Chapter 28 #2
I turn back to Z, feeling even stronger from Caleb allowing me to take the lead instead of shoving me aside and doing it himself.
“Why in person?” I ask.
“It’s how the grandfather wrote it,” Z says, eyes still pinging between Caleb and me. “The land’s worth a lot now and that compound up there…” he lets out a low whistle. “It’s all hush hush, so they keep to only doing things in person.”
“Can we set the meet site?” Domhnall asks.
I like that it’s a practical question to move things forward.
Z nods. “You can negotiate location. Senior will agree. The clause is just that warring family can’t settle anything binding without appearing in person with a lawyer present.
And listen Harp, family can’t kill each other or the whole claim dissolves.
Senior can’t touch Silas without losing everything.
You, either, or I wouldn’t have come to relay the message. ”
He holds my gaze. “You’ll be safe. And by signing this, you can keep Bruiser safe. If you don’t, Senior won’t stop until he’s found a way around that clause to secure the mountain property for his line.”
Caleb makes a noise. I don’t look at him. I don’t have to. I know he’s not going to stop me whatever I choose, because he just took that step back and he meant it.
“Then why hasn’t Silas signed it already?” I ask. “I need to speak to my father.”
Something crosses Z’s face. “That’s not possible right now.”
“Why the fuck not?”
He exhales. “Because he got out of prison two days ago and disappeared. We couldn’t track him before he was gone and believe me we tried.”
“Bullshit you couldn’t track him,” I bark. Now my mind’s spinning in a whole different direction. The punches just don’t stop coming, do they?
“Harp, I swear.” Z looks genuinely wrecked by this. “I don’t know where he is.”
Do I believe him? Maybe. Silas Tucker has been three moves ahead of everyone in every room he’s ever been in.
And he was close to parole. But the MC had ties in the prison. If they let him out, could he really have slipped through their net? They would have been watching his every move.
I guess if anyone could have snuck past them, it would be Silas.
My whole life he tried to protect me by running the game from somewhere off screen because that’s how he thinks protection works—i.e., keeping me in the dark. He stayed in the shadows of my life all during my growing up, and I only realized later it was how he was trying to keep me safe.
From all this?
I sigh, hating that I get it now.
I would do anything to keep Bruiser safe. Anything.
Jesus, he doesn’t even know Z isn’t his real father yet, and that Caleb is. I clearly learned it from Silas, who might’ve learned it from this crazy mountain family. The people who love you the most can sometimes be the most dangerous and ruinous to you.
I am going to have a very long conversation with my father when I find him.
I step close enough that Z can see my face clearly.
“Was it you?” I ask.
He goes still.
“The weed in my locker.” I watch his face. “Silas went back to prison for it. I’ve been carrying that guilt since I was just a teenager, thinking if I just hadn’t pissed McKenzie off, none of this woulda happened.”
My voice doesn’t shake. I’m amazed it doesn’t. “I need to know if it was you.”
Z’s whole body language changes.
Not going defensive. Or calculating. There’s just that specific collapse of a structure that has been holding itself up by sheer stubbornness and finally, finally cannot anymore.
He looks at the ground.
Then his eyes flick back up at me.
His voice, when it comes, is barely a sound.
“Yes.”
One word.
One syllable.
Ten years of Silas’s life stolen, in addition to mine and Caleb’s.
I stand there and let it move through me. It’s not the explosion I’d expected. More like the quiet release of pressure I’ve carried for a decade.
I was a kid from a trailer park who had just found the first real home she’d ever known at Caleb’s house with his family, and I blamed myself for losing it.
Every visit to that prison, and every time I sat across the glass from Silas, I swallowed down the guilt of it.
That guilt quietly rotted inside me, guiding decisions about what I deserved and didn’t in life. Every bit of it was built on something Z did before I ever had a chance.
He didn’t just take my father from me.
He took away my ability to believe in myself.
I spent a decade making decisions from inside that theft without knowing it.
I look at Z for a long moment, allowing myself to gaze at the boy I spent years sneaking across the dark to reach.
The boy who taught me to run toward the bleeding thing. I look at the man he became and the choices that carved him into someone I don’t recognize.
I find I have nothing left to say.
Domhnall is already on his phone, voice low and efficient in the hallway behind me.
“Isaak. We’ve got action. I need you to find a safe site to meet with the MC President of the Kings—yes, a face to face—with perimeter, and the best trust and estate lawyer in Texas to read a family will by morning. Torres, right? Yes. Call her now.”
I listen to that for a second—the sound of my people, my actual people, moving on my behalf.
Then I close the door in Z’s face.
I don’t slam it. A slam would mean he still has the power to make me feel something that big.
Just a click.
The quiet, final sound of a closed door that is simply that.
Closed. Permanently.
I stand in the hallway with my hand still on the knob and I breathe.
Caleb still doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move to catch me or fix anything or make it better. He’s just there, six feet back, present and steady and waiting for whatever I need him to be.
I let go of the knob. My hands shake, but I can’t afford to deal with all the emotions cascading in the background yet.
Instead, I turn to Domhnall. “We need the lawyer to look at the clause saying none of us can kill each other, before we agree to anything. Make sure that’s ironclad.”
My voice is all business. “And I want Isaak’s full team at whatever site we choose, not just as backup. I want security at our side that the Kings can see. Everything needs to be locked down, and every contingency run before we ever take one step in the door.”
Caleb nods once and Domhnall’s already on his phone again.
“And I want to know where the hell Silas might have disappeared to before I meet his brother.” I meet Caleb’s eyes.
He nods and pulls out his phone. “We’ll find him,” Caleb says. Simple. Certain.
I believe they’ll both do everything in their power.
So I walk back down the hall toward my son.
Outside there’s a man bleeding who used to be my whole world.
My uncle might be the President of the biggest, baddest MC this side of the border.
But the motherfucker hasn’t met me yet.