“Let me recap for you, bro, what’s going on,” I said before Rocky could put two brain cells together to say something. “The ranch is mine. The money is mine. Even the Land Rover you bought a few months ago. It’s mine. I can track the car payment back to my account. I met the bank manager and she’s a lovely woman who’s shared all the account statements.”
She hadn’t done any such thing and I hadn’t tracked the payment anywhere, but it was probably possible and Rocky wouldn’t know that.
“What?” Rocky looked a little green. “You’re shitting me.”
“Actually, Father’s beenshittingboth of us for the past eight years. If you want to keep the car, you better get in it and get off my property.”
“But what am I going to live on?” he whined.
I shrugged. “Maybe the money you earn at a job?”
When he didn’t move, I turned my head toward Colt. “Sheriff, I think there were some questions you had about an auction?”
I remembered the virgin auction he wanted to put me in and make bank. That couldn’t be legal and he wouldn’t want Colt to know about it.
Rocky paled, then pulled his keys from his pocket and ran to his fancy SUV, parked in front of one of the garage bays.
Just as Rocky peeled out down the drive, two ranch trucks came up from the stable and parked. Kyle, the foreman, and several of the ranch hands hopped out.
“Heard the honking. Something wrong?” Kyle asked, glancing around. He tipped his hat at Colt. “Sheriff.”
“Good seeing you again,” he replied.
“Hey Kyle,” I said, smiling at the man who was more father than my real one.
“Hey,chica.”
“I was just telling my father that he needs to leave my ranch immediately.”
Kyle’s eyebrows winged up. “Your ranch?”
I grinned. “Yeah, I inherited it from my mother.”
He looked between me and my father. Then glanced at Colt. “This true?”
Colt nodded. “It is.”
Kyle grinned. “What do you need from us, boss?”
I grinned right back.
“Please go inside, pack up my father’s clothes and leave them out by the gate. I won’t be needing them and when he gets out of jail, he’ll be able to pick them up.”
“Why you little bitch,” Father seethed.
This time, I was the one who punched him. The crack when I broke his nose was loud. So was his swearing as I shook out my fist.
“Tell me, father. How’d you get Mom to leave the ranch when you divorced? The property was hers and she’s the one who moved out. Left the state, even.”
He grinned, although it looked evil with his bloody teeth. “It was you or the ranch. She couldn’t have both.”
I blinked. Processed.
“You threatened to keep your daughter from your ex-wife to stay on the ranch that didn’t belong to you?”
“It wasn’t yours. Never could be. It wasn’t marital property,” Hayes added.
“She wanted Cassidy. I wanted the ranch. She wasn’t getting both,” Father snapped.
