“Since you were six, Mr.Dominic.”
Four months, two weeks, and fifteen days after his mother had died, to be exact.Ninety-one days until his father had decided a potential investment in Wine Country was more important than parenting his confused, grieving child.Mary had found him in the backyard crying beneath the cypress trees.It was only supposed to be temporary, but she’d lasted when no one else had, mostly, Nic suspected, for him.
“She’s right,” Nic said.“She runs this house, has for years when no one else would, especially not you.She deserves your respect.”
“Respect,” his father muttered.“Like you’d know anything about that.Twenty-seven years, not a word, and the first thing you do is come in here and try to give me orders.No respect.”
One eye remaining on his father, Nic angled toward Mary.“Would you give us a moment?”He didn’t want to have this conversation with an audience.
“I’ll go get a broom and dustpan,” she said.
“Leave it outside the door.I’ll clean it up when we’re done.”
“You don’t?—”
Nic held up a hand.“Please, Mary, let me take care of it.”
He waited for her to exit and pull the kitchen door shut before rotating back to Curtis.
“You were always too soft,” his father chided.
Too soft.
He’d said those same words the day Nic had stepped between Curtis’s fist and another good woman’s face.He wouldn’t let her take another hit for him.Eighteen and scrawny, still in his graduation gown, he’d gone to the ground, the punch nearly breaking his jaw.Too soft, his father had said.Too soft, he’d said again after Nic, trying to distract his father long enough for them to get away, had confessed he was gay.The second punch his father landed had broken his jaw, and Mary had had to take him to the hospital.But it had worked.And Nic had sworn awaysoftthe next day.
Twenty years in the Navy—seven of them in combat, five as a SEAL sniper before injury sidelined him.Instead of taking a discharge, he’d spent the next thirteen years as the JAG officer with the best courtroom record.Seven years after military retirement, he’d climbed to second-in-command of the Northern District of California’s USAO and become the FBI’s go-to prosecutor.He also brewed beer and moved around boxes and barrels for a second fucking living.He was a long fucking way fromsoft, and his hand closed into a fist, wanting to prove just how far to his father.But if he raised that fist, if he hit a defenseless old man, Nic would be no better than the devil himself.
He uncurled his fingers and walked slowly over to the table, gathering his patience as he picked up his father’s briefcase.“I’m nottryingto give you orders,” he said.“Iamgiving them.You will not disrespect Mary or anyone else helping you, including Harris Kincaid.”
“I’ll do whatever I want in my own goddamn house.”
“Is it still?Or have you mortgaged it to the hilt as well?”
His father glared but no denial accompanied the milky-blue stare.Heat prickled over Nic’s skin, his mouth going dry.He’d counted on at least some equity in the house to pay off Vaughn.It was worth nearly ten million, and unlike the commercial properties, there were no recorded liens filed against it—he’d checked—but that didn’t mean Curtis hadn’t used it for collateral elsewhere.Off the books.Which is what Nic had been looking for in the office.Seems he had his answer now.“Did you promise it to Duncan Vaughn?Or someone else?”
“You stay out of my business.”
Nic talked over him.“I need to know what I’m dealing with because if there’s nothing but debts, it’s only a matter of time before Vaughn kicks you out or burns it to the ground for the insurance proceeds.”
“What did that little shit Kincaid tell you?”
“He didn’t have to tell me anything.I’m smart.I figured it out myself after Vaughn’s goons tried to attack me.”
His father turned his face away, staring out the opposite window.“I’m handling it.”Still lording over his crumbling kingdom, stubborn to a fault, something Nic had admittedly inherited.
“You’re not handling it well,” Nic said.“I can help you.”
Curtis’s interest in the backyard didn’t waver.“With that fancy legal degree of yours?”
Fancy, in the deriding tone Nic had heard every day for so many years, but a picture from his JAG commissioning was one of those in Curtis’s office, according to Harris.Which meant Curtis had either been there or gone through the trouble of calling the Navy’s office to get it.“Yeah, with my fancy legal degree, if you’ll let me help you.”Nic stepped to his father’s side.“But that’s not all.I laid out two of his goons already, and I’ll do the same if he or your othercreditorssend more.You be sure to tell them that.”
His father’s gaze swung back to him.“Hardened up, huh?See, I did do something good for you after all.”
“You didn’t do shit,” Nic said, taking no small amount of satisfaction that Curtis shrank back a step.“I made me the man I am.And I won’t let your mistakes jeopardize everything I’ve worked for.”
Fourteen
The area around San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art was dotted with galleries and museums, a culture cluster as Becca had described it.Bars and restaurants also filled the bottom floors of the skyscrapers, making the live-work-party area not altogether deserted on a Friday night.Or rather, Saturday morning.Just past last call, they weren’t the only ones skulking about the streets.Dressed as they were, mostly in black, a group of punk-looking thirtysomethings hanging on to each other, they blended in with the rest of the staggering bar hoppers and club-goers.
