Hold (Gentry Boys, #5)(63)

There was no looking back once I was in Creed’s truck. I was out of the parking lot and on the road before I could think twice. There was no plan, not really, no strategy except to let Benton Gentry know that he was done. He didn’t exist for us. I wasn’t going to allow him to keep putting the screws to Deck by dangling us over his head.

I could have found my way out here blindfolded. For the rest of my life it wouldn’t matter how many years passed by. I would still be able to sniff out this miserable corner of the world. It was coded into my DNA. I turned down the winding dirt road that led to my parents’ place. It was dark enough that I couldn’t really see the homes that squatted out in the desert but I knew they were there. Some were the property of living Gentrys, or dead Gentrys, or imprisoned Gentrys. Some looked halfway decent. Some were utterly squalid. There were probably people in this country who would deny that anyone really lived like that but they would be wrong.

I’d expected my stomach to do backflips when I was back on my father’s property but aside from a vague sense of unease I felt nothing. This place had disturbed my nightmares for so long it scarcely seemed real anymore. I cut the headlights as I coasted the final fifty yards.

A naked single bulb was all that illuminated the outside. I could see a faint light peeking around the greasy oilcloth that covered the front room window and figured he was probably in there, sitting alone in the dark and getting shitfaced in honor of his dead wife.

Calmly knocking on the door made me feel like a complete f*cking hypocrite but I had to keep my head on straight and my hands to myself. The first round of knocking brought nothing, no response at all. I waited for a full minute and then pounded harder.

It occurred to me how easy it would be if Benton just didn’t answer the door. I could just go home to Saylor, to my kids, to everything that was good and gentle in the world, everything that was the opposite of this place. If Benton ever came around I’d just tell him to eat shit and die.

That wouldn’t stop him though.

That’s why I stayed at that door and battered it one last time.

“Fuck,” groaned a voice somewhere in the dark depths. There was a crash and then an uneven shuffling sound that drew closer.

I kept my arms at my sides and waited to see my father.

Benton Gentry had once been a powerful man who turned heads; some lustful, others fearful. But now he was just a soft, blue-eyed puddle. He outweighed me to be sure, but he was full of weak meat, not muscle. I didn’t want this to come down to violence. Lord knows I had a lot to lose. But if it did I knew I could take him down in three seconds. There was a certain power that came with knowing that.

The giant of my nightmares blinked at me owlishly and pushed open the ragged screen door.

“Hey there, kid,” he said, surprise in his voice.

“It’s Cordero,” I told him.

He scratched at his head, a mop of dark, greying blonde that was patchy and greasy. Then he chuckled. “I know that. You really think I don’t f*cking know which one you are?”

I had to cross my arms over my chest. I had to do it because my hands had instinctively drawn up into fists.

He belched and started to wander back inside. “You comin’ in?”

I felt for my wedding ring, a habit. Sometimes I caught myself absently pressing my fingers against it, a reminder that it represented the solid ground I stood on. But my finger was empty now. In my haste to get out of the house this morning I’d forgotten to slip it on. A casual mistake that now seemed to reek of a bad omen.

The smell of rotting food and general filth hit me even before I stepped over the threshold. My eyes automatically darted to the hallway, toward the bathroom where my mother had died. A cold finger traveled up my spine.

“Have a seat,” Benton ordered, creaking his way heavily into a peeling metal chair. The cracked table in front of him held a half empty bottle of Olde English.

“I’ll stand,” I said, backing against a wall to be as far away from him as possible.

Benton looked me over. He wasn’t completely wasted. There was a certain shrewd glint in his eyes.

“Guess the boys are too good to come pay their respects, eh?”

“You think that’s why I’m here? To pay you some f*cking respect?”

He straightened. His lip turned up in a sneer. “That’s how this is gonna go? Your mom dies and you figure you can roll in here as if you ever gave half a shit and give me attitude? Well if that’s the case you just f*ck right off.”

I shook my head. “I’ve got to tell you something first.”

He lifted the bottle to his lips and slurped as he swallowed. For a man who’d just lost his wife of twenty-seven years, he didn’t seem especially heartsick. He put the bottle down with a thud.

“Then tell me,” he said as if he was already bored with the situation, bored with my presence.

I almost just spit out a couple of terse lines about how his meal ticket was finished and good riddance forever to him and his miserable loneliness.

Instead I grabbed the empty chair that my mother had probably sat in thousands of times, turned it backward and straddled the seat, leveling him with a glare while he stared at me with a slack expression.

“You have no family,” I informed him. “The three of us were lucky to make it out of here alive and there will never be forgiveness for what you’ve done. Never. I don’t forgive Mom either. But it was your fault she ended up this way.”