JAMES
I passed Jaxon in the hallway that the gym was on, and I clasped a hand to his shoulder, bringing him to a stop. He turned his unnerving eyes to me. “Boss?”
Emmaline’s words had been ringing in my head for the past few days, and I couldn’t get them out. It couldn’t hurt to talk to him. Hell, maybe it would fill in a lot of the blanks that I was drawing when I tried to figure everything out in my head about my parents and the car accident.
“I want to see you in my office in an hour,” I told him.
He nodded once. “Yes, sir.”
I released his shoulder and continued on towards the stairs. Emmaline was still asleep when I walked into our room. Just like always, as soon as I had gotten out of bed this morning to go down to the gym, she had sprawled out across the entire bed. I would never understand how someone as little as her took up an entire king-sized bed, but she managed to do it every morning.
The woman was something else, but I loved every bit of her.
I leaned over the bed and pressed a kiss to her cheek before I strode off towards the bathroom to get a shower and shave. I was putting my watch on my wrist when my phone vibrated with a message from Adrian, letting me know he had everyone located that I had told him to locate from the report he had given me of Emmaline’s past.
I let him know to meet me in my office for lunch with the information, and we would go over it then. After pressing another kiss to Emmaline’s cheek, I left our bedroom, nodding once at the guard I had posted at her door. “No one comes in this room,” I ordered, just like I did every morning.
He nodded once. “Understood, Sir.”
Jaxon was waiting outside of my office for me when I got there. I nodded once at him in greeting as I unlocked my office door and walked in, listening as he followed me inside. I gestured to the chairs on the other side of my desk, a silent instruction for him to take a seat.
I sat down in my chair and pushed my fingers through my hair, something I did when I was frustrated or unsure about a situation. Emmaline had picked up on the nervous habit in no time at all. She paid more attention to her surroundings than she or anyone else thought she did.
“I was hoping you could fill some things in for me,” I started. Jaxon arched an eyebrow at me in question. “Regarding my childhood – up until the accident,” I clarified.
He leaned back in his seat. “For one, you and I were best friends,” he told me, confirming what Emmaline had told me. “We were inseparable.”
“That’s what Emmaline was telling me,” I confirmed.
He nodded. “Your mom . . . She was always different. My dad used to talk about how shady she was and always told me to avoid her at all costs – didn’t want me getting twisted up in her web, as he called it.”
I grunted. My brother had been tangled up in a web of lies so big and so thick that it’d been near impossible to escape.
It took me almost thirty-two fucking years to escape it.
“Do you remember if your dad used to say anything specific about her?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “No, sorry. Growing up, Dad tried to keep me separate from all of this shit – wanted me to have a childhood. So, he never talked about your mom or your dad.”
I frowned. This wasn’t proving to be helpful at all. “Your dad, though – he did love you, Sir.”
“James,” I corrected. “Just call me James.”
He shrugged but nodded his head. “Before the accident, shit wasn’t so bad. You and Darren both worshipped the ground your dad walked on, though he already had both of you caught up in this shit. But then, your mother crashed the car with you inside.” He frowned. “I remembered your dad yelling so loud that it carried over into our house next door. He was shouting at your mother – something about the car being wrecked on purpose. She almost killed you because of her hatred of him. That’s all I remember from their shouting match. I think he knocked her unconscious because everything in your house suddenly went quiet, and then your dad left the house – probably went to go see you.”
“And then everything between you and I ended,” I concluded. “And shit got bad at home once I was released.”
Jaxon nodded. “Dad just told me to leave you alone – that it was for the best. He was afraid me trying to rekindle those memories would do you more harm than good.”
“Your dad was a good man, Jaxon.” I did know that much. He’d been my father’s second in command, and he had been damn good at his job.
He smiled a little. “Yeah, he was. Shitty way for him to go out.” He frowned. “But he was a good man, nonetheless.”
Jaxon’s father, Paul, had been killed during an ambush. My father had barely escaped with his own life – had laid in a hospital bed in a coma for months. Paul was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Jaxon’s watch pinged, and he lifted his arm, taking a look at the text message. “I need to get to training,” he told me. “Am I good to go?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “How are the new recruits coming along, by the way?”
He shrugged. “As to be expected. But I’ll break them down, remind them who’s in charge.” He bowed his head to me. “Have a good one, James.”
I nodded at him, watching as he left my office.
~*~*~