Chapter Eight
OCEAN
“Ocean! My baby,” my mother greeted warmly as she hurried to me on the tarmac of the private airfield.
Euphemia Kilpatrick was tiny, instantly reminding me of Coby, who was only a couple of inches taller.
Dutifully, I leaned down so my mother could kiss my cheek and then wipe away the lipstick she left behind before gifting me with a warm smile.
While I knew she was genuinely happy to see me, the tightness around her eyes told me the real truth.
My father was a few paces behind, shaking hands with the pilot and the crew.
Appearances were all that mattered to him next to power.
I didn’t realize I was clenching my teeth until my mother caressed my jaw with her thumb.
A silent but gentle reminder of how dangerous it was to show Malcolm Kilpatrick what I was thinking.
“How are you, son? Have you been sleeping? Eating?”
“A little,” I lied as I smiled down at her. “How was your vacation?”
“It was nice,” she lied. “You didn’t have to come, you know.” Another lie. “Your father and I could have seen ourselves home.”
Behind me was Abel and the rest of my personal guard, and further behind them was a motorcade of armored cars waiting to escort my parents back to Glamis.
They had gone to Santorini to celebrate their anniversary and were supposed to be gone for a month, but my father had cut their vacation short, and no one knew why.
He hadn’t even bothered to warn me until they’d already landed.
I had to scramble my men and haul ass to the airfield to ensure my mom was protected from my father’s enemies. And mine.
“Then I would have had to wait a day to see my second favorite girl.”
My mom looked confused, and I hid my smile until she caught my meaning. Her expression brightened. “Oh, your second, huh? I know she must be special. When do I get to meet her?”
My gaze moved over her shoulder to the imposing figure heading this way. “Soon,” I told my mother, and she didn’t press for more when my father came to stand by her side.
Malcolm Kilpatrick was a tree trunk of a man with medium-dark skin, a bald head, a salt-and-pepper beard, a patch over his left eye, and a vacancy in the other.
“Son, you’re here,” he said by way of greeting. It was as good as I was going to get. “Good. Let’s go. We have a problem.”
My father walked off and climbed into a Bentley Mulsanne, leaving my mother behind.
I escorted her to another and put my personal guard, including Abel, on her before joining my father in the back of the Bentley. Neither of us spoke until the motorcade started moving, heading north toward the outskirts of Black Veil.
“I received word that another one of our stables has been raided.”
“And that was enough to cut your vacation short? I could have handled it.”
“And who would have handled you?”
Smiling sharply as if laughing at my father wasn’t as dangerous as drawing on him, I said, “I wasn’t aware that was an option.”
“Balfour tells me that you defied my orders and skipped the sit-down.”
“Something came up.”
“What could have been more important than your future and the future of this family?”
“What’s even odder than having your father pick out the woman you’re going to fuck for the rest of your life is that the woman you’ll be fucking is your cousin. Keeping it a buck, I think it’s fucking hilarious that you thought I’d go along with that shit.”
“She’s your third cousin.”
I stared down my father—the Boss of the Fola—with nothing but pure disgust. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“The blood’s diluted.”
It wasn’t. Not even close.
But then I realized what my father said, or rather what he didn’t say.
Enough…
Someone who wasn’t a sociopath might have said the blood was diluted enough, but my father has always been careful with his words, which meant these unveiled his true and far more sinister intentions.
“I’m not doing it.”
“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”
“So then kill me,” I said to my father. “Kill me and let Julius take over because I’m not marrying Niamh. I won’t do it to her, and I sure as hell won’t let you do it to me. I can choose my own wife.”
The Fola was made up of three families—the Kilpatrick, the Balfour-Young, and the Torrance.
It went back to the start of my great-grandfather’s original crew.
They called themselves the Brothers of Rory, and each wanted an equal piece of the pie, so James did to his sisters what my father is attempting to do to Niamh.
What he already did to Priscilla. And what he’ll eventually do to Chiara.
“That’s not how this goes,” my father, the traditionalist, responded. “If you want me to abdicate my throne, if you want to be Boss, you will marry who I fucking tell you.”
Or option B: I could kill him.
