“Reece—”
“I stood there when they came to the only agreement they came to durin’ that mess. When he flat refused to let Zara raise him, he promised he wouldn’t raise the boy. He promised he’d put that boy in a good home.”
“It would appear he didn’t lie, since he didn’t raise him, but he did lie since he took custody of the child and placed him with his sister,” Mick replied carefully.
“So you’re tellin’ me Zara’s nephew has been growin’ up in the next goddamned county for the last nine fuckin’ years without him knowin’ his aunt exists and without her knowin’ her sister’s boy is that close?” Reece ground out.
“I’m afraid that’s what I’m tellin’ you,” Mick answered.
“All right, so now you wanna tell me why Zara doesn’t know this?” Reece asked.
“I thought she did.”
“Well, she doesn’t,” Reece pointed out the obvious. “This town is small and the people close. How does she not know this?”
“The Cinders aren’t exactly social,” Mick stated the God’s honest truth. “The town rallied around Zara when all that happened, Reece. Not sure I know of anyone who gave their condolences to her folks, not that they wouldn’t want to, just that they knew it wouldn’t be welcomed so they didn’t bother. What I’m sayin’ is, not sure anyone knows where Zander is.”
“Can I ask why you didn’t tell her?” Reece pushed.
Emotion flashed in Mick’s eyes before he answered, “Like I said, I thought she knew. Didn’t bring it up because she essentially lost her sister and her parents through that and that’s not somethin’ you wanna bring up as a reminder for a sweet girl who kept her chin up and kept on keepin’ on.”
Fucking shit. That made sense.
“Shit, fuck,” Reece clipped.
“Think you need to take a calming breath, son,” Mick advised and Reece did exactly that before he looked out the window again.
However, the calming breath didn’t work.
Therefore, he bit off, “I do not believe this shit.”
Mick made no reply and the room lapsed into an uneasy silence before Mick broke it.
“Xavier took his hands to those girls?”
Reece sliced his eyes to the cop. “Repeatedly.”
Mick closed his eyes, whispering, “Dear Lord.”
“No marks, he wasn’t stupid. But that didn’t mean they didn’t get their asses kicked,” Reece shared and Mick opened his eyes. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that,” he finished.
“Didn’t ’spect Xavier was a warm and loving father, way those girls cleared out when they hit majority and just knowin’ the man, but didn’t suspect that.”
“Well, you were right. He was neither warm nor loving and he took that to extremes,” Reece confirmed.
“Sins of the fathers,” he muttered.
“Explain that,” Reece demanded.
“Went to school with Xavier Cinders and his sisters, Dahlia and Wilona. Can’t tell you how many times I saw one, the other, or all ’a them come to school with black eyes, fat lips, arms in slings. Back then, before school officials would report that to authorities and CPS would get called in, there was no help for them. Val Cinders was a hard man and the whole town knew it, just no one had the power to do anything about it. Reckon he taught his son to be just as hard. Sometimes the cycle breaks. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
“With Xavier, it didn’t,” Reece told him.
“I see that,” Mick replied.
“And now that boy’s livin’ in that.”
“We don’t know that,” Mick said quickly. “Maybe, by givin’ him to Wilona, he was breakin’ the cycle.”
Reece felt his eyes narrow. “He lied to his daughter while his other daughter was near on nine months pregnant, brain dead, hooked up to machines, and lyin’ in a hospital bed. He wasn’t breaking any cycle.”
“I remember that situation, Reece,” Mick said quietly and Reece knew he did. By the look on his face, he knew he remembered it like it was yesterday.
Then again, fucked-up shit like that wasn’t easy to forget.
“This can’t stand,” Reece declared.
“Son,” Mick started. “As Xenia’s parents with no other legal arrangements in place, custody fell to them. I knew there was no love lost between Zara and her family and since not a lot of folks around here like anyone who lives in that den of vipers and give them a wide berth, I just suspected that he was an ass to her like he is to everyone. It’s sorry news he took his hand to his girls and you gotta know I don’t like hearin’ it. But, I’ll remind you, it’s beyond the pale where Xenia took that. She got high
“She’d been clean for two years,” Reece reminded him.
“She picked a sorry time to fall off the wagon,” Mick returned.
“She’d been visited by her father that day,” Reece told him and watched him suck in a hissing breath. “Yeah. I can see you can imagine that visit was cheery.”
Mick’s brows went up. “He take his hands to her?”
“That asshole who, according to him, has done no wrong in his life visiting his unmarried, ex-junkie pregnant daughter? Yeah, Mick, he took his hand to her. She was a vegetable lyin’ in that bed but I still saw the bruise on her cheek. If you saw her, you couldn’t have missed it.”
“I thought she got that from getting hit by the car,” Mick muttered.
“She got it when her father planted his fist in his nine-months pregnant daughter’s face. After his visit, Xenia called Zara, lettin’ her know that shit went down and Zara spent the day with her sister, talkin’ her down from doin’ somethin’ stupid. But Zara had to go to work and Xenia did somethin’ stupid.”
Mick nodded.
Reece kept going.
“You don’t hit kids, you don’t hit women, and you only hit men when they give you call to do it. What would move a man to strike a pregnant woman is beyond me but he did it. Then again, he did the same to his baby girls and we could argue all day which one of those is more twisted with no answers since they’re equally fucked up.”
“This is true,” Mick murmured.
Reece went on. “Xenia told Zara she got flashbacks, terrified of the state of her life, havin’ a kid, not breakin’ that cycle, not able to get away from that motherfucker. Zara left, shit kept twisting in Xenia’s brain, and she made very wrong decisions that means she’s been alive for a long time, same time she was good as dead. Think she paid a high price for her dick of a father bein’ an asshole so, due respect, maybe you’ll have a care, shiftin’ blame to a dead woman.”
Mick lifted his chin to acknowledge the rebuke but stated, “We’re goin’ over history.”
“History doesn’t live and breathe and that boy is doin’ both one county over,” Reece fired back.
Shaughnessy locked eyes with him.
Reece kept talking.
“Zara was in no place financially to fight them for custody. She was twenty-fuckin’-four years old and workin’ nights, waitin’ tables at a bar. She’d started with nothin’ and worked her ass off since she was eighteen for everything she had. Not to mention, she had their promise that they’d find a good home for her sister’s son.”
“Not sure what either you or I can do about that. We can’t rewrite history,” Mick noted.
Reece stood and looked down at the man. “Yeah. You’re absolutely right. But we can write the future and that chapter’s gonna be written in blood.”
Mick stood too and warned softly, “Son, you’re talkin’ to an officer of the law.”
“Then you want this to go smooth, you start pokin’ around, ’cause Zander Cinders is gonna be livin’ with his aunt as soon’s I can pull that shit off and it’d help if you did what you could do to see that kid out of that viper’s den,” Reece returned, putting his mug down on Shaughnessy’s desk. “Obliged for the coffee,” he muttered. Turning on his boot, he stalked out of his office.
