CHAPTER ELEVEN
By the time Mountain, Izzy and Boone came into Troy, Izzy and Boone caught up on almost eight years of being separated. Mountain had been watching the boy most of the trip and he’d noticed something he wasn’t sure Izzy realized. He was in pain and at times, the pain was severe. He didn’t think Izzy had noticed though, because he was covering it well.
When they pulled up outside Melora’s house, he was surprised to see a ramp in place. When he lifted Bone out of the truck and placed him in his chair the door flew open and Melora rushed out.
Boone had a smile on his face when she threw her arms around him. “It is so good to see you again!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, wow, you grew up since I last saw you,” Boone told her.
Melora chuckled, “I could say the same thing about you. You were a scrawny little kid and now you’re still scrawny but not so little. We’re gonna have to fatten you up some.”
Sam came out on the porch holding T-Bone and watched them for a moment.
When Mountain pushed the chair up the ramp and onto the porch, he came to a stop beside Sam.
Sam held out his hand and waited for Boone to take it. “Pleased to meet you young man.”
“Same here.” Boone nodded.
“I’d like you to meet my son, Talon Boone Morgan Tory,” Sam told him. “Melora is my old lady soon to be my wife.”
Boone’s head snapped around to search Melora’s face. “You named your son after me?” he whispered.
“Sure did.” Melora grinned. “You gave me something very special, so I returned the favor.”
Sam opened the door and everyone went inside. Once inside, Mountain watched the young man. His face was pinched with pain and he knew he would have to speak to him soon.
“Are you guys’ hungry?” Melora asked. “I have some hot food for you.”
“Starving,” Izzy replied. “And tired. I think I could sleep for a week after that trip.”
“I thought I’d give Boone your room since you never sleep in there anymore,” Melora informed her.
Izzy smiled and nodded her head.
“I’ll bring his bags in from the truck,” Mountain said as he motioned for Sam to accompany him.
When they reached the truck Sam asked, “So did you run into any trouble?”
“Not really.” Mountain shrugged. “The uncle needs a lesson in good manners though. He’s as bad as their dad.”
“Did you get the bet settled?”
“Yeah, I hope so.” Mountain nodded. “I saw the local mob boss and explained the situation. He said he would clear it up. I have to trust that he will.” He hesitated, “I did give the man my name but not where I lived.”
Sam just stared at him for a moment, then suggested, “You know there is more to the story than the girls or Boone realize, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know that. I just hope it doesn’t come here looking for them,” Mountain said. “Dad gets out of prison in a few weeks, so I guess we’ll find out.”
“Does he know where they are?”
“No and I don’t plan on telling him either. I did check with the local MC but I wore my Sons of Satan vest. They’ll go south before they come here.”
“So, what’s up with the kid?”
“You saw it too then?” Mountain asked.
“What, that he’s in pain? Yeah, I saw it. I thought he was paralyzed? He shouldn’t be in that much pain.”
“I think we need to get him to a doctor and find out the truth.”
Sam thought for a moment then suggested, “Let me talk to Quinn’s doctor and see what he can find out. He knows how to be discreet.”
“Hopefully, quick as possible.” He lifted out Boone’s suitcase and started back to the house. “I met some very interesting guys while I was there. Melora and Izzy shared a house with them and they have been watching over Boone since the girls left town. I told them they would have a house and jobs if they came out here.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Those two girls just can’t help themselves.” Sam chuckled.
“How the hell did two old men like us get so lucky?” Mountain asked. “Damn.”
Sam nodded and they both stood for a moment. Then he sighed. “We’re going to have to talk to Izzy and Boone about what happened that night, you know that don’t you? We need to know if this is really over or if it’s going to come back and bite us in the ass.”
“Yeah I know, but let’s get Boone settled first,” Mountain agreed.
Sam paused then faced the other man. “Me and Melora are getting married next week. Just a simple ceremony but I want to claim both her and the baby. We’ll get married at the club in a few weeks but I want this now. As her father I thought you needed to know.”
Mountain shrugged his broad shoulders. “Thanks for letting me know. I have to ask, why two ceremonies?”
Sam grinned. “She wants a proper wedding night. Right now, it’s too soon to consummate the marriage but I want my ring on her finger as soon as I can get it there.”
Mountain just stared at the other man for a moment then nodded. “I understand both your reasons. That girl is the best thing that could happen to a man like me and I missed out on most of her life already. I wasn’t there when she needed someone to protect her but she’s got me now.” He hesitated then asked, “Can Izzy and I be there for the ceremony?”
“I think she plans to ask you to give her away, both times.” Sam grinned.
“As long as you realize she’s on loan to you,” Mountain informed him. “If you break her heart I’ll break you.”
For a long moment, steely violet eyes met steely blue.
Then Sam grinned. “I’d like to see you try,” he spoke softly as he eyed the bigger man.
Mountain grinned. “Let’s hope that day never comes. I don’t know about you but I’m getting too damn old for that shit.”
