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“Why did you even come looking for me?”

“You’re family,” he said.

“That’s never much mattered. What do you want from me?”

“The truth is, Bix,” said her dad, “you’re the most talented moonshiner of all of us. And we need to get something going again.”

“Well, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t need to. I have a job.”

“And a sugar daddy,” her brother said.

She crossed her arms and stared Chip down, her rage a flame. “So what if I do? If I got one, you can get one too. Go get one.”

“Hell no. You owe us. We’re family.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” she said.

Nothing but trauma and pain and hurt. Scars inside and out. She was her own woman because of her own grit. They could go to hell.

“Well now, I’m sure there’s some way we could figure out how to make you do it. Something you don’t want your sheriff to know about,” Chip said, stroking his chin.

They were threatening her. Threatening to blackmail her. And in the past, she would’ve tried to handle this on her own. She wasn’t going to do that now.Because she wasn’t alone. Because she loved Daughtry. Because she had Daughtry. And she was going to go to him.

“If you two aren’t gone when I get back, I swear you’re going to be sorry.”

And she ran. For all that she was worth.

When Bix came running up to the house holding her fishing pole, her eyes wide, everything in Daughtry went on high alert.

“Daughtry,” she said. “My dad and my brother here. They got out of prison, and they’re trying to... They think that they can blackmail me into making sure they get a job on the ranch. I don’t... I don’t want them here. I want them to go away.”

A monster woke up inside of him. It raised its head, and growled.

“Hang on,” he said.

He went into his bedroom and opened up his safe. He got out his badge, and his gun. He strapped the gun to his hip, put the badge in his pocket.

Bix eyed the piece on his hip.

“You don’t need that,” she said.

“I never assume, Bix.”

He got into his truck, and she went around to the passenger side.

“Stay here,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t need to come over there.”

“The hell I don’t. This is my family. This is my responsibility. My drama.”

“Get your ass in the house, Bix. I will come home when it’s safe, and I’ll get you then.”

“They’re not dangerous.”

But all he could think was the stories that she’d told him about her brother. That was a cruel son of a bitch. He knew that much. And he wasn’t going to let them near her. Not again. Because he had seen the condition they’d left her in. He’d seen it.