Page 86 of Rescued by the Single Dad

“Yeah, you’d have to be after that.”

“It is nice to talk about it with someone other than my therapist or sister,” he admitted.

“Had my own shitty episodes of life. I get it. It does help to talk about it. Get the thoughts out into the air rather than all tangled up in your head making a mess.”

Rocco simply bobbed his head. “I’m craving fried chicken. Can we swing in here?” He pointed to a fast-food fried chicken chain and Clint agreed, taking a right off the main road into the drive thru.

Clint wasn’t particularly hungry since he’d had a late breakfast with his dad, but he ordered some fries and a strawberry shake. They sat in the line for the ferry, munching on their artery clogging deliciousness.

“We’re only a year apart, and I was bigger than Brooke by the time I was thirteen. The summer I turned thirteen, I shot up five inches and gained like thirty pounds in almost pure muscle. I’m glad I managed to skip the lanky, awkward teenage years.” He slid his gaze sideways to Clint as he took a sip of his chocolate shake. “It was a way to protect myself. He rarely came after me—because our mother always stepped in—but sometimes he did. So I bulked up, that way I stood a fighting chance. Also, so I could protect Brooke and our mother.”

“No thirteen-year-old should ever have to do that,” Clint said, his voice deep and strained with emotion over what Rocco and Brooke must have endured.

“No, they shouldn’t. But that was my reality. He came home one night from work, and was already shit-faced. He immediately went after our mom. I stepped in and he punched me so hard I blacked out. I was unconscious on the floor. According to Brooke, our mom went apeshit on him, and he grabbed her head and slammed it onto the corner of the granite counter. She died instantly.”

Clint had a fry in his grasp, but it hung midair as the image of that horror scene took shape in his mind.

“Brooke was upstairs, but the way our house was laid out, you could hang out in the hallway upstairs and look through the spindles to see into the kitchen and living room. She saw the whole thing. Then she heard our dad call his cop buddies in a panic. Three of them came over within twenty minutes, helped him clean up the scene and they drove her body—rolled up in a rug—to a pig farm half an hour away.”

Clint no longer had an appetite. He closed the lid on his fry container. “Why a pig farm?”

Rocco’s snort was laden with disgust, not humor. “Because pigs will eat anything. It’s a great way to dispose of a body. And my dad and his buddies knew that because of the company they kept with gangs and traffickers. It’s how a lot of them disposed of their rivals, girls who OD’d, or anybody that looked at them the wrong way.”

“How did ...” Clint had a million questions. He just had no idea where to start.

“Brooke is a smart cookie. Once she woke me up, she helped me into our mom’s car and drove me to one of her friend’s houses. She didn’t have her license yet, but took the risk anyway. That friend’s mom was a nurse, so I was in expert hands. Then she hopped on a bus and went six towns over to turn in our dad. The only way they were able to find any proof was they took stool samples from the pigs and found our mother’s DNA.”

Bile coated the back of Clint’s tongue. Brooke and Rocco’s mother was murdered then fed to pigs. They didn’t even have a body to bury or ashes to spread.

Rocco had obviously recounted this enough times that he was numb to the whole thing. Or he was compartmentalizing like a champ and would hash this shit out later with his shrink.

“How did Brooke know about the pig farm?”

Rocco smiled with pride. “She told the FBI to check the soil deposits on the bottom of their shoes. They did, and then they traced it back to the pig farm. The pig farmer sang like a canary, too, when they promised him immunity and a placement in witness protection. It was a massive investigation. Brooke opened up a giant can of worms, and ten cops were put away for various crimes. Our dad was just one alcoholic sleazeball in a department of many.”

“Holy ... shit,” Clint breathed. “Brooke is—”

“The strongest fucking person I know. Which is why I never for a second believed that she was dead. And I certainly never believed that she tried to take her own life. And neither of us drink much given that our dad was an alcoholic. So I don’t believe that she was drunk on the boat.”

“She said she only had two glasses of champagne the whole night.”

“Yeah, someone out there tried to kill my sister, and we’re going to find them and they’re going to pay.”

Clint nodded as his gut spun with dread and unease.

He wanted to find Brooke’s wannabe killer just as much as Rocco, but he couldn’t go off like Batman and find the bad guy himself. He’d lived a life of danger as a marine. That part of his life was over now, though. He was a brewmaster and a single dad. Danger was not part of his daily routine. He had a family to think about. He was all Talia had.

But then he thought about Brooke and everything she’d gone through. And, yet, like a lotus, she rose from the thick, suffocating mud and out into the sunshine, more beautiful, resilient and stronger than ever. If she could do that after such a gruesome past, then Clint could suck it up and help her anyway he could. But where was the line?

There was only one way to know if a risk paid off.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Her left foot healed enough she could walk on it now, but there was a deep cut on the bottom of her right heel that was still pretty painful to put any kind of pressure on. However, hopping on one foot, and the toe pads of the other was far easier than butt shuffling all over Clint’s house.

Jagger joked that he should grab the dry mop for her to sit on so she could at least clean Clint’s floors while she scooted around. Then he suggested she go to his place and do the same.

Brooke was grateful for Clint’s youngest brother stopping by around lunchtime to check on her. He also brought her a Thai chicken noodle salad, which was delicious and filling. He didn’t stick around to chat for as long as before, but his brief presence helped quell the loneliness and boredom that took root in her chest after Talia left for the day.

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