“I know your dad. Is that why I’m still standing here waiting to hear the reason for this call?”

I was really loving this.

Tabatha blinked rapidly. Her hands came undone and she wiped them down her face. “Uh—yes. Yes, sir.”

Channing groaned. “Do not let my sister hear you call me sir. I will never hear the end of that.”

I chirped up, grinning, “Too late.” A pause. “Sir.”

He cursed into the phone. “Bren, you start with that and you don’t want to hear what I’ll start calling you back.”

Yep. I loved my brother. A lot.

I just laughed. “Just hear her out and stop trying to scare her. She’s had a hard time.”

“Why don’t you summarize it for her, hmm? I’m not lying about my guys and my bounty right now. I really don’t have the time.”

I raised my eyebrows at Tabatha and she nodded, stepping back into the corner, her shoulders falling down again. She looked almost relieved.

“Tabatha’s dad took out a bad loan to a guy named—”

Blaise spoke for this one, “Timothy Harper, Senior. He owns some restaurants in LA, but also some—”

Channing cut in, “Strip clubs. Yeah. I know of him. He has a strip club that’s on the outskirts between Roussou and Frisco. He’s got some illegal connections. Bren, what the fuck?”

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re mixed up in this?”

Oh. “Tab is a friend. The issue we have is that—”

Tabatha remained in her corner, but spoke up, her voice shaking, “I overheard my dad on the phone. I ran home one day. It was a quick trip. He didn’t know I was coming home and he was yelling at someone on the phone. My mom was gone, but I needed—”

“It’s okay.” Channing was more soothing now. “You don’t have to explain what you went there for. Just tell me the bullet points.”

She closed her eyes, both sides of her mouth turning down. Whatever she’d endured over the last two months had taken a toll. I noticed that she had lost weight, but I hadn’t really took note of it. I hadn’t given it any thought, but seeing her now, really seeing her, she looked as if two gusts of wind could blow her over. That was not the Tabatha Sweets I knew from school.

Regret and pain speared me, going right through my sternum.

I should’ve been a better friend.

Hell. I should’ve been a friend.

I’d been lost in my own world, the one where I was not thinking about my dad.

Tab yelled at me months ago for not being a good friend. She was right.

She was talking, “...He threatened my dad.”

“You heard it?”

She was nodding, but said for Channing, “Yes. He said, ‘Pay up or we’ll hurt your wife and kid.’”