Fender paced the living room. The baseball game was turned on low. The noise was a steady din—he heard none of it beyond a persistent hum—but it was nice to have the company as Daphne stood at his kitchen counter and called in the situation.

He and Landon had made quick work of checking out the apartment, but it was empty. His father wasn’t there, but his stamp was imprinted on every damn inch of the place, including the case of beer he’d guzzled out of the fridge. A full case, as evidenced by the empty cans he’d left in a garbage bag by the sink.

It was the garbage bag that really stuck in Fender’s craw. It wasn’t bad enough his father had broken in, but those fucking cans were proof of just how long he’d spent in the apartment, making himself at home. Living off his son like a leech.

Daphne tapped the face of her phone and pulled out the earbuds she’d used to make her calls. “I’m really sorry about this, Fender.”

“No one saw him?”

She shook her head. “No one. The super will be up in a bit to change the locks, and the uniforms are going to canvas the building and surrounding areas to see if anyone saw him, but he laid low all weekend.”

“Yeah, I figured that based on the beer.” Fender had also checked out his depleted fridge and freezer and the bowls still in the sink, and he knew he’d had company all weekend.

The anger that had ridden him throughout the afternoon sparked again, only instead of frustration at his own actions toward Harlow, he now had a ready outlet with his father. He’d been expecting the old man to come nosing around at work. He’d even braced for the possibility of a showdown at one of Mama Lou’s events. But to shack up in his apartment all weekend?

Feelings he’d believed long buried curled in his stomach, curdling there like sour milk. Ever since Nick had filled him in and let him know Trent was back, Fender had fought the subtle, insidious feeling of his past encroaching in on him. Closing in around him with thick, insurmountable walls.

There was only one person on earth who had the power to make him feel that way, and it was Trent Fucking Blackstone, Park Heights’s leading candidate for father of the year.

“You want to bunk at my place?” Landon stood beside him, right where he’d been Fender’s entire life. Or the years of his life that counted.

“Nah. You and Daph—” Before he could get the words out—could deny just how badly his skin crawled and how much he wanted out of his own goddamn home—Landon had him pulled close, in a tight hug.

“It’s going to be okay. We’re going to find him and do something about him.”

Once again, Fender was forced to admit his brother might be long, wiry and deceptively lean, but he was strong and solid, too. “Thanks, L. But he’s mine to deal with.”

Landon’s arms tightened before he added a solid smack on the back of Fender’s head. “We’re brothers, you asshole. You’re not dealing with this alone. Nor are you a ten-year-old kid trying to stay off his radar. We’re going to handle this. You don’t have to go it alone.”

So how did he explain that he did have to go it alone? That the same forces that had shaped him had made him absolutely certain his father would make problems for those Fender loved. Trent Blackstone was a miserable bastard with a mean streak like a snake, and once he got his teeth in something he didn’t let go.

“It’s like I’ve been marking time, you know?” His throat was raw, but suddenly it was deeply important to get it out. To rid himself of the words. “Like no matter what I’ve done, or what I’ve worked to build, all it took was a flick of his wrist and my father managed to tear it all down.”

“I know.”

And Landon did know. His rediscovery of his birth mother around the same time he’d met Daphne had stirred up feelings that had nearly busted them up before Landon had figured out how to deal with all of it.

Before he’d found a way to live with his past.

In L’s case, it was learning to live with his mother’s poor decisions that had spilled over onto him. Since she’d gone straight and worked to clean up her life, she’d begun to rebuild all the damaged pieces, and Landon was a part of that. But his mother wasn’t violent, mean, or ill-tempered. She wasn’t a thief, and she didn’t carry around a vendetta.

Trent Blackstone did.

“We’ve got your back, Fender. Whatever your father is planning, we’ve got you. He’s not going to succeed.”

Fender fought returning to that place in his mind where he’d buried memories of his father. The crappy, rundown apartment across town that still lived in his memories and reached up to claw at him in nightmares every now and again. The fists that had bunched and pummeled when he did something wrong. And the snake-mean words that had consistently told him what a burden he was and what a little shit he’d turned out to be.

He fought it with all he had.

But even he knew, sometimes the best of fighters lost. And the knockouts were often the punches you never saw coming.

