Page 117 of Stockman's Showdown

‘Right, where were we?’ Charlie pushed back his hat, the light catching on its unique hatband made from the crocodile that had dared to bite him. ‘Oh, yeah…’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now, according to them copper’s findings, they reckoned Jack Price was so devastated that he had nothing left, and with them bad guys after him, he set up his suicide to look like a murder and pin it on Harry. Which is what everyone had thought these past sixty years.’ Charlie shook his head. ‘But according to the forensic whatnot and the DNA thingy they scraped from the gun, the dynamite, the clothing, and stuff they dragged out of archives, they matched the DNA to Jack Price. He not only murdered my brother and his own wife, but he also hid Harry’s car in the Stoneys, letting everyone—including me—think that he’d absconded with a married woman. But I never believed my brother murdered anyone. He just didn’t have it in him.’ Charlie sighed, picked up his glass and raised it in the air. ‘Either way, it’s a sad tale… May they all rest in peace.’

Everyone raised their glass in a toast before taking a sip, even Leo.

Charlie rested his forearms on the table opposite Leo. ‘So why do you want to know that story, eh?’

It then clicked, and Bree’s eyes flared. ‘Are you related to Price?’

Leo nodded. ‘Jake Blackwell was my uncle.’

‘Blackwell Mining Company!’ It was the name of Leo’s mining company. Why hadn’t she seen this sooner?

‘My mother picked out the company name. She was Jake’s sister, who believed your family killed my family, making her suffer. And where I come from, we believe in payback. An eye for an eye.’

‘But we had nothing to do with Price’s death. He killed himself,’ said Bree.

‘So, I’ve just found out. Honestly, I’d only recently learned about my uncle.’

Bree leaned closer to Leo over the table. ‘This is about those stolen guns, isn’t it?’

Leo didn’t nod, but his cold eyes grew darker. ‘My uncle was supposed to settle his gambling debt with the organisation by giving them those stolen guns. But he never showed, leaving my mother behind.’

‘They didn’t hurt her, did they?’ Charlie’s concern was genuine. Even Bree stopped looking at Leo like a villain for just a moment.

‘My mother was forced to marry a lower-ranking member of the family as a way to repay that debt.’

‘Did you know?’ Bree asked.

‘I always knew my mother was part of an arranged marriage, just not the reason why. And my father always treated her well.’ He stared long and hard at Bree.

‘Go on,’ urged Bree

‘I never knew I had an uncle, or what he’d done, and how it affected my mother, until my mother spotted an article about his death in some obscure newspaper and demanded justice.’

‘Those news articles were written over sixty years ago. Why only now?’ Bree had seen the articles that Charlie had kept in a scrapbook, piled on their table with the rest of her grandfather’s notes in his search for Harry.

‘My mother is part of this charity that helps save the archives in libraries and stumbled upon an article written about the head stockman. It had a picture of Jack Price, and she knew who it was straight away. She then hired a private detective to find out where her brother was buried, where the station was, and how he’d been murdered. That’s when my mother learned that Elsie Creek Station was up for sale. Only then did she explain the entire story to me, demanding some sort of family justice.’

It sounded lame to Bree. But then again, if anyone dared harmed a hair on her family, she’d cut loose. ‘Is that why you wanted the station?’

‘I never wanted to buy it. Not when I got this property so easily. And I knew the caretaker’s caveat was watertight, so there was no way Charlie was going to sell to us.’

‘What about your lithium mine? Was that ever going to happen?’

‘Nope. It was something to keep the Riggs brothers busy chasing their tails.’ Leo’s smirk irritated Bree.

‘Hey,’ she said with a sneer, ‘you burned down our crops, making me play drover to feed our cattle for months. You destroyed Starvation Dam, poisoned our dogs, and made us sick from lead poisoning, Charlie had to go to hospital for a few days. Not to mention that idiot I shot in the arse…’ She gripped her glass as a random thought popped into her head. ‘Did you have anything to do with Darcie’s death?’

‘No. But I have been wearing down the defences of a certain old man,’ he said with a cold smile, nodding at Charlie. ‘Call it settling the score for what your family did to mine.’

‘You prick.’ She threw the glass at Leo. His arm deflected it to smash against the far wall, as she dragged her grandfather out of his chair and used her body to shield him. ‘You leave my grandfather alone. Charlie had nothing to do with any of this.’

‘So I found out only tonight.’ Leo motioned his hand to his men who’d pulled out their guns. ‘Calm down, all of you.Sit down, men.I mean that. Bree is only doing what I’d do for my family.’

But Bree wasn’t giving Leo the satisfaction of agreeing with him for being protective over what little family she had left.

Leo angled his head towards her, the light deepening the sharp shadows of his cheekbones, and the sinister shine to his darkening eyes. ‘You know, Bree, I wish it could have been different. I honestly believed it would have worked out with us.’

‘In your nightmares, demon seed. I don’t know why you’d even want me, I’m just the caretaker’s granddaughter, a simple bushie’s blacksmith.’

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