Page 5 of Ayden

“If they try anything, I want you to know that my family and I will protect you with our lives. They’ll never harm you so long as I have blood in my body.” She told him that was sweet, but nobody ever meant that. “I do. With all my heart. I will not allow them to touch you, and if they do, then I’m going to make them regret ever being born.”

She didn’t say anything for several minutes, and he let her think about it. They’d never had much of a father figure, and their mother had been working all the time to keep them in food and clothing. He was going to make sure that they had everything they needed for as long as he lived. When she finally spoke again, he smiled.

“Can we see your wolf?” He said that it would be his pleasure to show her and, in fact, thought that they should get to know all the wolves in his family. “That would be good. I know that you’re bigger than a regular wolf, but since neither of us has seen one, then we have nothing to compare it to.”

He laughed. He didn’t know why he thought that was so funny, but it felt good to be able to laugh. Selma said she thought he was goofy. Ayden told her that he could be when it suited him, but it had been a long time since he’d laughed like that.

“I’m sorry that you don’t get to laugh all that much.” She then asked about his family. “You don’t have parents around, do you?Uncle Lica said that they were terrible people and that we were lucky that we didn’t get to see them. Is that true?”

“Yes, my mom is in prison for killing my dad. They had a plan to make it so that we all died, and they could be without us. They beat the six of us and blamed us for everything that went wrong in their lives. I hate them both. The two of them would beat us daily, nearly killing us simply because they could. And they never liked your uncle Lica for some reason.” Both girls told him that they were sorry. “I am as well. That’s why I’m not terribly good at being around other people. I don’t know what they want from me. I don’t trust all that much like your mother doesn’t. I’m hoping that I can get over that soon. But for some reason, not only do I trust the two of you, but I trust your mother as well. With all my being.”

“We’ll never make you not trust us, Ayden, I promise you.” He had to fight the tears that started to fall down his cheeks. “Good night, Ayden. Thank you for being there for us. I don’t know what we would have done had your family not helped us when we needed it most. See you in the morning.”

The sun was just coming up in the sky when he got out of his bed. It was nice having a room so close to his new family, and he wanted to wake up daily and have a meal with the three of them. It was something new for him to have a family of his own, and he was going to make sure that he treated them right every moment of every day.

By the end of the day, he was exhausted again. Spending time with the girls as their mother had found herself a job and was glad to be working, he took them to the mall, as pitiful as it was to find them some clothing. They still couldn’t get into the house they’d been renting as it was still a crime scene, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t need things from the place. After shopping all day, glad for his grannie’s help, he was ready to take a long nap and not wake up until morning again.

“You’ll have to have things that most people don’t think about when buying their first home with children—especially girls in the house.” She told him that he’d need things like dressers and furniture for the little girls but also things like hangers to hang their things up with. “Towels for them as well as little girl things that they’ll need to have a bath with, too. I never thought of that until I had a look around in their hotel. My goodness, they’re very neat little girls, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t know anything much about them. Honest with his grannie, she told him that he needed to get with the other women in the household and have them take Summer shopping for them all. “Like, what kind of things are you talking about? Soap and shampoo I get, but what little girl things will they need?” It hit him like a brick when he got it. “Oh. Oh.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’re getting it now. With a houseful of women, you’re going to have to be less embarrassed about things than you are right now. If you think of it as embarrassing, they’re not going to be able to go to you because they won’t want you to dislike them.” He said that he’d get some books on things for teenage little girls. “You do that, but I’d ask their mother too. You don’t have to run right out now and figure it out, but you will need to be prepared if they need you.”

Ayden didn’t know what to think when he went to the library to check out some books on raising little girls. He felt like a pervert when he opened the first book and had to slam it shut when he saw what it was talking about. Women were a mystery to him, and he was hoping that someday, he’d be able to give his brothers advice on how to get through this part of their lives. Periods and development were things that he’d never thought about in all his life, having to talk to someone, his own daughters, about with their mother. Thank goodness for her in their lives, he thought.

They were still living out of bags from the store when theyfound a rental that they could live in for a while. It was only a month, but it seemed like forever to them all. After talking with Summer and her telling him that she’d had the sex talk with the girls, he could have laid down at her feet and begged for the same information. Ayden was going to be a good dad to the two girls even if he had to read every book there was on adolescents. He only hoped that someday they’d be able to talk to him like their mother did to him. Christ, he wasn’t going to survive this if he kept feeling his face heat up whenever he was around them.

Moving them into the house they were going to rent was an eye-opener too. While Harley was tomboyish, Selma was all girl. The house that they were renting had two little girl beds, but one was a canopy bed, which Selma wanted, and Harley took the one done up in horses and farm animals. He was excited to watch them grow up into personalities.

