My mother’s depravity went back years.
Stalking. Scamming. Fraud.
And my father was her longest fraud yet.
It’d all started when they’d first met.
It hadn’t been by happenstance. It’d all been planned out to the T. But back then, it hadn’t been just my mother in on it, but my grandmother and my aunt as well. It’d been multiple generations of fraudsters. Killed husbands—and I do mean husbands, plural. Stolen heirlooms. Fake marriages.
“Call her,” Dad suggested. “Get her up here. We’ll explain together.”
I scrubbed my hand down my face. “I…”
He picked up his phone and dialed a number.
“Yeah?”
Denver, the president of the Dixie Wardens MC, answered the phone gruffly, sounding like we’d pulled him from sleep.
“You have a minute?”
Denver was my dad’s younger brother. There was a twenty-five-year age gap between them. Denver and I were closer in age than Dad and Denver were.
He yawned. “Sure. Where are you? The office?”
“Yep,” he confirmed. “Would you mind stopping by Weaver and Eddy’s place and picking up Nettie?”
“Last I heard, Nettie wasn’t in town.” We could hear Denver moving in the background, opening and closing drawers.
“Oh, she’s here. Boone’s in my office right now.”
Denver sighed. “Shit.”
Then he hung up.
Almost as soon as Denver hung up, my own phone rang.
I glanced down at the screen and growled.
“Your mother, I’m assuming by the look on your face,” Dad guessed correctly.
“Yep.” I hit Answer, then put it on speaker. “Yes?”
“Is that any way to speak to your mother?”
I couldn’t stand the sound of her voice.
I couldn’t stand the way that she made me want to turn into a raving murderer, either.
I said nothing, and my mother sighed. “You’re so difficult. Just like your stepfather.”
She liked to point out that my stepfather wasn’t my actual father.
Though, he was in every way but one.
Biologically, he wasn’t mine, sure.
But he was there when I started walking. He was there when I threw my first pitch. He was there when I walked at graduation. He was there when I walked during my college graduation. He was there on opening day of my practice. He was there when I’d lost first my child, then Nettie.
