“No need to worry, just do me a solid and make sure they get everything turned off and properly shut down and locked up at both garages before you go. They’re going to have their hands full kicking out the campers who decided to squat there when we hadn’t been seen on the property for a few days. And Jake,” I added at the last minute.
“Yeah?”
“If they run into any trouble while they’re there, I want you to hide and call me immediately. Okay?”
“You want me to hide from trouble like a little bitch?”
“Yes, because having eyes on a problem is better than having a dead employee who can’t help give information to us if it becomes necessary.”
“Damn. You sound like you’re part of a special ops team and I’m helping you out on the sly.”
“Something like that. Just promise me that you’ll stay safe if something pops off.”
“I promise. I’ll find a good hidey-hole and call you or Brady.”
“Okay, good. Talk soon.” I hung up before Jake could ask any other questions. He already knew too much as far as I was concerned.
“Doc’s on his way in,” Bigfoot told me as he leaned in and kissed my cheek.
“For real this time?”
“For real, I promise. He’s about five minutes out, so you might want to have your dad and uncles meet us in my office. Tell him to leave his kid with Tilly. She’s out in the common room.”
No sooner did everyone congregate in Bigfoot’s office than Doc came through the doors with an envelope in hand. “Sorry for the delay. Shit was crazy…” When Doc realized there were several civilians in the room, he quickly shut his mouth.
“We’ll discuss that shit later. Right now, we need to know if the kid is Brian’s or not.”
Doc slid a finger under the sealed envelope and ripped it open. He slipped the papers free and looked them over from top to bottom before he handed them over to Bigfoot. My man nodded and passed them to Brian. I watched as my dad’s eyes swept over the papers a few times before the tears started to form in his eyes. I didn’t wait for confirmation of what I already knew. Instead, I went and wrapped my arms around the man who had raised me and held onto him as he came to grips with the fact that the son he had been raising for four - nearly five - years wasn’t his.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his ear. “I really hoped I was wrong about this.”
“Nothing’s changed. I’ll have to tell him when he’s older, but for now, he doesn’t need to know.” Dad let go of me and looked every man in the eye at least once. “This shit stays in this room unless it is important to what’s going on with those bastards who want my land and think they’ll get it through my son.”
“We will have to let the President of the Mojave Devils in on the fact that the kid is not related to you biologically. It eliminates any claim they think they’ll have on your land.”
“Does this mean everything can go back to normal?” Dad asked.
“For you and your brothers, I hope so. It doesn’t change the fact that Sammy killed two of their men or that Diego Rivera has a hard-on for your daughter.”
“You could have phrased that better, babe,” I chastised my man.
He shrugged because he honestly didn’t care about sugar-coating the truth, not even for my dad.
“What about Colleen?” he asked. “What if she comes back for him?”
“That won’t happen,” Baffle informed him.
“But he’s not mine. He has other family out there. What if-”
I cut my dad off. “We went over this the other day, Dad. Whether he’s yours biologically or not, you signed his birth certificate. You chose to marry that woman and raise that child without ever questioning if it was your kid or not. Now, you have to continue to take responsibility for him, just as if you had signed up to adopt a kid who doesn’t share your blood because you are all he has. We are all he has. Obviously, the rest of his family is evil, and we’ll never know for sure who his father is. He knows that you’re his dad and I’m his sister and Josh and Brady are his uncles though. If you can’t handle that, you let me know and I’ll tell him you had an accident and can’t care for him. I’ll do it, but what we’re not going to do is throw that kid to the wolves when none of this was his fault.”
“Colleen is dead. So, that ship has sailed. We won’t turn over a kid to the only blood relation we know of because they’d just send the kid to the cartel to deal with.”
“What do you mean send him to the cartel? Why would they want him?”
My dad was painfully naive. “It means they smuggle people to other people who want to purchase them, Dad. He would be sold in one type of slavery or another. Considering his age, you might be able to guess the kind of people who would buy him.”
“Over my dead fucking body,” he roared.