Chapter 2

Clive set the phone in the receiver and looked around the room. Rose asked him what he’d been able to find out, and all he did was stare at her. She had to know better than to ask him questions when he was in charge of things today.

“You bring that attitude to me, mister, and I’ll slap you fucking sideways.” He’d forgotten just for a second who he was dealing with and the day of the week. He told her what he knew. “What do you mean you can’t find them? What’s the point of having money if you can’t use it to find people. Did you tell that man what we want?”

“I did. He seems to think that they’ve left the little town they were in. Since Gilbert and that Summer person were together, we’ve known where that person is. You’d think with two kids hanging at her tit that we’d be able to locate them after she killed our son.” It wasn’t as if they liked Gilbert, but that wasn’t the point. The point was they were without any living relatives but the brats, and they were going to get them. At least one of them. “Once the body was removed from that house, they seemed to have vanished like the prom queen’s virginity on homecoming night.”

That sounded better in his head, but he didn’t correct himself. Rose would go on about how he didn’t need to say a word without her permission. Today was her day to be in charge, and he hated that almost as much as he hated his wife. But they had things going the way that they wanted now, and there was no point in messing up a good thing.

The two of them had been married for nearly forty years. Neither of them had wanted to get married, but it was that, or they’d lose all their fortune—though they had lost it anyway. His parents had arranged the marriage, and he was to do it, or therewould be no money. Also, they were to have a child as part of the deal. Clive looked at his wife and mentally shook his head. They’d worked out well, the two of them, so long as they followed their own set of rules.

On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he was the one that made decisions. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, Rose would make them. Sunday they neither one made any kind of decisions, and that had suited them just fine all their married life. There were rules too to those decisions. There was no overruling the decision from the day before; you couldn’t just keep going back over the same decisions daily because once they were made, they stuck.

The decision-making rules applied to everything. Money, household things, and even what they watched on television that night. Right now, they were watching a game show, and he was fine with that. But he never let on that he enjoyed her decisions either. Clive was sure that she did the same to him. They coexisted, and that was all they’d ever wanted out of their deal of being husband and wife.

“Did you find out where they’re staying or just that they’re not in the house anymore? I don’t like that the government is so willy-nilly about things. They should be able to tell us whatever we want to know as we pay our taxes, too. That bitch had better play ball with us, or so help me, Clive, I’m going to make her regret ever being around our son.” He was reasonably sure that she did that anyway but kept that to himself. Gilbert had been a handful before they’d sent him away to military school.

Not that it helped. He’d become more violent as the years went by, and when he’d knocked that Summer person around and she’d allowed herself to get knocked up, he didn’t seem to worry about how that was going to make them look either. They had a reputation to uphold, and he made them look bad. That was why having the brats was so important. They needed, nowmore than ever, someone to take over the family business when it was time. They had that all worked out as well. As soon as they were to get the girls or just one, he didn’t care. They were going to make sure that she was healthy, then send her off to boarding school where they’d not have to deal with her. He wanted nothing to do with raising a child, not even his own child, when it came to it.

“Did you hear me?” He looked at Rose when she snapped her fingers in front of his face. “I asked you if you have any information on who was the one that pulled the trigger on Gilbert?”

“The police. That’s all I was told that the police had had to take him down because he was holding a gun to one of the girls’ heads. I don’t understand why they didn’t just let him kill one of the girls. It certainly would have made our lives better, but there you have it. No one knows who pulled the killing trigger.” She asked him where the body was. “We can’t get it until we claim it. Silly thing if you ask me. It’s not like anyone is going to claim his body anyway. Just let us have it so that we can find out who the killer was and take care of them for killing our son. Do you suppose that there is more than one bullet in his body, and that’s what they’re holding onto it?”

“I never thought of that. Yes, that could be it. If so, then we’ll have the entire force put out of business by suing them. Is it too much to ask that someone pay for his death? Even if it’s the police? I tell you, Clive, people get stupider every day if you ask me. The rich are the only ones that have any sense.” Not that they were rich. Daily, they were borrowing from Paul to pay Peter. As it was right now, they barely had enough money to go to the end of the year. They’d never been any good at saving money, and it was beginning to show nowadays. “What do you know of that insurance policy that we had on Gilbert? Can it be cashed in yet?”

“I told you yesterday that without us making the payments, then it’s not any good. They told me that when it was my turn.” She told him that she’d forgotten. “I don’t understand that either. As far as I know, my parents never paid on their insurance, yet we were able to collect on it when they were dead. Why do you have to pay on a policy only to have to cash it in when they’re dead? Makes no sense at all.”

“Something about paying into it so that we can get a return. Stupid people. If I had the money to pay for it, why on earth would I need to cash in the policy in the first place? If I were in charge, that’s the way that I’d make it. You just had insurance on everybody.”

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