“Yup, we both are.” Sam chuckled as he followed Mountain into the house.
~* * * *~
A little later, after they’d eaten and were thinking about going to bed Izzy held her brother’s hand and they were reminiscing about the last time they saw each other. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been around the last eight years,” She spoke softly as tears began to roll down her cheeks.
Boone lifted his hands and gently wiped her tears away. “Please don’t do this, don’t cry. It’s ok. I remember the night I was shot, I remember everything you did and said and I would go through it all again, to protect you.”
Izzy snarled. “He had no right, no fucking right at all.”
Boone shrugged. “Dad always was a bastard.” He looked at the rest of them sitting there. “I guess we should tell you everything. I think you have the right to know.”
“They know most of the story,” Izzy told her brother, her eyes warning him.
“Then they need to know the rest of it, don’t you think?”
Izzy let out a sigh and nodded.
“Our father was a bastard from the time I could remember. Izzy was seven years old when I was born, so she had endured much more than I ever did. The first memory I have is when I was about two years old. I remember being cold and hungry and hearing my parents screaming at each other. Izzy wasn’t home from school yet, so I was in our bedroom sitting in the corner waiting for her to come home.” He shrugged. “It was always better when she was with me. She would hold me and tell me I was going to be ok.”
“Dad never could keep a job for very long,” Izzy took up the story. “Between his drinking and his gambling, we never knew from week to week if we would have a place to live or food on the table. It was a hard way to grow up. I think we changed schools fifteen times before Boone was ten.”
Boone let out a heavy sigh and continued, “The year before the shooting Mom had had enough. She wanted to leave and take us with her. She said she could get a job and support us and her. But Dad wouldn’t let her take us. He screamed at her that if she was going to walk out on him, she would go alone.” He glanced over at his sister and went on, “She surprised us all when the next morning she was gone. She took her clothes and left during the night. Things went downhill after that. Dad was never home and when he was there, he was drinking heavily. We never had enough food but Izzy took care of me, just the same as she’d been doing ever since I can remember. I remember that she often went hungry so that I could eat.” Boone rubbed his head almost like he had a headache. “About a week before the shooting, Dad came home one night in almost a good mood. He was drunk of course but for the first time in forever, he wasn’t angry.”
“I remember that night,” Izzy whispered. Her eyes were becoming haunted.
“He even remembered we were there. He brought us hamburgers from a fast food place. It was ten o’clock at night but he woke us up to eat cold, soggy hamburgers. He kept telling us his problems were over. He would stare at Izzy and tell her she was going to make him rich. I never did figure out what he was talking about. He finally fell asleep around one in the morning. Izzy had to carry me to bed after Dad fell asleep.”
Izzy shivered but didn’t say anything.
“Then a few hours later, he woke us up screaming about losing something. He tore the house apart, screaming and yelling. He was like a wild man that morning. He tore the whole house apart but didn’t find whatever it was he was looking for. Izzy would clean up and Dad came right behind her tearing things up.” He turned to her and asked, “Do you remember?”
“I remember.” She nodded. “I also remember a few days later. He came home that night and he was crazy.”
“Yeah, he was,” Bonne concurred. “He came into the bedroom and began yelling some crap about you finally being his good luck.”
“That’s when he told us about the card game he lost, and what he used as collateral.” Izzy sneered. “He bet his fifteen year old daughter on a single hand of cards.”
“But that wasn’t the whole bet,” Boone told her and everyone else. “Later that night or the next morning, Uncle Mike came into my hospital room and started yammering something about a key. Apparently, dad wanted him to ask me about a key he lost a few days before. It must have been the morning he tore the house apart.”
“A key?” Izzy frowned.
“Yeah, the night he came home with the hamburgers he’d taken a key from some guy at the card game he was at. The other guy didn’t know it was gone yet, but dad couldn’t find it the next morning. Apparently, that’s what he was looking for.”
“What does a key have to do with anything?” Sam asked.
“I’m not sure.” Boone shrugged. “I told Uncle Mike I had no clue what the hell he was talking about. I didn’t see any key that night, but Uncle Mike insisted dad had a key that night. He even suggested one of us had taken it. I told him I didn’t know anything about it and I also told him you wouldn’t have taken it either.” He shook his head. “He kept coming back every day to ask about the key. Then Dad went on trial for the shooting. I was still in the hospital and you were nowhere to be found. I asked Uncle Mike about you but he never told me anything.” Boone paused and stared at his hands in his lap. “It was only after Dad went to jail and he made arrangement for me to go and live with him that I found out the reason you never came to the hospital to see me. He told me he banned you from seeing me again and that if you did, he would have kicked me to the streets.” Boone laid his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes. “God, I hated that man. I hated the fact I had nowhere else to go. I think if you would’ve come around just then, I would have begged you to take me away. I would have gladly lived on the streets with you.” He turned his head and found her looking back. “Then you and Melora showed up. I know I was angry that day but I wasn’t angry with you. I was pissed at myself. I was feeling sorry for me. It wasn’t until Melora explained the kind of life you were living that I could see I was better off with Mike but I still hated it. She told me that day that you had been watching over me. She told me that I might not see you but that you were there.” He paused. “It made me feel better knowing you were still around watching over me.”
