Page 78 of Property of Chaos

What I should be doing is looking for a new place to live.

You’ll never outrun him.I buy time, is all. Trade away my sense of security for another twenty-four hours ruing what I’ve become.

But I love Temperance. I love the people I’ve gotten to know here. The cottage. The serenity of the countryside. The river walks.

I won’t move again. I won’t go.

Because if there’s one thing I won’t allow him to take, it’s my fucking right to be here.

Alive. Thriving.

Despite everything he did to prevent that.

TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAOS

Shit falls apart around here quickerthan an overstuffed taco in a toddler’s hands. I run rough fingers through my hair and glare at the bullshit spread out before us.

“You know they’ll twist this shit until they can pin us for it and then make out it was an insurance job, right?” Jinx scowls at the mixture of legal documents scattered over the meeting table.

“The loading dock is the least of our worries.” It’s the bodies they found under the destroyed foundations.

Thechildren’sbodies.

At this point, moving rural does fuck all to save us. We need to move countries. Planets. Fucking vaporize and find a new dimension or some shit.Fuck.“What did Fang find out?”

“Taylor is incarcerated, so we’re trying to get an audience with him to detail what we’re dealin’ with.”

I run a hand over my face at the news that the sole remaining member of the crew we inherited the yard from is unreachable. My heart hopes there’s a simple explanation for this, some way to point the finger of blame elsewhere. But my gut says it’s fucking kids; there’s nowhere right to point the finger when the shit’s that fucked up.

My eyes glaze over as I stare at the farm's sale contract slipped beneath the loading dock's title deed. What’s fucking with my head worse is the aching need I have to crawl back to Vanessa. To fucking kneel at her feet and rest my head in her lap. Let her pet my hair and fucking rub my back like the simp I am.

I’ve never needed coddling before. Reassurance that what I do is right.That I’m a good man.Fuck me—my momma complains I hated being cuddled as a baby, preferring to be left alone.

What the fuck is in that woman’s water to make me act this way?

“You need to tell the brothers where you’ve been,” Jinx states quietly when the silence stretches too long. “Shit’s gettin’ weird. First, you’re disappearing at night, and now you lose your goddamn shirt.” He nods to my bare arms.

“Didn’t lose it.” I stare at the table to avoid his eye. “I know exactly where it is.”

“They’re starting to talk amongst themselves.”

“So do your job and tell them to fucking stop.” I snatch up the title deed. “Why doesn’t this go back farther than 1994?”

“It was part of the surrounding property then.” Jinx rustles through the mess to find what he needs, handing me a larger map of the area.

“Would that first transfer not be recorded?”

“Not if it was a handshake deal. A gift.” He points to a name in the bottom right corner. “That was the guy who owned the whole place. Grain farm that went belly up, so he divided off the land for commercial purposes. The weird thing is, this whole section here”—he uses his index finger to circle several acres that encompass the yard—“was passed along undocumented to three main beneficiaries.”

“Who?”

“We’re working on that.”

I drop the map to the table. “This research is all shit my old man should have done before he fucking took the place.”

“He’s not the only one who should have thought to do it.”

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