Page 26 of Roped

Without a word, I start removing the blood-soaked gauze from my hand.

Mars turns back to peruse the damage I caused. “You broke his fuckin’ face.”

Since this doesn’t need my response either, I stay silent.

“We’re gonna have to get Dr. Harris up here,” he continues, referring to the old doctor that we use for stuff like this, making sure the damage from their beatings isn’t lasting so they’re still standing on the other side of the initiation week. Finally, Mars turns back to me and watches me take the gauze off. “You wanna tell me somethin’?”

Again, not something that requires words, so I simply shake my head.

He studies me for a few seconds. “I know you think every criminal deserves to rot either in prison or in hell, and I get that. But this is extreme, even for you, boy.”

I finally find my words and growl, “He fuckin’ killed someone for a pack of gum.”

“He almost killed someone for a pack of gum,” Mars reminds me.

“The kid was fuckin’ nineteen,” I say, dragging in an angry breath. “He was the sole guardian of his younger brother, and now ’cause of this pissant, he won’t be able to hold a job. Ever.” I take a pause to gather myself, arrange my words in my head so they don’t sound like a garbled mess because of the burning anger in my veins. “How many guys around these parts want to hire a guy in a wheelchair? His brother was about to be thrown in the fuckin’ system.”

“Yeah, but he wasn’t,” Mars reminds me again. “Instead, he’s up in a fancy boarding school because you saved him.”

Two years ago, John Walker was everywhere on the news. Along with Jesse, the store clerk who got paralyzed because of the shooting; and his younger brother, Sunny. There was a lot of speculation about what was going to happen to Sunny and if he was going to end up in the shitty system. Since the name Grayson and, by association, King, opens a fuck of a lot of doors in Montana, I pulled some strings and had Sunny sent up to a boarding school. I wouldn’t call it saving, though. Saving Sunny would’ve been somehow keeping him with Jesse, which I couldn’t do. Not with Jesse’s tough recovery both physically and mentally.

I want to say a lot of things, but I know if I open my mouth, nothing will come out. Nothing that would make any sense. So I hold all the fucking words inside and let them fight each other in my damaged brain.

Mars studies me for another moment. “You did what you could, you get me? You can’t go about killin’ people for it.”

I give him a look. Like, he can fucking talk. Being the patriarch of a billion-dollar ranch is not for the faint of heart. It requires strength, a certain ruthlessness, and a willingness to cross lines and make your own rules. As the foreman of this ranch, I’ve had to bend, break, and rewrite the law and play God from time to time. But Mars has buried more bodies than me. And while my regret went away the day my parents died, I know he feels it.

Mars preaches his one cardinal rule: “Not if he ain’t taken a life himself.”

I clench my jaw. There are many ways to take a life, to destroy it, to burn it down, without actually taking it. But I don’t share that with Mars. I also don’t share that according to his rules, I should be the one sitting in that chair, being beaten to death because I’ve played God for what he’d think is a lot less. I could resent him for his idealistic thinking, but I don’t. I think it’s admirable that he’s got some goodness left in him, some morals. He’s lucky that he’s never had anything snatched away from him like it was from me. But if he’s got his own rules, then I’ve got mine.

Mars lets out a large breath. “All right, I’m gonna get someone to clean this up and make that call to the doctor.” Then, looking at me, “And I’m pullin’ you off this.”

“The fuck you are,” I say and spit on the floor, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

He exhales sharply. “We need him alive, boy, and you’re too fuckin’ close to let that happen.”

When John Walker’s file came through Mars’s desk as the potential candidate for the program, he asked me if I’d be okay with recruiting him. Told him I would be. No, I didn’t think I’d ever come across the motherfucker, but I know how to do my job. I know how to keep my emotions out of something. Fuck, I do this to keep my emotions out of things in the first place. By this, I mean be the one to handle the initiation period. I’m the one who beats them up, tortures them, makes them repent for their crimes, baptizes them almost, until they’re ready to rejoin the world as responsible citizens. Or rather, loyal ranch hands at Rawhide.

I’m the enforcer.

It lets the people around me believe I’m not a monster, filled with anger and violence. That I’m just a man, albeit quiet and damaged, a loner, but still part of their little world with their little rules. But most of all, it lets me keep my promise. A promise I made that I wouldn’t go on a rampage and destroy the family that destroyed mine.

“You know I’m the only one who can handle this,” I tell him. “Who knows how to handle it.”

Not a lot of people know about the existence of Rawhide Redemption, for obvious reasons. It’s only me, the other two Grayson brothers, and a very select few necessary to run the operation. While some people don’t mind its existence, like the ones higher up in the government that have a stake in this program, Arsen isn’t too happy that such a thing exists. It’s a secret that, if it fell into the wrong hands, could destroy everything the Graysons have built. Their ranch, their land, their legacy. While I agree it’s dangerous to run an illegal prison program on the very land the Graysons have been fighting to protect for decades, I go along with it because it gives me an outlet for my violence and because I owe Mars everything.

“Taught you everythin’ you know,” Mars rumbles. “So you ain’t the only one who knows how to do this.”

I grit my jaw.

“And I did think you could handle it, but that was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before she came along.”

I growl like the monster I am, instantly and instinctively, as if protecting my territory. And my body tightens. Heats up, becomes hard and hungry. Ready to attack.