CHAPTER SEVEN
The Quiet Mustang
He needs to survive me first.
John sits tied to a wooden chair, the yellow overhanging light illuminating his injuries.
His face is swollen from day-old bruises, his nose bleeding, his mouth bleeding too.
There are a few teeth scattered on the floor around his feet, along with puddles of blood and piss.
Makes sense; he’s been tied to this chair for over eight hours and we didn’t give him a bucket.
I stand in front of him as I wrap gauze around my hands, my feet wide.
His bloodshot eyes follow my slow movements as he begs, “Jesus, fuck, h-how long do I-I—”
I rear back and punch him in the face, shutting him up.
The first punch is always the sweetest. I like to savor it, let it loosen my muscles, warm up my blood as I crack my neck and get in position again.
He’s still cursing from the first punch and already begging me to stop.
He knows I’m not going to, so I don’t know why he keeps wasting his words.
But then again, I’m not an expert when it comes to words, so what do I know.
All I know is that this feels good. Letting my arms fly and beating him with my fists.
Letting my body talk instead of my mouth.
There’s something calming about that. It at least calms the words inside of me.
The ones that are stuck in my head. I can see them but can’t really say them unless I put in a fuck ton of effort.
All day, they bang inside of me and I try to quiet them down.
They make me angry. They frustrate me. They remind me that I’m not normal.
Or whole. Not anymore. Not for the last sixteen years.
On the outside, I may look like just another man, barring the scar on my face, but on the inside, I’ve got huge pieces missing.
Beating up a low-life criminal like John Walker every now and then helps keep me sane.
Anyway, the more I beat him up, the more he screams. It would be annoying, but I’m used to it.
He’s no different than the others that come here to live out the rest of their prison sentence.
He wants to know how long I’m going to beat him up; how long he will stay tied up in this cabin, on rationed food and water, without even a bucket to piss and shit in.
And then, he says, he’s done. He wants to leave. He wants to go back to prison.
Again, I don’t know why because he already knows that’s not an option.
He knew that when he volunteered to apply for our program: Rawhide Redemption.
He also knew if an inmate is chosen to join the reformation program at Rawhide, their prison sentence will be curtailed and they’ll receive a check for fifty thousand dollars at signing.
Along with a lifelong job at Rawhide if they survive.
In exchange, they swear their loyalty to the Graysons and do whatever we tell them to.
Most people like the fact they don’t have to do time; others like the job security.
Some also like that when we induct someone into our fold, we protect them with our lives too. Them and their families.
But first, they go through an initiation period.
To repent for their crimes and to see whether we made the right decision in accepting them.
As in whether or not they’re Rawhide material.
The initiation period can last anywhere from a week to a month, depending on how much work is needed to “reform” the convict.
No, it doesn’t say what the initiation entails, but the terms are clear: When you agree to join the Rawhide Redemption program, there’s no going back.
In the midst of the beatdown, I think I hear my name being called, but I can’t be sure.
Then it gets louder and before I know it, I’m being yanked away from my target.
I come back to the moment and realize that John is slumped to the side, unconscious, his face completely unrecognizable due to more injuries and the blood.
A bone sticks out the side of his face and the man who pulled me back, Marsden, is bent over and inspecting.
Panting, I ask, “He breathin’?”
Marsden straightens and turns to me, his face stern.
Nine years older than me, Mars is my cousin and very much the patriarch of the Grayson family.
He wears his Stetson and his authority well.
Nothing happens at Rawhide without his say-so and I respect him for that.
I respect him for the way he took over the ranch and the upbringing of his two younger brothers, Arsenal and Axton, when their parents died.
He also kept me around, helped me through my parents’ deaths and all the bullshit that came after it.
He had no reason to. Yes, I was family, and Arsen and I were thick as thieves growing up.
But I’m not a Grayson, and the Graysons like to keep their business to themselves.
For good reason. What with century-old land feuds and a prison reformation program that isn’t exactly on the books.
More than my cousin, Mars is the man I owe everything to.
Making him unhappy isn’t something I like to do and something Arsen likes to give me shit about.
So he’d be proud to know that for once, Mars’s anger doesn’t bother me.
“Barely,” Mars replies with a grunt.
Without a word, I start removing the blood-soaked gauze from my hand.
Mars turns back to peruse the damage I caused. “You broke his fuckin’ face.”
Since this doesn’t need my response either, I stay silent.
“We’re gonna have to get Dr. Harris up here,” he continues, referring to the old doctor that we use for stuff like this, making sure the damage from their beatings isn’t lasting so they’re still standing on the other side of the initiation week.
Finally, Mars turns back to me and watches me take the gauze off. “You wanna tell me somethin’?”
Again, not something that requires words, so I simply shake my head.
He studies me for a few seconds. “I know you think every criminal deserves to rot either in prison or in hell, and I get that. But this is extreme, even for you, boy.”
I finally find my words and growl, “He fuckin’ killed someone for a pack of gum.”
“He almost killed someone for a pack of gum,” Mars reminds me.
“The kid was fuckin’ nineteen,” I say, dragging in an angry breath.
“He was the sole guardian of his younger brother, and now ’cause of this pissant, he won’t be able to hold a job.
Ever.” I take a pause to gather myself, arrange my words in my head so they don’t sound like a garbled mess because of the burning anger in my veins.
“How many guys around these parts want to hire a guy in a wheelchair? His brother was about to be thrown in the fuckin’ system. ”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t,” Mars reminds me again. “Instead, he’s up in a fancy boarding school because you saved him.”
Two years ago, John Walker was everywhere on the news.
Along with Jesse, the store clerk who got paralyzed because of the shooting; and his younger brother, Sunny.
There was a lot of speculation about what was going to happen to Sunny and if he was going to end up in the shitty system.
Since the name Grayson and, by association, King, opens a fuck of a lot of doors in Montana, I pulled some strings and had Sunny sent up to a boarding school.
I wouldn’t call it saving, though. Saving Sunny would’ve been somehow keeping him with Jesse, which I couldn’t do.
Not with Jesse’s tough recovery both physically and mentally.
I want to say a lot of things, but I know if I open my mouth, nothing will come out. Nothing that would make any sense. So I hold all the fucking words inside and let them fight each other in my damaged brain.
Mars studies me for another moment. “You did what you could, you get me? You can’t go about killin’ people for it.”
I give him a look. Like, he can fucking talk.
Being the patriarch of a billion-dollar ranch is not for the faint of heart.
It requires strength, a certain ruthlessness, and a willingness to cross lines and make your own rules.
As the foreman of this ranch, I’ve had to bend, break, and rewrite the law and play God from time to time.
But Mars has buried more bodies than me.
And while my regret went away the day my parents died, I know he feels it.
Mars preaches his one cardinal rule: “Not if he ain’t taken a life himself.”
I clench my jaw. There are many ways to take a life, to destroy it, to burn it down, without actually taking it.
But I don’t share that with Mars. I also don’t share that according to his rules, I should be the one sitting in that chair, being beaten to death because I’ve played God for what he’d think is a lot less.
I could resent him for his idealistic thinking, but I don’t.
I think it’s admirable that he’s got some goodness left in him, some morals.
He’s lucky that he’s never had anything snatched away from him like it was from me.
But if he’s got his own rules, then I’ve got mine.
Mars lets out a large breath. “All right, I’m gonna get someone to clean this up and make that call to the doctor.” Then, looking at me, “And I’m pullin’ you off this.”
“The fuck you are,” I say and spit on the floor, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
He exhales sharply. “We need him alive, boy, and you’re too fuckin’ close to let that happen.”