Page 1 of The Last Call Home (The Timberbridge Brothers #5)

Malerick

There are moments in our lives that mold us into who we become.

I’ve had a few.

One of them is carved so deep it thrums beneath my skin, close to my heart like a pulse. I don’t talk about it. I try fucking hard not to breathe life into it, because every time I do, it reminds me what I’m capable of.

The night I almost killed my father.

I was seventeen. Not quite a boy anymore, but far too soon to think I was a man.

I was just a raw nerve in a too-small body, brittle with anger I didn’t know how to name.

Yep, I was at that strange, unraveling age when your skin feels too tight for who you’re becoming—when everything inside you feels too much, too loud, too close to the surface.

It was a Birchwood Springs night that felt like it wanted to swallow us whole.

The cold didn’t just sting—it crawled. Slid under doors and into your chest like it was looking for something to break.

Frost covered the windows, snow stacked so high it blurred the world outside.

The wind howled like it had a score to settle, probably with the Timberbridge family.

None of that scared me.

The real storm existed within our home—as it always had.

I heard the yelling before I hit the bottom stair. A crash—a bottle? A chair?—followed by Keir’s voice, that familiar tight rasp he got when he was trying to keep things from shattering. He always tried. He shielded and never ran.

I hated that he thought it had to be him. He believed absorbing our father’s fury was some kind of twisted birthright.

I should’ve stopped him sooner. Should’ve gotten off my ass and done something before he had to.

The family room lights stung when I walked in.

Too bright, too angry, too ready to see a fight—see blood.

Our father stood in the center, reveling in the wreckage.

Swaying. Shoulders coiled, fists half-curled.

His face was blotched red, whiskey sweat gleaming down his temple.

Eyes small and cruel. He looked as if he was ready to fight God.

Keir was right there between him and the hallway. Not moving. Not blinking. Already bracing.

Ledger, Hopper, and Atlas were gone. Which meant Keir had already gotten them out. Of course he had.

“You think hiding them makes you a man?” our father spat, voice slurred but venom-precise. “You think you’re better than me?”

Keir didn’t respond. Didn’t move.

I stepped in between them.

“Get out of here, Mal,” Keir warned. His voice was barely above a whisper. A plea I’d heard too many times.

“No.” My voice came out low, clipped. Almost calm. “You go check on the others. Make sure they’re safe. It’s too fucking cold.” I looked at our father and let the words drop like bricks. “I’ll deal with him.”

That got the old man’s attention.

He turned toward me, slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, like he’d been waiting for this. His grin twisted, mean and pleased with itself. It made my stomach pull tight in that way it always did when he smiled like that—like pain was a game he couldn’t wait to play.

“Look who finally grew a pair.”

Then he lunged at Keir. My body moved before my brain caught up. I shoved forward, arm out like instinct. My hand closed around the fire poker by the hearth as if it had been waiting for me. There was a split second—just one—where everything slowed.

Keir’s eyes flicked to mine, wide and unreadable. Our father stumbling, already mid-motion, already too far gone. My fingers tightening on the handle.

“Leave. Go and check on the others,” I repeated the order because I had no idea what would happen at that moment. I just needed him to be with the young ones.

Something inside me cracked open. I wasn’t thinking. I was done thinking. This wasn’t about being brave, heroic, or even doing what was right.

This was survival.

This was seventeen years of swallowed words and bruised silences and pretending that this—our father regularly beating the shit out of us—was normal.

This was fury shaped into something physical, aimed right at the man who made us grow up afraid, angry . . . broken. I raised it.

He stared at me like he was finally seeing me for the first time. And he fucking smiled. That smile nearly did me in.

He wanted it. Wanted me to swing. To cross that line. To be his mirror.

“Go ahead,” he whispered. “Do it. Be a man. You end me, you’ll become me.”

My grip tightened. My arms shook. My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached. Every memory I had of him yelling, of Ledger hiding under beds, of Keir’s bruises, of silence that lasted too long—it all roared inside me.

I wanted to.

Fuck, I wanted it so bad.

But I didn’t.

Because if I became him, he’d win.

So I dropped the poker.

The clang against the tile floor was final. I didn’t surrender. I chose myself.

“You don’t get to make me you,” I said.

He took a step forward, but I didn’t do anything for him. I walked out, leaving our father standing there in a puddle of his own rage.

That night, we slept in the barn. My brothers and I—even Atlas—curled up in horse blankets. Ledger tucked against my side, his hand gripping my shirt like he thought I’d disappear if he let go.

I didn’t sleep. Neither did Keir.

We watched the door until morning.

That was the night something inside me changed. I stopped being a kid and became whatever a boy had to become to survive. Something cracked and didn’t heal right. Grew back twisted. Fused with everything I couldn’t say.

My father was a monster, but this town . . . this town let him be that way. No one ever defended us, even when they knew what was happening behind closed doors.

People knew. Of course they did. The bruises, the silences, the way we fought when people pissed us off. We were bad news. Yet, no one stepped in. No teacher. No neighbor. No friend-of-a-friend. Just polite smiles in public and shut doors in private.

So I left. I ran like my life depended on it—because it did. I made Keir swear that he’d leave if things got to the point where he felt he might want to kill our father. After that, I planned on never coming back. Not for a funeral. Not for a favor. Not even for forgiveness.

I joined the Bureau. The Federal fucking Bureau of Investigation. Because if no one was going to protect kids like me, then I would.

That’s where I first met Cassian.

We were partners. I was assigned to him straight out of Quantico. He had all charm and swagger and zero regard for procedure. If James Bond had a moral compass and unresolved trauma that he refused to unpack—that would be Cass.

He didn’t last long in the Bureau. He had a way of doing things—his way. Not illegal, but . . . not exactly by the book either. Morally gray, rule-adjacent, and somehow still always defending those no one else would.

He landed at some high-level private security firm that pays outrageous money for people who know how to color outside the lines without setting the whole damn place on fire. I didn’t blame him for leaving. Hell, part of me wanted to follow. But I stayed—at least until I found a reason to leave.

Until Birchwood Springs needed a sheriff before the Hollow Syndicate burnt it to the ground, I didn’t put wear a badge to enforce the law. I wore it so I’d have the power to bend it when the law didn’t protect the people who needed it most.

I became a sheriff to hunt down men like my father.