Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
Here’s a reminder before you lose your shit today: They don’t serve alcohol in prison.
—Text from Magnolia to Beau
MAGNOLIA
Was it against the rules of the world to have fun and be carefree? To enjoy your life?
Because that was what it was beginning to feel like.
Each time that I felt happy, something would happen to steal that happiness away.
Fucking Cain.
He had a way of ruining everything. And the impressive thing was, he was just existing at this point and he was ruining my life.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He pulled me in to rest on his free knee and said, “Look what Apollo found.”
I leaned more fully into Beau, but also gave my attention to this near stranger beside me. “What am I looking at?”
The computer whiz next to me, Apollo, gave the full rundown. Then Beau told me about what had led him to the conclusion.
“You’re telling me that Cain has a twin. And those two twins are actively ruining women’s lives?”
He nodded.
I buried my face in my hands.
Beau pressed a kiss to the side of my face, and I couldn’t help but lean into his touch just a bit more. “It’ll be okay.”
He smelled so good, and he calmed my anxiety better than Xanax.
“Were they all suicide?” I wondered.
I was aware of the rest of the men at the table remaining silent, but I could feel their eyes on me nonetheless.
They weren’t talking, but they were definitely taking in every scrap of information. Likely so that they could provide backup for Beau if he needed it.
I loved that he had that support.
That, by being Beau’s, I also had that support.
“Done!”
I looked over to see the documentary that Iris was watching was over.
Before either Beau or I could reach for it—because Beau had turned into someone I could truly rely on when it came to Iris—Shaw, also known as Thumper to the club, took the iPad from her and started to scan through it.
“I watched a really cool one called My Octopus Teacher last week. You should watch it. It made me cry.”
I looked over at Shaw.
Shaw was having a hard time of it.
According to Beau, when Shaw was still a prospect for the Dixie Wardens Montana Chapter, he’d met a girl named Katana, who happened to be Hux’s cousin.
They’d had their fun together, then they’d separated just as fast as they’d hooked up, both happy to go the other way and not look back.
But shortly after Shaw had become a fully patched member of the Dixie Wardens MC, Katana had found out that she had cancer and was also pregnant with Shaw’s child.
Now Katana was in the battle of her life while also being pregnant.
It was no wonder that Shaw was having trouble with his emotions.
Though, I’d never heard of this documentary. Maybe it truly was that sad.
“Okay, sounds perfect.” Iris nodded.
He signed her into his Netflix, then cued up the show for her.
She slipped her headphones back on and went back to resting against Beau, not a care in the world.
“I hope my kid grows up to be like her.” Boone grinned at Iris’s attitude.
I rolled my eyes. “Iris is one of a kind. But your kid’s definitely getting some personality.”
As I said this, Margie puked down the front of his shirt, white formula mixed with some green baby food staining the front of his shirt and leaking straight down to his pants.
My hand covered my mouth as I tried not to laugh.
The other men at the table had no such issue.
They guffawed, which only pissed Margie off more.
Poor girl.
“On that note,” Boone said as he stood up, grimacing when the formula tracked farther down his body. “I think I’ll go home for the night. Let me know if we can help in any way.” As he said that, the puke started to leach into his pants. “Goddammit, it’s on my balls.”
I was silently laughing at the waddle that he was doing as he made his way over to his wife and bent over to whisper in her ear.
Nettie looked up and gave Boone a long sweep of her eyes, taking in every single inch of him before her face broke out in a smile.
“Another avenue we need to investigate is the father. He was married seven times. Has zero net worth, too, until eight years ago. Then poof, money. Big money, too. Looks like this is a family con man business.”
That honestly wouldn’t surprise me with Cain’s family. I’d met his father once at a family barbecue that Rose had begged me to attend with her. Needless to say, I had been less than impressed with Cain’s family.
Though, suspiciously, Cain’s twin hadn’t been there…at least I hadn’t thought he’d been there. Would I even be able to tell?
“What does Cain’s twin look like.”
When the men at the table looked at me like I was nuts, I grimaced. “I know he’s a twin. But not all twins look like each other!”
Apollo’s smile was soft when he flipped his computer around to show me the two men standing side by side.
They looked identical. Not a single thing different about them that would help you differentiate one from the other. Especially not if you didn’t know their personalities well.
“The other women,” I found myself asking again. “Did they all die by suicide, too?”