* * *

Heavy metal throbbed out of the back of the garage, which meant Junior Timmons had won the toss that morning. His guys, along with Annie, had a system for deciding what went on the radio. A complicated mix of gambling, rock-scissors-paper, and an occasional plea for mercy when three days in a row of anything had begun to chafe against the best of spirits, dictated what they played on the satellite radio at Blackstone’s Auto Body.

Personally, Fender preferred his rock a bit less death-metally, but he’d get by.

Fender called a quick meeting of his staff, going over and over in his mind what he wanted to say. In moments, everyone who was in that day had surrounded him in one of the bays, one of them thoughtful enough to turn down the radio before joining the team huddle.

“I appreciate you all holding down the fort while I was gone.”

“That was a great race this weekend,” Junior piped up from the back.

“It was,” he agreed, swallowing around the tightness in his throat. “So look, something happened over the weekend.”

Gathering his thoughts, Fender took a deep breath and pushed through it. The details of his father’s return. A description of Trent as best as he knew it. And a recounting of the break-in and subsequent holiday his father had spent squatting in his apartment.

“I need you to be alert, and don’t feel you need to engage him.”

His crew nodded their agreement, and every one of them was understanding and encouraging, offering their support as they walked back to their various jobs around the garage. Which left Annie Foreman as the last one who lingered.

“Boss? Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.”

Annie motioned toward an alcove off the main garage, which housed their fridge and small kitchen area. Fender had known Annie for a long time and had never seen her upset. But the quivering lip and tear-filled eyes were impossible to miss.

“Annie? What’s wrong?”

“I’m the reason your dad broke in.”

“Of course you’re not.”

Tears continued to fill her eyes, spilling over as she shook her head. “It’s true. He was in here on Friday, and I met him and talked to him. I was the one who told him you weren’t around all weekend.”

“But Annie, this isn’t your fault.”

“Sure it is. If it weren’t for my big mouth, he’d never have gone to your place. I saw Barbara trying to shake him off at the front desk and thought she was messing with a customer, like how she can get with her snooty attitude. And then when he said he was your dad, I saw a bit of resemblance. And then I ran my big mouth.”

Fender comforted her for a few more minutes, piecing together what must have happened after Trent visited the garage on Friday. Annie had given him the details of race weekend, and his father had done the rest. The busted locks and garbage at his apartment told the rest of the story.

Once he finally managed to console Annie and assure her that her “big mouth” wasn’t responsible for anything, he made a quick call to Daphne. The news in return—that Trent still hadn’t been sighted—only added to his building anger.

He’d believed that he’d gone through every emotion the day before, so it was humbling to realize there were a whole host of them he hadn’t experienced yet. All along with a ferocious wrath that burned in his blood and pushed him toward a desperate desire to act.

Underpinning it all was the continued ache that he’d sent Harlow away. Even in the midst of all the bullshit with his father, she still found a way into his thoughts.

And his heart.

* * *

Harlow worked her way through the day, focused on the mental equivalent of putting one foot in front of the other. She diligently worked through her to-do list, checking off one item after the next. That sort of productivity would normally make her feel like an accomplished ass-kicker, but today, it was just a glum reminder of the fact that she had nothing better to do.

No dinner dates to get to. No plans to rush home for. And not one single outreach from Fender.

Although their discussion in the car and all that had come after had seemed horribly final, somewhere around three that morning she began to wonder if they could find their way past it. He’d been surly at dinner the week before and gotten over it. And Friday afternoon had been the same. Things were new between them, and they’d moved fast.

Maybe he was just processing things, her three A.M. self whispered.

Only things hadn’t gotten better in the bright light of day. Nor had he called. Or texted. Or emailed.

Or just come by.

She toyed with marching over to Brooklyn to do it herself, but something held her back. The self-righteous indignation that had carried her through her conversation with her mother and on into the night had faded, replaced with the finality of Fender’s choices.

He had dumped her.

And that hurt, way down in the places she avoided looking at too deeply. Fender’s rejection now lived alongside her father’s, Kincaide Reynolds’s extracurricular activities as much a betrayal of his family as they were of his marriage. Those rejections lived beside the expectations of others, who believed her interest in art was frivolous and simply a pastime until she found a husband.

