Page 106 of Cardinal

"I'm gonna beat your ass and make it look like an accident and drag it to your room myself if you don't move on the count of three." Okay, I wouldn't hurt him that bad, just enough to teach him a lesson on who was in charge around the place.

"I can take you on any day."

Yeah, no, we're doing this.

My cocky ass son needed to be taught a lesson the hard way.

Lunging at him, I easily tackled him to the ground with a grunt and put him in a knee hold down. "Don't forget who taught you how to fight." The extra trainers who helped him when I couldn't were nowhere near my playing field.

Gritting his teeth, Gale threw his hands at me while bucking his body to try and throw me off. "Don't forget that I am your son." I don't know how, maybe through sheer determination or some stupid stubbornness, but he managed to pull one of my legs out from under me, toppling me over. "And that I am better and stronger." A winded grunt punched out of my body from Gale's weight falling onto me.

"Stronger I'll give you. Better?" Just to prove my own stubborn point, I tripped him down by grabbing his arm and pulling him right into me. Not giving him a hair of a second to react, I wrap my arms and legs around him, putting him into a guillotine chokehold.

"Luca! What the fuck are you doing to our son? Let him go, you asshole!"

Uh oh.

"Ooooh, you're in troooouuuubllllle." Gale's strangled voice choked out mockingly from under me.

When I showed no signs of releasing Gale because I was too busy plotting an escape and coming up with a whole list of excuses to lessen the blow from my lovely wife, a swift kick lodged itself into my side. Instinctively, my arms released my son with my cough so my body could curl up to defend myself against another blow.

"The fuck is wrong with you? How many times do I have to tell you to quit doing that kind of hold on Gale? What if you snap his neck or suffocate him with your fat arms?" Juliet had every right to fret over our kid, even if she knew I'd never truly harm him—mother's instinct and all. Well, that and a guillotine choke was rather risky, but it often got my point across to Gale fairly quickly. Of course, I'd never harm him; I was a professional, so I knew what I was doing.

Checking Gale over, Juliet completely ignored me—rude—as I groaned in pain on the floor. It might have been exaggerated to earn some sympathy from Juliet, but I doubt it'd work since she knew her hits could never hurt me unless she went for a cheap shot between the legs.

Huffing, Juliet glared at both me and Gale with her arms crossed. "Why the hell were you tw—OH MY FUCKING GOD! WHY THE FUCK IS MY NEW COMPUTER BROKEN!?"

And that would be our cue to scram.

"Get the fucking keys," I told Gale in a hurry as I scrambled to my feet and made a run for it.

"She'll just hack the car and shut it down." Gale's voice trailed behind me as we ran through the house to the garage.

Stopping at the key cabinet, I trifled through it with Gale. "Not the Camry." Eventually, I grew smart enough in the first few years of our relationship to stash away some old cars that didn't rely on computers and fancy electronics. Juliet couldn't hack something that didn't have Wi-Fi unless she managed to Jerry rig it.

"I thought she slashed the tires on that damn thing last time she caught us." Gale's words were as frantic as his hands as he brushed them through every set of hanging keys.

"Wheels are replaceable." With the keys in one hand, I snatched my son's wrist and dragged both our asses out the door just mere seconds before Juliet got her hands on us. "Get in!" I practically shoved my son into the car when I flung the door open and forced him to crawl across the center console.

Unfortunately, our escape hit a flat before we even started the car. "Holy shit, dad! Mom's got her controller and the drone up!" Yeah, words I never ever want to hear from my son or anyone. A pissed-off wife with any kind of weapon was a huge no-no, but my pissed-off wife with a weapon? Yeah, no, we were fucked.

Three soft pops rang out in succession, and the distinct sound of air hissing out of deflating tires filled my ears and the air around us.

"I'm gonna kill both of you." Juliet's deadly voice chilled the air and my spine.

"Sweetheart," with a sheepish smile, I turned around to face her with my hands up in the air. "It was an accident. I'll replace it like I always do."

"Okay, the fact you broke my expensive, customized shit pisses me the fuck off, but what really threw me off my hinges is the fact I had a program running through there that's taken me weeks to perfect. You potentially fucked it all up! The whole network that the program was going to shut down could potentially be all gone. Yeah, I'm fucking pissed about the broken screen and computer tower, but I'm really fucking pissed and angry and upset about the program and victims who are going to be harmed if this shit fails!"

Juliet kept prattling on and on about how this had been a long project for her and the business and how it was a big stint, and honestly, I felt like a fucking asshole now. Looking over at Gale, I could see his shoulders slumping with his cowering body as he looked at his mother apologetically.

Yeah, this time we fucked up, bad.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I slowly approached Juliet, taking the gun away from her before pulling her into a tight hug. "I'm so sorry." I was definitely groveling more tonight. "What can we do to fix it. Please, tell us. We really should have been more careful with our roughhousing, and we should have known better than to roughhouse around your systems."

Climbing out of the car, Gale joined in on the hug. "Yeah, I'm sorry mom. I should have just listened to Dad and not egg him. It's my fault the fight started." At least he had our big hearts where it counted. "Please, let us help you fix it. Do you need me to try and run a backup program or a different program to try and patchwork things? Is there anything I can help you recover?"

"I don't know how much of it can be salvaged, or if any of it can… Just… Go plug in my spare tower, boot it up, and transfer whatever data you can from the tower you broke. I need a moment to cool off before I rip both your heads off and kick them into the sea." Juliet sighed heavily against us with a deep frown.

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