Chapter Two
“What do you know about axe throwing bars?”
When they had their barbecue dinner set out on the table that night, Denver decided to pose the question to his brothers.
Technically, he didn’t have to ask anybody’s permission to do something like this. Yes, typically the money came out of the broader collective
ranch pot for new endeavors, and they asked all four main families that made up Four Corners to vote.
Meeting with the whole collective at a town hall to make sure everyone was on board.
But in this case, he would be financing the whole thing from his own pocket. So he didn’t figure it was up to him to consult
anybody.
He realized, though, that his siblings might feel differently.
“Is this a trick question?” Landry asked, looking over at his wife and daughter, and then back to Denver. “Is someone in trouble?”
“I can’t recall having done any raids on axe throwing bars recently,” Daughtry said, still wearing his uniform from his shift
earlier in the day. “Or any raids, for that matter. Since our dad leaving town functionally removed most of the crime.”
“Well, I warned all my friends at the axe throwing bar that you were coming,” Daughtry’s wife, Bix, said. “Because I don’t like cops.”
“Which has made things very difficult for me,” Daughtry said dryly as Bix grinned up at him.
Denver’s siblings were disgustingly happy. He was thrilled for them. Honestly. It was all he had ever wanted for them. That
was kind of the point of taking charge of everything. It was kind of the point of trying this to make a new life for them.
A safer one. A happier one.
It was why he, who had never known anything about having a real family, who had never known anything about holidays or birthday
parties and had never really had one thrown for him, had decided that they all needed these get-togethers.
It was why they had crowded table family dinners. It was why he had become a grill master. Not just because he liked beef.
It was his life’s work, after all. The gambling made a lot of money, because he was great at it. Because he was . . . He couldn’t
help it if his brain worked a certain way and he could count cards easily. At least, it wasn’t his fault as far as he was
concerned. He knew that other people, his competitors, might feel differently. He couldn’t help them with that.
But the ranch, that was his passion. Doing honest work. He didn’t gamble anymore. He’d made all he needed to. Between that
and judicious investments, he netted himself quite a fortune. Enough to blot out some of the debt his father had left behind,
enough to make sure that his family was taken care of.
Enough to support the ranch even when things weren’t going well.
“I’ve been to one,” his sister-in-law Rue said, down from her end of the table. “Back when I was with . . .” She slid a look
over to Justice.
“I’m not threatened by Asher.”
Justice and Rue had been best friends for years and years, and she had very nearly married another man a few months back. But fate had righted itself, and the two of them were together now.
“It was fun,” Rue finished.
“Yeah. Well. We’re going to open one up on the ranch.”
“That’s desperately random,” Arizona said.
“Why is it random, Arizona?”
“It’s random,” Arizona’s stepson said, chewing around a big mouthful of food.
“He says it’s random. Therefore, it’s random.”
Denver looked to his brother-in-law, who simply shrugged. “I don’t argue with either of them.”
“Well, an opportunity came up. For me to go into business with Sheena Patrick.”
“The bartender?” Justice asked, his brows lifting.
It was Rue’s turn to shoot him a surreptitious side-eye. “The hot bartender?”
“I’m not blind,” said Justice, who clearly felt convicted by his wife’s characterization of Sheena.
“Yes,” Rue said, sniffy. “But you’ve voiced your opinions on her very boldly in the past.”
“In the past you were my friend, not my wife,” Justice said.
“Yeah,” Denver said. “The hot bartender.”
“She’s Dan Patrick’s daughter,” Daughtry pointed out.
As if Denver didn’t know that.
Though, Daughtry was more connected to the fallout of that day than anyone other than Denver.
They had both been enmeshed in their father’s empire to a degree they were ashamed of.
It was just that their hair shirts had taken different forms. Daughtry’s was a badge and a uniform.
Denver’s was . . . the land, he supposed.
The burden of trying to pay it all back.
Ensuring that his family really was cared for this time.
That it wasn’t all a lie coming from a narcissist who was hell-bent on altering reality to suit his narrative.
“Yes. She is,” he acknowledged. “I owe her a favor.”
“You don’t owe dad’s victims,” Arizona said. “Outside this house or inside this house. His actions were his own.”
