Page 102 of Bossy Hero

“Sit the fuck down,” I bark out.

Joining me on the couch, he remains silent.

I will not fucking punch him. I will not fucking scream at him. I will let him explain at his pace.

Maybe if I tell myself that enough times, it’ll work.

Because I honestly feel like jumping his shit the longer this pathetic excuse for a conversation continues.

“Don’t spit out all the answers at once. I’m struggling to keep up.”

He rambles through some platitudes about how he’s working to find the right words. As if there are any.

I tune most of it out as my emotions riot.

“. . . Please be patient with me and try to listen...”

The roar of blood rushing behind my ears muffles whatever the fuck else comes out of his mouth. “Just to recap for you, in case you’ve forgotten. I didn’t sleep last night. The woman I love was shot, and I killed the gunman in a restaurant parking lot. Mydaughterjust barged into a meeting in front of a third of my staff to drop a bomb at my feet. Andyouneedmeto be patient.”

My chest heaves with increasingly jagged breaths.

And yet, he still doesn’t answer.

Calling up all the love I’ve ever had for him, I manage to keep my voice steady. “Speak, dammit.Fuck.” I groan. “Fucking start talking before I lose my shit.”

“Before we opened Redleg, I looked for anything in your past that might come back to bite you. I was trying to protect you. Protect what you were building.”

My teeth grind, and I thrust out my open palm to cut him off. “Whatwewere building.”

None of this would be here if we hadn’t partnered the way we did. None of it.

And if he doesn’t know that, there’s another one of my fucking failures screaming right in my face.

Defeat creeping into my soul, I let my exhausted frame slump from the arm of the sofa onto the cushion and stretch my legs out in front of me. “Keep going,” I encourage him.

Finally, Tomer begins explaining how this cluster became utterly fucked beyond all recognition.

“Her mother was a woman named Abigail Holt. From Georgia. I found your name and birth date on the original birth registration paperwork in the hospital. The state rejected it since you hadn’t signed it to confirm paternity.”

Well, considering I didn’t know she was pregnant, that’s a no-brainer.

And I don’t recall dating anyone by the name of Abigail.

He continues, explaining how the state returned the registration forms to her, notifying her to resubmit with paternity paperwork so I could be named on the birth certificate.

Clearly, that never happened, and thus, I wasn’t listed.

Abigail, Abigail, Abigail.

Nothing springs to mind. I’m too fucking tired for this shit.

“How old is Lettie?” I ask him when he pauses for a breath.

“She’ll be twenty-six in two months.”

Leaning my head against the sofa cushion, I mentally rewind my life by twenty-six years to see if I can connect any of these dots. “I was in the Rangers.” I recall deployments and leave time from all those years ago, trying to discover who this mystery woman could be. “Was probably on that mission in Kigari, Africa.”

That was a long, brutal assignment. Before leaving, I decided to break up with...

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