Chapter 41
Idaho
Aweek had passed and we were trying to finalize our plans to start going after Fremont.
It was difficult because the man had so much pull with the city and law enforcement.
We couldn't just make him disappear, like Butcher kept suggesting.
As much as I wanted to give Krier some company in that mineshaft, Fremont's disappearance would cause a manhunt.
We didn't need people looking at us too closely, and they inevitably would.
The cops working with Fremont would set them on our trail in a heartbeat.
Lock knew this, so he was keeping everyone on a tight leash while we tried to figure out our game plan.
I promised Eva that I'd take her on an extended honeymoon once this was all over.
For now it was too dangerous to leave the others.
There was safety in numbers for all of us.
The women were taking the resulting lockdown fairly well, apparently they'd already been through this before.
Eva was back in school, but with Thomas, and a second bodyguard I hired, she was safe to go to classes.
Fremont wasn't going to go after her on campus. He still had a reputation to maintain.
I walked into Lock's office and shut the door. He raised his head and his eyes went from me to it as his brows rose. "Something you need to talk about?"
"Yeah."
"If it has anything to do with what you saw last week, I don't-"
"It's not that," I said, interrupting him. I sat down in the chair, making myself at home and irritating him. I was the younger brother by two minutes, it was my duty in life to annoy him.
Lock set his pen down and leaned back in the chair. He folded his arms over his chest, watching me, waiting. I'd asked to speak with him, he wasn't about to start this. He probably wished I'd fuck off and get lost.
"We need to talk about this." I motioned between us. "I plan to stay and this fucking wall between us needs to be knocked down."
"You created it." He stared at me, an impassive look on his face, but I knew he was furious.
The first few times I'd tried to explain to him, he let me. But in order to honor our mother's wishes, I hadn't been able to tell him much. That had only pissed him off more and not long after he stopped listening to any explanations. He just cut me out.
"It's been a long time," I told him.
He slammed a fist down on the desk, forcing me to shut my mouth. The rage was still there, boiling under the surface for all these years. "You left our mother to die alone," he snapped. He was trying to contain himself.
"She wasn't alone. She had you. And Daphne.”
"Oh," he sneered, "and that makes it better?" He gave a humorless laugh. "She wasted away in that bed for a week. Waiting for you." His chest was rising and falling rapidly as his anger mounted. "I fucking waited there for you. And where were you?"
"I-"
"Where the fuck were you!" he bellowed, half rising from the chair, leaning over the desk. He wanted to kill me. I could see it in his eyes.
"I made a promise," I told him.
"Fuck your promises!"
The door opened and we both looked over at Hush. "Need some help, Lock? Idaho?" he asked, looking between us.
'Help', as in, the boss was going full Lockout and we didn't want holes in the walls. Hush knew Lock well. "No. It's fine," I answered because my brother was too busy foaming at the fucking mouth to answer. "Give us a few minutes."
As soon as the door shut Lock focused back on me again. "I don't want your bullshit excuses. Either tell me where you were instead of being next to our mother's side, or get the fuck out. Out of my office. Out of my club. Out of my goddamn life."
I'd asked for this. There was no holding back this time.
The promise I'd made to our mother didn't matter anymore.
She was gone, her daughter was gone, and her sons were at each other's throats.
She had thought by keeping it secret we would avoid this situation.
I wasn't breaking the intent behind her promise, so it was time to fix this.
"I got there before you and Daphne did."
Lock stopped breathing for a few heartbeats. It was as though he'd turned to stone. Once he began again, he sat down. It was the only invitation to speak I was going to get.
"I got there a day before you," I said again.
"I had every intention of sitting there with her, with all of you, until the end.
Until that fucking disease took her from us.
" I held his gaze. "But then her phone rang.
" I shook my head, looking down, studying the wood grain pattern on the desk.
"She was too damn weak to answer it, so I did. "
Silence stretched between us. I could hear his voice all over again.
"It was Dad. He was tripping over his words, that's how fast he was speaking. He was in trouble."
"Who gives a fuck?" Lockout snapped. "He abandoned us."
"Mom gave a fuck," I answered. "She-" I sighed, knowing he wasn't going to like what I was about to say.
Lock hated our father. Hated him more than he hated anything in this world.
It was because he saw too much of himself in the man who helped create us.
Only our father was a piece of shit. He never deserved our mother.
Didn't love her. Didn't love us. He was a lowlife.
A criminal. And had never done anything with himself.
He lived off Mom, and us when we were sixteen and old enough to get jobs.
Daphne had gotten the hell out as soon as she could, at our urging.
He drank the days away. Fought with Mom.
The day he raised a hand to her was the day we stepped up and took over as the men in our house.
He didn't abandon us so much as we forced him out. And we could both live with that.
What Lock meant by he abandoned us, was that the man who'd sired us had changed not long after we were born.
He'd gone from the guy Mom had fallen in love with, so hopeful about the world and his family, to a useless fucking cokehead.
