Chapter Twenty-Seven The Dark Stallion
THE TURNERS ARE the family of golden children. Blond hair and blue eyes. And Brecken Turner is no exception.
He sits behind his desk in the glass-walled conference room, his body stiff. Those blue eyes of his, much like his sister’s, are narrowed into slits and on me. He was in the middle of a meeting when we walked in, me and Rad, and he understandably wasn’t really happy about it.
Me neither.
I don’t want to be stuck in a town packed with concrete buildings, much less in one such building crawling with people, much much less in a room where the same people have sucked out the very air.
Even though they cleared out pretty quick, their smell and body heat still remain, and I can’t wait to get out of here.
“How did you get past security?” he asks, his tone sharp, the syllables crisp.
While most of the assholes in Montana want to be a cowboy, there are a few exceptions.
Like Brecken. He’s the rare breed who wears suits and hires people to do his dirty work for him.
Kinda like my own brother, but at least Marsden was a cowboy first before he became a landowner.
He knows the land he owns, unlike Brecken.
I take a deep breath. “If I tell you, I may have to kill you.”
A keening sound fills the room at my words, and I look to my right: Hank Turner.
Last time I saw him, he was lying on the ground in his front yard where I dragged him out of his bedroom. His face was smashed in and his body was covered in blood. He was half dead and barely recognizable.
Sitting here in a wheelchair, he still looks the same today.
He’s lost much of his weight, and his shoulders are hunched.
There are tubes sticking out of his nose and his throat, and he looks like he’s going to drop dead any second.
The only reason he doesn’t is because there’s still venom lurking in his eyes that’s directed toward me.
I broke twenty-seven bones in his body that night.
They had to keep him in the hospital for over six months.
I was already in prison by the time he got out, my trial and sentencing completed at an expedited pace.
Not that I care about that. All I care about is that they had to reconstruct his jaw, but there was no saving his larynx.
I crushed it too bad and damaged it permanently.
Along with paralyzing the fucker for the rest of his life.
So now he has to pee in a bag and shit in a pan.
And do this thing called esophageal speech.
Where, apparently, you produce sounds using the muscles of your esophagus.
I didn’t know what it meant until I looked it up.
I’m not gonna lie, it gives me great satisfaction in knowing I took away his voice when he was the one responsible for fucking with Rad all those years ago.
Sometimes the universe can really be poetic.
Looking away from the pathetic waste of space, I focus on his son. “And I’m not here for that.”
Brecken looks at me for a beat before glancing over to Rad, who as always has picked a corner spot to stand in with his arms folded and his eyes hidden beneath the brim of his hat. Coming back to me, Brecken says, “You’re not supposed to be here. I’m sure your parole officer told you that.”
He did. It’s one of the conditions of my parole. Stay away from the defendant I beat up with a branding iron.
“I’m aware.” I tip my hat back and settle in the chair. “Good move by the way, sendin’ my parole officer to the ranch.”
His jaw clenches. “I could call him right now and have you sent back to where you belong.”
“You could,” I agree. “But then how will you ever get what you need?”
“And what do you think it is that I need?”
“Money.”
His jaw clenches again. “What do you know about it?”
“I know you don’t got it.”
He watches me for a few seconds before breathing out. “If this is another bid to get a piece of our land, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. We don’t need your money.”
“I know. You already have someone lined up who’s going to drill on your land and bring you all the money that you need.”
“So then I don’t understand the purpose of your visit.”
“The purpose of my visit,” I say, continuing to look him in the eyes, “is to tell you that the land you’re gonna drill on belongs to me. Or at least half of it.”
“What?”
I throw the file I brought with me on the table. It skids across and makes it all the way to him where he slaps a palm on it to keep it from falling to the floor. He glances down at it for a second before looking up. “What is this?”
“Readin’ material.”
His jaw moves back and forth before he once again glances down and opens the file.
What he reads in there makes his body go even more rigid, his fingers fisting the edge of the page.
Then he slowly breathes out, lets go of the file, and reaches for the phone.
Looking up at me, he presses a button on it and says, “Yeah, Beth. Can you send my father’s nurse in? He needs to go home.”
