Duke reached across and clamped a hard hand on the kid’s shoulder. As Tony’s wide eyes swung to his, he dropped his voice. “You’re gonna stop bullying that kid, are we clear? I hear anything more about you picking on him? The next visit will not be about an early f**king dinner.”
Tony narrowed his eyes. “I can do what I—”
“Not while I’m around, you can’t.”
“You’re not my father!”
“Well, there’s no one else stepping up, so it looks like you’re stuck with me.” Duke put his face in close. “No more. Do you hear me—whatever the hell is wrong in your own life, you do not take it out on some poor son of a bitch in your class.”
The kid’s momentary flash-in-the-pan aggression didn’t last in the face of a grown man getting up in his grille. But Duke wanted this to be about more than ripping Tony a new one.
He sat back. “Look, I know I haven’t been around much, but I was wondering if maybe you and me, we could start getting together. My night job doesn’t start until late, and you’re just f**king around here in the afternoon. No reason we shouldn’t kick some hours together.”
Wow. Parental figure of the year over here, dropping the f-bomb. Whatever. He’d never done this before.
After a period of silence, Tony glanced over. Looked away.
Looked back.
The suspicion and mistrust were a ball buster, they really were. But like the kid hadn’t earned the right to be cautious?
“You’re a bouncer, right?” Tony asked.
“Yeah.”
“Do you beat people up at work?”
“Only when they deserve it.”
“Cool…”
“Not really. Dealing with stupid, drunk people is no way to make a living.” Duke shook his head. “I wanted to be a doctor, actually. Now, that is cool.”
“Why aren’t you one?”
Because your mother and I were…
Fuck that. “I quit college.”
“Why?”
“I was a pu**y.” Yeeeeeeah, he probably shouldn’t be using that kind of language around the kid, but the truth was the truth. “I didn’t even apply to medical school. I pulled out two credits shy of what I needed to graduate. Biggest mistake I ever made.”
His head had been too f**ked to keep going, although in retrospect, he knew that was more about the evil that his brother was than anything he’d felt for Nicole: The concept that he’d shared a womb with someone capable of such casual cruelty had crippled him, shut him down … essentially infected him.
A chance meeting with Cait seemed to be turning that around, though.
And now he was going to try doing the same to Tony.
Trickle-down wasn’t just about economics.
“Monday,” he said. “Five p.m. Be in your gym shorts with a towel and a bottle of water on you. We’re going to go play basketball. Deal?”
Tony narrowed those eyes again. But after a moment, he nodded. “Okay.”
Duke nodded back. And stayed around to watch the kid walk to the door and disappear inside.
Before he could even put his truck in drive again, his phone went off—for the third time. Answering the call, he barked, “Rolly, what the hell is your problem?”
“You had a visitor.”
Duke rolled his eyes. “Oh, for f**k’s sake, do not tell me you’re dropping acid again. The last time, you were convinced Bob Barker was staging an intervention.”
“Okay, that was just a bad trip.”
“Yeah, because you didn’t listen to Mr. Price Is Right and put up your damn bong—”
“It was a woman. She was talking all weird, something about your brother? And, um…”
A blast of cold fear cleared his head and then some. “What. Rolly, what did she say?”
“Something about seeing you with your son?”
Duke exhaled in a rush, a swift pain hitting him in the gut sure as if he’d been kicked by a steel-toed boot. “When did she come by?”
“’Bout an hour ago? That’s why I’ve been calling you. You never have visitors, and she looked pretty upset—”
“I gotta go. Bye.”
Stomping on the accelerator, he skidded out as he turned around and flashed down to the exit of the development.
“Jesus f**king Christ,” he bit out as he called a number he’d never expected to dial.
Five rings later, like the phone’s owner wasn’t in any goddamn hurry, a voice drawled, “Hellllllo.”
“You f**king ass**le.”
“I’m sorry, who is this?” G.B. mocked.
“You know exactly who it is. What the f**k are you doing?”
“God, how rude are you, my dearest, darling, long-lost brother? We don’t speak for how many years, and you don’t even ask how I’m doing before you—”
“Do not try to play me. I know what you are, and I know what you’re capable of.” He’d just evidently forgotten that—why the hell hadn’t it dawned on him that his brother was a liar, too? “Leave Cait out of this.”
“Oh, but see, I can’t do that. You were the one who brought her into it.”
“You don’t even know her!”
“And neither do you—or should I say, neither will you. Duke, you’ve just got to understand something—you can’t keep women from me. Didn’t work with Nicole, not going to work with this new one.”
Duke’s hand cranked down so hard on his cell that it let out a long beep, like it was going into cardiac arrest. “Listen to me. You stay the f**k away from her—”
“Not your call. And do yourself a favor. Don’t try to win her back—you don’t have a chance.”
“We’ll see about that.”
He hung up the phone and then threw the thing at the dash. Slamming his hands into the wheel, he clenched his teeth around the scream in his throat. He knew better than to try to talk to his brother—back in the early days, he’d given that enough shots to last twelve lifetimes.
No talking. No reasoning.
The only thing he could potentially work with was Cait.
“Shit!”
Steaming across town, he pulled into her neighborhood going Nascar fast, but slowed down—because running over some kid or somebody’s dog over was not going to help the situation. And as he came up to her house, he was sorely relieved to see her car in the driveway.
Now, if he could just get her to answer the door.