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“Captain, you can’t bring her—”
Cap punches him in the face before anyone sees it coming and he stumbles back, hitting the wall.
“You will never dictate what happens with my daughter again, do you understand me?!”
“I was only trying to protect—”
“Nobody fucking asked you to!”
“I had no choice!” Perkins snaps. “As soon as I realized Mallory was pregnant, I knew I had to get her out of here, hide her until the baby was born. Donley is aware of your relationships, he watches, so when you showed the first sign of possibly caring for a girl, he waited for the slipup. Had he found out about the baby, Mallory would have been pulled under his thumb, and then Zoey taken the second she was born. I couldn’t allow that. I’ve seen what those people create, how they can take an innocent girl and turn her into...”
Ravina.
“You had no fucking right to step in where you weren’t wanted,” Captain spits.
“That girl would have milked you dry.” Perkins glares. “Look what she gave up for money and a secure lifestyle, both of which she knows damn well she could have gotten from you if she just stayed, if she had wanted to stay.”
“None of that concerns you!” Captain shouts. “It was my problem to worry about!”
“The risk was too high to leave it in your hands! Even though you act like you’re not, you’re still only a kid!”
“Why do you fucking care?!”
“You know why!” Perkins snaps.
Captain shoots up straight, all three of us freezing at Perkins’ words. Perkins himself even seems struck that he’s said it.
Captain swallows, looks to me, then Royce, and back to Perkins.
“So it’s true,” Cap says after a few minutes. “And the paternity test results that I get back today will prove it.”
Every move has a purpose.
The lab. That’s why he had to make Perkins bleed yesterday.
“Yes,” Perkins confirms on a whisper. “Don’t bring her home, not yet. Soon she’ll be safe, but not—”
“You think we don’t know it’s her or Raven?” Captain glares.
“You know,” Perkins’ voice is nothing but a whisper, his desperate fucking eyes coming my way. “Then why’s the girl still here?”
“You thought we’d give up one of our own, just like that?” I ask.
Perkins steps back.
“Stay away from Zoey. Stay away from all of us,” Captain demands of him.
Perkins stiffens, his tone almost pleading. “She is my blood.”
Cap leans in, his voice a deep rumble from within his chest. “Family runs deeper than blood.”
“No...” Royce finally speaks. “He’s ...” He looks to Perkins. “You’re Zoey’s dad?”
“No.” Captain glares at the man in front of him. “He’s mine.”We’re sitting in the truck during what is supposed to be our PE hour. Not one of us has spoken since we left Perkins’ office, but I know all our minds our spinning.
“I was going to tell you yesterday,” Cap offers.
“When did you suspect, man? Or fuck, how?” Royce asks.
“Only the last week. I found an old hospital record in the paperwork from the shit Raven gave us, one we pushed aside as nothing. The man who we were always told was my biological dad got sick his junior year at Brayshaw, missed half the year.”
“Sick?”
“Testicular cancer.” He looks to me. “The paper was his op report. Which meant—”
“He couldn’t have fucking kids.”
Cap nods. “Then everything Raven said about Perkins telling Collins he was protecting his own. It made no sense. The only answer was in the beginning he was trying to hide her not only from us but from them too.” Cap looks out the window. “Hiding Zoey didn’t protect Graven from anything, it only protected her.”
“He was protecting her... for you,” Royce says, his confusion obvious.
“All this shit over the years, being in our business, stopping us from pulling stupid shit, Dad letting him stay around.” Cap looks back at us.
“Dad has known this entire time.”
“Yep.”
“And he lied to us.”
“Why?” Royce hedges.
“Because, at the end of the day, my sperm donor or not, Connor Perkins wasn’t Brayshaw.” He brings his eyes back to ours. “The second he agreed to protect Ravina for Felix, he became Graven.”
Family runs deeper than blood.
Perkins chose his blood, that’s who had his loyalty.
Fuck.
“Yo,” Royce drags out, sitting forward in his seat. “I know we’re talkin’ serious shit right now, but uh... we got a couple fugitive females ahead.”
Both mine and Cap’s eyes flash to the windshield finding Raven and Victoria crouched down, sneaking past the trunks of the cars not two rows up from where we’re parked.
Raven’s head snaps over her shoulder and she says something to Victoria. Victoria, who flips her off in response, but keeps after her.
Despite the fucked hour we’ve had, we laugh.
“How far should we let ‘em get?” Cap slides the key into the ignition.
I frown, sitting back in the seat. “She’s far enough.”
He turns it over, firing up the engine, and we laugh as Raven freezes mid crawl, causing Victoria to bump into her ass, then fall back on her own.
