Ryker (Hope City #6) - Kris Michaels Page 0,37

frowned. “Nobody told me I couldn’t get dressed.”

The man turned and stared at him. Ryker caught a good visual of his name tag. Carl. “Did you ask?”

He chuckled. “Nah, I’m more of an ‘ask for forgiveness rather than permission’ type of guy.” He wasn’t really, but Carl didn’t need to know that.

“Right. Make that the day after tomorrow. I’m going to go raid a supply cart, grab a couple safety pins, and come back. If the doc sees that, he might not let you go home until next week.” The man laughed hysterically at his own joke and left.

“I would never have guessed you were a comedian.” Ryker popped his eyes open. Xander and Killian stood just outside his door. His body tensed. The last time he’d talked to Xander was almost four months ago. That conversation had lasted twenty seconds. “May we come in?”

He nodded and watched as his half-brothers shuffled into the room. Xander was, as usual, dressed in a three-piece suit. Killian wore work clothes, although the last time he’d heard, Killian’s construction company was the largest in the tri-state area. He should be in a suit. All the Ganas brothers were successful.

“We stopped by last night.”

Ryker cocked his head. “Why?” It wasn’t like they were close.

“To make sure you were okay. Dad called me to let me know you were here.”

“Really? Hoping I was dead or dying, no doubt.” The bitterness dripped from his low words.

Xander shook his head. “The old man knows he was wrong. He just can’t bring himself to apologize. He’s old-country proud.” The Greek heritage was strong in the Ganas family.

Ryker snorted. “The man accused me of being responsible for Mom’s death.” He’d screamed that message at the top of his lungs when Ryker tried to see his mother at the hospital morgue. They buried her on the estate. No one notified him of the service. No one—including his half-brothers.

Killian drew a sharp breath. “We never thought that.”

“You never said otherwise.” Ryker flung the words back at his brother. “And thanks for letting me know when you buried her.”

“He said he told you. Afterward, he ranted about how you didn’t care enough to show up. Hell, we were all mourning. Numb. But when two and two didn’t add up, we reached out to you.” Xander slipped his hands into his pockets as he spoke.

“Yeah, nice to know it took a year for you to realize I wasn’t responsible for her accident,” Ryker fired back.

He’d lost his mom. She was driving into the city to have lunch with him when an accident in front of her on the interstate caused her to swerve. She hit the retaining wall, and the car flipped into oncoming traffic. Thankfully, no one else suffered, but his mother’s neck broke on impact. According to the highway patrol unit first on scene, she was dead when he arrived. But Benjamin, his stepfather, had fixated on the fact that she wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t been going to meet him. Her death became his fault because Benjamin had to have someone to blame and he was the easy target. Always the easy target.

Good ole Ben hated him. The man overlooked the fact his mother had a child out of wedlock, but that Ryker had the audacity to continue his relationship with his mother after Benjamin had asked him to leave the family estate when he was eighteen was unacceptable. Benjamin did everything he could to hinder Ryker from having anything to do with his brothers or his mother. At ten, Xander was the oldest when Ryker left. Killian was eight. He’d visit on the occasional holiday—when his mother’s pleading had become too much for his stepfather—but Benjamin had never made him feel welcome, even though the vicious man loved his mom with a singular devotion.

“It took us a year to find you. I hired a private investigator.” Xander shrugged. “We didn’t know you’d changed your last name from Ganas.”

Ryker smiled tightly. “Your father requested it. He told me he didn’t want me to pollute the waters for his sons.” The bastard had the audacity to offer to pay him off. As if. He took his mother’s maiden name, the name he had before Ben adopted him. Another concession for his mother that Benjamin Ganas told him he regretted.

“Christ.” Killian groaned and dropped into the chair Ryker’d just vacated. “He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?”

“I can think of other modifiers,” Xander agreed. “Ryker, I’m not trying to make amends