Men like that only protected the innocent and the loyal, and my mother was no such thing.
“Yep,” I confirmed as I pushed Bea into the car and then opened the door of the Lexus SUV for my mother. “He’s been over to the house nearly every day for the past few weeks.”
“Oh,” she said as I closed the door on her after she’d gotten in.
“Dad,” I called to Benjamin who was arguing with poor Officer Danner again. “Come on!”
They ignored me and as I walked closer, I caught sight of the utter disgust on Lionel’s face as my father spoke.
“You better get on board with things here, son,” my dad was threatening, his habitually immaculate hair gone slightly astray in the ruckus. It was a small thing but it reminded me of my father’s fallibility. “Your father is always vouching for you but I’m beginning to doubt your investment in this.”
“I’m invested, Ben, and I don’t have to answer to you,” Lionel said.
“I’m the mayor,” my dad said as if that explained just how wrong Lionel was.
“And Javier is the one with the money and the connections. My dad is the one with the intel, Jack and Ace are the ones with the inside track and Mitch is the one with the dealers. That makes us equal.”
“Fuck,” my dad swore viciously, so unlike him I stayed frozen between two cars, only a meter away from them. He ran a hand through his mussed hair and looked, for a moment, utterly lost. “I don’t know how it got to be this way, Danner, I really don’t.”
Lionel squinted at him. “As a cop you learn pretty quick what motivates people and you know what it is 85% of the time, Ben? Greed. Plain and simple.”
“I have money,” my dad muttered.
“Vengeance and pride work a close second,” Danner retorted. “Garro hurt your daughter, undermines your respect and makes more money than you do each year in around about a month with the operation he’s got going. Trust me, Ben, you’re chin-deep in shit and it stinks of greed.”
With that parting shot, Officer Danner inclined his head and prowled over to his personal vehicle, an old Mustang convertible.
My dad stood there for a second, looking so lost that I almost didn’t recognize him. All I knew was that my dad was doing more than his usual bit to incarcerate The Fallen, and in his quest, he might end up precariously close to incarceration himself.
Zeus.
I was fuckin’ livid.
Don’t know where the fuck H.R. got off on bein’ a bitch to a woman she didn’t even know. What did it matter that Lou was her age in number if not in fuckin’ maturity?
The woman made me happier than Harleys, Canadian whiskey and any kinda high.
But my kid didn’t want to hear it.
The second we’d got home, I’d called her out on her shit. Fights in the Garro house were usually loud bursts of shoutin’ and screamin’ followed by hours of brooding silence. We all had tempers but H.R.’s was worst of all.
She called me disgustin’, cryin’ as she did it as if I’d broken her little girl heart by fallin’ in love with a woman. She’d never had a hope of her mum and me gettin’ back together and when that childhood pain had drained away, she’d grown up likin’ her dad’s full attention.
She wasn’t gonna get as much of it now and my spoiled brat didn’t like it.
“You’ll be nice to her on pain of bein’ turned out on the street,” I’d growled at her when she’d called Lou a slut for the last fuckin’ time.
I’d sent Cress on ahead before gettin’ involved with the confrontation at the school and when I’d come home, she’d been ready. She had her jacket on, purse across her shoulder and keys in hand. She knew it’d come to H.R. stormin’ out, so when she did, tears streamin’ at my dishonest threat, Cress followed her with a gentle smile my way.
She’d do what she could with my girl.
The cat was outta the bag now and it was fuckin’ scratchin’ and wailin’ like a wild thing but I had hope H.R. was mature enough to see that Lou made her old man happy.
I wrenched a kitchen chair out from the table and dropped myself in it with a loud fuckin’ sigh.
King did the same.
“Why do I feel like my son is ’bout to give his old man a lecture?” I griped, running my hands through my hair to relieve some of the stress runnin’ through my body.
He shrugged. “Spend a fuckuva lota time with Cress, it’s not a bad guess.”
I sighed, slid the pack of cigarettes from my back pocket and laughed despite my fuckin’ fury when I saw that Lou’d drawn a disgusted or dyin’ face on each cancer stick. I looked up grinn’ as I put the pack back in my pocket. “Have at it, then.”
“’S not really a lecture, Dad. Just me tellin’ ya that I get it. I get what it’s like to see the face of an angel and covet it so hard, you’ll do anythin’ to posses it. And I know what it’s like at the end’a that road when you got her beside you and you wake up to that face of beauty every fuckin’ day like you’re livin’ a dream.”
King paused for a sec, searchin’ my face before he continued. “Yeah, I get that you’re on that road now and I get you know it’s a fuckin’ rough ride, but you gotta do what you gotta do to secure that kinda happiness for yourself. Don’t regret a minute of the pain that was securin’ my woman to my side and know you won’t either. H.R.’s a little girl still but she’ll come ’round.”
I stared off over his shoulder, rubbin’ my fingers through my beard as I thought over my son’s wisdom and blessin’. He’d always been a smart kid and I liked to think I’d given him that. He’d stopped bein’ a son to raise a long fuckin’ time ago and now he was more like one of my brothers, one of The Fallen.
“When you comin’ home to prospect?” I asked, because as far as I was concerned, the other conversation was wrapped up tight.
King laughed and slapped his messy hair into a knot at the back of his head. “Why’d I know that was comin’?”
“As I said, smart boy.”
“You serious though, Dad? ’Cause Cress and I are havin’ a fuckin’ blast down in Vancouver but you need us, we’ll be back faster than you can say ‘The Fallen.’ Hope you get that.”
“Got it. But nah, it was just the wishful thinkin’ of an old man. Shits goin’ down with the Nightstalkers and I’m not sure who to trust, to tell you the fuckin’ truth of it.”
King frowned. “You think you got a rat?”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I held up a finger for King and answered, “Yeah.”
“Prez, there’s another fire,” Nova said over the sound of revving engines in the background.
“Fuck, where this time?”
“The grow-op near Squamish. We got Officer Hutchinson over there now, he’ll deal with keepin’ the illegal nature of the warehouse on the down low, but there’s more.”
“Say it,” I growled.
“They hit the tattoo parlor and the truckin’ company too. There’s graffiti everywhere and they took all the money from the till at Street Ink Tat Parlor, but there wasn’t anythin’ to take from Edge Trucking. This was to make a fuckin’ point.”