An Offer You Can't Refuse by Sal Bianchi (best beach reads .txt) 📕

are you hiding?” I barked at him. “That was your baby she was pregnant with, and you don’t seem to care about it. Hell, judging by this party you’re throwing, I’d go as far as saying you seem happy about it.”

“I am happy about it!” Ian roared. “A baby would have ruined my life!”

His friends, who up ‘til now had been protesting and trying to get me to leave him alone, fell silent at his sudden, intense outburst. Ian must have noticed the looks of shock on his friends’ faces, because he suddenly began to backpedal.

“I mean, I don’t even know if that kid was mine,” he insisted. “She was sleeping with half the city! We had already broken up way before that, so whatever happened to her has nothing to do with me.”

“Really?” I asked skeptically. Behind him, I could see his friends muttering among themselves and throwing confused glances his way. “So the name Shane Rutherford doesn’t mean anything to you?”

Ian stopped fidgeting as soon as I mentioned Shane’s name. He froze entirely, and his face tensed so much that I could see the veins throbbing at his temple.

“No,” he lied pitifully.

“Did you hire him to kill her?” I asked him straight out, loudly enough to make sure his friends would overhear. His eyes went wide as he gaped at me. He turned to look at his friends once before looking back at me. Then, without warning, he shoved me hard and sprinted past me toward the front of the boat.

Unfortunately for him, he was drunk enough that he stumbled almost immediately. One of the girls standing by the edge of the boat screamed as he knocked into her on his way down. I rushed up to him while he was still on the ground and twisted his arms behind his back before he could regain his bearings.

“Hey!” The same friend from before yelled as he stomped over to where I was restraining Ian. “Get off of him! You can’t detain him without a warrant!”

I turned my head to shoot Jase a glance. I actually couldn’t detain him under any circumstances, since I wasn’t actually a member of law enforcement. Jase needed to be the one to bring him in.

He glared back at me. He looked angry, but he got the hint and marched up to where I was struggling to keep Ian still on the ground.

“You’re under arrest for possession and distribution of illegal narcotics,” he stated boldly as he secured Ian’s hands behind his back with a set of handcuffs.

“What?” Ian barked angrily. “How did you…?”

He shut his mouth before he could say anything else. I turned around to glare at his friend. Even though he’d looked ready to fight me just a few seconds before, now he was completely docile. His other friends, too, were slowly meandering away and pointedly looking anywhere but at Ian.

No doubt they were well aware of the drugs and were trying to save themselves from any kind of incrimination by distancing themselves from the situation.

“You searched my things without permission!” Ian snarled as Jase hauled him to his feet. By now, a crowd had gathered on the deck of the boat to watch the altercation unfold. “You can’t do that! Whatever you found will be inadmissible. Do you have any idea who my father is?”

“You can tell us all about him after you’ve been booked,” Jase replied, though he was shooting me another apprehensive glare. I followed him as he marched Ian toward the front of the yacht back toward the dock.

“Call my dad!” Ian screamed as he struggled fruitlessly to break free of Jase’s hold. Someone had finally turned off the music, and the crowd was now swarming toward the front of the boat as they fought to get a glimpse of the commotion. Most of them were holding their phones aloft as they did. There was no doubt in my mind that video footage of this incident would be all over the internet in just a matter of minutes.

23

Nick

“It was a clean search,” I insisted vehemently.

“Okay,” Bette scoffed. “So you didn’t kick down a locked door?”

I bit my lip in frustration, unsure how to respond to her loaded question. It was the morning after the arrest that Jase and I had made on Ian Brooks. I’d come into the SDCT office early to interrogate Ian. He’d been too drunk the previous night to be reliable, but when I’d arrived, Flint had informed me that Ian had lawyered up and was refusing to speak. Furthermore, his lawyer was claiming that the drugs we found as part of an illegal search, and therefore unable to be considered valid evidence. Their argument was that a door was found kicked in on the upper floor of the yacht.

“Yes, I did,” I retorted. “But there wasn’t even anything in there! The room I found the cocaine in was completely unlocked. And I had permission to be on the boat, so they can’t claim I was a trespasser.”

“Oh, just stop with the excuses!” Bette snapped. She’d barged into the break room as soon as I’d gotten here to yell at me for messing up the case. “You think you’re so clever that you can just do what you want and weasel your way out of facing any consequences. The SDCT is in deep crap because of you! Not only did you obtain evidence illegally, but now we have videos of you tackling a suspect to the ground circulating online.”

“I didn’t tackle him.” I frowned. “He was already on the ground. All I did was restrain him.”

“Which you don’t have the authority to do!” Bette screamed. “I told Flint this would happen, that you’d end up screwing all of us over.”

“Leave him alone, Owens,” Jase finally interjected. He’d been quiet the entire time she was reaming me out, probably because he was mad at me too. He’d been standoffish ever since the arrest, but I guess even he finally had enough of Bette.

“Wow,”