by Evie Nichole
“It doesn’t matter.” Joe’s voice was rough. His face was slack, and he looked older than his years. In fact, he looked ancient. “My Amelia is dead. It doesn’t matter.”
“But you were still being unfaithful to Mom all those years later!” Met’s agitation was painful to see. “You’ll admit you were so obviously in love with Amelia Collins, but you won’t admit that you screwed up and cheated again all those years later?”
“I didn’t!” Joe insisted. “I don’t know what you thought you saw. But you’d better keep your trap shut or I’ll make sure you’re cut off without a penny.”
“You can’t do that,” Met told his father. “You don’t even have the power. You still think you run things, but you don’t. It’s time to step down. It’s time to be honest with yourself about your role. You are an embarrassment to us all. Your days running this family are over. Everyone in Denver knows what you are, Joe. You’re an old man who hasn’t accepted the fact that it’s time to retire.”
“You’re an ungrateful little bastard.” Joe pointed at Met. Then he turned his angry gaze to Daphne. “And you’re a whore. I’m going to make sure your boss and everyone at your company are fully aware of how you operate.”
“Dad!” Met snarled. “What the hell? I love Daphne! If you do that to her, you’re hurting me as well!”
“Good,” Joe said roughly. “That’s what you deserve. You deserve worse. You deserve to be humiliated just like you’ve humiliated me.”
“By what?” Met pushed his father again. He pushed him toward the bedroom door. “By forcing you to take responsibility for your own actions? You’re a drunk. And coming from me, that’s a pretty serious accusation! So, you’re going to ruin my life and the life of the woman I love because you’re pouting?”
“Fuck. You!” Joe snarled. He shoved at Met, but he could not move him. His son was far too strong and too muscular for the father to best.
“Get out of here,” Met told Joe. “Leave and don’t come back. And if that’s the way you’re going to treat me and the woman I love, then you don’t need to be a part of my life anyway.”
“Met, no,” Daphne whispered. “Mr. Hernandez, don’t do that to your son. Don’t be that way. Met is trying so hard to help with all of the drama that’s following you guys around like a black cloud. Why are you going to work against the efforts of your own sons?”
“They’re lying bastards,” Joe growled. “All of them.” Then he pointed at Daphne. “Do you think I’m some old loser ready to be put out to pasture?”
“No.” Daphne’s heart was pounding, and her breath was coming in ragged gasps. She had to be so very careful. “I think that you’re a man who has worked hard to raise sons to carry on the family business and to grow it and take it places you never dreamed of. Now you’re afraid to let go of the reins. That’s what I think. But I believe that you can. Your sons are good men. All of them. Your daughter is a good woman. She just needs you to give her a chance.”
“Jesse isn’t my daughter,” Joe said gruffly. “She’s Amelia’s daughter. She belongs to my Amelia. And that is why I want so badly for her to be better. I want to take care of her. Amelia meant everything.”
From the corner of her eye, Daphne could see that Joe’s words were having a profound effect on Met. Joe was essentially telling his son that the daughter he had adopted was more cherished and more loved than the sons and the wife who had stood by him for the whole of their lives.
“Joe,” Daphne said slowly. “Amelia wasn’t your wife.” She was gripping the sheets and blankets tightly to draw them around her. As if they would offer any kind of protection when this man exploded. There would be nothing to protect her when it all hit the fan.
“Amelia meant more than my wife! You don’t understand,” Joe moaned. “You don’t understand. You don’t see how the accident took everything away from me. Jesse was all I had left.”
“You had your family,” Daphne reminded him quietly. “You have five sons and a wife who has stood beside you when other women would have turned their backs.”
“Not now.” Joe suddenly focused on Daphne. A twisted smile curled his lower lip. “She’s not standing by me now. Is she? She’s planning to leave. You all think I’m too stupid to see it. I can. I can tell what’s going to happen. She will leave, and you will all go with her. I’ll be alone.”
