Wife's Bitter Revenge Against Neglectful CEO Husband-Chapter 138: Morrison Blanchard
You get what you paid for, which is an idiom for a reason. Oh boy, did Alec give me what I paid for last night. I was sore. Everywhere.
As soon as I sat up, I was ready to beg Alec to carry me to the bathroom, but then I remembered what happened when he carried me to the shower last night and stayed in there with me.
I’d die if we tried that stunt again so soon. I glanced over at Alec. His eyes opened. He reached for me again. Adrenaline kicked in long enough for me to dart to the bathroom and out of harm’s way. I locked the door.
Alec’s chuckle filtered in. I gritted my teeth and swore. I should get even with him, and probably would, but not until I was up for the backlash.
Toilet, shower, and toothbrush helped immensely with my misery. I would be okay. All I had to do was survive the next hour or so until Alec left for work. After that, I could escape to my home office and die quietly in front of my computer.
Until Jake got back to me, there wasn’t much we could do about Colby except monitor his situation. I highly doubted CK had slept since he’d seen the first image of his baby brother on screen.
What I could do was go back to Eugene’s love list item. Maybe my success with Colby would carry forward.
Eugene provided me with the basics. Morrison Blanchard was born sixty years ago. He married his high school sweetheart, Anna Gilly. They had a daughter, Hillary. She would be around thirty years old now.
While Eugene may have started as a loan shark and enforcer, he evolved into management, leaving the frontline work to Marrison and his minions. Morrison was all muscle. He may have finished high school, but he barely knew how to read. Forget cognitive reasoning. That was Eugene’s job, but Morrison was loyal and followed instructions without question. He demanded the same from his men.
For a long time, Morrison ruled his men within the realm of absolutes. Either they obeyed and succeeded in carrying out their missions, or they didn’t. Those that didn’t found themselves without a job in the most permanent way ever. Succeed, and Eugene and Morrison rewarded their employees well.
That changed when Morrison had a run-in with the Raven’s Claw gang. More specifically, with Ken Key, the leader of the Raven’s Claw. Key’s people were no match for the well-trained men who operated under Morrison. Time after time, they got their asses handed to them. Eventually, Key and Morrison came to an agreement. Raven’s Claw would continue to operate but under Morrison’s umbrella. Mostly, the newcomers kept to themselves. They focused on some enforcer duties, but mostly, they were streetwise drug dealers who dabbled in prostitution and the occasional carjacking. The Key decided to take up the side hustle of hijacking semi-trucks. He failed to report the money he earned from the hijacking to Morrison.
While it wasn’t okay by any stretch of the imagination, Eugene and Morrison had learned long ago to expect a certain amount of profit skimming. It was a natural part of dealing with dishonest people. In fact, it was built into the profit projections. When Key’s side projects included just the occasional car, they let it slide, but when Key started targeting truck shipments belonging to the partners, something had to be done fast. Essentially, the little punk was attempting a coup to overthrow Morrison and Eugene and take over the operation.
Morrison had no choice but to eliminate the entire gang, down to the dogs in the junked-up yard and the birds in filthy cages on the roof. He sent his men in to do just that. It wasn’t the first time they had to execute the enemy. It was the first time Morrison saw Hillary running from the building wrapped in a bloodied sheet while one of his men raised a gun and pointed it at her back.
Morrison acted as any father would have. He shot the gun-toting man before the man could shoot his daughter. Marrison rushed in and got Hillary away from the bloodbath, but killing one of his own men, even to save his child, didn’t sit well with him.
While the organization took care of the dead man’s family, Marrison’s betrayal of one of his own ate away at his edge until he had none. Eugene understood the dilemma waging within Morrison and cut him some slack. He cut him so much slack that Eugene found himself back on the streets again, doing the job Morrison couldn’t, which further devasted the man. Working the streets was his job.
Not only had Morrison failed his daughter to such a degree that he was unaware she’d been an active member of Raven’s Claw for two years before that night, but now he couldn’t do the job he was hired to do. He had no value to anyone. Not his family. Not his best friend Eugene, and definitely not his men who now saw him as a detriment.
Morrison walked away. He walked away from his family, his friends, and his job. Shortly afterward, Anna packed up Hillary in the middle of the night and left town. As far as Eugene could tell, they took a couple of suitcases and the contents of their home safe. He didn’t know what was in the safe.
To me, it sounded like the obvious answer to what happened to the family was Morrison left ahead of the others to secure a new home for them. Once he had one, he called and had his wife and child join him. They had walked away because they didn’t want to be found. They didn’t want to be a part of a life of crime where Morrison’s daughter might find a gun pointed at her ever again.
It was a fairy tale, really. Dad sacrifices everything for the sake of his only child. Only I didn’t believe in fairy tales. So I started the process of tracking the family of three back to their parents, hometown, friends, and family who they might have reached out to over the years to see what might have happened to them.
Maybe I would get lucky this time. Maybe I would find out the fairy tale was actually reality.
Since Morrison and Anna had gone to school together, they shared much of the same history. They grew up in Abertown, which was little more than a postage stamp on a green canvas of nothing. Morrison’s dad was a farmer. His mother was a housewife. They had passed away a few years before Morrison disappeared. His dad died under the wheels of his tractor. His mother died of a broken heart. At least that was the story the local historian, also known as the town gossip, liked to tell.
Anna never knew her father. She lived with her mother and grandmother in an apartment over the town’s only diner, which was owned and operated by the family. From the time she could walk and carry a plate without breaking it, Anna worked in the diner when she wasn’t in school or riding horses.
When her grandmother died, her mom sold the diner and threatened to move with Anna to Las Vegas, only Anna was in love with Morrison by then. The youngsters were left with a choice of either getting married or being separated, perhaps forever.
Anna’s mom stood by her side while the young couple married at the local town hall. Mom’s suitcase was at her side. As soon as Anna said I do, her mom was out the door to catch the next bus to Nevada.
Six months later, her mom had burned through her savings and was living on the streets, spending every penny she could beg, borrow, and steal on the slot machines. Six months after that, she was in the hospital with cancer, begging to die.
So family was out. Neither Morrison nor Anna had siblings.
I was out of coffee and my eyes ached. My ears might as well be bleeding from my phone call with the gossip. She talked non-stop for over two hours. I was lucky that the Abertown librarian had put me in touch with her, but still, that woman could talk.
I eased my stiff body of the chair and made a fresh coffee run. I needed to get back into my routine of cardio in the morning and The Red Dragon in the afternoon or I would be an old woman way before Alec slowed down.
I picked up the phone and called Estelle.
"I have a proposition for you, do you have a minute?" I asked.
"For you, always." 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖
"Crazy Code is in dire need of a manager. Eugene said he would like you to get out of the finance business. How would you feel about transitioning to the tech industry? We need a person behind the scenes who keeps us fully staffed and organized, which is easier said than done. Wrangling a bunch of coders is kind of akin to wrangling cats. Both lack adequate social skills. Both respond well to food and lose focus easily. We can offer you a lucrative package. What do you say? Care to try it? You’d be doing me a huge favor."
