Page 49 of Callum

“I can’t believe you didn’t stab Maddock with all that fucking itching,” Lachlan chuckles under his breath, reaching over to snatch the twenty-dollar bill out of Merrick’s hand.

“You two assholes weren’t betting again, were you?”

Neither Lachlan nor Merrick bother to look in Grant’s direction before speaking in unison. “No, sir.”

Grant shakes his head at their backs, coming to a stop next to his Ducati. He doesn’t actually look angry. If anything, he seems relieved to finally be outside. “Don’t do it again.”

“Sure thing, bossman!” Lachlan calls over his shoulder from halfway down the driveway.

Maddock stops next to Grant, his mouth set in a hard line. He looks a bit like he might puke, and I have the overwhelming urge to take a step away from him so it doesn’t get on my shoes. “You alright, Mads?”

“Never better,” he grunts, his eyes locked on the ground near our feet. “I need out of this fucking suit.”

“You’re dismissed,” Grant claps him on the shoulder, spinning the bigger man toward Merrick’s Mercedes G-Wagen. “I need you right by tomorrow.”

“Yeah, boss,” Maddock mumbles, but Merrick nods more assuredly in Grant’s direction. Maddock never has been great at cowing to the Father, and it doesn’t appear to have gotten better since he had his daughter.

The older Miles gets, the more questions she asks about her mother. Every time Maddock has to lie to her, to tell her that her mother passed away in childbirth, it kills a small piece of him. Not because he thinks it would be better to tell his daughter that her mother was murdered by her grandfather, but because he isn’t able to tell her he has doled out justice for the woman who brought her into this world.

Not much longer now.

Thirteen: Warehouse Blues

CALLUM

Gravel crunches beneath my feet, little puffs of white powder lifting around my dress shoes with each step. The text went out before I even made it to the end of the Father’s driveway.

Grant: Warehouse. Fifteen minutes.

Stepping into the wood-framed skeleton of the building, I take a moment to look around the half-finished space. Things have progressed since the last time I was here, the outside now fully encased in dark green plywood. There are windows in every opening and massive garage doors closing in the front half of the building, but the inside of the Warehouse is much the same. Wires run through the ceiling directly into the framed-out walls, and pipes stick up from the plywood floor in random places around the space. Most of the walls still need to be closed in, but it’s easier to see the ultimate vision now.

“When will it actually be finished?”

“Three-ish weeks?”

“I don’t deal in ‘-ish’, Maddock.”

Mads laughs, rubbing one tattooed hand over his eyes. He has changed out of his suit and into a dirt-covered t-shirt and jeans. He looks far more comfortable now. “Then call it four weeks, and throw a fucking party when it happens in three.”

“Fair enough,” Grant concedes, leaning against one of the bare framing boards just as the front door opens behind me again.

“It’s cold as fuck out here.”

“Pussy,” Merrick grunts, shoving past Lachlan to get into the Warehouse first.

“I’ll have you know,” Lachlan counters, one hand snapping out to slap Merrick in the back of the head. “I take that as a compliment.”

Grant’s long-suffering sigh is audible across the empty room, but he doesn’t get to intervene in the argument before Lachlan speaks again. “Just because you’ve never given a pussy a good pounding—”

“I sleep with women, you asshole,” Merrick bites out, grabbing a loose board off a table to his right, swinging it directly at Lachlan’s face. Our youngest brother has a lifetime of honed reflexes on his side, and he catches the board just before it cracks him in the nose.

“No one said you didn’t sleep with women. I simply implied that you’re bad at it.”

“Shut up before he kills you,” Grant growls, giving the arguing idiots a stern look. “I won’t stop him if he tries.”

Lachlan scoffs, narrowing his eyes at Grant. “I would stop him if he tried.”

“Come on, Lally,” I give him a small smile, patting his shoulder as they catch up to where I’m standing. “Leave it, yeah?”

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