“We could’ve helped.” I touch Jake’s arm as he passes, a reminder to keep himself in check, and return my gaze to Dad. “We respected you back then. Loved you. We would’ve worked harder on the ranch, figured out a way to make more money. But instead of coming to us, you took away the two people who mean the most to this family. In one night, you twisted us into the vengeful, bitter men we are today, and we won’t stop until this is finished. I hope you’re proud.”
“What do you mean you won’t stop?” Dad looks at the laptop, at Jake, and back at me, his eyes widening with understanding. “You’re behind the disappearances?” His throat bobs. “You’re the reason my business partners are missing?” He drags a hand down his pallid face, his voice a whisper. “What have you done?”
“We took care of your debts.” I return to the chair and rest a loose fist beneath my chin, watching him. “Rogan Schroeder won’t threaten this family again.”
Dad removes his white Stetson and carefully places it on the desk. “That’s why he didn’t show for our meeting last week.”
Oh, he showed. Jake and I intercepted him a few miles away. The arrogant fuck was alone when we shot out his tires and forced him off the dirt road. His body and pickup truck lay at the bottom of the ravine, buried beneath the very earth he drilled out of the south pasture.
Dad doesn’t need the details. He comprehends enough. It burns in his red-rimmed eyes. “You don’t know who Rogan Schroeder is, do you?”
“A criminal loan shark intent on taking this land.”
A hollow laugh bursts from his chest. “I suppose I owe you a thank you?”
“You owe us more than that.” Jake glances at the clock on the wall. “Our lawyer will be here any minute.”
“A lawyer for what?” Dad peeks at the desk drawer again, eyes wild. “You boys think you’re going to turn me in?”
“No, you worthless piece of shit.” I angle forward and let my expression convey the lethal conviction of my words. “You’re going to sign over ownership of the cattle operation and all assets on the property to us. Then you’re going to take your whore and disappear. Quietly. Permanently.”
“Or what?”
“Or you stop breathing.” I shrug.
“You’re threatening me?” He rises with a wide stance and swipes a hand across the desk, crashing computer equipment to the floor. “I’m your father!”
“That’s the only reason we’re giving you the option to live.” I remain seated, unmoved by his posturing.
A knock sounds at the front door, and Jake steps out of the office to greet the lawyer.
“I won’t agree to this.” Dad snarls at me. “The cattle business is all I have left.”
A business he acquired from my mother and ran into the ground after her death. He never deserved Julep Ranch.
“If you don’t sign the papers and leave town, I will kill you.” My tone doesn’t waver, my eye contact steady and brutally honest. “I’ll disembowel you just to see how long you live without your toxic insides. The truth is, Dad, I would enjoy it. And why is that? Did I inherit that sickness from you?”
“No.” A clammy sheen shines on his brow, and he slumps into the chair, studying my expression as horror strains his own. “I’ve never killed anyone.”
“That’s right. You hire out the dirty work. Because you don’t have the stomach for it. Because you’re a weak, pathetic old man.”
His jaw tightens, and his eyes grow cold.
I’m baiting him. Mostly, I want to see if he has what it takes to reach for the gun that no longer sits in that drawer. But I already know he won’t. He didn’t have the balls to kill Conor and Lorne himself, and he certainly doesn’t have it in him to kill his own sons.
Jake returns with the business attorney, and the room coils with silent tension. As papers are laid out with signature boxes marked with tabs, Dad stares at the documents, his eyes swirling with resentment and conflict.
I slide a pen across the desk. “What we’re offering is more than you deserve. Sign the fucking papers.”
“The business is steeped in debt. It won’t make you rich, boy.”
“This isn’t about money. It’s about taking what rightfully belongs to us and making sure you lose everything our mother built. As far as revenge goes, this is trivial.”
“If I sign,” he says, his voice lowering with waning resistance, “you’ll let this go?”
“Yes. We’ll let you go. Gladly.”
He snatches the pen and angrily scrawls his signature, one page after another without reading the terms. “I don’t want to lose you boys.”
“You already have.” Jake gathers the signed paperwork and hands it off to the quiet, middle-aged lawyer. “I’ll walk you out.”
He leaves me alone with Dad again, putting a helluva lot of trust in me that I won’t kill him. Or maybe he’s hoping I’ll do exactly that.