Bruised Innocence

Chapter 39

*An author is nothing without the readers.
This one's dedicated to VandanaSunil *

Everett Fern was working in the factory. He had been much better lately.

He still had to content with waking up with cricks in his neck but something within him had calmed down after he had taught that bastard a lesson.

Strangely enough, sometimes he felt pity for him as well and a sense of guilt always accompanied it.

Wasn't he also just a lost kid?

But everytime Everett found himself thinking along those lines, he reminded himself of what he did to his son and the guilt would recede like a low tide in the sea.

"Everett!" A very familiar voice broke his chain of thoughts and he turned to look at her.

"Del?"

Sure enough, Della was standing there in her factory uniform holding a brown packaged cube in her hand.

An involuntary grin broke out on his face but before Everett could ask about her and Ar's wellbeing, she thrusted that package in his hand.

"Wha--?"

"Detective Smith came home today with some other officials. This is the money that the judge ordered them to pay us in fine. I withdrew it all."

Everett looked down at the package in his hands and tried to give it back to her,

"I don't need it Del---"

"Yes you do! Detective Smith told me everything! How you borrowed it from dealers and had to pay them back by selling-----that!"

Del looked around them, afraid of being overheard, sighed in relief and then added,

"Go pay them and rent a decent place for yourself. And for God's sake, try to sleep! You look like you haven't slept a wink in weeks."

She looked at him, concerned and just when Everett was about to think that he might have been forgiven, she shook her head and walked away.

I guess I am not quite forgiven yet!

Everett thought but his day had gotten much better already.

He couldn't wait to get out of this mess already, so he walked back to the changing rooms, changed back to his daywear and sneaked out from the emergency exit at the back.

He scaled the walls of the premises and went to the hideout where he knew that he would find the dealer.

At the hideout, he was blindfolded, and driven to some place. When he could see again, he found himself inside a big open warehouse.

He was made to stand in the middle. As he looked up, he saw a metallic corrugated ceiling, ropes hanging with levers attached to them, a gallery that ran around the walls of the structure and people with guns pointed at him standing on them, at regular intervals.

Right in front of him, stood a bald middle aged man. He had heard of him; Preston Johnson, he was not a man, someone could get away fiddling with.

He stood with a authority but there was a submission in his posture, his hands were held behind his back. Everett frowned. As far as he knew, Johnson was the one in charge of these dealings.

He raked his eyes all over the warehouse, trying to find out the head honcho there. He had a gut feeling that he was to be greeted by him. Why else wouldn't someone have spoken something to him yet?