Page 40 of Broken Promises

“I’m not.”

“You are. It’s written all over your face,” she said dryly as Marco walked in.

“You’re late, Beck.”

“Sorry, I was trying to take the trash out, but D wouldn’t let me,” she said with a straight face.

“Late is still late,” he muttered, giving me a small smile. “Morning. Thanks for being able to help out today. Jensen was supposed to watch them, but he got called into a meeting.”

“Don’t you guys work for yourselves?” I asked slowly.

“Mostly. Jensen just got accepted for a new job that he’s been wanting though, and he has some things to do over the next few months before he can officially start.”

“Doing what?”

“Dad’s the new headmaster of Crestford Academy. He starts in the new school year,” Beckett said proudly, surprising me.

“They let someone from a criminal organization run an academy?”

“Jensen has a clean record and isn’t part of the crews,” Marco shrugged. “It probably helped their decision when we offered to donate a boatload of cash if he was accepted too. It’s not like his education is lacking. He had top grades in school, and his family name holds a lot of weight too. Crestford were more than happy to have him.”

“Is this some kind of power play? Are you guys taking over?” I joked, but Marco just chuckled.

“Something like that. We know for a fact that Crestford isn’t exactly run by the book, and we wanted to make it safer for the kids. Jensen has been wanting to do something other than work bars and stay at home with kids. He’s been doing it forever, so now it’s his turn to do something for himself. Lukas is intending on doing the same thing.”

“What about the kids you guys take in?”

“Right now, we have you and Poppy to help. If we need to hire other people, we can. We kind of owe it to them. They sacrificed a lot of their time to stay home and raise our kids so we could keep running the crews.”

I loved how accepting they all were of each other’s wants and needs.

“Well, I’m really happy for them. Tell Lukas the Heights needs decent role models. I never had a good teacher or principal when I was there. It’s not a fancy school with good pay, but it would make a difference,” I smiled. He nodded, a thoughtful look on his face.

“I’ll let him know. He’s not in it for the money, we don’t need that. The kids are in the living room. You’ve only got to juggle two of them today. The others are in after-school care until we can pick them up near dinner time.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t let fucking Lavaro in,” Beckett said bluntly before walking off, and Marco frowned.

“Ander’s back?”

I winced, nodding. “He’s outside talking to Diesel. He dropped me off.”

“Just what we needed,” he said under his breath as he walked off, speaking again over his shoulder. “There’s a list on the counter of anything you should need. Call if you need help.”

“I will,” I answered, turning to walk in the other direction of the living room.

I was pretty sure the two toddlers were new, and I had no idea where the baby was. Maybe they’d found her a permanent home?

I sat on the floor with them, forgetting about all my problems the second the little cuties started babbling away to me with big smiles on their faces.

Best job ever.

Logan

I wasn’t sure how it would go when Zavier asked me to pick him up so we could talk, but so far, we’d just hung out like nothing had changed. It was a relief since I’d been expecting a fight or something.

“She won’t reply to my messages,” I sighed, making Zavier wince from the passenger seat. We’d parked down at the docks in Ashburn Valley, hoping the chance of a mafia attack would be slim here. The Reapers practically owned the docks, and the Psychos and Devils ran the rest of Ashburn. Three crews in one town meant we’d be pretty safe from attackers, unless they were suicidal.

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