Met suddenly charged his father. With a yell, he shoved his shoulder into Joe’s midsection and pushed the man into the hallway. Joe grunted. Daphne tripped on the bedclothes as she struggled to get up off the mattress.
Joe’s back slammed against the opposite wall. Daphne heard the breath whoosh out of his lungs. Then he went down. Met was on top of him. Met was shouting and yelling and even crying out in emotional turmoil.
Daphne hit her knees in the hallway as she struggled to grab hold of Met’s arm. “Met! Met, stop! Please. Please let him go!”
The sickening crunch of cartilage was accompanied by the warm spray of blood as Met’s fist collided with his father’s nose. Daphne screamed. The sound seemed to echo around the hallway before resonating in Daphne’s own ears. She struggled to hang onto Met. Unfortunately, Joe wasn’t helping. He was just lying on the floor laughing as his nose oozed blood all over the rug.
“Get out!” Daphne screamed. She pushed at Joe with her bare feet. “Get out. Get out. Get out!”
Finally, Joe rolled onto his stomach. Met let go of his father, and Daphne was able to grab hold of him around the upper part of his torso. She held on tight though her strength was paltry next to his. She pulled him away from his father and held tight. Rocking back and forth, she whispered nonsense to Met to try and calm him down.
Joe crawled toward the stairs. Using the railing to pull himself to a standing position, Joe pointed at his son. “You’re nothing but a useless piece of shit who uses his fists instead of his words.”
“Stop it!” Daphne shouted. She was so angry with this old man that she could hardly keep herself under control. “They use their words with you, you stupid old man! You won’t listen! You never listen. You just do what you want and push them and push them until they have no choice but to use their fists.” Daphne realized something. The knowledge made her sick to her stomach. She gazed up at Joe Hernandez and let her words fly. “You want them all to fail. You want the company to lose the contracts. You want everything to go to hell because then you can tell yourself that it’s because you weren’t in charge anymore. If they’re successful without you, you believe it will somehow make you less. You’re wrong! You’re sick and twisted, and I hope you choke on your spite!”
Joe’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. He stared for a moment at Daphne and Met. Met was grabbing his head in both hands as he let Daphne hold him there on the floor. Every single interaction these men had with their father only served to re-traumatize them over and over again until they could not take it anymore. Nobody could have dealt with that. Not and come out unscathed.
Without another word, Joe Hernandez turned his back on his son and started down the stairs. Daphne heard him leaving. She heard his boots on the tile near the front door. She heard the lock turn. Then she heard Joe leaving the house and the finalistic thud of the door closing.
“It’s over,” she whispered to Met. “It’s all over. You’ll see. Your father isn’t going to hurt you anymore. He’s gone. You don’t have to worry anymore.”
“That’s a lie.” Met’s words were spoken so softly that she could hardly hear them.
Daphne leaned in closer to Met’s mouth. “What?”
“I said that’s a lie.” He gave a bitter chuckle. “My father will never be gone. He will never stop. And he will always try to screw things up for the rest of us. I’m just sorry that you’re getting caught in that web.”
Daphne thought about Justin and his stalking and the explosive box full of gasoline that had burned holes in Met’s T-shirt only the night before. “I think we’re so tangled up in each other’s lives right now that none o
f that matters anyway,” she told Met. “None of it matters. I love you, and that’s the only thing I’m worried about right now.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Met scrubbed at the black marks left on the concrete stoop of his brother’s home. The work wasn’t particularly hard, but it consumed enough of his mind that he wasn’t stuck thinking about his father’s earlier outburst. Soon enough, he spotted the familiar slightly dented front end of Laredo’s company truck pulling into the driveway. Met wasn’t sure if he was glad to see it or not. It was almost impossible to say. He had a bad feeling that Joe had contacted Laredo and asked him to handle his youngest brother. That tended to be the way of things in the Hernandez household. At least it had been for a good number of years.
“I didn’t necessarily think you were aiming to become my cleaning lady,” Laredo drawled with obvious amusement. “Although the place does need a new housekeeper now that Ms. Naranjo has moved out to Clouds End Farm with us.”
