Jagged (19 page)

“The Dog,” Mick returned. “Been around years, Reece, as you probably know from the last time you were in Gnaw Bone. Know things can get rowdy there. Know past management of The Dog preferred to deal with things on their own. It’s good you know now that I don’t turn the other cheek, son, not ever. But if the parties involved are good with walkin’ away without callin’ a cruiser, I’m good with that, long’s there’s no coercion for them to come to that decision, no weapons involved, and no lengthy hospital stays. You with me on this?”

He was talking about fights at The Dog and how he wanted them handled.

Reece had been handling bar fights for twenty-two years. He usually handled them by stopping them before they started. If that didn’t work, he’d do it Shaughnessy’s way.

So Reece told him, “I can agree on that. But that’s not why I’m here.”

It was then Mick’s brows drew together. He took a sip of coffee as he cleared his features.

Then he asked, “So, son, why’re you here?”

“Zara Cinders is livin’ with me,” Reece said as answer and Mick nodded but it wasn’t lost on Reece that Mick’s eyes grew even sharper.

Zara was liked. This was not a surprise. She was extremely likeable and she’d been around Gnaw Bone since birth so most everyone knew just how much there was to like.

Zara was also protected and this was also not a surprise. Kids who came from families like hers, if the town gave a shit, tended to be that way, too.

“Yeah. Hear you gave her a job, got her out of those apartments,” Mick said. “Good owners. Just lazy. Keep tellin’ ’em they should do somethin’ about their locks and peepholes before somethin’ not good happens and they keep tellin’ me they’ll get around to it. Zara, she’s a good gal. Well-liked. Glad you got her out of there and in a job where she can back get on her feet.”

“You don’t understand me,” Reece said. “She’s livin’ with me, as in she’s mine.”

Mick had no response but Reece again saw the man’s already acute attention that he hid behind his good-ol’-boy ways get even more acute.

Reece didn’t need a response.

He kept talking.

“Came in ’cause we were at The Rooster last night and Dahlia Cinders dropped by our table. She told Zara she had to speak to her father. This conversation did not go well, no information was shared, and it was, thankfully, brief. Zara’s worried, though. ’Spect, you know what went down, you know why she is. I’m wonderin’ if there’s somethin’ I need to know. That way I can cushion the blow when it’s time that she does know. And I figure, the person who knows the most around this town is you.”

There was a hint of surprise in his eyes when Mick asked, “Her father hasn’t called her?”

“They don’t speak,” Reece explained.

“Yes, I know, but…” Mick trailed off, looked to his desk, took a sip of coffee, then looked back at Reece. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, son, and I’m sorry that you’re the one’s gonna have to tell Zara. But, two days ago, Xenia passed away.”

Just as he thought.

Reece’s eyes slid to look out the window as his lips muttered, “Shit, fuck.”

Nearly nine years ago, Xenia Cinders got high at the same time she got drunk. For reasons known only to her, and locked away now for near on a decade, she left her house, wandered into the street, and was hit by a car.

The car wasn’t going that fast. Her body took some damage but not much. But luck that didn’t shine often on the Cinders girls didn’t shine on Xenia that night. The hit she took meant she landed with all her weight and a goodly amount of momentum on her head. The head trauma was extreme and irreparable.

She was brain dead.

Unfortunately, her body didn’t know that.

Also, unfortunately, for a reason in the beginning but after that reason was no longer a reason it ended up being just plain stubborn cruelty, even though Zara had begged her parents to turn off the machines and let her go, they’d refused.

So now Xenia had lived an extra nine years without lifting a finger, blinking an eye, eating a bite of food, enjoying a drink, or actually living at all.

“You know anything about it, you know it’s a blessing,” Mick said quietly and Reece looked back at him.

“Not sure Zara’s gonna look at it like that.”

“I can see that.” His eyes grew sharp again. “You care about her though, son, enough to make her yours, you’ll guide her to that.”

This, they didn’t need. Reece had just got her back. They had shit to talk about, shit to do, and he wanted his girl to have it easy for a while. It’d been bad for her for too long. He’d guided her out. She was in a good place, close to happy.

They didn’t need this, but more, Zara didn’t.

Reece clenched his teeth, felt a muscle move in his cheek, and released his jaw to say, “Least they got that boy in a good home.”

