if you feel me.”
“I feel you.”
“Good. Now I know my brothers have made the offer as well, so I’m gonna throw this out there. No better men than my brothers. No one more loyal. But you take one of their names and not mine…just saying, it’s gonna piss me off.”
Even though my heart was thudding in my chest and drawing oxygen into my lungs was difficult, I still found it in me to laugh.
When I was done, Jasper was smiling at me.
“I hear that.”
“Good. Now help me carry all this shit out to my car. And while we’re doing that, you can fill me in on how my daughter’s doing.”
“She’s a Walker,” I told him.
“Know that.”
“No, Jasper, she’s a Walker. In other words, Hadley’s fine. All fine. Slept like a rock, not even a single twitch all night. This morning she woke up and in true Walker fashion, made it her mission to communicate just how fine she was. Not saying it won’t fuck with her in the future, but for right now, she’s doing what she always does—dealing with it head-on so it doesn’t fester.”
“No, Brady, she didn’t sleep safe through the night because she’s a Walker. She did that because she’s yours.”
Good goddamn, the power of his words slammed into me. A golden trail started to scorch through me.
Unfortunately, the goodness I was feeling was short-lived.
This was because I heard Hadley shout.
Jasper heard it, too, and was on my heels as I jogged down the hall and hit the reception area.
And when my eyes landed on the man I never wanted to see again, venom hit my stomach.
Then my world exploded.
39
I shouldn’t have been doing what I was doing.
I knew it.
But this time, it was not anger consuming me, making me do something stupid. It was something different. Sure, anger played a part, but protecting the man I loved won out.
That was why when Lauren called back to Brady’s office not knowing he wasn’t in there, to tell him a Mr. Hewitt was there to see him, I jumped out of Brady’s chair and flew down the hall.
Hell no.
Hell to the fucking no was Brady going to have to face the man who killed his beloved sister.
The bad part of this plan was Brady had unequivocally made it clear I was never to be in his father’s presence.
And I would’ve respected this if Brent Hewitt hadn’t dragged his slimy ass to Georgia and dared to invade Brady’s privacy.
There was no mistaking the man standing in the open reception area was Brady’s father. I’d envisioned a pot-bellied, ugly, disheveled, dirty, smelly, old, haggard man. That was not who was standing in front of me. Either he spent his time in prison getting fit and healthy, or even as a sorry-assed, murdering drunk, he’d been physically attractive. It sucked, it really did, that a man as vile as Brent was as handsome as he was, and he’d passed his superior genes down to his son. There wasn’t a streak of gray in his hair, his eyes were a nice shade of brown, meaning Brady got his gray ones from his bitch of a mother.
Brent noticed I’d entered the room and turned fully to me and smiled.
And that sucked a hundredfold because he had a nice smile.
Bastard.
“You’ve got some nerve,” I hissed.
“Pardon?”
“You heard me. You got some nerve coming here.”
“Ma’am, I think you have me mistaken. I’m Brent Hewitt—”
“I know who you are.”
Brent flinched.
“Then you understand—”
“No, you asshole, I do not understand how after what you did you’d think Brady would want one thing to do with you.”
“I paid for that,” he snapped.
“Really? You did? You killed your daughter,” I shouted. “There’s no payment to wipe that debt clean.”
And suddenly Brent Hewitt wasn’t so good-looking. His face twisted in revulsion and he took a step in my direction.
“The next step you take will be your last, you move another inch toward my woman.”
I heard the words, I knew it was Brady, but I didn’t recognize the voice. It was low and deep and filled with a ferociousness I’d never heard and just yesterday he’d rescued me from a cult compound and witnessed a sick fuck in the middle of trying to cleanse me. So it was saying something I’d never heard this level of aggression coming from my man.
“Son—”
“He’s not your son,” I lashed out. “He’s not anything to you.”
“I don’t know who you think you are.” Brent’s gaze came back to mine and I made sure I had his attention