proper and traditionalist suits, she might as well be wearing nothing at all, because he could see beyond all that to expose the sexy woman he knew she was. The woman who was ruthlessly dissecting his libido bit by bit.
There was a gentle knock on his bedroom door. “Come in.”
Caden opened the door and walked in with Dalton following behind. “Ready to ride?”
Jace nodded as he glanced at the two men. His blood. His brothers. “Yes. Come on. Let’s go see Dad.”
* * *
Sheppard stood at the window and glanced out. Delvers wasn’t a bad place if you had to be locked up. In fact, as a trustee, he had more freedom here than most of the guys. Only difference was their sentences were a hell of a lot shorter than his—five years at the max. He had served fifteen years of a thirty-year sentence, making it through the halfway mark.
It was hard being locked up, denied your freedom for a crime you didn’t commit, and then knowing the person who had been responsible was out there somewhere walking around scot-free. His father had asked Sheppard more than once if he had any clue as to who might have wanted to end Sylvia’s life, but he’d admitted honestly that he had been and still was clueless.
Shep had known Sylvia’s secrets even when she thought he hadn’t. His wife had been unfaithful to him, and not the other way around like the prosecution had claimed. Her lover hadn’t attended the trial and, to this day, as far as he knew, Shep was the only one who knew of the affair, other than the man’s wife. She had been the one to expose it to Shep. But he couldn’t even say either of them had anything to do with Sylvia’s death, because at the time they were both out of the country together, trying to rebuild their marriage. He hadn’t felt the need to say anything about either of them to his attorney. The last thing he wanted was to smear the name of his sons’ mother.
“Mr. Shep, I just wanted to come say goodbye.”
Shep turned and looked into Matthew Fontane’s face, a face that looked somewhat different than the one who’d come to Delvers to serve time five years ago. Shep had been at Delvers only two weeks when Fontane had arrived, furious, full of anger and mad at the world. At eighteen, Fontane had been caught in a carjacking ring. The driver had suddenly had a heart attack and would have died if Fontane hadn’t stayed behind to give the man CPR. For that, he’d received a lighter sentence than the others. However, Fontane felt he should have been able to walk free.
The warden had assigned him to Shep’s team, and they had butted heads from day one. But it didn’t take long for Shep—through hard work and determination—to make the young man see the error of his ways. He found Fontane, who had dropped out of school at sixteen, to be a highly intelligent and bright kid who just happened to have a smart mouth and a troubled childhood. Now five years later, while imprisoned, Fontane had gotten his GED and was only a few credits short of having a college degree in criminology. He had already been accepted at Hampton University to finish up his education. No longer was he angry and mad at the world. Today he would be set free, and Shep knew that Fontane would do just fine.
“I’m going to miss seeing you around here, Fontane,” Shep said, smiling at the young man of twenty-three, almost feeling like a proud parent. “But I know you’ll be able to handle anything that comes your way. You’re a born leader for the right side, the side that knows crime doesn’t pay.”
Fontane nodded, and then his smile faded to be replaced by a deep frown. “I hate that you’re being left here for a crime you didn’t commit. That’s the one thing I can’t accept as fair.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, but you have fifteen more years to do. I think if I had to be in here one more day I would have—”
“Found the strength to endure it,” Shep cut in to finish for him. “There was a time when I wondered how I was going to make it, knowing I had left three teenage sons behind, but somehow I found the strength.”
“But it’s wrong. Someone should have found your old lady’s killer by now.