Page 80 of Bad Cowboy, Tennessee

“There was a kid,” Draven finally said, pacing over to one edge of the room. “Not my kid, but somebody else’s kid. He was at my party, when he shouldn’t have been.”

My blood went cold. “How young?”

“Twenty,” Draven said. “Told us he was twenty-two.”

A flood of relief filled me, hearing that at least this “kid” was an adult.

Draven paced over and opened the front doors of the armoire cabinet on one end of the room and pulled out yet another whiskey bottle, going back over to replenish his glass.

“Devvy Franklin was in my house, drinking at age 20, and getting into a fight that he couldn’t win. Ended up bleeding, broken, bruised, and then later on when he found himself in a hospital bed getting his stomach pumped for alcohol poisoning, he was told he had a minor concussion, too.”

“Fuck.”

“Devvy Franklin also happened to be the son and heir of Franklin Cooperative,” Draven said. “I’m not going to get into it right now, but let’s just say… my father has always hated me, but now he wishes I didn’t exist. I jeopardized the biggest business deal of his career.”

“Who gives a damn about a business deal when a kid could have died?”

“My point exactly,” Draven said. “My dad isn’t exactly a warm-hearted type. To say the least. Never was to me, never was to anyone else other than my brother.”

“So now you’re ostracized?”

He watched me. “I have dirt on him, too.”

Draven told me a story about finding his father’s second cell phone—a burner phone—on his desk. Apparently, his dad was Randall Lyons, a prominent figure in their home and also a massively hypocritical person. He’d go to church, preaching love and loyalty to family, but then he’d cheat on his wife relentlessly, also dabbling in hard drugs.

His father lived a secret double-life, and Draven had discovered it. It was the only leverage he had against his dad, but he also didn’t want to reveal it to the public.

He wanted to do it “the right way,” whatever that meant.

It didn’t seem like Draven was trying to protect his father’s secret.

It seemed like he was just trying to protecthimself.

“So you don’t want to just show the world the screenshots and photos you found of him?” I asked.

“If my father comes down, he comes down like a bowling pin. So many other people will be hurt.”

“And you want to protect certain other people?”

Draven nodded. “There are some people Ideeplywant to protect.”

I furrowed my brow.

So there was something more.

Something behind Draven’s voice when he talked about his father. He hated him, without a doubt. Finally, he was telling mesomething—but I knew there was more, and I knew this wasn’t the right time to push him on it.

There had been more that happened with his father.

“Your dad… wasn’t good to you, growing up?”

Fuck.

Put those words back in.

I’d already asked too much, but now, when I looked at Draven, I saw that the liquor was getting to his blood.

He was going to tell me more.

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