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I fisted my hands, then thought…fuck it.
I was tired of playing the good daughter while being treated like absolute shit.
It was time for me to be who I wanted to be.
And that definitely wasn’t the obedient little Hades that took over all shifts for those that couldn’t get it done.
Pulling out my phone, I sent a request for an Uber, then started walking.
Time to go find someone that would help me solve a problem. Oh, and blow this popsicle stand.
Once I figured out Tony’s stalker situation, I was done.
CHAPTER 4
I pee in pools.
-Yeti Cup
HANNIBAL
“Listen, Mom,” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I won’t be home. I’m sorry.”
Fucking holiday weekends and my mom always expecting me to be home when I hadn’t attended a family function in years.
Not because I didn’t like them—though they were stressful—but I was just too damn busy. Starting your own business was a bitch, and when everything took off on me before I was ready, I’d had no other choice but to throw myself in headfirst.
If any of my family happened to be within the vicinity of me when I was in town, we’d go eat and hang out. If they weren’t, then we didn’t. Easy as that.
My mom had five boys, Harrison, Holden, Hunter, Hancock and then me. She had us all one right after the other, starting with Harrison and ending with Hancock and me. Hancock was my identical twin brother. Though, at this stage in our lives, we didn’t necessarily look identical anymore.
I was way more graying than he was, though I was fairly convinced Hancock colored his hair like the little diva he was.
I mean, why else would his still be almost all the way black, and mine took on this chrome look?
“You’re not even listening to me, are you, Hannibal Peters?” my mother snapped.
Actually, I wasn’t.
Not that I would tell her that.
“Mom,” I tried to be nice, but the patience was thinning with each second I stayed on this phone call and listened to her bitch. “I’m literally in the middle of a meeting.”
She sighed. “Then why did you answer?”
I felt my eyelid twitch. “Because the last time I didn’t answer, you yelled at me the next three times I answered your calls, saying that you and Dad were getting old, and what if one day you were calling to tell me that my dad was in the hospital and dying, and I’d ignored it…so now I fuckin’ answer.”
My mother sighed. “I don’t know why you boys insist on talking like criminals.”
Because we were all raised on a cattle ranch, and Dad didn’t give one flying fuck how his kids talked as long as they could wrangle a calf when it escaped its mom.
“Mom, are we done?” I questioned.
My mom’s sighs were getting heavier and heavier.
“I suppose we can be.”
“All right. I’ll try calling you back after we get done here. But it may be a while,” I stated.
“Fine,” my mother said. “I love you.”
And, to make sure that she didn’t get me a shitty Easter basket like Hancock got last year after he’d failed to say it, I said, “I love you, too.”
When I hung up I looked at my newest client.
Currently, I was at a circus of all places.
Even weirder, I was contacted by a friend who owned a rival circus to the one I was working with. What were the odds that two circuses would contact me within a week of each other?
“So tell me what you think you need,” I suggested. “Then I can make recommendations based on what you tell me.”
The man currently sitting in front of me was named Crew. His parents had started Vegas Royale Circus back in nineteen fifty-five. Now, Crew owned all stock in the company after his parents’ deaths a few weeks ago.
And he was trying to beef up security and hire people he could trust to run the damn thing since he had no desire to make this his life.
Which was funny because it sounded like my friend, Keene, who’d just called about his circus that he co-owned with family.
Speaking of Keene’s family, the dark-headed woman that continuously caught my attention came to mind, and I shook the thoughts off.
Yeah, best not to go there at this moment in time.
“Well, to be completely honest, there’s absolutely no security here, whatsoever. And since this is a more…risqué…circus, a lot of the women are treated like shit. When I first got here, I had two attacked in the parking lot on two separate nights.”
“Ahh,” I nodded.
I’d done my research on the circus Crew now owned.
Years and years ago when his father had founded the circus, it’d been a traveling one. However, over time, they’d realized that crew retention was near impossible for the kind of shows they were wanting to put on without being in a fixed position where the crew could get there every night without having to travel with them.
