by Aiden Bates
My father could have helped them. He could have stopped padding the pockets of his friends and allies with state funds, and put that money back into the communities instead. So no, I’d never believed my father to be a great man.
But if the story that Rusty and his brothers were telling was true, my father wasn’t even a good man.
He was a bad man. An evil man. He wasn’t just the kind of man who was indirectly putting people in danger because of his obsession with power and his personal greed. He was the kind of man who was directly hurting people. Omegas, women, children—and any Alpha who tried to stand up to him or get in his way.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and pulled up my dad’s number. I supposed that was one way I could get a feel for things. I could just ask.
But I knew better than to think that a simple, “Hey, Dad. Are you financing dangerous birth control conspiracies and murdering your political opponents?” would get me the answers that I needed.
My father was a politician. He knew how to lie.
Sighing, I pressed the call button.
The benefit of being Congressman Brent Rasner’s son was that when he did lie, I knew all his dirty little tells.
“Daniel? Son, is it really you?” The surprise in my father’s voice was manufactured. He was trying to make a point.
“Yeah, Dad. It’s me.”
“Daniel! Hell, is everything okay?”
I clenched my jaw. “Yeah. Everything is fine. Can’t a son call his father out of the blue anymore?”
“Of course you can, Daniel. It’s just a shock, that’s all. I thought maybe something bad had happened. After all, it’s not common that I get to hear my son’s voice more than once a month.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” I didn’t mean it. He knew exactly why I usually cut our calls short or dodged them altogether. My father always had an agenda. Always. Without fail. Even now, he was trying to manipulate me into feeling guilty for something so simple as an unexpected phone call. Once upon a time, it might have worked on me too.
But that time had passed. I wasn’t going to be manipulated by him anymore.
“Well, if nothing’s wrong, then. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
I drew in a deep breath. I could beat around the bush on this all I wanted, but he’d already called me out, so there was no point in dragging this on for longer than I had to. My father always had an agenda. He knew I wouldn’t have been calling without one of my own.
“American Families First,” I said. “You do a lot of work with them, right?”
A pause. With my dad, that was never a good sign.
“What’s this about, Daniel? You know my position on AFF. If you’re calling to lecture me on politics too complicated for you to understand again—”
“I’m not here to lecture, Dad.”
“Ah.” Another pause. “Well, good, then. I’ve got a full docket today, Daniel. Always happy to hear from you, but you know what it’s like.”
“I’ll get straight to the point, then. Remember that birth control scandal?”
“Terrible thing.” A noise of displeasure. “All those Omegas going into those rampant heats—it’s one thing to use birth control for hormones and family planning, but honestly, Daniel, I’m glad you’re not on the stuff anymore. Dangerous, don’t you think? Trying to tamper with your hormones like that—I’ve always been against it.”
“Right.” If I clenched my jaw any harder, I was going to get a tension headache. Dad might’ve had a full docket today, but he never missed an opportunity to get up on a soapbox when someone put one on a platform for him. “Well, there’s a rumor going around that AFF and the company that made the pills, Bicroft Pharmaceuticals, worked together to tamper with the birth control on purpose. That they were trying to cause a stir among Omegas. On purpose.”
“Hmm.”
“Do you know anything about that?”
There was a longer pause this time. One that I knew well. On the other end of that pause, there were usually only more lies.
To my surprise, though, Dad gave me an affirmative.
“I’ve heard a thing or two about it, sure,” he admitted. “But frankly, Daniel, I thought I raised you better than that.”
“Better than what?”
“Better than falling for silly conspiracy theories. Blatant, shameless propaganda.” There was a laugh, hearty and full. “Hell, next thing you’re going to be asking me about Area 51, tin foil hats and little green men!”
“So you know that it’s not true, then.” For a moment, I held my breath and hoped that he was right. That this was a conspiracy theory. Propaganda. Nothing more.
