Colson (The Henchmen MC #20) - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,7

at his age," I went on, needing someone to talk to, and my Mom had always been that person for me, even if she could no longer be an active participant in the conversation. "And doubling down on the discipline only seemed to push Miguel further away."

He had been utterly uncontrollable by the time he hit seventeen. Loud and mean and aggressive, but my mother refused to kick him out, but didn't send out a search party when he decided to stop coming home anymore.

We saw him over the years. Sometimes he would drop-over for Thanksgiving like there was no bad blood between us. And for the sake of family, my mother and I would pretend that we didn't see the gun in his waistband, or the massive number three tattooed on his forearm.

Third Street.

It didn't surprise me that he chose that family over ours when he was young, and stupid, and looking for a thrill, and easy money. What did surprise me, though, was that he stayed. Even through all the changes in leadership, even through all the arrests and the drugs and the in-fighting.

I guess a part of me had naively always thought of gangs as a young guy's game. For some, to get away from shitty home lives. For others, to get the thrill of doing something illegal, the bragging rights for having a nicer car and better clothes than everyone else they went to school with.

I always figured that Miguel would get tired of it at some point, see that there was really no future in that kind of life, and come back to the family, start over, build a normal life.

I stopped wishing for that a couple of years ago, though.

In fact, Miguel was really what had finally pushed me to bite the bullet, take all my savings, and get us this new place.

Because we had still been living in the old neighborhood. Sure, there were shitty areas, streets I didn't want to walk down at night, but for the most part, the apartment where we lived was full of people just like us. Young families, multi-generational families, everyone just trying to get by in life.

The schools weren't the best, but they weren't awful either. And keeping our overhead low allowed me to build a savings in the first place.

But when I noticed Miguel and Jacob starting to kick around together, when I saw the strange way Miguel looked at his nephew, almost like he was waiting for him, and then, in turn, the same way Jacob looked at Miguel, with a bit of wonder, I realized what was starting to happen.

Jacob was starting to see the lure of the streets. And Miguel was helping him.

That was the final straw.

I would be damned if I let my son follow on the misguided path of his uncle.

Did I understand? Christ, yeah, I actually did. I, too, wanted to know what it was like to food shop with wild abandon, spring for the expensive cereal and the name brand pasta sauce. I would have liked to invest in a new wardrobe or get myself a pair of earrings that didn't turn my earlobes green. And I knew that Jacob wanted some of the finer things in life too. I couldn't even begrudge him for it. But getting it by selling drugs or pimping out down-on-their-luck women? Yeah, no, that was not going to happen. Not on my watch.

So with my heart firmly lodged in my throat, I had taken my savings and socked it into the townhouse. Which, thankfully, had been on the market long enough that the sellers were happy for any bid.

I had such high hopes about the whole situation.

Until Jacob started sneaking out.

I knew right where he was going too.

To see his damn uncle.

See, I had been lucky when I was young to snag myself a job at the post office. I had been luckier that, when I found out I was pregnant, they had allowed me to switch to the graveyard shift. It allowed me to be with Jacob all day, then get him to sleep at night, and leave him with my mother in case he woke up. It had been perfect. I got to go to every school event for Jacob, be there to nurse him when he was sick, help him with homework, get dinner on the table for him.

But then Mom started forgetting things. And you know how it is at first, you blame it on age, you blame