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“Oklahoma is, anyway,” Ben said softly.
Zach turned to him. “The Dragons are on us. We initiated our charter on the night we killed their whole club.” He turned back to Cooper. “Coop, it sucks, but we’ve got to get him in our pocket. If we can’t pay him off, and we won’t take his job, all we’ve got left is leverage. Do we want to burn that right out the gate?”
“Gambling leverage in Vegas is tricky, anyway,” Ben said. It wasn’t the first time he’d made that observation, but Cooper didn’t stop him from repeating himself. “Too many people with the same leverage. Thins out the threat, and on our best day we’ll never be as big a threat as someplace like the Bellagio.”
Cooper slammed his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands. Curling his fingers into his hair, he pulled. “FUCK!” he yelled, and the ambient hum of the diner went still.
“Cooper,” Ben said, his voice full of calm warning.
Staying still, Cooper went quiet and focused on finding his balance. Yes, he’d bitten off a far bigger hunk than he’d realized when he’d thrown his name on the table to lead this charter. Yes, he’d come to regret most of the choices he’d made since then. But here he was, and he was no quitter. This was his bed, and he was going to kick off his boots, fluff the damn pillows, and lie down in it.
By the time he found calm and felt like he fit properly inside his skin again, the diner had resumed its normal rhythms. Cooper lifted his head and saw the waitress, a tired middle-aged broad with a wide ass encased in mom jeans, approaching with their plates on her arms. He waited until she’d set them at the appropriate places and performed her usual rituals—did they need anything else? Some relish, maybe? Refills?—and gone back behind the counter.
As he grabbed the ketchup bottle from the condiment tray, he said, “Yeah, fine. We’ll vote it.”
He knew exactly how the vote would go down: the only way it could. They had to have the sheriff on board. So they’d vote to do his dirty work. They’d wipe out a crew they’d never even fucking met.
Cooper had never felt more homesick for Tulsa and the seat he’d had at that table than right this minute.
CHAPTER TEN
“Bring the butter over, too, please,” Siena said as she took her seat at the dining room table. Geneva didn’t answer, but Siena saw her pull the tub of Land O Lakes out with one hand and the pitcher of apple juice out with the other.
Siena waited until her sister returned to the table, set her burdens down, and sat, before she returned to the topic she’d tried to get started while they were making spaghetti and meatballs, salad, and French bread from a tube. Geneva had been monosyllabic at best then—more like openly hostile.
The poor thing had been depressed since Christmas, but not until Siena talked to Dr. Granger had the weather between them become wintry. Since that day, and the altercation with Luis’s father that night, Geneva had been acting like she was trapped behind enemy lines.
Dr. Granger called Geneva in the next school day, after Jorge had raised a stink about his son being treated unfairly. Because Geneva didn’t like to lie, she’d told the counselor the truth and had expected Luis’s suspension to be lifted. Instead, all three boys had been suspended for three days.
Geneva’s life in ninth grade—already a life under siege—had become markedly worse. Jayce and Henry had now joined her tormentors, and they had much more specific knowledge about her to really cause lasting pain and humiliation.
So... yeah, if she were in Geneva’s shoes, she’d be pissed at the person who’d blown the whole thing up, too. But Siena couldn’t think how she should have handled things differently. Should she have kept her mouth shut and just let those little shits get away with it? Her sister absolutely thought so, but Siena couldn’t make that sit right in her head. She’d gone to the person she was supposed to go to—no, that wasn’t even right. She had kept her mouth shut until she wascalled inanddirectly asked, because Geneva’s teachers had noticed that something was wrong.
Now, in addition to the even hotter inferno high school had become for her, Geneva was also in therapy, with two different therapists: the first was a child psychologist who specialized in learning disorders and disabilities. Dr. Marquez had done an assessment and declared that Siena’s little sister was indeed on the autism spectrum, and also had ADD. Not one or the other but both.Anddepression, but Dr. Marquez didn’t think that was chronic or clinical. He considered it related to the other stuff and Geneva’s ‘lack of support’ to this point.
Lack of support. He’d said that to Siena straight out. It was her responsibility to take care of Geneva, to protect her and nurture her and see to it she was happy and supported, and she’d fallen down on the job not to have realized her sister was not just a bullied kid, not just introverted and a little odd, but had an actual disorder—two of them!—requiring therapy, coping strategies, and accommodations.
That was the other therapist: an ‘occupational therapist’ to help her build those coping strategies and better understand the world around her.
Siena had hadno ideaGeneva wasn’t understanding the world around her.
Now there was another school meeting scheduled for tomorrow evening, and she was trying to understand as much as she possibly could so she could be the support Geneva needed.
“I know you don’t have to tell me what happens during therapy, sis,” she said now. “I’m not trying to pry. I’m just trying to understand how I can help, or what we should be doing differently.”