Met did not look up at his brother as he continued to scrub. The acid cleaner was just beginning to cut through the scorch marks. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ll be applying for that position anytime soon.”
“We can hire someone to take care of this.” Laredo squatted down and rubbed at the marks with one finger. “They seem pretty locked on there.”
“No. I’ll take care of it. It will keep me occupied.” Met didn’t say anything else. He was hoping Laredo would just leave.
Unfortunately, the vandalism was apparently not the only reason Laredo had come to visit. “So, Dad called me.”
“Lucky you,” Met grunted. He flung out a bucket of water to rinse the acid and stood up to stretch. His back and shoulders were sore, but it was a good kind of sore. The kind that tells a man that he has been doing something other than sitting on his ass all day.
“You guys actually fought?” Laredo did not sound like he actually believed what he’d heard from Joe. “And apparently you had some hooker upstairs?”
Met clenched his fists at his sides. “She’s not a hooker. Is that what he actually said? Did that bastard call Daphne a hooker? I’ll rip his throat out for that! I swear I will.”
“Easy,” Laredo murmured. “Did you say Daphne? Like Daphne Evans? Are you sleeping with the public relations lady?”
“It’s not that simple.” Met made a frustrated noise and threw his scrub brush down on the cement. It clattered away, and he realized that he might have really messed things up for Daphne without realizing it. “I’m not sleeping with her.”
“Okay?” Laredo narrowed his gaze and folded his arms over his chest. “Let me tell you that I don’t think that’s going to matter to Dad. He’s set on going to the PR firm and demanding the woman be fired. I didn’t realize he was blabbering on about Daphne though. That seems really out of character for her.”
“It is,” Met agreed. Then he backtracked. “Or it would be. If we were sleeping together. But we’re not. I’m trying to make you understand that Daphne isn’t doing anything wrong here. She isn’t being unethical or anything else. We can’t let Dad punish her just because she made him admit something he isn’t happy about.”
“Which is?” Laredo prompted. “As you might imagine, Dad left out any part of that conversation that would make him look bad.”
“You mean like the part where he admitted that he was sleeping with Amelia Collins?” Met said dully. “Yeah, I bet.” He put his hands on top of his head and sucked in a deep breath. He felt like shit. He felt as though his entire life had just been turned upside down and now his father was so worried about saving face—hypothetically, of course—that he was going to make things worse just for spite.
“Dad was sleeping with Amelia Collins?” Laredo stumbled back a step. Then he frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense, Met. You saw Dad with some woman when you were seventeen. Amelia died when you were maybe eleven or twelve like Jesse.”
“I caught him in the barn with her just a few days before the accident,” Met said quietly. He had always wondered why he was the only one who seemed to have the knack for walking in on super-awkward situations involving their parents. The rest of his brothers hadn’t had to worry about that so much. Met was the one who knew all the dirty secrets.
Laredo was silent for a moment. That was when Met noticed that his brother wasn’t wearing a suit. He was dressed in jeans and a very plain button-down. He was also wearing boots. It was almost like seeing Laredo naked or something equally disturbing. Laredo did not walk around in jeans. He wore those atrocious suits that he had filled his closet with. Surely he didn’t go to work dressed like that. It would have been absolutely insupportable. The whole world would have ended. The company stock would have hit rock bottom, and the employees would have quit. It would be a bit like announcing Armageddon was coming.
“You’re in jeans,” Met observed. “Why?”
“I always wear jeans.” Laredo sounded nonplussed. He also sounded distracted. Apparently, he hadn’t suspected that his father had been sleeping with Amelia Collins. At least that was one person in the family who hadn’t thought the worst.
“Well, he was,” Met growled. “I saw him. He just admitted it this morning. And I honestly believe he was more in love with Amelia than anyone could give him credit for. I know it sounds crazy, but he kept raving about his Amelia.”
“No shit.” Laredo pursed his lips. “Do you—how far back do you think this goes?”
“That’s the scariest part,” Met admitted. He rubbed a hand down his face and wished he could stop wondering that himself. “I don’t know what I believe about that.”
