Page 49 of My Dark Protector

“I figured you were.”

“The handrail’s fine. Just fixed that before you go here.”

The tour of the upstairs was more perfunctory. More shop talk than anything else. Jaxon was trying and failing to let the fact slide that Owen had just spent a quarter of an hour praising him.Despitewhat Owen knew about him.

Not to mention that he didn’t even know itall.

He didn’t know what Jaxon had done to get into Eric’s good graces to begin with. How he’d… fucking sold out the man that Brad insisted loved him like a son.

It was well before Owen had saved his ass, one of the last times he’d actually been inside Blacktown. Before he stopped hanging around with Brad full stop and Cassandra had practically banned him from the house for his connections.

Brad was still asleep and Jaxon was sneaking into Owen’s unlocked office to snoop around for something to give to Eric. He had wanted, more than anything, to belong, so when Eric told him that all he’d need for a permanent spot in his group was something damning about Owen Madden, well…

His stomach had sort of sunk because he was fairly certain that the man had no skeletons in any closets. Anywhere. Now, Cassandra had that crazy sister, but everyone knew about her, so that was no secret. And therefore, no leverage.

So he’d gone snooping in the file cabinets until he found the one with a folder containing Dave’s name.

Which was weird, because it was in the cabinet with all his business records. Top-notch business records, by the way.

Jaxon pulled it out, skimmed the two documents inside, and nearly fell to the floor.

Because inside was Dave’s full birth certificate. The long one. Without a father or mother listed. Of course. Everyone knew Owen adopted Dave. Taken custody of him, whatever. It was the other piece of paper that made Jaxon’s jaw drop.

He wasn’t versed in legal jargon, but from what he could glean, this listed Owen as Dave’s father.

And Cassandra couldn’t be his mother because he was born two months before Brad.

So that meant that Owen had a bit of something on the side, and Dave was the result. Perfect family man, Owen Madden. With an illegitimate son.

He pulled out his phone and snapped pictures of both documents, sending them via text message to Eric before he put all of it back in the folder and back into the filing cabinet.

He snuck out from Owen’s office and back to Brad’s room with no one the wiser.

No one except Eric, that is.

Fuck, he was awful.

He’d outed Owen’s biggest secret to a McKinnon, complete with proof and everything. And then, later, he’d taken money from Owen to get back on his feet because he was a despicable junkie. Or had been. And now he was lusting after Owen’s daughter when he was pretty sure she didn’t want him like that.

Possibly.

No, he was sure. And even if she did, she wouldn’t want anything to do with him after she found out about this.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. This had gone on too far.

Owen was talking about something with the drywall, and Jaxon felt like if he opened his mouth, he’d vomit out the truth, but maybe Owen needed to hear it.

But just as he was about to do it, his phone buzzed in his pocket and his hand jumped towards it out of habit.

“Sorry…” Jaxon pulled it out and checked the screen, his heart skipping a beat when he saw Teagan’s name and number there on the banner.

He smiled and heard Owen chuckle.

“I’ll leave you to it then.”

Jaxon looked up abruptly. “No, I mean, it’s-”

“It’s Teagan, isn’t it?”

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