“Sorry, son?” Mick asked.

Reece locked eyes with the man. “”Spect you know, maybe you don’t, but Xavier Cinders had no problem takin’ his hand to his wife
or
his girls. Didn’t do it often, used words most the time to make them feel shit, but he did it. Xenia got the worst of it but that didn’t mean he didn’t call Zara down to watch when her sister caught it. So it’s good that when they finally got that baby out of Xenia, Cinders put him up for adoption.”

Shaughnessy looked confused. “Zander Cinders is in a private school not too far from here, Reece. Xavier didn’t put that child up for adoption. His sister, Wilona, just in the next county, has raised him since birth.”

What the fuck?

“Are you fuckin’ shittin’ me?” Reece growled and he heard his voice. He suspected he knew what his face looked like and he suspected both were why Mick Shaughnessy straightened to alert in his chair.

“Son—”

“That motherfucker promised Zara he would put Xenia’s boy up for adoption, make sure he got a good home.”

“Reece—”

“I stood there when they came to the only agreement they came to durin’ that mess. When he flat refused to let Zara raise him, he promised he wouldn’t raise the boy. He promised he’d put that boy in a good home.”

“It would appear he didn’t lie, since he didn’t raise him, but he did lie since he took custody of the child and placed him with his sister,” Mick replied carefully.

“So you’re tellin’ me Zara’s nephew has been growin’ up in the next goddamned county for the last nine fuckin’ years without him knowin’ his aunt exists and without her knowin’ her sister’s boy is that close?” Reece ground out.

“I’m afraid that’s what I’m tellin’ you,” Mick answered.

“All right, so now you wanna tell me why Zara doesn’t know this?” Reece asked.

“I thought she did.”

“Well, she doesn’t,” Reece pointed out the obvious. “This town is small and the people close. How does she not know this?”

“The Cinders aren’t exactly social,” Mick stated the God’s honest truth. “The town rallied around Zara when all that happened, Reece. Not sure I know of anyone who gave their condolences to her folks, not that they wouldn’t want to, just that they knew it wouldn’t be welcomed so they didn’t bother. What I’m sayin’ is, not sure anyone knows where Zander is.”

“Can I ask why you didn’t tell her?” Reece pushed.

Emotion flashed in Mick’s eyes before he answered, “Like I said, I thought she knew. Didn’t bring it up because she essentially lost her sister and her parents through that and that’s not somethin’ you wanna bring up as a reminder for a sweet girl who kept her chin up and kept on keepin’ on.”

Fucking shit. That made sense.

“Shit, fuck,” Reece clipped.

“Think you need to take a calming breath, son,” Mick advised and Reece did exactly that before he looked out the window again.

However, the calming breath didn’t work.

Therefore, he bit off, “I do not believe this shit.”

Mick made no reply and the room lapsed into an uneasy silence before Mick broke it.

“Xavier took his hands to those girls?”

Reece sliced his eyes to the cop. “Repeatedly.”

Mick closed his eyes, whispering, “Dear Lord.”

“No marks, he wasn’t stupid. But that didn’t mean they didn’t get their asses kicked,” Reece shared and Mick opened his eyes. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that,” he finished.

“Didn’t ’spect Xavier was a warm and loving father, way those girls cleared out when they hit majority and just knowin’ the man, but didn’t suspect that.”

“Well, you were right. He was neither warm nor loving and he took that to extremes,” Reece confirmed.

“Sins of the fathers,” he muttered.

“Explain that,” Reece demanded.

“Went to school with Xavier Cinders and his sisters, Dahlia and Wilona. Can’t tell you how many times I saw one, the other, or all ’a them come to school with black eyes, fat lips, arms in slings. Back then, before school officials would report that to authorities and CPS would get called in, there was no help for them. Val Cinders was a hard man and the whole town knew it, just no one had the power to do anything about it. Reckon he taught his son to be just as hard. Sometimes the cycle breaks. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

“With Xavier, it didn’t,” Reece told him.

“I see that,” Mick replied.

“And now that boy’s livin’ in that.”

“We don’t know that,” Mick said quickly. “Maybe, by givin’ him to Wilona, he was breakin’ the cycle.”

Reece felt his eyes narrow. “He lied to his daughter while his other daughter was near on nine months pregnant, brain dead, hooked up to machines, and lyin’ in a hospital bed. He wasn’t breaking any cycle.”

