Chapter 19 Hawk
HAWK
Morning breaks. I haven’t slept. But I lay in my bed all last night and tried. Dawn breaks, and I shower.
Coffee.
Lots of coffee.
And then I get back into my truck—I swear I fucking live in the thing lately—and drive to the hospital.
Eagle.
He was trying to tell me something—Dad and D-D-D—before the nurse sedated him. I’ve replayed it a hundred times, that stutter catching on a letter that won’t cooperate. The only D I can think of—besides Dad, which it may very well be—is the same one that keeps crawling out of his grave.
Diego Vega.
I park in the parking lot because I don’t want to have to wait for the valet when I leave, and I take the stairs two at a time because the elevators seem too slow this morning.
I should look in on my father while I’m here. Of course, then I risk running into Grace, the nurse on his floor who I’ve ghosted.
Except she’s not the real reason I don’t look in on Austin Bellamy.
The truth is I don’t want to see him.
At the nurses’ station on Eagle’s floor, a woman in soft blue scrubs looks up. I haven’t seen her before. She’s got a dimple on only one cheek. It’s unique. Attractive. Does nothing for me.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m just going in to see my brother.”
She types on her keyboard. “And your brother is?”
“Eagle Bellamy. I’ve been here before. Yesterday.”
She checks a chart. “He’s awake. He needs calm. No agitation.” She raises her eyebrows.
“Yeah, I get it. Like I said, I was here yesterday. And, also like I said, he’s my brother.”
She looks me up and down, her lips pursed slightly. “If his heart rate spikes, I come in and I end the visit. Understood?”
“Of course I understand.” I resist an eyeroll. “Is my mother with him?”
“Mrs. Bellamy hasn’t visited yet today.”
“Okay. See you.”
Eagle is propped up, pale against the sheets, eyes half-lidded. The monitor next to him ticks off his heartbeats.
“Hey, E,” I say.
“Hawk. You’re back.” His voice cracks a little.
I drag the chair closer. “It’s the next morning. You got overwhelmed last night. A nurse gave you the pharmaceutical equivalent of a brick to the head.”
He blinks slowly. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” I lean in. “You were trying to tell me something.”
He scrunches his forehead. “Was I?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure I’m the one who should be in this bed?” He attempts a smile. “You look like hell rolled up in a sleeping bag.”
I scoff. “Funny you should use the word sleep in that sentence. I haven’t gotten any.”
“It shows, brother.” He cranes his neck upward an inch. “What’s going on with you?”
Yeah. Not the time to clue Eagle in on everything. “I’m good. Just a lot going on. Nothing for you to worry about.” I pick up his water from the night table. “Drink?”
He nods. I hold the straw to his mouth. He sips.
When he settles back, I take a breath like I’m stepping onto thin ice. “I need to circle back to what you were trying to say before. Dad and the D—”
His heart rate ticks up. The monitor betrays him with beeps that come too close together.
Fuck. All I need is for Nurse Ratched to come bellowing in here and end my visit.
I lift a hand. “Easy. It’s just me. We go slow.”
He stares at the ceiling for a beat, then drags his gaze back to mine. “You know I couldn’t get over it,” he says softly. “Dad trying to…you know. And then he couldn’t even do that right.”
His mouth twists. I want to say Don’t. Don’t sugar coat it. Dad tried to off himself because of some terrible dark secret and he fucked it up.
But that’s for me.
Eagle still thinks Dad is an upstanding citizen.
“And I kept thinking,” he continues. “If he’s alive, and he’s awake, why isn’t he saying anything? Why can’t he tell us what happened?”
“He has brain damage, Eagle. His head isn’t working right.”
“I know. I get that. But if it’s so damned important, why didn’t he tell us before he tried to…do what he did?”
I have no answer for my brother.
But he keeps talking.
“So I broke into his office.”
I drop my jaw. The fuck? When?
“Eagle—”
He shrugs with only half his shoulders. “Mom hasn’t allowed anyone in there since he pulled that trigger. But she’s been so worried about Dad and spending most of the time here, so I found a window.”
“How’d you get in?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Picked the lock.”
“The fuck? Eagle…”
“Don’t look so surprised. You know me. I sold drugs back in the day, for God’s sake. Is it so outrageous that I might have learned how to pick locks? It’s fucking easy, by the way.”
I tamp down the urge to lay into my brother. Hell, I’m no paragon of virtue lately. Somehow my high moral standard has been compromised all to hell.
“Right.” I bite back a snide comment. “What’d you find?”
“At first, nothing. Files where you’d expect them to be. Contracts. Tax returns. Paper that makes lawyers rich. But then I started thinking like a guy who wants to hide something from other guys who want to find it.”
“Which you are,” I say.
He smirks. “Which I am. Second drawer down, right side. There’s a false bottom.” His gaze sharpens. “I nearly missed it. But I didn’t. Turns out it was cheap wood. I popped it with a knife.”
The monitor beeps a hair faster. I glance at it. “Take a deep breath and then keep going.”
“Old statements,” he says. “Way back. Bellamy Ranch got into some trouble when we were all little.”
“What kind of trouble?” I ask.
“I wasn’t able to figure that out from what I found. But I learned that Dad burned through most of Grandma’s Cooper Steel money.” He swallows. “All of it, Hawk. I don’t know how. It’s not in the statements. But it’s gone.”
