Chapter 3
Three
One day you’re young, and the next day you’re wondering if you’ll ever find a pillow that doesn’t make your neck hurt again.
—Gentry’s secret thoughts
Gentry
Six months later
It was possible.
And it’d gone off without a hitch.
Now I was in Bear Pass, Montana, training as a deputy for Jesper County Sheriff’s Department.
I stared at the walls of my new house.
It was better than anything I’d ever seen before.
When I was little, and my entire life was ahead of me, I used to watch Fresh Prince of Bel-Air late at night, and I’d see their house and I’d think…one day I’m going to have that.
But that life had never come for me.
When I was eighteen, I’d joined the military because it was either that or keep living in a trailer house for the rest of my life.
And, seriously, nothing against the life that my family was able to provide for me, but it wasn’t enough.
Van, my big brother, and I had grown up knowing that when we were old enough to work, we were going to have to do it.
My dad worked shift work from eleven to seven every night. My mom worked during the day as a school lunch lady, and then when we were old enough to take care of ourselves, she took a night job that paid better, but also meant that she was gone more often than she was home.
Van and I practically raised ourselves from the time that I was eight and he was eleven.
With no one home to regulate what I watched at night, or when I went to bed, I did what I wanted.
And I saw that house on the Fresh Prince show and knew that I wanted that someday.
Hence why I followed in my brother’s footsteps and joined the Army.
Van went in as a grunt, realized he wanted more, and moved to the warrant officer route.
Meanwhile, I liked being a grunt.
I liked even more when I graduated Ranger school and became what I’d always wanted to be.
Though, throughout it all, that still didn’t help me buy the house I wanted.
The United States Government might be mighty, but they paid like shit.
Though, until Dean was born, I hadn’t cared all that much about the house.
But then I’d gotten a woman pregnant while on leave one day seven years ago.
Then I cared about not having the house.
Though, that woman had fought me tooth and nail.
If I wanted to see him, I had to get it approved. I had supervised visits when I got pissed off enough that I took it to court.
I had to pay child support, but she didn’t want me to have any part of his life at all.
It was the worst time of my life.
I’d had to get out of the military to be able to fight for my kid, and when I did, I struggled financially.
Which wasn’t conducive with trying to fight for custody of a child.
In the end, none of it mattered.
Because I’d gotten caught up in Sage Rice’s shit, and her family had ruined my life.
Sage Rice—now Kelly—had ruined my life.
Though, through no fault of her own.
I’d done the right thing.
The only problem was, by doing the right thing, I’d signed my own child’s death warrant.
This may make me a bad person, but sometimes I had recurring dreams that I had to make the same decision, only this time I was fully aware that by saving Sage, I would be killing my son.
Either way I chose in my dreams, I always hated myself when I woke up.
There was no right answer.
There never fucking would be.
And now I was in this big-ass house, in the middle of a Montana town, paid for by stealing money from the fuckin’ Irish Mob, and I had no one to share it with.
You could always share it with your wife.
I immediately shut that thought down.
Sage wasn’t really my wife. Sure, on paper she had been, but we’d never been anything more than just that—a paper.
Her brother and father both worked for the Irish Mob—though they were nothing more than glorified lackeys. But the real kicker was Mario O’Neal’s brother, Dario. Dario had promised me after I’d pulled his brother out of the car where he’d been assaulting Sage that I would regret interfering.
And I fucking did.
I really fucking did.
Which made me sick to my stomach.
Because had I not interfered, I would’ve gone against my moral compass.
Needless to say, Dario had made it clear that he would not give Sage an out.
He was something important to the Irish Mob. A cousin or nephew or something of the head of the Irish Mob, he was actually someone that could do something. And he had.
He’d made my life a living hell for seven years.
He’d gotten me sent to prison thanks to a corrupt judge, shitty lawyers, and paid juries.
Every appeal that I filed was shot down before I could even formulate a plan.
But then, one day while I was getting jumped, one of the guys told me the reason that this—this being the beatings—would never end was because I’d “taken the woman.”
I took that to mean that, since I’d taken Sage up on the marriage proposal, I’d foiled their plans.
Taken away something more important than Mario’s life.
I’d taken away the woman that needed to be punished right along with me.
By doing that, I’d outsmarted them. We’d outsmarted them.
Something in which they would never allow to let stand.
Honestly, Apollo’s offer to get me out couldn’t have come at a better time.
I’d denied the divorce decree and they hadn’t liked it.
I would’ve been dead within a month.
Speaking of Apollo, my phone rang and I noticed his name on the caller ID log.
“You get her here?” I asked.
Apollo chuckled. “Of course I did. She’s on her way.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
There was no love between Sage and me.
She was a gorgeous woman. Looked like a woman right out of every man’s fantasy.
But the times had been tough when we’d been pushed into each other’s lives.
She was the reason that I’d lost my son.
That was something that I could never get over.
Not to mention, she wasn’t going to want someone who was ten years older than her and reminded her of one of the worst moments of her life.
However, that didn’t mean that I wanted her to suffer.
If Apollo could hide me, he could hide her.
I just had to get her here.
And hopefully convince her to change her name and delete herself off the face of the earth.
In the meantime, Sage would have her trail deleted, her bank accounts hidden, and all of her paperwork through the agency she’d taken the six-month job for changed to reflect a different person.
In essence, Apollo would be deleting her entire footprint without actually informing her.
It was underhanded and all, but I couldn’t risk my new life for her.
I just hoped she forgave me when she figured out why I’d done it.
Not because I wanted to save Sage, but because I wanted to stick it to Dario O’Neal. To Devin Rice. To the mob leader, Sean O’Sullivan.
Fuck them.
Fuck them all.
I hoped that, despite my reasoning for bringing her here, she integrated well. Oh, and decided to keep the name change and change her appearance and possibly create herself a new life far away from the freaks that were her family.
And not draw attention to herself.
“It’s all set up and ready to go,” Apollo said.
“She left yesterday in my boy’s truck. No way for anyone to track it, either.
She did us a favor and cleared out her bank account.
I was able to finagle it with the bank that they gave it all to her, and none of it will be able to be traced.
They were non-sequential bills. And all of the money was moved in such a way that there’s no way to trace it.
Bank manager only knows he helped someone.
He doesn’t know who that someone is. I have a couple of guys following her out.
I don’t want that money stolen or her to be hurt. ”
When I’d first asked Apollo to get Sage out, I’d originally wanted her to be as far away from me as possible. But Apollo had pointed out that it was kind of hard to create a secure area for people without having safeguards in place. And that I was asking a lot of him by not making it easy for him.
The man did have a point.
I blew out a relieved breath. “Thank you.”
I didn’t know why I was doing all this.
Hell, I didn’t know why I’d gotten her name—or a nickname of her name—tattooed on my chest.
I didn’t know why I worried about her every second of every day.
Didn’t know why I dropped that damn dog off with her the day before I was sent to prison.
I didn’t know what it was about her that made me fucking care.
I just did.
“Thanks, Apollo,” I repeated sincerely. “This means a lot to me.”
“I fuckin’ hate when people try to intimidate the little guy,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”
I never thought of myself as a “little guy” until I saw what money did for the “big guy.”
It bought everything.
And fuck everyone else that got in their way.