Unauthorized Affair (Unauthorized #1)(35)
“Coleton, your father wants you to call him.”
Coleton almost laughed. “Yeah right, Ma, is this a joke?”
“No really. He just called me and told me he wanted you to call him.”
“Well I’m not going to.”
“He didn’t think you’d want to. So he gave me a message for you. He says your pinko girlfriend is a cop. And he wants to meet her.”
Coleton’s mind couldn’t put everything she’d said together for a moment. Pinko? Cop? And then realization and terror hit him in the same instant, making his muscles go leaden and dead in fear. He leaned against a building. “Pinko Mom? Did he say pink-haired?”
“Yes Cole, pink-haired, that was it. Who is she, baby? You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend. Is her hair really pink? I don’t like that Coleton.”
“I’ll tell you later, Ma.” He reached out his two-ton hand and pushed the end-call button on the screen.
Jen was a cop. And that’s why she was unavailable. And she was on his dad’s radar. His dad said he wanted to meet her. Did that mean she was as good as dead? Coleton held himself upright with effort. Think, dammit! Think! What in the hell are you going to do? He knew he didn’t have time to be pissed that Jen was a cop. All he cared about at this point was making sure she was safe. If that was possible.
Coleton pushed himself upright and started walking again, dragging each foot towards where his car was parked. He hadn’t talked to his dad in seven years. His dad was a criminal. The worst kind of criminal. Some sort of old-time mobster who thought he could kill whoever pissed him off. Who had no respect for human life. Who thought ordering a hit, or shooting someone, was like ordering dinner. Or eating dessert. But his dad had been quiet for years. When he’d told Jen his dad was retired he hadn’t been lying exactly. He thought maybe his dad was retired. Getting too old for the rigors of being a mob boss in California, where gangs were more wide-spread than mob families, and even more dangerous these days.
The horrible scene from when he was 12 years old flashed in front of his eyes, as it often did when he thought of his dad. Just before he’d run away for good. He’d lived with his mom then, and his mom and dad hadn’t ever been legally married, so he didn’t spend a ton of time with his dad. And the time he did spend was strange. It made no sense to Coleton. His dad would talk on the phone a lot, or play cards with his friends, and they’d laugh and brag about women and scores they’d made. Coleton had heard stories about his dad at school, whispered stories, but he didn’t think any of them were true. They were too crazy, too fanciful. He’d asked his mom what daddy did, and his mom had said he ran a trucking company. Coleton never saw any trucks or truckers, but his dad scared him from a young age. He was quick to yell and quicker to hit. And when Coleton had been 12, his dad had insisted he come over after school one day. He’d told Coleton that he was finally old enough to start learning the family business. Coleton had been excited at first, but when it became clear they weren’t going to leave the house, Coleton became apprehensive, realizing there was no trucking business.
His dad had told him to go out to the garage and open the trunk of his car and bring in what he found there. Coleton’s world had narrowed to a tiny pinprick of light, and he tried to see his way to the garage with that little bit of sight. Two of his uncles followed him, laughing softly. Coleton had turned the key in the lock and opened the truck slowly, ready to cut and run. He thought maybe his dad had put snakes or tarantulas in the trunk, and this was some sort of a test. So when he’d seen a man instead, he’d been surprised into dumb silence. He stood and stared as the man reached out a bloody hand to him and said something that sounded like “help me.” The man’s mouth had been mashed in, his lips looked like hamburger.
Coleton took a terrified step backwards and his uncles pulled the man out of the trunk, ordering him to walk. Coleton lagged behind, not wanting to see whatever was going to happen next. As he rounded the corner into his father’s den, he saw his father with a gun in his hand. A big gun. A heavy-looking gun. To 12-year-old Coleton it looked as big as a cannon. Coleton had turned and run then, to more laughter from his uncles. Run into his room. Slammed the door. Gone right out the window without stopping. But he still heard the gunshot from the foot of the driveway. He’d run and hitched a ride to the interstate and then just hitched. Not caring where he went. He’d spent a few hazy days sleeping under bridges and experiencing more horrors that he’d mostly blocked out, but eventually he’d been forced to call his mother. He hadn’t gone to the cops. He’d been taught from an early age that a cop would only kick you while you were down. That all cops were corrupt and a corrupt cop only cared about one thing. Himself. That cops were never to be trusted. That they would put you in jail on a whim. That your only hope of survival was to stay under the radar. To not get caught. And Coleton had been great at that. A sensitive, shy, intellectual child, he’d never done anything to get caught for.
When he finally called his mother and told her what happened, his mother had said that his dad had probably just wanted to talk to the guy. That she was sure it had all been a big joke, That Coleton shouldn’t have run away. Coleton responded by hanging up on her. But 12 hours later, starving and bruised from— from an incident that he didn’t quite remember— Coleton had called her again. Eventually, he had ended up at Aunt Edda’s house, and lived there until he was 17. The couple of times he’d seen his father show up in the driveway, he’d ran out the back door and not come back for days. And the one time his mom came down to get him and take him to Christmas dinner with the family, he’d jumped out of a moving car, somersaulted into the ditch, and run away again.