“No,” I stated firmly.
“Takin’ down The Fallen has been our family mission since your grandfather was in office and if I don’t get the job done, it’ll be your duty,” he reminded again of something I’d grown up hearing about.
My grandfather had made some inroads, put a few of the brothers away back in the 60s for drug possession with intent to distribute and a few bodily assault charges.
My father hadn’t made any unless you called Zeus Garro killing a man for shooting a child good police work and not just an obvious arrest seeing as he’d done it in First Light Church parking lot.
I’d been on my father’s force for six months at that point and some things were becoming painfully obvious.
Harold was corrupt.
And not inconsequentially.
He was rotten straight to his core, putrid to his marrow and greed-driven with every beat of his selfish heart.
I was still a rookie and even though I was his son, he was still feeling me out, so thus far, I’d been able to keep myself out of his “goon squadron,” a collection of officers that he trusted enough to task with his dirty work.
I didn’t know the specifics of that dirty work and I didn’t want to not really, but I had a feeling that I was inevitably going to come to a crossroads where I’d have to decide what kind of man I wanted to be. My father’s or my own.
“Listen, I’ve got to go, Harleigh Rose’s time with her dad is up and I’ve got to take her to get her present,” I said, my eyes to the little girl who had just thrown herself into her father’s arms.
A guard moved forward to pull them apart then hesitated at the ferocity of Garro’s frown. A moment later, she unlatched herself, turned to face the guard and flipped him the bird.
“Jesus,” I muttered under my breath as she flounced away, waving at her dad over her shoulder in a cool way I knew she had to have learned from her biker brethren that was just a flick of her fingers.
I hung up the phone without listening to what my dad was saying, and grinned at her as the guard let her into the waiting area with me.
“So?” I asked.
Her smile widened, lips bright pink and full over straight white teeth. “Best. Birthday. Ever!”
“You deserve it, so I’m glad,” I told her and as her smile collapsed, her mouth tight and her eyes big with the effort not to blink and let the moisture there pool.
God, that fuckin’ bitch Farrah fucked her up so well it was a wonder Harleigh Rose believed she deserved any goodness at all.
“Dad wants to talk to you,” she told me after taking a deep breath through her nose.
“What?”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s not that scary, you know. Sure, he’s like twice your size, but honestly, he’s twice anyone’s size so you shouldn’t feel bad about it.”
“Not feeling bad about my size, Rosie,” I said after a startled laugh. “Just wondering why he wants to talk to me.”
“He said,” she cleared her throat and affected Garro’s voice, “‘Man’s takin’ care’a my princess, better look ’im in the eye while I threaten ’im if somethin’ happens to my girl. Wanna make sure it sticks in his brain.’”
I chuckled again despite myself. “Guess I better go talk to him then. You’re going to wait here and not move an inch?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve got to move to breathe and like, walk over to that bench over there. Is that cool?”
“Brat,” I told her fondly, ruffling her hair as I moved toward the door and waited for the guard to allow me entry.
Walking across the space to Zeus Garro who sat with his powerful thighs spread, huge hands resting on the table and chin tilted up like he was still holdin’ biker court from prison, was one of the longest walks of my life.
When I made it to the table, I gestured to the chair in front of him and asked, “May I?”
“Clean cut, rookie cop with down-home manners,” he muttered instead of answering. “Takin’ care’a my kids.”
I sat anyway. “Yeah, Garro, my parents and I are taking care of your kids because the province granted us temporary custody while you’re in prison. Not that my decision had anything to do with you, but you should be grateful I didn’t let the system get them or they’d be separated and placed anywhere between here and Newfoundland.”
“That why you’re doin’ this, so I’ll thank you? So, I’ll think I owe you one?” he asked in a low growl.
“I’m doing this because I was there that day you got shot saving Louise Lafayette and despite what I’ve been raised to think, I don’t think you’re entirely bad. More than that, I met Harleigh Rose that day, saw her faint with the force of her scream as she watched you go down and people form bonds over something like that. We did. I kept in touch vaguely over the years then saw her three months ago stealing candy bars just to feed herself. Fed the kids dinner and took them home to have another chat with your cunt of an ex-wife and King and Harleigh Rose found her dying on the floor. What’s a man to do when he’s faced with a situation like that but take them in?”
Garro stared at me for a long minute with eyes the same colour and cut as a blade. There were tattoos that ran from his wrists up under the pushed-up sleeves of his orange jumpsuit and a huge, ragged scar at the junction of his throat and shoulder like someone had taken an axe to him.
They probably had.
I didn’t know how the two of us were supposed to sit there and have a meeting of the minds. We had nothing in common, no shared history, similarities in past or plans for the future.
Yet, there was something about the way he’d been with his daughter, so obviously overjoyed to see her, so comfortably doting, more like a typical suburban dad than a biker outlaw. Something too in the way he sat there, relaxed, but coiled, casual but cunning that made me want to gift him my respect, even after years of being told bikers and Zeus Garro most of all, were filth.
“Great man, maybe he calls the cops, makes sure the kids get placed in a good home or pushes for a distant relative to take ’em in. Good man, he drops ’em off at their mum’s house and drives away, feelin’ like he did his good Samaritan work for the day or the month or the fuckin’ year. A bad man never even notices Harleigh Rose run outta a building at the sound of gunshots and chases after ’er so he wouldn’t be sittin’ ’ere like this with me now.”
He paused, his eyes drilling into me until he seemed to find the gold he was looking for. “Nah, got the feelin’ that despite you bein’ that son of a bitch Harold Danner’s son, you’re something altogether different than any’a those kinds’a men. You got heart and morals the like I’ve never seen, doin’ what you’re doin’ with my kids. You want my thanks or not, you got it.”
“Don’t need it,” I agreed. “But I’m happy to accept it.”
“Things’ll change when I’m out,” he said over the rattle of chains as he steepled his fingertips together.
I shrugged. “Of course, they’ll go live with you, but I don’t see why I can’t be in their lives.”
“It’s the rookie in you sayin’ that. You know somewhere deep that this isn’t their life and it isn’t yours. You don’t go to prisons to visit cons, you put ’em there in the fuckin’ first place. They want to see you after, hey, I’m not stoppin’ ’em because God fuckin’ knows those kids need some good and some lovin’ in their life. I plan to give it to’em. I also plan to raise ’em like Garros, like bikers, and your people got a pretty big fuckin’ problem with that.”