Izzy reached out and took his hand. “You were never alone. Even when Melora and I left Chicago, someone was watching over you.”
Boone smiled. “I know. I saw them every day. I never let them know but I did.”
“Let’s go back to this key for a moment,” Mountain urged. “Whatever became of that?”
Boone shrugged. “I don’t know. A couple of years ago, Mike cornered me out on the patio. As usual, he’d been drinking. A letter from Dad arrived that day in the mail and after he read it, he started drinking. Anyway, he came out to where I was sitting and started asking me about the stupid key again.” Boone shook his head. “I told him again, I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he said something about Izzy must have it. I tried to tell him she would have told me but he got mad and hit me. I was surprised, yet not surprised. He’d slapped me around before but that night he smacked me hard enough to knock me out of my chair. I couldn’t move and the jolt from slamming down on the patio gave me so much pain I almost passed out.”
Izzy put her hands over her mouth as tears filled her eyes.
He shrugged. “I don’t know how long I laid there before Aunt Judy finally helped me back into the chair. She got me to bed but two days later, I was back in the hospital with pneumonia.”
“God, Boone I am so sorry!” Izzy cried. “I should have been there for you and I wasn’t.”
Boone shook his head. “No, you had every right to make a life of your own. I was ok for the most part.”
Izzy shook her head. “No you don’t understand. I took the key that night. After Dad fell asleep and I carried you to bed, I went back to the living room because I heard Dad saying something. He was talking in his sleep and I stood there and listened to him spout off about besting the man. I didn’t know who he was talking about, he never said his name but he did say he would use the key against him. Someone would pay big to get the damn key back and that he would be set up for life.” Izzy wiped her tears away. “After everything he’d done to us and to Mom, I didn’t want him to get his payday so I took the key and I hid it. Then I watched him go nuts trying to find it. The night of the shooting, he spouted off about trading me in the fucking card game. Before I knew it, you grabbed the gun and then he had it and you were laying on the floor bleeding. I saw your bat on the floor beside the door and I just picked it up and swung it at his head. I watched him go down and I picked you up and got you the hell out of there.” Izzy sobbed. “Oh God, Boone I am so sorry! If I had left the key alone, you wouldn’t have been shot and none of this would have happened.”
“I think you both know better than that,” Mountain finally spoke up. He’d listened to the whole story come out and one thing he knew was that their father wasn’t worth spit and that he would use his children to get ahead.
Boone nodded. “Yeah, I do anyway. Dad never cared for us, even when Mom left. The only reason he wouldn’t allow her to take us, was he always figured on using us to get ahead.”
“She wasn’t much better,” Izzy told them.
“What do you mean?” Boone asked.
“After Uncle Mike kicked me out of your life, I went to find her. It took me a while, like two years but I managed to track her down. She was living in some dive and working as a stripper. She knew all about Dad and what happened. She saw the story on the news but didn’t come forward. She said she couldn’t take care of herself let alone a crippled kid, so she let you go home with Mike. When I asked her why she didn’t fight harder to take me and you with her when she left, she told me the truth. She said you were her kid but that I wasn’t. She told me I wasn’t Sonny’s kid either. I was her sister’s brat. The night I was born, she helped her sister through the labor, then things went wrong and her sister bled to death. Roxi said she had no choice but to pretend I was her kid since she claimed she didn’t know who my father was. Then she got this look in her eye and she told me she knew who my father was and that if I helped her, she would make sure I got some money out of the deal. I told her she could go to hell before I’d help her.”
“So we’re not brother and sister at all?” Boone asked.
Izzy slid off her chair and knelt in front of Boone’s chair. “You will always be my brother. It doesn’t matter to me whether we share the same bloodline or not, you are my brother, now and forever.”
Boone just stared at her for a moment. He began shaking his head then she cried out, “A family doesn’t always mean being that closely related, you know. It does mean you love the other person. I love you so much Boone, I have since the day you were born and that love will last until both of us are gone from this world.”
Boone took a deep breath and exhaled. “So ok, like you said love is what’s important. I can’t imagine life without you being part of me.”
“So what is this thing with the key?” Sam asked.
Izzy shrugged. “I don’t know but the key is important to somebody.”
“Do you still have the key?” Melora asked.
Izzy nodded. “Yeah, I still have it but I have no idea who to ask about it. I don’t want Sonny or Roxi to profit from it nor do I want whoever Sonny took it from to get it back.”
“Maybe I can help find out who the key actually belongs to,” Mountain suggested.
“How are you going to do that?” Izzy asked.
“I’m not sure yet, but I’m working on it.” He smiled at her.