daughter up from school for once in his parenting career.”
“Is that why Snake called Henry? To get him to check up on your ex?”
Naomi nodded. “Yup. Henry drove by AIE Securities and made sure his car was in the lot. We’re in the clear.”
Gail was out of town and had given Naomi the okay to work from home. Normally, Naomi would’ve gone with Gail on the work trip, leaving Thea with Dean. But obviously, that was out of the question now. She could’ve kept Thea, but Naomi hadn’t worked without distraction in two weeks. Besides, it was good for Thea to get back into a routine. Maybe if they got back to normal, everything else would fall into place.
“She’d probably just be watchin’ TV if she was here, anyway.”
Naomi rolled her eyes, trying not to bristle at the comment. “You know what? I get enough of that from mean moms, alright? I don’t need to get it from some unmarried, childless twentysomething drunk-at-ten-in-the-morning guy who asked me to fix him breakfast. Watch your ‘tude, dude.”
Phoenix cringed. “Shit, I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t know anything ‘bout bein’ a mom. As you can obviously tell from my perfect male body.”
“Gah, if I roll my eyes at you one more time, I’mma be stuck that way and you’re gonna have to finish this cookin’.”
“Please don’t,” Phoenix groaned. “The bacon is callin’ to me and I’ll burn this fuckin’ place down if I’m in charge of the oven.”
Naomi smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m hungry too, so I’ll leave you be this time. It’s just mommy bashers are everywhere these days, bullyin’ perfectly great moms and it’s ridiculous what people get self-righteous about. We already can’t sneeze without crossin’ our legs, maybe we should, I dunno, at least be nice to each other? The world’s already mean enough, ya know?”
She pivoted to find Phoenix scratching under his slightly raised ball cap while his face scrunched up in question. “Why do y’all gotta sneeze with your legs crossed?”
Naomi snorted. “You’ll find out when you’re older.”
“I’m older than you, though?” Phoenix countered in a question.
Naomi continued, shaking her head. “Mommy bashin’ aside. I’ve seen the writin’ on the wall. If I refused to let Thea near a screen, she’d be behind the rest of her classmates. These kids are smarter and quicker than we ever were—or will be—and they’ll never be told ‘you won’t have a calculator on you at all times’. My baby might learn how to code something into a computer that cures cancer, or some shit. It’s better for her to learn how to navigate the internet than Lincoln Logs in this day and age.”
“Jesus H. Christ, you and Snake are made for each other.”
Naomi laughed as she turned back to the stovetop. “I’m rollin’ my eyes again, just so you know. I’ve probably got one more eye roll in me before I’m stuck that way. It’ll be hard to keep cookin’ like that and this bacon ain’t near done in the oven. And no one likes overcooked eggs or lumpy grits.”
A watery belch behind her made her whip around to see Phoenix’s blanched face again. “God, why does that sound like heaven and hell in the same bite.”
“I figured you were sassy ‘cause you’re feelin’ last night a little.”
Phoenix groaned. “A lot, actually. I don’t remember the last time I got that gone. I guess Devil always kept me in check more than I knew.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t go anymore, right?”
“Nope.” Phoenix rested his head in his palms, squishing his face before declaring his woes with all the airs of a soap opera actress. “All the good ones are gone, Naomi. Stolen from me. I keep tryna tell ‘em, can’t be puttin’ pussy on the pedestal, my dude. But they don’t listen. “First Jaybird… then Devil…”
“Don’t be so dramatic. That’s growin’ up. We all gotta do it sometime. Besides, you’ve got Hawk and Wes still.”
Phoenix scoffed. “Yeah, sure. I’ll party with the machine and the robot. That’ll be greaaaat fun.”
“Hey,” Naomi turned and snapped the tongs at him, far away so that if any bacon grease or eggs flew off, it wouldn’t be anywhere close to hitting his whiney ass. “Wes is fun. Y’all gotta get all your issues out on the table.” A memory wriggled in the back of her brain. Maybe it was something Phoenix had said the night before? She’d been preoccupied, so it was hard to recall.
“That ain’t happenin’, Naynay.”
Naomi growled, all attempts at remembering the night before’s conversation forgotten. “I really don’t like that nickname. But you and Nora are stickin’ to it, I guess.”
“I like it,” Phoenix joked. “Makes me wanna dance.” He did a shimmy and immediately turned an off shade of green. “Ugh, is it gonna be ready soon? If not, I might go pray to the porcelain gods first.”
“Should be done actually.” Using Wes’s tried-and-true T-shirt method, she pulled the hot baking sheet from the oven and laid the metal on the stovetop, careful to do it without hurting Phoenix’s delicate ears. “Where’s everyone else?”
