Asa (Marked Men #6)(73)

I was rubbing water off of my face with another towel when I found the phone and stopped dead in my tracks when the face on the screen wasn’t the one I wanted to see but one that I hadn’t seen in so long I almost forgot what it looked like. I sat my ass on the edge of the bed and answered the call with a terse “What kind of trouble are you in, Mom?” I had had enough of mothers to last me a lifetime the last month or so.

It sounded like she was at a truck stop. The background noise was full of wind, horns blaring, and engines revving.

“None. Why is that always the first thing you ask me?” Her drawl was twice as thick as my own and I always asked her that question because the only time I heard from her was when she needed something or was in trouble. I guess the apple didn’t fall very far from that tree.

“Where are you?” I grumbled out the question and flopped back on the bed so that I was staring at the ceiling. I had spent a lot of lost hours in this exact same position over the last few days.

“Outside of Chicago. Listen, I just got a call from the Kentucky Department of Corrections.”

Well, that couldn’t amount to anything good. “About what?”

She screamed something that I couldn’t make out and then came back on the line. “About your father.”

My father was like a ghost story. Something I had heard about my entire life, some specter that existed in theory and used to scare me when I didn’t act right, but there was no actual, tangible proof that he was a real, living, breathing human being.

“What about him? Is he finally up for parole and looking for character witnesses?” I said this ironically considering I had never met the man, and if my illustrious past was anything to go by, I got all of my worst character traits from his side of the genetic pool. He could rot behind bars forever as far as I was concerned.

“Asa!” My mom snapped my name and then moved off to somewhere where she wasn’t battling the background noise to be heard. “Your dad has been sick for a long time.”

I knew I was supposed to feel something at those words, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the feeling was supposed to be. “Okay.”

She sighed and said my name again. “Your dad passed away in the prison hospital last night. He had a massive heart attack. There was nothing anyone could do for him.”

Again I wasn’t sure how any of that was supposed to make me feel or what kind of reaction she was looking to get out of me. “Okay.”

My mom swore and I actually heard her tapping her foot impatiently on the other end of the phone line.

“Asa, you’re his only kin. Your dad never married and his parents passed away years ago. Your dad was an only child, so that means you need to go to Kentucky and settle his affairs.”

I groaned and used my free hand to grind it into my eye sockets. “Mom, he was locked up for over thirty years. What kind of affairs could he possibly have? Let the state sort it all out. I’m not interested in going back there.” Especially not for a man I had never met. The man I would have turned into if fate and a bunch of pissed-off bikers hadn’t turned it all around for me.

“You should know better than that, son. Even the most troubled soul has someone out there to love it. Your father might have made some serious mistakes, but his family never turned their backs on him. They owned a beautiful farm right outside of Woodward that your dad grew up on. Since he’s gone, the land and everything on it will pass down to you.”

I swore and bolted up into a sitting position. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding, Asa?” No, she sounded annoyed that she had to be dealing with any of it at all. “They never cared for my relationship with your dad or the fact you were born right before he got locked up. They thought I was trash and that we ruined his life, but they never gave up hope on your dad.”

“Why does it go to me and not to you? If they hated us, why do I get anything?” Maybe that’s why she sounded so put out.

“I told you your father never married. That includes me. I was in his contact information on his paperwork when he got arrested because we were living together at the time. The prison called me and his lawyer to pass on the news.” She mumbled something under her breath and then all the noise in the background was back. “Go home, Asa. Put your dad to rest. See the farm. Keep it or sell it. Either way you have a way to really start your life over just like your sister did.”

She didn’t tell me good-bye. she just hung up, leaving me staring at the phone in dumbfounded shock. Suddenly I didn’t have to worry about what emotion to feel because I was feeling all of them at once. Happiness, rage, fear, sadness, confusion … everything surged to the surface. I was no longer hollow, I was no longer empty. I was full of everything that I had been actively avoiding for most of my life, and now all I could do was laugh like a lunatic and throw my phone across the room. I laughed and laughed until tears fell out of the corners of my eyes and my abs hurt from the exertion. I felt like I was losing my mind but I knew the only thing there was for me to do was get on the next plane to Kentucky.

I didn’t have to look up when her boots hit the bottom of the porch steps to know my sister had found her way to where I was. She somehow always managed to appear when I needed her the most. Initially I had left Denver without saying a word to anyone. I didn’t tell Rome I was leaving, and I didn’t call Ayden to let her know what was going on. It only took getting off the plane and taking a cab to my father’s lawyer’s office for me to have a major change of heart. I was immediately inundated with so much information, given so many decisions to make, that I had to take a second to get my shit together and I realized I couldn’t close the door on where and who I had been by myself. I needed Ayden to help me do it once and for all.