And little did he know, it was my option A.
“What do you want to do about the raids?” I asked. “Black knows something. We need to question him more thoroughly.”
Michael Black was an old-school pimp who had been chased out of Chicago for reasons unknown, but my father wouldn’t listen, which only made me distrust the man even more.
There was only one explanation for why my father wouldn’t listen to reason. Black had something on him.
“Black works for us.”
I rolled my eyes toward the roof of the SUV. My father’s ego was so great that he believed fear was enough to keep everyone loyal. It was a mistake that would cost him in the end. I’d make sure of it.
“He’s also the one in charge of the girls.
If someone’s coming at us, why just the stables?
Why not the weapons depot? The shipments?
The traps? The gambling spots? Why always the one piece of business we entrusted with the shadiest motherfucker we know?
Have you considered that whoever is doing this is after him and not us? ”
“It has crossed my mind.”
“So why don’t you do anything about it?”
“Because there are bigger things at play here.”
“What does Black have on you?” I asked because I didn’t like mincing words.
“What makes you think a peon like Michael Black could ever have something on me and live to threaten me with it?”
“Then let me send him packing.”
“No.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because Black’s useful. He gets the job done, and he doesn’t ask questions. Can you do the same? Find out what is happening to my stables and end it.”
The rest of the ride to Glamis, my family’s sprawling estate north of Black Veil, passed in stony silence.
On the outskirts of the city, the motorcade broke up, going in four different directions to confuse any tails.
When the twenty-five-thousand-square-foot home sitting on thirty acres of land came into view, I felt nothing.
JJ, my grandfather, decided it was safer for his family to live far out of reach of his enemies but close enough for him to keep an eye on his interests, so he bought this land deep in suburbia once my great-grandfather stepped down.
What started as a simple cabin sitting on miles of land stretching in each direction had been replaced by a rustic palace—an oasis.
Each generation had added on a new wing as more of our family immigrated here over the years, and I knew I would be no different.
To my father, it was the seat of his power. The crown jewel of the Kilpatrick wealth. It was the walls behind which he decided who lived or died, who got money, and who became made.
To my mother and me, it was where we learned to hide in plain sight, shield our emotions, diminish who we were so that there was less of him to trample.
It was how my mother taught me to survive him, but I haven’t been down with that shit in a long time.
I started pushing back when I was fourteen, but it didn’t last. Once my father realized he was losing control of me, he started using my mom to re-tighten the leash.
And after all he’d done to her, even if my father turned into a saint tomorrow, we were long past forgiveness now.
Once I reached the city, my first stop was to the raided flesh den under Black’s command.
“What the hell happened here?” I looked around at the destruction and the executed corpses of the men meant to protect it. I saw as much as the gas mask I’d been forced to wear allowed. Whoever was behind this hadn’t been simply looking to rob the place.
This was personal.
Fumes from the toxic gas covering the walls, floor, and furniture had made habitation of the underground hideaway impossible.
“What happened? Look around!” Evan, the captean of the Balfour-Young family, shouted. “This is the fourth fucking hit this month! Someone’s been razing our houses.”
“I can see that,” I bit out. “What I want to know is why?”
“We don’t know that yet. The person behind this only ever asks for one thing.”
“Black,” I answered with a nod. “Where is he? He should be here cleaning this up.”
Evan scowled as if only just realizing it. “Don’t know. Haven’t seen him in a few days. Maybe whoever’s looking for him finally found him.”
“If they had, they wouldn’t have done this.” I gestured around the restored historic hotel that was once abandoned and now served as one of Black Veil’s stables and a safe harbor for girls with no other options. “What about the girls? Are they good?”
“The whores are fine.” Evan waved me off as if their well-being was of little importance. The girls who worked the flesh dens did it as much for our benefit as their own and had only asked for one thing besides fair wage—protection. “They’re spooked but ain’t hurt. Except…”
“Spit it out,” I barked.
“I don’t know what those bitches are complaining about. Whoever is doing this isn’t concerned with some whores. They haven’t touched a hair on their heads, but the girls are talking about quitting if we can’t guarantee their safety. Don’t worry, I’ll—”