Page 88 of A Wreck, You Make Me (Bad Boys of Bardstown #3)

Chapter Thirty-Three

THE WRECKING THORN

The house we’re all staring at is dilapidated.

The lawn is more like a jungle. The driveway is more like a dirt path.

The shingles on the roof are broken and falling apart and there’s a hole in the front window.

I thought her old apartment was bad but this is a disaster.

But then what else can you expect from a house when it’s in such a shitty part of town.

This one’s even shittier than where she used to live.

And the anger burns like acid in my veins at the thought of her living here.

The thought of her living here with a baseball bat hidden under her bed.

But I keep my cool. For now. I walk up the driveway with my brothers behind and yes, I’m including Reed in them again. If I already didn’t consider him my brother, I would start that now because he’s the one who’s making this happen.

Before Reed became a part of our family and owned a garage that remodels and restores vintage cars, he used to work for his father.

His father is a big deal in Bardstown, a rich asshole with tons of influence and backhanded dealings.

And you don’t have backhanded dealings without private investigators and all sorts of shady characters on your payroll, people who can dig all sorts of unsavory things about you.

Since I wanted a permanent solution for our problems, namely our parents, I asked him to enlist someone on his father’s payroll and look into them.

Turns out, there was a lot to look into.

Not only are they swimming in debt with loan sharks beating down at their doors, there’s something even more vile in their background that’s making it almost impossible to not charge into their home and tear my father limb from limb.

It wouldn’t even take much, not with his pedo drunk ass.

I knock at the door or more like bang on it until it snaps open and I see her mother at the threshold, fuming.

As soon as she sees it’s me and my brothers, her face twists with anger and she opens her mouth to, I’m sure, run it in a way that’ll only piss me off.

So I don’t give her a chance. I push past her and enter the house.

Which isn’t much better on the inside than it was on the outside.

Dirty dishes litter the floor and sit in a stack on the table.

Dirty laundry is scattered everywhere including the couch where I’m assuming she was parked on because there’s a half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray on the arm, with TV running in front of it.

It makes me want to pick up that bowl with crusty milk in it and throw it through the screen.

This is how she lived, didn’t she? Before she got out of the hellhole.

No, she pulled herself out of there. She pulled herself and her sister out.

She gave Snow the best life she could all the while wanting nothing for herself.

Not one thing. No, that’s not true. She wanted something.

She wanted me. She wanted me to want her back and I was the jackass who never saw it. Who never understood.

Focus.

I turn around and to her growing anger, one by one, my brothers file in.

They walk in further, eyeing the space like I did and come to stand slightly behind me.

Even Conrad. A silent message that I’m in charge here but they’re close if I need them.

Fuck, I love my brothers. I love my family and I’m going to fucking take this bitch down.

“Who said you could come into my house?” she snaps at us but mostly at me because she gets it.

She got it that night when I threw her out of our house.

She knows there’s something between me and her daughter.

Well, after that video the whole fucking world knows but she knows whatever it is, it’s here to stay.

I’m here to stay. And stand between her and her daughter.

Both of them actually. Because she isn’t touching Snow either.

“You came into our home uninvited,” I remind her.

She sneers. “I came looking for my daughter.” Then, her eyes go hard and she adds, “Who’s doing pretty well for herself these days. At least, she took one advice from me and stopped her bitching about men looking at her too much.”

Don’t. Don’t. Don’t hit her. She’s a woman, first and my mother taught me better than that. Second, it would be too easy for her. Getting punched in the face and bleeding a little. I have a better plan, which is why I’m here.

“You’re leaving town,” I tell her.

“What?”

I look at her a beat. “For a very, very long time. Possibly for life. But we’ll see what the judge says.”

She looks at me with confusion before glancing back at my brothers who are collectively standing in a battle stance. Coming back to me, she goes, “What is this? Some kind of a threat? Because let me tell you I’m not?—”

“Not a threat,” I say, shaking my head, keeping my eyes steady. “Just a courtesy heads up. Cops are about ten minutes away.”

“Cops for what? What?—”

I lean forward then. “For the fact that you have evidence against your husband that shows he’s a fucking pedophile. But you chose not to disclose it to anyone.”

At this, Reed holds up a file with all the photos that his guy found after he went through their house yesterday.

Apparently, it’s extremely easy to snoop into the house of a drunk who’s perpetually passed out.

Plus, she actually works for a living these days instead of hitting up her daughter and loan sharks for money.

Reeds tosses the file on the coffee table and a few photos spill out.

Her eyes widen when she sees what’s in them.

I’d say she looks like her daughter, with green eyes and red hair.

But she possesses none of her beauty and I don’t think it’s a trick of time.

I think she’s always been this way, hateful and harsh.

Anyway, I haven’t seen what’s on the photos but from what my brothers tell me it’s a bunch of teenage girls in various state of undress.

Just the thought of it made me throw up in my mouth a bit.

Ledger did throw up. Reed couldn’t look at them either and both Stellan and Conrad took one look and left the room for a little bit, angry and seething.

I’m not sure if these photos were taken while my father was in the room or did these girls have no knowledge of them being photographed.

That’s for the cops and the prosecutors to decide.

All I know is that I want him and her put away for life.

“This is the last time you’ve fucked with her, do you understand?” I warn with a calm voice because I want her to understand me. I want her to absorb it in her bones that if she tries again, I’m going to kill her.