“But what people think of us comes down to him. And I can’t just rest on the knowledge that I didn’t do anything. It’s not
good enough. Not for me.”
“I get it,” Daughtry said.
Because of course he did.
Landry and Justice were younger; they had a different relationship to what their father had done. They had been abused. But
they hadn’t actively helped their father run his criminal operation. Not the way that Daughtry and Denver had.
They had their own personal feelings on what had to be done to make it all right. And nobody could convince either of them
otherwise.
“Anyway, I think it’s a good idea.” He wasn’t entirely sure that it was a good idea. But the truth was . . . he liked her.
She was strong. She was scrappy. He understood what she had been through. In a sense. She was the youngest, and she had raised
her siblings. Siblings who were now off enjoying a good life because of her. And maybe he had helped with that a little bit.
Maybe it made him feel good.
That didn’t really matter. The thing was, he understood her. And that made him feel like this whole thing was going to be
good.
“So people are going to come here and have events and stay for the weekend and enjoy a little bit of axe throwing?” Landry
asked.
“I think it sounds great,” Fia said.
Landry’s wife ran a farm at Sullivan’s Point, her family’s quadrant of Four Corners Ranch. Fia might have the last name King now, but she was a Sullivan. And at Sullivan’s Point, they had built a store a couple of years back that brought a lot of foot traffic to the ranch.
Pyrite Falls was a tiny town. It served as a rest stop for people headed to the coast, mainly. And of course the bar was popular
with the locals who came down from the hills to go out after a day of hard work.
But it was beginning to change. In large part due to what they were offering at Four Corners. And while they had been met
with some resistance from the town initially, now it was clear that them building the economy like this was only good.
“Something fun to do. And with the equine therapy happening at McCloud’s, and the new place getting set up by Gideon Payne . . .
Well, there’s a lot going on here. Could be good to have something different. A lot of people are going to be interested in
this. Locals and tourists alike.”
He said that with a great deal of confidence. When just this morning he had never heard of such a thing, and hadn’t been certain
of it. But he had done a little bit of research since then. It seemed like places like this were popping up all over, and
that they were often busy.
Why not do something different? Give people something else to do.
Hell, Mapleton didn’t have an axe throwing place. Maybe people would drive from over there to here. Now that would be something.
“So you’re opening a whole business on our property out of a misguided sense of guilt,” Arizona said.
“We have tons of extra buildings. The old gaming hall can act as the host. Hell, we’ll reinforce the historical part of it,
put in some plaques and stuff. People will be interested in that. An axe throwing facility in an old den of sin. Sounds good
to me.”
They all avoided that place. It had been their dad’s old headquarters.
Denver’s blessing and curse was his photographic memory.
He remembered everything. In detail. Just going near that place brought him back to sitting in that old building, stacking up bags of cocaine, or his dad threatening someone who owed him money.
A kingpin of a rural shithole, that had been him.
What a King.
The most ironic last name of all time, in Denver’s opinion. He might have left all that behind, might have gone straight when
his father never had, but the memories lingered all the same.
He’d deal with it, though. Sheena wanted the restitution he’d promised, and he’d give it.
That it would be right at the center of that old building seemed almost poetic.
“Yeah,” Arizona said, looking reluctantly interested then. “I guess it does.”
“And yes, there will be expenses associated with that, but let me worry about it.”
“You’re not going to take this to the collective?”
He felt a little bit like a dick not taking it to the collective. Because they were supposed to.
But this was his land, and it wasn’t really going to affect anybody.
Well. The traffic that it brought in might.
But . . . he was just going to get the ball rolling on it before he brought it forward. That was all.
“We’ve done a lot of work to rehab our image within Four Corners too,” Landry pointed out. “And not being quite so isolated
is part of that. Nobody else goes off making all their own decisions, Denver.”
“Well, I helped found the collective as it is.”
Back when Gus McCloud had run his dad off, and the Sullivans had lost their parents, when the Garretts were trying to rebuild, and Denver’s father had gone from the ranch, thanks to a hefty incentive from Denver himself, they had gotten together and decided how they were going to run things.
That they were going to do them differently and better than their parents had.