Chapter 76
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
HUNTER
Beau walks out the front door with a shotgun. A twelve-gauge pump-action resting against his shoulder like a lunatic.
Every weapon on the property swings toward him, but I know my brother better than to go for the attack. Especially when I can’t see Lola.
Beau stops on the porch. Scans the army in front of him. When his eyes land on me, he smiles. And it feels like the first real one from him since Dad died.
He brings the shotgun down from his shoulder and holds it across his body.
“What the fuck are you playing at, Beau?” I shout.
“Careful, brother,” he says. “Reese has a gun to your wife’s head. You shoot me, he pulls the trigger. You rush the house, and he pulls the trigger. You do anything other than stand right there and listen to what I have to say, your pretty little firefly dies.”
The world narrows to a point, but I keep my calm. Beau’s little show is about to come to an end.
“You took my son,” I say.
My voice is terrifyingly calm when all I want to do is tear my own brother's head off.
“I took what I needed to get your attention.”
“You took my fucking wife, brother. My fucking wife and son. Are you insane?” I almost choke out.
I can’t believe my own brother would do this to me. I fucking loved him. Only tried to do what’s right by him. And this is how he repays me? By trying to break me to nothing.
He laughs, and my finger twitches on the trigger. One shot. I could end this.
But, I ain’t taking that risk on Lola’s life.
“She’s fine. Little banged up.”
“You’re a cunt, Beau,” Ace spits beside me.
He shrugs.
“Why? What the fuck have I done to you that’s so bad that I deserve this? Trying to toss me in jail? Taking my boy?”
Something flickers across his face. The first crack. “The Greeks made you an offer you shouldn’t have refused, Hunter. I took it upon myself to secure it for the sake of our ranch. Our father's legacy.”
I shake my head. “Our father would be turning in his grave watching you now.”
He takes in a breath. “Well, I don’t give a fuck about the opinions of a dead man.”
He runs his hand over his face and stares off into the distance, almost zoning out.
“You murdered the mother of my child to take my ranch. That’s all this is, ain’t it? Greed.”
“Our ranch!” he snaps. “It was supposed to be our ranch, Hunter! But you took it. Like you take everything!”
“Dad gave it to me.”
“Dad was wrong!” he bellows. The shotgun shifts in his grip. “I worked that land harder than you ever did! Every morning! Every season! And what did I get? Second. Always fucking second.”
For one horrible second, I understand him. The resentment. Watching me inherit what he thought should have been his.
I understand it. But I will never forgive it. “You could have talked to me, Beau.”
“You wouldn’t have listened.”
“You’re my brother. I would have—”
He raises the shotgun and then points it dead at my chest, and every finger on every trigger behind me tightens.
“Don’t say brother to me,” he hisses. “You lost the right to call me that when you married some stranger and gave her a stake in our family’s legacy without asking a single one of us.
You married that slut to make sure I never got it.
You fucked my plans up. If you’d have just gone to jail, none of this would be happening. ”
Jett moves in beside me, his rifle follows Beau’s chest.
“Put the gun down, Beau,” I say.
“No.”
“Put it down and we can—”
“THERE IS NO WE!” he screams. At this range, he doesn’t need to be a good shot; he pulls the trigger, and I’ll be dead. “There hasn’t been a we since Dad died! There’s you, Hunter. There’s always just been you. And I am done standing in your shadow.”
His finger moves to the trigger.
Time stops.
I can see everything. The sweat on his brow. The white of his knuckles. The slight tremble in the barrel tells me he hasn’t fully committed. That somewhere inside the man pointing a shotgun at his brother’s chest, there’s a boy who rode horses and ate ice cream at the diner with me.
That boy is losing.
And then from inside the house…
A gunshot.
Beau’s head snaps toward the sound, and the shotgun drops an inch.
An inch is all I need.
I close the distance in two strides, grab the barrel with both hands, and wrench it sideways.
The stock cracks against my forearm, and pain detonates through my wrist, but I don’t let go.
I twist. He fights. The gun goes off, and the blast tears into the porch railing six inches from Jett’s head. Wood splinters explode into the air.
“Jesus fuck!” Jett dives.
I rip the shotgun from Beau’s hands and toss it behind me. It clatters across the gravel. Beau staggers back, and I punch him in the gut so hard he falls to the ground, and I stamp on his stomach.
My men are already moving in, Drago taking the lead.
I look down at Beau; he’s got no fucking remorse. Nothing to say for himself.
“You ain’t no brother of mine,” I hiss, and I pull out the blade from my pocket and drag it across his throat. “You don’t deserve the blood that flows through your veins.”
He claws at his neck as I release his stomach, but Ace is right there, taking over my spot, making slices across his body to drain him.
“Fuck you,” Ace spits right at Beau’s face.
Ace looks to me, eyes full of heartbreak. We’re letting our own brother bleed out on the concrete.
“Hunter, get in here!” Jett calls out from the front door.
Fuck.
“I’ll make sure he dies,” Ace says coldly.
I don’t respond. I run.