“But wait… Grandma only died a little over a year ago.”
“I know. Dad kept it all from her.”
None of this makes sense to me. Eight years ago, Falcon went to Grandma to get the money we needed to pay for the drugs we destroyed to get Eagle out of trouble. She had it in cash. Her butler got it for Falcon. How is any of this true?
Then again, that was cash…
Eagle is talking about assets. Really big assets.
“So Dad controlled Grandma’s money?” I ask.
He nods. “Apparently. Or he controlled her.”
The room tilts. “Dad always had cash flow,” I say. “I mean, we had everything. The money had to come from somewhere. The ranch always made money.”
“Not that kind of money,” Eagle says.
“It had to come from somewhere.”
“From somewhere,” Eagle says quietly. “That’s the point.”
My heart sinks. Not because Eagle found out my father might be a criminal. I already knew that. But because this could take all of us down.
“So what else did you find?” I ask.
“That night, I went home and did some searching. On the dark web.”
My jaw tightens. “You told me you haven’t—”
He rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t buying. I was reading. The dark web isn’t just a drug market. It’s forums, message boards. Places where people talk about things polite people pretend don’t exist. I found a corner where people were discussing Austin Bellamy. Rumors. Debt. And one name kept popping up.”
My mouth goes dry. “Say his name.”
“Diego Vega,” he says, and the monitor jumps.
The nurse’s shoes squeak in the hall like a warning.
I pitch my voice low and even. “Breathe. Slow in. Slow out.”
Eagle obeys, eyes closed, nostrils flaring.
“Evidence?” I ask when the beeping recedes to something like normal.
“As much evidence as you get in shadow markets,” he says. “The same usernames popping up across threads. Receipts with numbers blacked out, dates that line up with what I found in Dad’s false bottom. All paths led to the same place.”
“Vega.” My tongue hates the taste of it.
“Saved us,” Eagle whispers. “Saved the ranch. Saved the family. We all owe our lives to the devil.”
“The devil who threatened to kill you,” I say. “The devil who you killed, and we buried.”
The heart monitor again.
Fuck! I didn’t need to bring that up. Not now, anyway.
“Easy,” I say. “It’s okay, E. I’m not sure it was actually Vega that day anyway.”
Eagle breathes in, out, in again. The monitors return to normal.
Why? Why would Vega rescue Dad and then flood our lives with poison later? Why play banker here and butcher there?
Why would a man with the resources to save a billion-dollar ranch lower himself to hawking drugs?
None of this makes any sense at all.
Eagle swallows. “Maybe he didn’t die that night. Maybe it was theater. Maybe it was the kind of show a man puts on when he needs the world to believe he’s gone.”
“Falcon and I buried him,” I whisper.
I squeeze the armrest until my knuckles ache. In my mind, Vega falls in slow motion.
Vega.
Or someone pretending to be Vega.
“What were you doing at my house the other night?” I ask, even though I know. Even though it hurts to hear it.
“Coming to you,” Eagle says simply. “Like always. You’re the compass.
I called. You didn’t answer. Your truck was there, so I figured you were inside the house.
I knocked.” He frowns. “Three times, I think. Then a pinch. Like a wasp sting on the back of my neck. Lights out. Next thing I know—nurses and fluorescent halos.”
I force my hands to unclench. “You asked for me.”
“Of course I did.” He looks at me like I’m an idiot. “You’ve always been there.”
“And you didn’t use the coke in the truck,” I say. It isn’t a question, but it is an offering. An I-choose-you over the part of my brain that catalogs every relapse like a mug shot.
“Of course not,” he says. “I’ve screwed up enough to write a book, but I was done with that poison. Am done. I know I have to go back to rehab, so save your lecture. I’ll go. But I didn’t use.”
“I believe you,” I say, and mean it. “And I’m sorry I didn’t answer when you called.”
His mouth quirks. “You were busy.”
Busy fucking Daniela. Busy having one night just for me.
And I’ve paid for it.
“What else did you see?” I ask. “In Dad’s office. On the forums.”
“Mentions,” he says. “Hushed ones. A line about leverage, like that man never moved a single muscle without it. About Bellamys who preach right and wrong until someone tilts the table. About turning backs when the bill comes due.”
Reyes’s voice muscles into my skull. Funny how easy it is to get Bellamys to turn their backs on their morals with just a little leverage.
I stand too fast and the room lists. I pace once, twice, to burn off the electricity crawling under my skin.
“Ease up, Hawk,” Eagle says.
I sit again. “I’m getting security on you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Not negotiable.” I cross my arms. “Falcon’s guys. He’ll grumble and then send a small army. Dad has a detail. You get one too.”
He stares at me for a second but then nods. “Okay.”
I’m not telling him everything. My brother doesn’t need to know that Diego Vega is likely still alive. And still fucking with our father.
I lean forward. “You did good, Eagle. You followed the wrong smell into the right room. You found something I don’t think we were supposed to find.”
“That’s flattering and terrifying.” He exhales.
I squeeze Eagle’s forearm. “I’ll be back later.”
“Don’t set anything on fire,” he says.
The words hit too close to the coordinates in my pocket. “I’ll do my best.”
“Hey, Hawk?”
I turn at the door.
“If Vega saved us once,” he says, “what did he make Dad pay with?”
I don’t answer because the nurse enters.
And because I don’t know.
Yet.