“Of course it’s not true, Daniel. Bicroft’s whole business is built on Omegas trusting their products, isn’t it? Why the hell would they intentionally screw up their own formula.”
“Right.” In that, he did have a point. “But say that they did anyway. Just, humor me for a second. Beyond that logic…do you have any evidence that they didn’t know the pills were botched?”
“Of course I do. You know me, Daniel. Nothing I like more than hard, clean facts.”
“So how do you know?”
“Because the Bicroft CEO told me personally. Ran into him at a fundraiser back when the news of the pills first broke. He was quite upset about it, as I recall. Worried about stock prices plummeting. Can hardly blame him, either. In this economy…” He scoffed. “Now, if you’d watch the news a little more closely, you’d know that they already have the name of the man who did tamper with the pills. Derek something. Real nasty piece of work.”
“Didn’t they drop that investigation?” Despite my father’s scoffing, I wasn’t exactly living under a rock here. “I thought someone else had already come forward about that.”
Derek something. Rusty’s notes had been clear on that part of the story. The way the King brothers told it, Derek had been on the run for trying to blow the top off this thing. He’d stolen the compound Bicroft was using to doctor the pills. They’d done their best to shift the entire scope of the investigation onto him for it.
And it had almost worked, too—until Kaleb managed to track down the man who’d actually carried out the tampering.
But Rusty’s notes had also mentioned that Derek was now shacked up with Rusty’s oldest brother, Kaleb. Derek was carrying Kaleb’s child and everything.
It only made the story that much twistier. That much harder to process. It only made it that much more difficult to uncover the truth.
“What I’m saying, son, is that you need to stop it with this witch hunt business. You want someone to blame, you ought to stop pointing fingers and let our boys at the FBI do their jobs.”
“Good point, Dad.” The lie made my mouth taste like ash, but I could hear his temper starting to boil in his voice. “It’s such a weird story, isn’t it? And you know how journalists are.”
I could feel the temperature of the conversation warm up on that note. Dad hated journalists more than anything. Usually because they were always trying to uncover all the shady shit he was up to. He called it a witch hunt, they called it news.
“Look, Daniel. I like that you’re trying to get involved with politics. It’s the family business, after all. Always proud to hear that my son is trying to stay informed. But you’ve got Lissa to take care of, remember. You don’t want to start slacking off on raising that beautiful little girl because you’re digging around in nasty rumors about things that are bigger than you.”
Uh-huh. That was always Dad’s line. If I’d been born an Alpha, he wouldn’t have dared suggest something like that—but I hadn’t been. I was an Omega, a single dad—and therefore, somehow in his mind, all of this was way over my head and out of my reach.
“Thanks, Dad.” I swallowed down my pride. I had one more question for him. I’d warmed him up for it already. I couldn’t let my ego get in the way of asking it. “And hey, while we’re on the subject…AFF. They’ve got the same ideas about birth control that you do, right
?”
“Of course they do! They’re not bad people, Daniel. They just want to keep families safe. It’s all there in the name, isn’t it? American. Families. First.”
“Of course.” A metallic taste sank into my mouth beneath my tongue. “Thanks for clearing that up for me, Dad. It’s helped a lot.”
“What else are fathers for? Hell, you hear any more nasty little rumors like that, you let me know first thing. Always happy to set the record straight.” He chuckled. “What else are congressmen for?”
We exchanged a brief goodbye before I hung up the phone. By the time the conversation was over, the taste of metal on my tongue had flooded my mouth completely. I could hear my pulse beating away in my ear drums, like I was deep under water and the pressure was threatening to crack my skull in.
All those long, measured pauses. I’d known the sound of that silence well. He’d been doing it since I was a kid. My childhood dog, Rumbles, had spent an entire winter getting sicker and sicker, until he wouldn’t even fetch his favorite ball anymore. He’d just stare at it from across the room like the memory of summer days long gone.
When Dad finally told me one day after school that Rumbles had ran away, I’d asked him point blank if he really meant Rumbles had been put down. He’d given me one of those long pauses then. They weren’t sinister, just thoughtful. Like he was doing long division in his head.