“Hell.” Laredo clapped Met on the shoulder—thankfully the good one. “You’ve had quite the morning. Hmm?”
“Yeah. It’s been grand,” Met agreed sarcastically.
He looked off across the front yard. The neighborhood was notoriously expensive. In fact, Laredo’s home was located in one of the most pretentious and expensive areas in Denver. It certainly wasn’t the largest house. It wasn’t even one of the most expensive. And yet there was no doubting that Laredo’s previous marital experience had left him struggling to make himself worthy enough for the woman’s taste.
“Why do you keep this place?” Met wondered out loud. It was a question he’d wondered since he had moved in. “What’s the point?”
“I suppose the money could be better used elsewhere,” Laredo agreed. He also looked off across the yard to the houses across the street with their grand porticoes and in-ground swimming pools. “Maybe someday I’ll find a need to sell this place and move on. I’m not sure. I suppose it’s possible. It isn’t like I could ever ask Aria to live here. It wouldn’t suit her.”
“It wouldn’t suit Aria to be away from her farm and her horses,” Met agreed. He had known Aria Callahan as long as he could remember, and he could not even begin to see her living in this neighborhood without putting up a serious fight. “But why not just sell it and be done?”
“Helena turned me inside out,” Laredo quietly admitted. He looked down at his boots and rubbed the toe of one against the other. “I listened to that woman and let her turn me inside out. She told me I looked bad on a horse. She told me I wasn’t fit enough or smart enough or competent enough to be a cowboy. She told me—God, I can’t even recall all of the things she told me.”
Met could not find the words to express his shock and horror. It was almost impossible to imagine that some crazy bitch of a woman had the ability to convince Laredo Hernandez of that sort of nonsense. Laredo was infallible in Met’s eyes. He always had been.
Laredo snorted. He looked over at Met and nodded. “It’s true. I know now that Helena was playing a game. I think I thought that a long time before it ended, but I kept trying to make the woman happy. I tried to be what she wanted. I tried to be good enough, smart enough, successful enough, and just—enough. So, this house was an extension of that.” Laredo scratched his cheek and turned to stare at the front door now streaked with soot. “I think hang
ing onto this house for now is my way of acknowledging that all of that happened. I don’t want to forget. That would mean that I didn’t learn anything from it.”
“Women make fools of us all,” Met grumbled. “I think we should hunt Helena down and string her up.”
“Actually, she had the nerve to show up at Bella’s first horseshow. We suspect that her sister told her that Bella had started riding.” Laredo paused for a moment. Met could not interpret his brother’s expression. Then Laredo sighed. “The sickest part of that whole incident was that Bella didn’t really know who Helena was. It had been so long since she had seen her mother that she couldn’t even remember her face.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” Laredo shook his head. “Aria is a much better mother to Bella than Helena ever was or would have been.”
“Kind of like Cal was a better father to us than Dad ever was.” Met thought that over for a moment. “Do you think that’s why he was so insistent on adopting Jesse officially? That never made any sense to me. Not legally anyway. It didn’t make a difference. It didn’t mean that her inheritance or her land actually belonged to Dad. It just meant that Jesse was tied to his family. Do you think it was because he had a genuine”—what could you call that kind of devotion—“thing for her mother?”
“I hate to think that this is true, but yeah.” Laredo sighed. “I do think that’s why Dad insisted on the adoption.”
“Did you know about Dad and Amelia?” Met suddenly turned to stare at his brother. “Tell me you didn’t know all these years!”
“No. I didn’t know.” Laredo pressed his lips into a thin line. “It isn’t that simple. I didn’t know, and yet knowing means that there are a whole lot of things that now make more sense.”
A police car pulled up at the curb. Both brothers sighed in what could only be considered a negative response. To say that their experience with law enforcement had been bad ever since they were old enough for Captain Paul Weatherby to think of them as Hernandez men was an understatement. But Met did not recognize the officer that got out of the vehicle and headed up the driveway toward the front door.