“That’s your father,” she says, watching me with hatred but I do think there’s a slight fear in her voice. “You’ll be putting away your father. Your own blood for a slu?—”

“Don’t finish that sentence. Or you won’t get a chance to live behind bars because I will strangle you right here.

” Even though her expression is defiant, I can see her swallow.

“And to answer your question, he’s not my father.

He may have had a hand in my birth but these guys here, they raised me.

So yeah, I’ll do that to my drunk, waste of space, piece of shit, so-called father. I’ll do it to anyone who hurts her.”

She opens her mouth to say something when we all hear a creak coming from the hallway.

I already know who it’s going to be before I turn around and see him standing by the stairs.

He’s blinking his eyes open as if he just woke up even though it’s the middle of the day, trying to figure out what’s happening and why is his house suddenly swarmed with all these people.

Who look like him.

Although I don’t think he’s able to put even that together.

Our father looks like us, me, Stellan and Ledger.

Or rather we look like him, dark hair, dark eyes.

Tall and built bodies. I wish I could say I don’t remember what he looked like when he was with us but I do.

He looked large. He looked big. He looked intimidating and mean when he’d come home drunk.

I hate to admit it but he would scare me.

I thought if my father ever laid a hand on me, I’d die.

I thought I could never win against him.

Now as I walk toward him, all I can feel is immense hatred.

With maybe a little pity mixed in. Not only because he looks like a husk of a man he used to be, hunched shoulders, bony chest, hair almost all gone and a haggard face, but also because if he wasn’t such an asshole, a criminal pedo asshole, he could’ve been a part of something.

He could’ve been a part of our family. Family of good and loyal men.

I’m sure my brothers are all thinking the same thing, feeling the same thing but they still make way for me to approach him first. He watches me come closer but there’s very little recognition in his cloudy eyes. Until I stop a few feet away from him, breathing in his reeking stench.

“You’re…” he says, his voice distorted and scratchy unlike clear and thundering from back in the day, his eyes going back and forth between mine. “Are you my?—”

“Unfortunately,” I say.

His eyes flare wide before glancing behind my shoulders to my brothers. “What are you…” Then, coming back to me, he asks, “Which one are you?”

I bark out a laugh, my anger overtaken by pity.

“It doesn’t matter which one I am. I’m here to tell you that you didn’t win.

You leaving us was a blessing. We were happy without you.

We had our moments yes, and tragedy had a way of finding us, but we lived.

And we grew up and we grew . We’re still growing.

We’re still flourishing and our name will live on.

People still tell our story to this day.

I want you to know that. I want you to think about that when you sit behind bars without your precious alcohol, without your wives and your kids being your punching bag, without those young girls you traumatized and violated.

I want you to think about how we’re living our life to the fullest and how you’re dying a little every day. ”

His frown has thickened, and he doesn’t look so sleepy anymore.

Although, he still looks pathetic. I take a step back from him and turn around.

But then change my mind and face him again, before rearing back and laying a heavy one in his face.

It pushes him so far back that he crashes against the opposite wall and slides down, unconscious.

So apparently, my anger wasn’t gone anywhere.

She’s going to be pissed, my Little Strawberry, when I tell her I broke my promise but at least, I didn’t kill him, just knocked him out.

Her mother screams from behind me and rushes over to see to him but I don’t want to stay here a moment longer.

I have things to do. I stride back out, my brothers in wake, just a cop car is pulling up.

I march over to the rental car that we got at the airport and slide into the driver’s seat.

We just flew into town to take care of our parents but now, we’re flying back to the city where everything fell apart.

“Any luck?” I ask Conrad as I start the car.

His jaw clenches and he shakes his head. “If Wyn knows where Jupiter is, then she isn’t telling me.”

I grip the wheel tighter as I pull out and Ledger chimes in from the backseat. “She knows. They all know. But they aren’t telling us.”

No, they aren’t.

And while I’ve tried to keep my cool for over twenty-four hours, tried to keep myself distracted from the list of things I need to do before I can go get her but now, I’m starting to get antsy. Where could she be?

She told me the other night before I stupidly fucking left to get away from her and her truth, that she wouldn’t be here when I came back.

I didn’t think this is what she meant. I didn’t think it meant me getting back to the hotel after that bullshit fucking meeting with the management—they’re still deciding my fate by the way, but I should hear something by tonight because the next game is in two days—going straight to her room to find Callie in there, looking at me with accusation.

My sister handed me her note with a muttered, “Idiot.” And then left.

It said three words: Don’t chase me .

I ignored it and called her cell to find out she left it in her hotel room.

Quite possibly because it has the tracking software on it.

I went back to Callie to ask her exactly what happened and where she went.

My sister said she didn’t know. All Jupiter said to her was she needed space and handed Callie the note.

So I went to Snow because she wouldn’t leave without telling Snow where she went.

But again, Snow gave me no information other than: “She loves you, Shepard. And you broke her heart. She’s not here because of you. Fix it. Bring her back.”

Meanwhile, Reed was making his own phone calls so we could take care of our asshole parents.

And my brothers were trying to get any information they could from their women about where Jupiter went.

All of them kept—still keep—saying the same thing: I’m an asshole and she needs to be away from me for a bit.

But they aren’t telling us anything else.

Enough is enough though. I need to find her. I need to fucking tell her that I love her and then I have to find a way to win her back. Because we’re connected and I’m not giving up on her and neither am I letting her give up on me.

On us.