Dad rarely spoke without thinking. I’d seen him do the same thing on television when a reporter had asked him a hard question. One that he either didn’t want to answer, or one where he knew the answer would make him look bad if he said it.
Every time he lied—or just avoided the truth, for that matter—he paused like that. It was why he was one of the few members of congress who’d escaped the shadow of scandal for his whole career. Even the assassination conspiracy he’d been tied to had ended with his reputation looking sparkling as ever.
Pristine as the white snow outside our house on the day Dad said Rumbles ran away. No paw prints. No signs of a struggle. Just a blank canvas on which Dad could paint whatever picture he most liked.
“He must have slipped out the front door while the maid was going home,” Dad had told me. There was even a little tear in his eye when he said it. Just the one—anything more wouldn’t have been manly, of course. “I’m so sorry, Daniel. We’ll get you a new puppy come spring. Purebred one—a German Shepard, maybe. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Mark my word, come spring you won’t even remember that silly old mutt even existed.”
I reached into my briefcase, fingers shaking as I pulled Rusty’s notes back out. At the bottom of the last page, he’d written his number for me.
My hands were still trembling as I dialed it in. Not in nervousness, but in rage.
“Hello?” Rusty’s voice was a raw rasp. He sounded like hell—like he’d been crying, maybe, but that didn’t sound like Rusty. Knowing him, he’d probably just woken up.
“It’s me.” I gave it a moment to sink in. We’d had a kid together. It didn’t seem right, having to tell him my name.
“Daniel. Hey.” Rusty cleared his throat. “How are you?”
For the first time all morning, I felt a little relief wash over me. Not a wave, but a sprinkle, maybe. Like the promising beginnings of a much needed rain.
“I’m going to help you get answers,” I told him. “Just answers, okay? This story you’ve thrown my way—it stinks. I don’t want to get involved any more than I have to, but if you need my help finding answers, you’ve got it.”
“Shit. Really?” Rusty coughed. When his voice came back in, it was a little less sleepy. Brighter. Tinged with hope. “That’d…hell, that’s all I could ask for, Daniel. What…what made you change your mind?”
“My dad’s hiding something, Rusty.” Just saying it out loud made the relief pour down a little harder. Saying it out loud like that…it felt like a confession. Unfortunately, it also made it all unavoidable. Made it real. “He’s hiding something, and I want to find out what it is.”
9
Rusty
I met him halfway.
Spartanburg, South Carolina was Daniel’s stomping grounds just as much as Fort Greene had been mine as a kid. Sparkleburg, my brothers and I had always called it, on account of how it made the military barracks of Fort Greene and the borderline slums of Kings Place where we’d grown up look even worse every football season when the Spartan Prep school bus had rolled in. The fact that I’d met a Spartanburg boy like Daniel all the way out in Las Vegas had been too funny to believe from the start.
The fact that we’d fallen into bed together, then fallen in love, then come crashing out of it was just a cruel twist of fate by comparison.
Meeting in Greenville—Green Vegas, as Harper liked to call it, both because of the gambling habits of the residents and because of the lucrative illegal weed industry that ran through the town like a life-giving river—just made our reunion a hilarious new chapter in the tragedy that was us.
If you could even call it a reunion.
From the terms Daniel had set, it sounded more like a wake. One final meeting before we put whatever we’d had between us in the ground for good.
“I’m not playing PI. I’m not going to lie for you. And I’m not getting sucked in. I’m getting you the information you need, then I’m out of this. For good.” The parting blow he’d left me on the phone while we set a meeting time and place had felt particularly below the belt in that regard.
He must have known what it meant to me, seeing him again. I knew this was just business. We’d both agreed on that much. But any interaction with Daniel Rasner felt like an apple on a stick for me anyway. Forbidden fucking fruit. The whole drive to Greenville, I didn’t even listen to the radio. Just played out different ways that I might put words together in just the right way, do just the right thing, to change his mind and win him back.
