He sounded like he’d rather kick himself in his own balls than get us one.
“Do you happen to have a bathroom I could use?” Beckham asked, batting her eyelashes. “I’m newly pregnant, and my bladder control is crazy bad right now.”
Trouper snorted.
“Umm, sure,” the older man, Mr. Sharp I assumed, said. “Just be quiet. Our daughter is down for her nap, and it took a very long time for her to go to sleep.”
“Oh?” Lynn asked, sounding intrigued. “From what I knew, you were fixed.”
Laric’s mother hissed in a breath and narrowed her eyes dangerously at Lynn.
“Um,” Mr. Sharp said. “I don’t think you understand. Rebecca has a disease that makes it unable for her to have children. And, unfortunately, that means that we don’t have any of our own. We recently adopted, though. We got the call on Monday that a little girl became available to foster, and possibly adopt due to parent neglect. But she isn’t doing well. That’s why I asked your friend to please remain quiet.”
Lynn’s brows went up. “Is that right?”
CHAPTER 14
Learning is a gift, even when pain is the teacher.
-Lynn to Laric
LARIC
I couldn’t believe this lying, manipulative little shit had been under our noses all this time.
And, when I do finally meet the one responsible for the other half of my genes, I find out that she’s a crazy-ass bitch.
“I…is there something more going on here?” Mr. Sharp, my mother’s new husband, asked.
On the way over here Hunt had dumped a boatload of information into our phones.
In between the walk inside and now, I’d done a little light reading right along with the rest of the guys.
My mother, at forty-one years old, had married the man she was with now two years ago. They lived in a twenty-bedroom mansion in Piney Woods, Texas and had no kids. Until this week, apparently.
She didn’t work, and Albert Sharp—boy, would Al hate sharing a name with a man that was married to a crazy bitch like my mother—kept her fat and happy.
I wonder if Sharp knew that the baby girl they had wasn’t recently in need of a foster home.
I couldn’t wait to tell him.
After Beckham made sure that the little girl was safe, however.
Then, all bets were off.
Troup’s phone went off, and he pulled it out of his pocket, nodded once at what he read on the screen, and then jerked his chin in our direction.
Show time.
I carefully moved my hand out of Catori’s, and then pushed her slightly backward behind me, making sure that my bigger body fully covered hers before I started speaking.
“Did you know that there’s a missing kid in the area?” I asked conversationally.
Sharp frowned.
My mother growled.
I grinned.
“Oh, no,” my mother tried, taking a step back. “I think I hear Genny.”
Sharp tilted his head. “No, I don’t hear her.”
“Genny is…”
“Genny,” Lynn grunted. “You didn’t even bother to change her name before you passed her off as your own?”
Sharp’s eyes came to Lynn, his gaze laser focused now. “What?”
“Your beloved wife, who might I add isn’t all that beloved, decided to kidnap two children. But one of those children didn’t fit her narrative, so she dumped him off in the woods. Someone called in a tip today about a child that may or may not be the child that fits the kidnapped little girl’s description to this very address. Police are on the way, but we were closer,” Lynn said. “We just so happened to also have a reason to get in the door and not seem suspicious.”
Sharp’s mouth fell open. “Please, for the love of all that’s holy, tell me you did not do that?”
His apparent surprise was wearing off, and then my mother started to try to cover her ass.
It wouldn’t work.
Sharp didn’t look the type to take fuck-ups like this particular one lying down.
“I knew you wanted kids so badly…” she started. “And this one was being mistreated!”
“Wasn’t being mistreated.” I felt the need for clarification. “The child was being disciplined by the mother because the little girl slapped the little boy on the face when he tried to eat some of her French toast. Ol’ Rebecca here must’ve seen that ‘ill treatment’ and thought that she could give this little girl a better life. Only, she thought that she wouldn’t be noticed or something, all of a sudden having a brand new kid that had her face plastered every fuckin’ where.”
Rebecca’s mouth snapped shut. “I should’ve aborted you.”
“You should’ve,” I said. “My life was a living hell. I was abused from the time that I learned to walk, until I left for the military at the age of eighteen. You took me away from my father. My mistreatment gave me anger issues and eventually sent me to jail. So yeah, you probably should have. Would’ve saved me a whole lot of grief over the last thirty-some odd years.” I paused. “Did you even look into who you were giving me to before you did the giving? I don’t think you did. That, or you just didn’t care that he had a thing for beating on little boys.”