Apollo twisted his computer screen back to face him and hit a few keys. Read for a few seconds before answering.
“All but the first wives for both Cain and the father.”
“So what you’re telling me is that they both lost someone, then decided to capitalize on these losses by marrying all over again, then beating the shit out of them, degrading them, and ultimately making them want to choose ending their own life rather than be married to them any longer.”
“That’s only Able. Cain isn’t actually marrying any of these women. Hell, two of the women he only knew a couple of months before they ‘passed’ away,” Apollo read, using air quotes to emphasize passed.
I let my head fall back on Beau’s shoulder.
“This is a nightmare. My sister is dead, and now he’s asking for money?
How did this get into my name, anyway? I mean, if he started the life insurance policy, how is it mine?
I shouldn’t have even known that it was there or that she had one to begin with. ”
“Looks like all of the policies were in the women’s names.
They just had a will drafted that said that their money went to him.
Right before they got married. According to this.
” Apollo twisted the laptop on the tabletop to show me.
“Your sister changed her will three times. The original will had you listed. Then it was changed to reflect Cain as the beneficiary. Then, a week before she passed, it was changed again to list you as the beneficiary.”
“Jesus,” I groaned. “What the hell was she thinking?”
“That it was two hundred million dollars, and there was no way that she was going to let a man that abused her get that cash,” Beau rumbled, pressing a kiss to my temple.
“She might not have realized how much trouble it would cause. She was likely just thinking that she didn’t want this man who had made her miserable to come out on top. ”
When he put it like that, it made sense.
But…
“She knew that I was trying to hide Iris, though,” I said. “She had to know that Cain would come looking for this cash when he realized. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s been three years. Why is this just all of a sudden an issue? Why come for it now?”
Apollo grunted. “I don’t know yet, but I’m sure I can find out. Maybe he just thought it’d be easier to contest on his end.”
Whatever the answer to this was, when they said how much it was, it made me want to fight that much harder for it.
Two hundred million was a shit ton of money.
If I had that kind of cash, I could protect Iris from a lot of things.
It was time to stop being stubborn about my ‘blood money’ and start thinking practically.
“How do I get the money?” I asked.
“It’s been sent to the state of Oklahoma as unclaimed cash,” Apollo explained.
I scrubbed at my face. “This is a living nightmare. How do you even get that?”
Apollo got to typing again, then loudly clicked the enter key.
“Funds are being transferred in two business days. You should have it by Wednesday of next week.”
I blinked. “But…”
What did one do with two hundred million dollars? Did you have to have a special bank? Did I need an account in the Caymans?
There were so many questions!
“On that note.” Beau squeezed my hip. “Let’s get home. I’m sure you’re exhausted.”
I was.
Playing for ninety minutes during a hard-fought game was exhausting. It was even more exhausting when you were sleep-deprived from an overabundance of lovemaking.
Not that I was complaining about that last part.
That little facet about my life would be the most deliciously perfect aspect of it.
I stood up when Beau pushed up on my butt, indicating that it was time for me to get up.
He didn’t remove his hand, though, when he was standing.
He left it there, kept his hold on Iris, and guided us out of Hopps as everyone else waved us on.
By the time we’d gotten home, Iris was so fully engrossed in her documentary that she threw a fit when I asked her to get ready for bed.
Thanks, Shaw.
Beau, thankfully, offered to deal with it while I was getting showered and ready for bed.
By the time that I finished up washing the shampoo from my hair, he was there, joining me in the shower.
His rough hands moved to the softness of my belly and pulled me into his hard body.
Years in the military had honed Beau’s body into a lean, mean, fighting machine.
He was hard all over, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him.
He was in better shape than I was, and I’d spent the last fifteen years of my life getting my body into elite shape thanks to my career as a professional soccer player.
If you were to look at the two of us side by side and were asked which one was the professional soccer player, every single one of them would point toward Beau.
I turned in his arms and wrapped my arms around his neck, having to stand on my tiptoes to do it.
The water sluiced down over my waterproof cast and onto his shoulders.
He leaned down, his back blocking the spray, and pressed a soft kiss onto my mouth.
I deepened that kiss, pressing the length of my body against his as I did.
His hard cock was pinned between us, pulsing with each beat of his heart.
I let my hand smooth through his beard, liking that he’d let it grow wild again after selling the Cowgirls.
No longer the face of the organization, he’d been able to go back to his previous style.
“I love this.”