He'd started drinking heavily and eventually turned to drugs to deal with the demons that haunted him.
That's what he told Mom anyway. We knew better.
He just wanted to escape reality and all the responsibilities that came with having a family.
We never got to have that strong father figure and Mom lost the man she loved.
She never gave up hope that he'd return to her. Not even in the end.
"She asked me to help him."
"And you went?" Lock spat, looking disgusted.
"You wanted me to ignore her dying wish, Liam?" I asked, incredulous.
His shoulders sagged and he sighed. "No.
She would have only badgered you until you went anyway.
" We both grinned at his words. That was Mom.
She had been our strength as kids. The one who was always there for us whenever we needed someone.
And we needed her a lot. More than we should have. Fuck, I missed her.
"He called because he owed some dealer money." I shook my head. "I don't know what the fuck he did with it all, but he had to come up with two grand or they were going to kill him." I snorted. "Two grand. A fucking drop in the bucket for either of us at this point."
"Did you find him?"
"Not before Catfish Willy did," I admitted. "Took me a while to track him down. By the time I did, he was in a dumpster."
"So he's dead." Lock nodded his head, not showing any emotion. "I figured. Otherwise he'd have shown up looking for money a long time ago."
"I tried to get home," I told him.
"You showed up the day after the funeral."
"Yeah," I sighed. "I would have rather been there with the three of you, but she begged me."
"Yeah, I don't know if I could have denied her that either."
I scoffed at that. "Why do you think she asked me?" I chuckled. "She knew what you'd say even to her deathbed wish."
One corner of his mouth kicked up at that. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me?" he asked. "I'd have been pissed, but I wouldn't have cut you out like I did."
"She made me promise. And fuck you. You absolutely would have cut me off for going to help Dad."
"See me doing it now?" he asked with a lifted brow.
"You've mellowed out in your old age."
He snorted and shook his head. "Fuck off." He paused, then eventually asked, “Did you ever tell Daphne?”
“No. I didn’t want to put her in the middle of us. And she never asked. She just loved us both and didn’t speak about me to you.”
This time the silence was less tense. We just sat there in it. Comfortable. Coming back had been the right call on my part. He was already halfway to forgiving me by the time we had this talk. Now that he knew it had been Mom who'd been the reason I wasn't there, it took the wind out of his sails.
The door opened again. "Sorry. Seriously. Just makin' sure you two haven't killed each other. You two being quiet is almost as scary as Toxic and Butcher being quiet," Hush said, then shut the door again when he saw we were both alive.
I chuckled. "You have a great family here."
"They're yours now, too," Lock said with a heavy sigh. "Still isn't getting you out of scrubbing toilets." He stood up and went to the door.
"We done?"
"That's all the patience I have for talking about emotional shit today," he replied as I followed him out into the main area of the clubhouse.
"We could still talk about Keely," I offered with a shit-eating grin.
Before he could yell at me the door to the clubhouse slammed open.
My hand went directly to the gun at my back.
My shoulders tensed when I saw Static walk in.
He was covered in blood. His dress shirt ripped in three places.
His tie was gone. He'd gone into work this morning to take some time off so he could focus on this Fremont problem with us.
"What the fuck happened?" Lock asked.
Static grinned, then grimaced and touched his split lower lip. He had a black eye and I was sure there were bruises all over his body. "Fucking assholes who took Eva jumped me on the way home."
"We should have killed them," I muttered.
"One might be dead," Static mused. "Strangled him with my fucking tie 'til he stopped moving."
The other men were gathering in the main area along with us, having heard the shouting from upstairs. Didn't take them long to convene.
"Better come with me," Static said.
"You look rough," Toxic told him.
"You should see the other guys. Well, you're about to see one." He led us out to his car, which he usually took into work, and it had a huge gash down the side. They'd run him off the road. He opened the trunk and motioned to the body laying inside.
"Is he dead?" Rip asked.
"Yeah."
"Where's his ear?" Hellfire questioned.
"Bit it off while we were wrestling around," Static admitted. He shrugged when Hellfire stared at him. "Got me the upper hand in the moment."
"Well, fuck," Lock muttered. "You remember where that damn mine shaft was?"
"Yeah, Lock," he said. "I do. There's just one problem."
"What's that?" he asked.
Butcher reached into the trunk, into the guy's pocket, and pulled out a metal badge.
"Shit."
I wasn't sure how many of us actually said the word, but it was most of us. The fucking douchebag was a cop. A dead cop.
"No wonder Fremont was so sure that his witness would play to his story," Lock said. "He was a cop."
We all stared down at the dead body. I was glad I'd taken the time to smooth things over with my brother.
We weren't one hundred percent good yet.
It would take more time, but at least we'd finally talked.
That had been coming for years. I'd eagerly step into this skirmish with my newfound family, knowing that things were mostly settled between us. "This escalates things," I said.
"Yeah." Lock looked around at all our grim faces. "Get ready for a war."
***
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