Naomi crunched bacon into the grits and added cheddar cheese. Operating on autopilot, she piled grits, scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon on Phoenix’s plate before serving him.
He tilted his head before taking the plate. “Thanks. I know I’m a sad sack of shit this mornin’ but I coulda at least served myself.”
Naomi felt her eyes widen a fraction and she huffed an awkward laugh, confronted again with how fucked up her relationship had been.
“Shit, sorry, just habit from home, I guess. It was, um… expected.” She cleared her throat and added smaller portions onto her plate. “Should we tell everyone else it’s ready or eat it all?” Her pasted grin was brittle enough to disintegrate, but thankfully Phoenix was too consumed with his food to notice as she turned to talk to him.
“Everyone else?” Phoenix took a bite and groaned with his eyes crossed. “Gawd this is good. I didn’t know oven-baked bacon was even a thing. My mamaw always fried it over the stove.”
“My grandmomma did too, but once I found out about the oven, there was no goin’ back. I like how it gets crispier all over.”
“It’s damn good. That all you gonna eat? Don’t want it to go to waste.”
“Won’t Hawk, Wes, and Devil want some too?”
Phoenix kept shoveling in as he answered. “Doubtful. After they’re done ‘interrogatin’ Ascot, they probably won’t have the stomach for it.”
Naomi’s fork paused on the way to her mouth and the eggs fell off. “Wh-what’s that mean? Wes said y’all were gonna persuade him to talk today?”
Phoenix snorted. “Sh’yeah, right, persuade, that’s a fancy-ass name for it, but sure.”
Naomi blinked a few times, watching Phoenix scarf down his food like a starving man. “What’s the right name for it, then?”
“Um, torture? Shit, if your beloved Wes was in charge, the guy might not even be above ground right now, let alone in our basement.” Phoenix continued to laugh before looking up. Whatever he saw in her face made him green again and curse under his breath. “Aw hell, he didn’t tell you.”
Naomi set her plate aside and spoke low. “Phoenix, I’mma ask this nicely. What the fuck is goin’ on?” Her conversation with Wes flashed across her mind like headlights in the dark.
“...maybe you should ease up on the boxin’...”
“Yeah, uh… you’re right.”
He hadn’t lied, per se, but omission was just as bad.
Phoenix swallowed hard, even though he’d stopped shoveling food down for the time being. “Uh… I-I dunno.” He lifted his hat and turned it around on his head. “I-I’m still drunk, who the hell knows what I’m sayin’?” He forced a laugh, but Naomi glared at him until it died. “Shit, you’re scary when you go all mom face, you know that, right?”
“Where are they, Phoenix?”
“Like… really, really scary. You just went zero to one hundred, real quick.”
“I ain’t fuckin’ around, Phoenix.” She was so pissed off, her accent came out thicker than even she was used to. “Take me to ‘em right now, or so help me I’ll tell everyone what you said last night.”
A flood of panic and bewilderment filled his face and she could tell her bluff had worked. She couldn’t remember what he’d said the night before, but obviously he was filling in blanks he didn’t want anyone else knowing about. She mentally pinned that in the back of her mind to investigate.
He gulped and nodded. “Okay, sure… just, uh… just follow me.”
As Phoenix led her through toward the staircase in the center of the converted warehouse, Naomi silently cursed her blind trust in Wes. She’d promised herself that she’d stay clueless. Plausible deniability and all that.
But she wouldn’t let herself stay in the dark any longer. Her daddy had been the best investigator Ashland County had ever seen before he got promoted. Needless to say, Captain George Ward’s genes held strong, and she couldn’t go one more second without figuring out what the hell was going on.
They traveled the stairs, but when they got to the first floor, Phoenix led them out of the stairwell and into the war room where she and Wes had had their first kiss. It’d opened her eyes to her feelings for him and how much she needed to get out of her toxic relationship. But had she just traded one monster for another?
They entered the war room and Phoenix went to the opposite wall and pressed what looked like simple grooves in the metal.
“Fuckin’ A, they’re all gonna kill me,” he murmured under his breath.
“Wes won’t if I get to him first,” Naomi grumbled back.
A hole in the floor opened up like magic. Seriously, one moment it was a seemingly impenetrable concrete floor, the next it was a damn hole that led to the basement.
“This way.”
Phoenix descended the steep metal staircase and Naomi had a moment of hesitation. She obviously had poor judgment in men. What if this was a trap? Immediately, she shoved the paranoid thought away. She had nothing to offer these men. At best, she was good at making breakfast and exposing party guests. At worst, she was a drain on their resources and a potential liability that could get them all killed.
She took a breath and followed Phoenix down into an empty hallway made of concrete and metal. They didn’t have to walk far before he stood in an open doorway.
“Guys… we have a visitor.”