“I remember that situation, Reece,” Mick said quietly and Reece knew he did. By the look on his face, he knew he remembered it like it was yesterday.

Then again, fucked-up shit like that wasn’t easy to forget.

“This can’t stand,” Reece declared.

“Son,” Mick started. “As Xenia’s parents with no other legal arrangements in place, custody fell to them. I knew there was no love lost between Zara and her family and since not a lot of folks around here like anyone who lives in that den of vipers and give them a wide berth, I just suspected that he was an ass to her like he is to everyone. It’s sorry news he took his hand to his girls and you gotta know I don’t like hearin’ it. But, I’ll remind you, it’s beyond the pale where Xenia took that. She got high
and
drunk when she was nearly full-term pregnant.”

“She’d been clean for two years,” Reece reminded him.

“She picked a sorry time to fall off the wagon,” Mick returned.

“She’d been visited by her father that day,” Reece told him and watched him suck in a hissing breath. “Yeah. I can see you can imagine that visit was cheery.”

Mick’s brows went up. “He take his hands to her?”

“That asshole who, according to him, has done no wrong in his life visiting his unmarried, ex-junkie pregnant daughter? Yeah, Mick, he took his hand to her. She was a vegetable lyin’ in that bed but I still saw the bruise on her cheek. If you saw her, you couldn’t have missed it.”

“I thought she got that from getting hit by the car,” Mick muttered.

“She got it when her father planted his fist in his nine-months pregnant daughter’s face. After his visit, Xenia called Zara, lettin’ her know that shit went down and Zara spent the day with her sister, talkin’ her down from doin’ somethin’ stupid. But Zara had to go to work and Xenia did somethin’ stupid.”

Mick nodded.

Reece kept going.

“You don’t hit kids, you don’t hit women, and you only hit men when they give you call to do it. What would move a man to strike a pregnant woman is beyond me but he did it. Then again, he did the same to his baby girls and we could argue all day which one of those is more twisted with no answers since they’re equally fucked up.”

“This is true,” Mick murmured.

Reece went on. “Xenia told Zara she got flashbacks, terrified of the state of her life, havin’ a kid, not breakin’ that cycle, not able to get away from that motherfucker. Zara left, shit kept twisting in Xenia’s brain, and she made very wrong decisions that means she’s been alive for a long time, same time she was good as dead. Think she paid a high price for her dick of a father bein’ an asshole so, due respect, maybe you’ll have a care, shiftin’ blame to a dead woman.”

Mick lifted his chin to acknowledge the rebuke but stated, “We’re goin’ over history.”

“History doesn’t live and breathe and that boy is doin’ both one county over,” Reece fired back.

Shaughnessy locked eyes with him.

Reece kept talking.

“Zara was in no place financially to fight them for custody. She was twenty-fuckin’-four years old and workin’ nights, waitin’ tables at a bar. She’d started with nothin’ and worked her ass off since she was eighteen for everything she had. Not to mention, she had their promise that they’d find a good home for her sister’s son.”

“Not sure what either you or I can do about that. We can’t rewrite history,” Mick noted.

Reece stood and looked down at the man. “Yeah. You’re absolutely right. But we can write the future and that chapter’s gonna be written in blood.”

Mick stood too and warned softly, “Son, you’re talkin’ to an officer of the law.”

“Then you want this to go smooth, you start pokin’ around, ’cause Zander Cinders is gonna be livin’ with his aunt as soon’s I can pull that shit off and it’d help if you did what you could do to see that kid out of that viper’s den,” Reece returned, putting his mug down on Shaughnessy’s desk. “Obliged for the coffee,” he muttered. Turning on his boot, he stalked out of his office.

When he left the station, he didn’t go to his truck. He walked down the boardwalk, fury and adrenalin coursing energy through his frame that he had to burn off because it felt like his fucking head was going to explode.

His thoughts were assaulting him, an onslaught that caused a piercing pain to shoot through his right eye.

Zara was going to lose her mind when she found out her nephew was that close, being raised by a Cinders. He’d just guided her to getting it all together and now, fuck it, it was going to come flying apart.

He hated that for his girl but that wasn’t what sent that pain stabbing through his eye.

He’d left her.

Back then, after that shit went down and he got her to the other side, he’d left.