Page 55 of Broken Chains

I rolled my eyes. “Peyton already told you?”

He laughed. “My sisters tell me just about everything and far more than I ever care to know.” He slid a folder over to me. I stared down at it. “It’s a good offer.”

I opened the folder. It was an employment document. He was offering eighty-two thousand dollars a year as a ranch hand. I skimmed through some of the details: mending fences, caring for the animals, seasonal round-ups, occasional overnights. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle and that was far more money than I’d ever seen in my lifetime.

I closed the folder and slid it back to him. “Did she tell you about the plant?”

“Huh?” he asked, caught off guard. “The plant in town?”

“Yeah. It’s closing. Official announcement hasn’t been made yet,” I informed him.

“Shit! You serious?”

“Unfortunately, yes. You know what this means, right?”

“A lot of people are going to be out of work very soon,” Thomas said solemnly.

“Even worse, a good eighty to ninety percent of Larken wolves will be out of work. I know that doesn’t mean much to you, but it terrifies me.”

He nodded. “I understand your concern. I don’t think Luke will up and move the pack though, Oliver.”

“You don’t know how bad it is over there, Thomas. Don’t get me wrong, I like Luke and he’s truly trying to make things better, but Jedidiah never cared about those that left Collier to follow him. He guilted most of them into it or chose the hotheads he knew he could keep riled up over the injustice he spouted. My father definitely fell into that category.”

“What does he have to say about you mating a Collier?” Thomas asked without judgement, only curiosity.

I snorted. “I don’t actually talk to the old man unless he’s drunk and looking to pick a fight. Now that we aren’t living under his roof, I’ll likely never hear from him again.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Thomas said.

I shrugged. “Is what it is.”

“So you pretty much raised your brothers, is that right? Luke was telling me a little about it.”

I was surprised to hear the two men talked, especially about me, but I supposed it was because of my mating Peyton. Of course Thomas would want to check up on me.

“Yeah, Brady was only four when our mom left, Kenneth just a year old. I did what I had to do. No regrets. They’re good boys. Not perfect, but really are any of us?” I was proud of my brothers and the young men they were growing into.

“You’ve done a good job with them. They’re great guys. Luke says Tim and Kenneth are about the only two young people in Larken that he doesn’t ever worry about.”

I beamed with pride. “He said that?”

“Yeah. Said since you moved out of the trailer park, he hasn’t had any issues with Brady either.”

I nodded. “Not sure what’s going on with him. He was definitely headed down the wrong path for a while. Didn’t seem to matter what I did or said to try and stop it.”

“Some of us just have to learn things the hard way, in our own time.”

“True. I definitely fall into that category,” I admitted.

“I do know enough about what’s happening over there to know that the plant closing is going to crush them. Many are already dabbling in drugs and other illegal activities. Makes me question what I’m about to offer, but what do you think about having some of them come and work here at the ranch? We have more work than we can keep up with, and Ruby is talking about expanding the dairy again. I need hands and hard workers.”

“You’d do that? Let them come back into your territory?” I couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“My father always told me, ‘Those Larken wolves are our responsibility. They were Collier first. Jedidiah’s too damn stubborn to let me help, but some day it’ll be up to us to make sure he doesn’t kill them all over there.’ I’m not sure of Luke’s stance on it yet, but do you think maybe a program like that would be received?”

I sighed. “If you had asked me that even a month ago, I’d have said hell no, but I never dreamed I’d ask Cruz for a job at that plant, either. We all do what we need to survive, and survival is all we know in Larken.”

“Tell me what it’s really like there,” Thomas said.

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