Another keening-like sound from Hank Turner that makes Brecken clench his teeth. He doesn’t look away, though, and neither do I. Not even when the door to the conference room opens and those sounds become louder as the nurse wheels him out as she murmurs soothing words.
Then, Brecken asks, “Is this some kind of a joke?”
“Depends.” I shift in my seat. “Are you laughin’?”
His chest moves with a large breath. “You’re married to my sister.”
“You could ask her yourself.”
His breaths are getting faster, harsher as he once again reaches for the phone and dials a number. This time, though, he puts it on speaker and the room is filled with a loud ring. That a second later gets cut off by a shrill voice: “Breck?”
“Peyton?”
“Oh my God, Breck,” Peyton goes. “Thank God, you called. Thank God; I was so scared. I was so—”
“Where are you? What—”
“God, Breck,” Peyton cuts him off. “These Graysons are crazy. They’ve k-kidnapped me.
They’re holding me against my will and he”—a sob echoes in the room—“f-forced me to marry him. Gosh, I’m married to a Grayson, Breck.
He said if I didn’t sign the papers, he’d kill me.
He said he’d make it hurt. Like really hurt, Breck.
He said if I didn’t listen to him, he’d cut my body into pieces and hide it all over his ranch so they’d never find me.
And to prove his point, he killed a bear in front of me.
He took off its head and chopped it into pieces. Pieces, Breck.”
I have to clench my fists in order to suppress a sigh. I glance over at Rad, and I notice his jaw is ticking. I don’t blame him. If he’s really into her, he’s in for a very rough ride. That girl is something else, a fucking hurricane. There’s acting and then there’s overacting.
“I’m so scared,” she keeps going in her fake sobbing voice. “I’m so fucking scared. You—”
“Tell me where you are, Peyton. Where—”
“You have to save me. You have to get me out of here. Just please do whatever they tell you to do. Just—”
Someone on the line—Axton—cuts her off and commands, “Enough.”
And the line goes dead. The silence that follows is filled with Brecken’s heavy breaths and his anger. I can feel it. I can even relate to it. That’s what I feel every time I think of a Turner. He slowly puts the phone down as he asks, in a voice that’s gone really quiet, “What do you want?”
My jaw clenches. “You know what I want. I want your land.”
“Apparently, you already have half of it,” he says, his body almost vibrating.
“Yeah, but I want all of it. I want your share of the land too.”
“Is that right?”
“You sign your half over to me, your sister goes free and that oil company you’re meetin’ up with in a few weeks gets to drill.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I take it all away. I fuck it all up. Your meeting, your business.” I force myself to add, “Your sister.”
My proclamation is followed by a silence so thick that when Breck speaks next, his voice sounds too loud and jarring. “She doesn’t deserve this. She doesn’t deserve to be a pawn in your game.”
I already fucking know that.
I know she doesn’t deserve what I’m dishing out.
And no, I’m not talking about his sister; I’m talking about her.
Not because I think his sister, the real Peyton, deserves to be toyed with, either, but because I dragged the girl, the one I thought was Peyton, through the fires of hell just for trusting the wrong man.
Just for coming out of her shell for once in her shitty life.
I’m the one who committed the crime all those years ago, but she’s the one who got punished for it.
Even so, I keep my voice light: “That’s up to you now, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know what?”
“What my father was doing,” he says, his eyes frothing with something. “All my life he groomed me to take over the business, this land, everything he and my ancestors ever built. When all this time, he was burning it to the ground. Just like he did with my family. My mother and my sister.”
I don’t know a lot about Brecken Turner.
Except that we’re about the same age and he thinks his degrees from Harvard and wherever the fuck else will help him run his ranch.
But right now, in this moment, I almost feel sympathy for him; looks like he got screwed over by his father too.
Almost. Because sympathy is for better men than me.
I’m just a man burning with hatred and driven by revenge.
“Any particular reason you’re sharing your sob story?”
He grits his teeth and draws his shoulders straight. “As I said, I didn’t know. I had no idea he’d rigged the barn that night. Or that he was going to kill that girl. So—”
I spring up from my seat then, cutting him off. I don’t need to hear this. I don’t need to hear how he didn’t know his father was going to blow up an innocent girl so maybe I should take mercy on him. On his family, on his sister.