In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,113
with me hundred million and you’ve got the nerve to show your face at Uncle Pete’s funeral. It’s like you wanna die.”
“Because it’s not my fault!”
Will growled and that’s when his eldest son stepped in.
Dougie was the smartest of Will’s boys. He knew well how to play the game but he was always smooth. Using the charm. Even with Freddy. He didn’t explode at him the way Will wanted to. He just stepped in close, a cigarette between his middle and forefingers, his free hand stuffed in the jacket pocket of his Italian suit.
He leaned over, so he could look right into Freddy’s eyes.
“We’re not discussing this with you, Uncle,” Dougie said calmly. Always calm, that one. “We’re telling you what you need to do. Or the New York coppers . . . they’ll be finding pieces of you all up and down the Eastern seaboard. So if you wanna keep breathing, get us back our da’s money. Understand. . . Uncle?”
The side door opened and Freddy’s eldest girl stepped out. She looked right at her father, being held between two of Will’s burly sons, blood and bruises on his face.
Freddy grinned when he saw her . . . until she turned away from him and faced Will.
“My sisters and I are about to leave, but Aunt Bernice said you wanted to talk to me?”
“Yeah, I do.” He headed back inside, and Charlie followed, not even glancing again at her battered old man.
He led her into a room with a washer and a few grizzlies in it.
“Get out,” Will ordered.
“Who the hell do you think you—”
Will bared his fangs and hissed while the grizzlies huffed at him and bared their fangs in return.
Charlie pressed her hand against Will’s chest. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said to the bears. “Could you give us just a few minutes? I have to speak with my uncle and we just need some place private. If that’s okay.”
“Well, since you’ve been so nice,” one of the older bears replied, “we’ll give you a few minutes alone.”
“Thank you so much,” she said with that charming smile.
The bears started to walk out, but the youngest stopped and said to Charlie, “There’s a girl running around screaming, ‘Bear!’ every time she sees one of us. It’s beginning to upset my uncles.”
“Yeah, that’s my baby sister. She’s got a bear issue. But as soon I’m done here, we’re out.”
“Okay. Great.”
“And I’m very sorry if she insulted anyone. She was just trying to manage her fear.”
“No big deal,” the grizzly insisted. “Really.”
Charlie closed the door. “See what nice gets you?”
“But I prefer rude and violent.”
* * *
“Why is your sister wet and wearing a T-shirt?”
Stevie shrugged at Shen’s question. “It’s complicated.”
“In other words, I don’t want to know?”
“Exactly.”
Stevie rested her arms on the bar.
“Want a drink?” Shen asked her.
“No.” She glanced around the bar and, making sure everyone was busy not noticing her, she leaned into Shen and whispered, “I have to figure out how to get my sisters to that damn wild dog thing.”
“Is that really your only option here?”
“Do you have six figures lying around to loan us to repair the living room I damaged?”
“No.”
“Then yes, that’s my only option.”
“What’s your only option?” Max asked.
She was standing right by Stevie, but a few seconds before she’d been across the room.
“Nothing,” Stevie lied with a smile.
Max leaned around her and said, “Shen, what’s her only option?”
“You know what I’m not going to do?” Shen announced. “Get between sisters. I have two. I got between them once, and when I woke up from my coma, I decided I’d never do that again. With any sisters.”
“You were in a coma?” Stevie asked.
“My mother said I was unconscious for less than thirty seconds, but it felt like a coma.”
“Just tell me,” Max pushed.
“No.”
“Tell me.”
“Never!” Stevie raised her hand, her forefinger pointed at the sky. “I will go to my grave never telling you anything!”
Max, always annoyed when Stevie became “stupidly dramatic,” balled her hand into a fist and Stevie waited for the first blow, but her sister just stood there, gazing straight ahead; barely breathing.
“Max?” Stevie asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone is touching my ass.”
Stevie leaned around her sister and that’s when she saw Creepy Roy on the other side of Max, his even creepier hand disappearing under her T-shirt.