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“Don’t coach me, big brother. I know what I’m doing here.” He tiptoed over to the sofa and gently peeled her fingers away from the weapon she was holding. After he placed it in the gun safe, he nodded at Coco and said, “How can these women go to sleep with loaded guns in their hands?”
Kurt remembered something his mother had once told him. “She’s an angel born without wings with lethal blood running through her veins and a devil’s heart pumping its random beats inside her. Will she be heaven sent or hell bound? No one really knows, but either way, it is our duty to hold on to her and love her.”
“What did you say?” Brandon’s head popped up from an armrest where he’d been relaxing.
“Something Mom told me a long time ago.”
“I heard you, but why would you say that now?”
Kurt eyed the gorgeous woman with raven hair and skin so white and flawless that she looked like the very angel his mother had once described. “She may have her father’s blood in her veins, but she isn’t like him, Brandon. We shouldn’t put a gun in her hand. And we should never ask her to fight for herself when we should take up arms and fight for her. You’ve trained her and that’s obvious. Mother would be so very proud, but I don’t want my woman with a gun in her hand and a baby on her hip.”
“What are you talking about?” Brandon leaned forward with his legs splayed, his hands gripping the armrests.
“Mom.” He fondly remembered his mother in her later years, writing about a past no one could’ve seen let alone understood, but he remembered everything as if it were yesterday. He recalled how she was before she became this driven writer, dying to tell her story even if those tales were penned in deception and disguised as fiction. “You’re the oldest now and you’re telling me you don’t remember Mom with a gun in hand and one of the younger ones beside her or attached to her hip?”
“Sometimes a man has to choose whether or not he wants to rehash the past or let rabid dogs lie.” Brandon’s eyes were misty and Kurt was glad to see those watery eyes. It proved him wrong on one count. Brandon still had a heart somewhere underneath his tough exterior. Maybe his heart wasn’t as black as Kurt had once feared. He could hope anyway.
At the very least, he’d called their mother out as she was—at least how she was before she was ill and bedridden. She’d been a vulture in business, a rabid dog. She was aggressive, restless, and practically foaming at the mouth for the big score, the huge payday.
The last two years of her life, she was a mother, seeking forgiveness from a higher power and those close to her and leaning on Coco for one reason more than any other. She wanted Coco to carry on with her work but to what degree is what concerned Kurt. How much did Coc
o really know? How much had his mother taught her and how much had she learned from her?
As he and Brandon discussed the recent past, he couldn’t help but think of the future. As Geraldine Blazier’s sons, would they carry on the family tradition, making the big money the old-fashioned and illegal way or would they better themselves, learn from their mother’s mistakes, protect themselves from the heartache and death that surely followed those in their line of work?
He had almost slipped off to sleep when Brandon said, “I don’t want this for us.”
Liam shifted his upper body, obvious in his attempt to find a comfortable position. “None of us do.”
“When we get out of here tomorrow, we start making a way for a better future. I don’t want to dodge bullets the rest of my life and have to wonder if we’re running from our enemies or running from theirs.” Brandon looked at Coco as if he would do anything in his power to protect her. “Whatever it takes.” He took a moment to study each brother, nodding slightly before he moved on to the next one. “We go legal because it’s the right thing to do and because it could save the people we care about.”
“We’ll do it,” Zak said, never dragging his gaze away from Drina.
“I already told you I’m out,” Kurt said.
“Leaving the gun business behind will be easier than you think, Brandon.” Liam threw a cushion behind his head. “We’ll work cattle by day and lay down at night with a clear conscience. That’s better than what we’ve had and far more than what Mom and Nate enjoyed.”
“I don’t know about all that, but I know one thing—I’m not spending my life behind bars while the people I love are fighting a war we didn’t cause with people we don’t know. We’re not paying for the sins of our mother. The people we love aren’t going to die with bullet holes in their flesh.” His face softened. “Those we love will one day meet the perfect demise. They’ll die in their sleep of old age, surrounded by those they love.”
Chapter Twelve
At some point during the night, Coco had stumbled to the master bedroom and fallen in bed as if she were drunk and delusional. In fact, she had been exhausted. As she’d dozed off, it had occurred to her that she’d fallen asleep right after Brandon had said the locals were on the scene and the Cartwells had advised them to stay where they were for the night.
She’d always felt particularly safe there at the club. Part of the reason was due to the fact the club’s suite access and privacy doors were on lockdown by codes only known and used by the suite owners. The other part was because the only windows in the whole apartment were those overlooking the scenic cliffs. She could go outside completely naked and scream her bloody head off and no one would see her. If someone heard her it would be by freak chance.
Sometimes she wondered if she should just break down and ask Brandon to let her stay there for a while, enjoy the peace and serenity found there and perhaps work on his mother’s books, the stories she wanted told sometime soon. She’d promised Geraldine that much and she owed her that, if nothing else.
The apartment was still quiet when she slipped out of bed and took the comforter with her to the balcony. The sun was gradually coming up over the horizon. She curled up on the cushioned lounger and watched as several birds soared from the other side of the cliffs, taking flight in a symbolic manner. Perhaps they were going out to meet the new day or maybe they were fleeing while they still could, fearing her presence there represented danger.
She sighed at the thought, wrapped the blanket tighter around her and breathed in the morning air, appreciating the cool, crisp wind whipping around her. This was a new day, a new beginning, a day that would start in an unusual manner and she could feel it in her bones.
Perhaps that’s why the birds flocked together and flew away. She’d invaded their space or perhaps they realized she was a new hunter rising, a new predator in a big world full of smaller prey.
She shook off the thought and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to be like her father. She didn’t even want to be Geraldine Blazier’s protégé but as the tips of the mountaintops became slightly orange at the highest peaks, she realized what the day ahead represented.
Bold and bloody choices—decisions she didn’t want to make but choices that were there all the same.
“I thought you might be out here,” Liam said, handing her a bottle of orange juice. “I checked the date on it.”
