“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 and drunk when she was nearly full-term pregnant.”

“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.

When he left the station, he didn’t go to his truck. He walked down the boardwalk, fury and adrenalin coursing energy through his frame that he had to burn off because it felt like his fucking head was going to explode.

His thoughts were assaulting him, an onslaught that caused a piercing pain to shoot through his right eye.

Zara was going to lose her mind when she found out her nephew was that close, being raised by a Cinders. He’d just guided her to getting it all together and now, fuck it, it was going to come flying apart.

He hated that for his girl but that wasn’t what sent that pain stabbing through his eye.

He’d left her.

Back then, after that shit went down and he got her to the other side, he’d left.

Because of his own fucked-up history, his vow not to get tied to another woman, not to get tied to anything, he’d walked away from her.

He knew he’d go back. Even at that age, Zara was the kind of woman you went back to. Hell, even back then, Reece knew she was the kind of woman you stuck to. He just wasn’t that kind of man back then and that was why he let her go, so she could have a man like that.

But he never knew he’d be where he was right then and go back.

It was no consolation that the baby had been taken by C-section by that time. The deal struck. Zara getting out of her end the knowledge her nephew would go to a couple who wanted a child desperately and couldn’t have one so they’d treat the one they got right and a promise from her father and mother that she’d never see or speak to them again.

He’d had no idea that baby was handed off to an aunt.

He’d just taken Zara’s pulse, saw she was moving on, healing, and he’d left.

He’d fucking left.

He could see it in his head, the image burning deep, that first good-bye, standing by his truck, her in his arms, smiling her sweet smile, her pretty brown eyes sad that he was going but understanding that was him. Giving him that. Giving him up. Letting him be who he was and taking him as he came.

He’d been her one. It took him years to realize she was his.

And she’d let him go so he could be who he had to be.

And he’d let her go so he could be a motherfucking asshole.

His girl, his cookie, abused by her father for as long as she could remember, having a mother who was so checked out, it was a wonder that bitch wasn’t in a coma, too. Zara had broken away, forged a life for herself. Then when her sister essentially bites it, the baby Zara was looking forward to helping Xenia raise gone, she found it in her to move on and start to heal.

He told himself he could go. She was strong.

What really happened was he told himself what he had to hear so he could cover his own ass, deny the depth of feeling he had for a woman, and run away from history so he wouldn’t have to learn one day she was a bitch like all the rest.

Even if she had given him no indication whatsoever she would be. There were no signs. No red flags.

Nothing.

He just left her.

The fury not subsiding, he wanted to punch something, and on that thought, mindlessly scanning as he beat back the pain in his head and tried to breathe through the weight in his chest, his eyes fell on a sign.

The instant they did, his feet took him there.

He walked through the door and saw that Nina Maxwell’s law offices weren’t swank but they were comfortable and understatedly plush. They were also professional. They were such that you walked in and instantly felt whoever worked there could sort your shit.

For it being such a shit day, it was still his lucky day because there was a receptionist behind the desk and Nina was standing at her side.

Both of their eyes came to him, Nina’s immediately concerned, the receptionist’s welcoming.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked.

“I know him, Nance,” Nina murmured to her receptionist as she walked around the desk, a welcoming smile on her lips but it was wary. “Reece, this is a surprise.”

Her eyes were scanning his face and he knew what she saw seeing as he wasn’t hiding it.

“You got a second?” he asked when she stopped close.

Her head tipped to the side. “I’ll make one.”

“Neens, I’m sorry, but you have an eight-thirty appointment,” the receptionist reminded her and Nina looked to her at the same time she wrapped her fingers around Reece’s bicep and moved them to a side hall.

“Do me a favor. When they arrive, get them coffee and ask them to wait a spell. I’ll try not to take long,” Nina told the receptionist and led Reece into the hall.

She dropped his arm, guided them to a door, and moved them through to an office with a decent view of the mountains and the biggest desk he’d ever seen in his life.

He heard the door click and Nina ask, “Is Zara okay?”

Reece turned to watch her walk to the desk, not behind it, in front of it where she leaned her hips against the edge. She wasn’t assuming a position of authority or dominance. Her position was open, friendly; this was a chat among friends.

Said a lot about her.

What said more was that she wore a tight skirt, stylish blouse, sexy spike-heeled pumps, and nice jewelry that added personality to a sexy but professional package. She wasn’t a knockout but she was very pretty and with that hair, those eyes, those clothes, all of it screaming high-maintenance, she was a challenge many men would accept.

But getting to know her last night, she was a whole lot more. Nina was so goddamned smart it was borderline scary and she was able to speak her mind. A fact she’d demonstrated repeatedly.

In other words, not easy. Not even close. Attractive. Sexy. Stimulating. Cute as all fuck.

But not easy.

Reece knew it’d take a man like her husband to accept that challenge. And watching them together last night, Holden Maxwell lucked out he got hold of that spitfire and his wife lucked out she’d landed a man who got off on her not-unappealing brand of shit.

“She is now,” he answered. “She’s sleepin’. In a couple hours, she will not be.”

“I’m assuming you care to explain that since you’re here,” she noted in her also not-unappealing voice with its English accent.

“And I’m assumin’ with you two thick as thieves last night that you’re tight with my woman,” Reece returned.

She nodded. “We’re close, yes.”

“Then you know about her dad and her sister.”

“Yes,” she replied.

“All about it?”

“Yes, Reece.”

“Do you know about her dad?” Reece pushed.

It sounded like the same question, but if she knew, she’d know it wasn’t.

She studied him carefully. It took her a moment to trust him and he saw her body go tight with awareness before she spoke cautiously.

“If you mean about the physical and mental abuse, then… yes.”

“I mean that,” Reece confirmed.

Nina nodded.

“You know her sister was pregnant?”

Her face softened, sadness came into her eyes, and she replied, “Yes, Reece, I know that, too.”

Zara had shared, which meant she was still torn up about her nephew.

Back then, he’d held her as she cried. They’d stayed up past dawn, drinking beer, shooting vodka, and processing what she was going to do about it and, when she came to the realization she had no money and no power, he’d helped her accept that. Helped her accept her sister might still be breathing with the aid of machines, but she was still gone. Then he’d helped her figure out how she would move on.