Or, at the very least, maybe I could convince him to let me be in our daughter’s life. If he didn’t want anything to do with me, fine. But our daughter…
She deserved to know who I was, didn’t she? And me, I’d built my life the way Daniel had told me to. I wasn’t some no-name nobody with barely a hundred bucks in my bank account anymore.
I could provide for her. I could be a good father to her.
If Daniel Rasner let me.
Christ. Even as I tempted myself with the notion, I knew that it was probably asking for too much. Whatever reason Daniel had for hating me now, he obviously thought it was a good one.
I just wished I knew how I could make it right.
Hell, I just wished I knew what the reason was.
I came fifteen minutes early. He showed up forty-five minutes late. For the hour between my arrival and his, I paced the damp little park we’d chosen as our neutral ground until my boots were caked with mud and I’d worn my footprints into trenches beneath my feet.
But then, finally, a silver Mercedes pulled up alongside my black Mustang. Daniel climbed out of it, his brow beaded with a light sweat and his button-down rumpled from the drive.
He looked tired. Even more tired than he’d been when I saw him yesterday. Those bags beneath his eyes, like he was carrying the entire weight of the world in them. A furrow in his brow that threatened to turn into frown lines.
And even then, somehow he still managed to take my goddamn breath away.
“I’m so sorry. Work was—God, you have no idea, I’ve been putting out fires all day and—”
He stopped in his tracks at the edge of the parking lot. Part of me—the cocky part—told me that I’d stunned him with my own exceptional good looks as well. I was wearing more or less the same thing he’d seen me in yesterday. A tight, plain black t-shirt with one of my MMA sponsor’s logos over my heart. My bomber jacket, my boots, and my jeans. I’d put on a little cologne—not much, but it felt wrong not to spiff myself up for him at least a little. My hair was cropped close as ever, dark and messy with the cowlick at my temple—just like old time
s.
But then I saw the way he glanced down at the mud. It made me chuckle.
Of course. He wasn’t stunned by me. He just didn’t want to get his fancy leather shoes dirty.
His loss. If Daniel didn’t want to get dirty, then he should’ve never called me in the first place.
“What do you do? For work, I mean.” I leaned back against the big, gnarled oak I’d posted up next to. Maybe it was best if we kept our distance. He’d probably feel safer with a lawn full of sparse grass and mud between us, anyway. “Thought fancy trust fund boys like you didn’t have to work.”
He blinked for a moment, then his frown deepened. “I’m a social worker, Rusty. I help people.”
“Oh.” Well, shit. Now I felt bad. “Sorry. Was just teasin’, is all.”
“I’m sure.” Daniel crossed his arms over his chest, wrapping himself up against the misty breeze. “I didn’t have to go into it, though. You’re right. Dad offered me a paid position on his campaign staff. I turned him down.”
“You never were a political type, yeah.”
“I just didn’t want to teach my daughter that you could slide by on your last name instead of hard work, is all.”
My daughter. Mine. I had to hand it to him—he’d inherited his father’s way with words. It cut through me like a fresh razor blade. Not our daughter. Even now, she was his. His, and his alone.
“Sounds like noble work, anyway.” My voice was a grumble. I was hurt, and he could probably see it. I didn’t wear my emotions on my sleeve or anything, but I’d never been good at pretending I hadn’t taken a hit when a fist came crashing into my face.
“I didn’t come here to talk about my life, Rusty.” His own voice was cold as the ice forming around the edges around the park’s puddles.
Fine. I could understand that. He’d come for business.
Business was what we’d do.
“Brought you this.” I held out Josh’s notebook for him. It felt almost wrong, handing it off like that. It was the last thing any of us really had of Josh. But the notes I’d given Daniel had been meant to outline a case. He’d want more evidence before he went forward on this. He’d need more proof. Josh’s journal could give that to him.
