Too bad the bastard had been killed before the hammer had fallen. . . .

For once, Max didn’t fight the onslaught of bad memories, the snapshots of arguments, beatings, disapproval . . . downright hatred . . . filtering through his brain like the worst kind of slideshow. The way he looked at it, though, he was never coming back to Charlemont after this, so it was the last time, in his entire life, his father was going to get any airtime under his skull.

In other cities, in other climates, in other time zones, it was so much easier to leave everything that had hurt behind.

So much easier to pretend things had never happened.

From out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mother-and-son duo come in and get in line. The kid was scrawny and lanky, with the all-cartilage, no-bones body of a typical sixteen-year-old. Mom had the gray skin of a smoker and more tattoos than Max did.

It was hard to tell who was talking back to the other more.

Clearly, a fair fight.

When the kid finally shut the hell up, he turned around, like he was considering a bid for an escape—and that was when he saw Max.

God, Max knew that rebellion so well, those crazy eyes, the cruisin’-for-a-bruisin’ routine. He’d done all that. But when your dad beat you with a strap at least once a week, sometimes because you’d done something, and sometimes because he just felt like trying to break you again, you did one of two things. You got quiet or you got crazy.

He’d chosen the latter.

Edward had chosen the former.

Ramsey came out from the back. “He’ll see you. C’mon.”

As Max got to his feet, that kid looked at him like he was some kind of status to aspire to, and Max understood. If you got swolt and you got ink, if you wore a scowl and had a mean light in your eye, you were defending yourself against not so much the people standing in front of you . . .

. . . as the one you had left behind.

The one with the strap and laugh, who’d enjoyed your pain because it had made him feel stronger.

“Max?”

“Sorry,” he said to Ramsey. “I’m here.”

He had the vague impression of a number of corridors, and a checkpoint with bars, and then he was down a hall with multiple doors that had caged lightbulbs above them. Two were lit. Three were not. He was led all the way down to the last lit one.

Ramsey opened the door and Max hesitated. There was something about Edward that always made him feel like an ass—and not because, when they were growing up together, he’d frequently, in fact, been an ass.

The thing was, Edward had been their leader, their chief, their king. And Max just the jester with psychotic tendencies.

With all that in mind, he forced himself to walk in with his head up—but he shouldn’t have bothered. Edward wasn’t watching the door. He was sitting with his hands folded on the table and his eyes on his fingers.

Ramsey said something and closed the door.

“So I understand you’re leaving.” Edward glanced up. “Where are you headed?”

It was a while before Max could reply. “I don’t know. Not here. That’s all that matters.”

“I can totally understand that.”

Max exhaled his tension and went over to the seat opposite his brother. When he tried to pull the stainless-steel chair out, it didn’t budge.

“They’re bolted to the floor.” Edward smiled a little. “I gather that some of my fellow inmates have trouble expressing their emotions. Without throwing things, that is.”

“I would fit in here.”

“You would.”

Max squeezed himself into the spot, his knees and thighs bumping into the bottom of the table. “This thing’s bolted down, too.”

“Trust no one.”

“Isn’t that from The X-Files?”

“Is it?”

There was a period of silence. “Edward, I need to tell you something before I go.”

THIRTY-TWO

Annnnnnd this is why they called it morning sickness, Lizzie thought as she slowed the four-wheeler down and leaned to the side to dry-heave. For, like, the fourth time.

But she was determined to get around her full property.

The good news? At least the fresh air, and the sun on her face, and the scent of the grass and the good earth, were a balm to her soul. And what do you know, the wide open sky and the solitude helped recast the night before, making what had struck her as a grotesque manipulation of the legal system when it had happened seem more like just a brother wanting to protect his sister by keeping her out of the papers.

Plus there was Amelia to think of.

As Lizzie straightened and took a sip of water from her bottle, she looked down at her lower belly. If she had a kid out there in the world? Attached to the Bradford name? The last thing she would want was the family in the news and all over social media—especially with regard to what had gone down in that marsh.

For godsake, Amelia might be coming home for good in a few days, but even if she weren’t in Charlemont, everywhere she went, she would be known as the kid whose mother had . . . yadda yadda yadda.

Horrible for a child.

Lizzie hit the gas and continued in a fat loop that stuck to her fence line. And as she bumped along, searching for downed trees, limbs, and fence posts, she thought about Amelia through the years.

The poor girl didn’t even know who her father was.

It was never spoken of.

Surmounting the rise that was in the far northern corner of her farm, Lizzie stopped and turned in her seat. Looking down over the land she owned free and clear, that she had bought and paid for on her own, she realized . . . holy crap, she just might have someone to leave all of this to.

Would her child know and love the earth as she did? Want to sink vital hands into the good soil and cultivate from seeds things that fed people and made a house smell and look beautiful? Would he or she be an artist? Perhaps a painter who would find inspiration here . . . or a writer who would ply many the occupied solitary hour at a keyboard in the front living room.

Would her son be married up here on this hill? Would her daughter keep horses in the barn down there?

So many questions. And so many projections.

Not one of which included Easterly or any of the Bradford lineage.

Perhaps her child would go into the business? Learn about bourbon and its history, and become passionate about its careful tending and the honoring of long-standing tradition.

Or . . . dear Lord, what if she ended up with a Gin? She didn’t think she could live through that.

Images from the night before came back to her, and then there were others from when Lane and Richard Pford had gone at it in the hall at Easterly. Lane had been so worried about his sister, so protective. And then there was his preoccupation with Edward. His concern over Max. His love for Miss Aurora and even his addled mother.

And on top of that there was that young boy, Damion, his father’s illegitimate son by the family’s old controller. Lane was even taking care of him, even though he didn’t have to, making sure that the boy was treated fairly.

Lane was scared to be a father. But with everything Lizzie knew about him, he was going to be a good family man—because he already was one.

Putting her hand on her stomach, she decided she was going to tell him about the pregnancy. One, because God forbid if she lost the baby, as sometimes happened before the second trimester, she wanted him to at least know what was inside her while it was there and alive. And two, because he deserved what Amelia’s father, whoever he was or had been, had been cheated out of.

The Bradford family had a checkered history with fathers and their children.

And she sure as hell was not going to be a part of it.

Edward had never particularly gotten along with his brother Max. He had learned, however, not to take this personally. Max did not appear to get along with anybody all that well. So when Ramsey had come to announce that the black sheep of the family was pulling out of Charlemont and wanted to see him right before his exit?

Something told Edward that this was the last time he was going to see the guy.

“What’s wrong, Max. What do you think I’ve got to hear.”

Max rubbed his face. Stroked his beard. Looked as if he was going to vomit.

There even seemed to be a sheen of tears across those pale gray eyes, something that was utterly unexpected.