Page 196 of Duty and Desire
In other words, she looked happy.
A corn muffin landed on my plate and females babbled around me while their males gravitated to Mo.
As for me?
I had Mo.
Mo had a great family.
He was giving it to me.
And that meant I was happy.
Mo
They were on meringue cake,eating it in the living room, the women sipping Amaretto and Kahlua from his mother’s snifters, sitting on his mother’s couches, absorbed in woman talk.
Mo was standing with the guys, having already devoured his cake and setting the plate aside when his phone vibrated.
He pulled it out, looked at the screen and glanced to Lottie, who had her head bent way back, laughing at something Trine had said (or Lene, whatever).
“Gotta take this,” he muttered to the men and moved to and out the front door.
He’d received a text.
Standing on his mother’s front porch, he made a call.
“Mo,” Brock Lucas answered.
“Hey, Slim,” Mo greeted. “What’s up?”
“We had a situation last night in lockup.”
Mo drew in breath.
“This guy,” Slim went on, “the one who sent those letters about Lottie, some of the other men set on him at chow and did a number on him before the guards could break it up.”
Jesus shit.
“No idea why,” Lucas kept going. “He’s an easy mark, uptight like he is, no priors, slight, no experience lookin’ out for himself, definitely not in a situation like that. They could have just scented weak blood and went after it. He’d already had sometrouble bein’ pushed around. Complained to the guards he’d been threatened. They put him in solitary a couple of days and the men who were causing the problem were moved out, either transferred or they made deals or bail. So they put him back in gen pop. Apparently, those men had friends and he was still a target.”
“And?” Mo prompted when he didn’t say more.
“They got him to the hospital and fixed him up. But in recovery, he developed a pulmonary embolism. Lost oxygen to his brain. They took him back into surgery, got that fixed too, but the damage was done.”
Mo’s entire body felt tight.
“What damage, Slim?”
“Man’s alive, but braindead,” Slim said. “He’s on a respirator. Considering his inclinations, something my guess due to their reactions to the trouble he was in they suspected, his family is not tight with him. They’ve been called in. I don’t know if they’ll elect to take him off the machines. I just know, even if they don’t, this man isn’t gonna be in a position to hurt Lottie, or anyone. There’s not a blip on him, Mo. He’s breathing, but he’s still gone.”
Mo didn’t know what he was feeling.
Because he was human, he didn’t want it to be good.
But mostly it was good.
“So it’s over,” Mo noted.
