Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
And my world got him put in a fucking box behind bars with very little hope to see the light of day and enjoy the freedoms I fought an entire career to protect.
All of it for a crime he damn sure didn’t commit.
Chapter 4
Gonzo
“This shit can’t be real, Dad,” GJ muttered, disappointment laced in every word.
The words bled out of him, slow and heavy, like a wound that was bleeding out. He sat across from me, swallowed whole by the county’s ugly orange jumpsuit. The Plexiglass barrier between us felt thicker than steel. I could reach out, flatten my palm against the cold surface, but it didn’t matter—I couldn’t touch him, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn’t grip his shoulder, couldn’t give him the kind of reassurance a father should.
The only thing I had was my voice, and right now, even that sounded like nothing more than words that couldn’t be backed up. I knew I would do everything to get him out of this mess, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t feeling the weight of being stuck behind bars. And I couldn’t be sure I would be successful given the way things were going.
Men like us weren’t meant to be caged.
His eyes were bruised by exhaustion, sunken, with dark bags underneath that no young man should carry.
“We’re workin’ on it, GJ,” I said, knowing damn well the words meant nothing to him. Didn’t matter if they were true. Didn’t matter if I had half the club pulling strings and burning favors. What my boy needed was freedom, his life back. And right now, freedom looked like a fantasy, so far out of reach it might as well have been a fairy tale.
Tarte had tried—Christ, she had tried like hell. Our attorney was a shark on the hunt, the type who’d shredded every man who dared sit across from her in law school. She was at the top of her game. But even she couldn’t move the mountain that was this new judge. Weeks of arguing, digging, throwing everything she had into fighting the bail refusal—wasted.
How the fuck could they claim he was a flight risk? My son. My boy who hadn’t been further than Okinawa when I was stationed there. And hell, he was so little then, he didn’t even remember Japan. For the last eleven years, he’d been rooted to the same damn house in Dreadnought. Didn’t even have a passport. Never taken a trip out of state. Never even been on a plane since he was a toddler. The boy was twenty-two and half his life had been in this small town.
But according to this fresh-faced prick of a judge, my boy was a risk to vanish into thin air. By what fucking standards could someone explain that?
“Burn, he dug into it.” My words came out hard, clipped with the bitter sting of our reality. I hated saying them, hated what they meant.
Burn was our enforcer, the man who knew how to dig graves or find secrets depending on the job. His contacts went deeper than the roots of this town, and he’d uncovered the kind of shit that didn’t leave much room for fixing. But I couldn’t tell GJ all of it. Couldn’t let him sink under that weight. He needed some form of hope, even if it was paper-thin.
“Always follow the money,” GJ interrupted, parroting back the advice I’d given him since he was old enough to start sniffing out trouble. His lips twisted, his jaw tight. “Money ain’t shit where I sit, Dad. Word inside here is the powers that be have pockets lined deep. There has to be something out there.”
“I know, GJ.” My throat was tight. “But I can’t knock the fuckin’ walls down and drag you outta here. Even though I want to.”
His mouth pressed flat, his face hollowed out with a pain I couldn’t touch. “Devyn told Mom they’re pushin’ shit through too fast. Said maybe I got a shot on appeal, once we get out of this district.” He shook his head, let out a bitter laugh. “Fuckin’ should’ve paid better attention in government. Or history. I don’t even know what the fuck a district is. Or how many appeals I get. All I know is I’m lookin’ at life, no parole, unless I somehow get twenty-two years in because of some loophole that does allow non-parolees a chance if they serve over twenty years without one infraction. How am I supposed to survive without getting an infraction when I gotta watch my own back? Tell me, Dad, how am I supposed to do this shit?”
Every syllable dug knives into me.
“I know the sentence you’re looking at, GJ,” I rasped. My fists tightened on the table in front of me until my knuckles burned. “I’m doin’ every fucking thing I can. You hear me? Every fucking thing. Just… keep your head down. Hang on.”