All of it sat uncomfortably atop her own thoughts about herself. That she’d spent her life preparing for it to start, and maybe the sad truth was that it already had. And what she had to show for it was empty, vapid and unsatisfying.

* * *

Fender plowed through the paperwork that had piled up over the weekend. Barbara had already taken the deposits to the bank, but he still had to process invoices from some of his vendors, and reorder any needed inventory. He went through the motions, the usual satisfaction he took from being a business owner nowhere in sight as he slogged through each page.

Landon had been on his ass to automate, and he’d taken a few steps in that direction, but maybe he needed to do more. Maybe the mind-numbing focus he’d need to change gears and redo his business was just what he needed. Or fuck the automation. He’d been eyeing a sweet GTO that was going up for auction in a few weeks. The car needed a shit-ton of work and restoring it to its former glory would give him something to focus on.

Something that wasn’t Harlow.

“Look at you, my boy. A businessman in Brooklyn.”

The scent of cigarette smoke hit him seconds before the scratchy voice. Fender glanced up; a lifetime’s worth of anger and pain and grief stood in his office doorway. A million ways to play the scene flitted through Fender’s mind, but he ultimately opted for keen disinterest. “Heard you were back in town.”

The darkness that hooded Trent Blackstone’s gaze—and the clear disappointment he’d not gotten a rise out of his son—gave Fender the boost he needed, and he added another jab before his father could speak. “Saw you were back in town, come to think of it. With the shit-ton of garbage you left in my kitchen, it was hard to miss the news.”

Trent did grin then, the harsh, craggy lines of his face grooving deep. “I could hardly make a sound around the neighbors by trying to dump out the trash, now could I? Plus, I figured it made for a nice calling card.”

“Fuck you.”

“Always were an eloquent little shit.”

Trent dropped his cigarette on the ground and stomped it under his boot before taking the chair opposite Fender’s desk. He propped his feet up on the edge of the scarred wood, the dark stain of ash still riding the tip of one boot. “Neighborhood’s changed.”

“You’ve been gone from it a long time.” Refusing to pull any punches, Fender pressed on. “Why are you back?”

“Man’s not welcome in his hometown?”

“What were you expecting, a parade?”

“Maybe.” Trent shrugged. “Maybe not. This town always was a piece of shit anyway. I was happy the day I got the fuck out of here.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Few places. Better places than this shit hole.”

Fender doubted it, but he remained quiet, strangely curious to hear where his father had been all this time.

“Spent the last few years in Ohio. Lots of work there. Texas before that. Oklahoma before that.”

“A rolling stone.”

“Man’s gotta make a living.” Trent twisted in his chair, his gaze roaming over the cars up on the lifts, visible through the window of Fender’s office. “You’re making one here.”

“I get by.”

“That’s a BMW 8 series up on the lift. Don’t bullshit me, boy. You do more than fine.”

Fender had done more than fine, and he was proud of it. He took something he loved—a personal passion—and channeled it into his life’s work. And he’d be damned if he was letting his asshole father come in here and taint it. “We’ve caught up long enough. What do you want and what is it going to take to get you the hell out of town?”

Trent pulled his feet off the desk, dropping them to the ground with a thud before he leaned forward toward. The move was threatening and vintage Trent, but Fender saw it in a different light.

The eyes of a child had given way to the eyes of a man. And the aging, skinny shell of the man across from him didn’t hold nearly the power that he used to.

“Seems you could show a bit more respect to your father.”

Fender stood then, pushing back hard on his chair so that it slammed into the wall. “Seems like you could get a fucking clue about where you’re not welcome.”

Trent came to his feet as well, his sneer the only advantage he had. “Always were an ungrateful little bastard.”

“Yeah, well, I learned from the best. And I want you the fuck out of here. Out of my garage. Out of my life. You’ve spent the last fifteen years in a hole. Go crawl back into it.”

* * *

Trent rapidly calculated the angles, reluctantly impressed at Fender’s outburst. If he weren’t so goddamn desperate, he might actually be proud of his son. He’d spent his life messing up sniveling little assholes who couldn’t pay up on a debt, or who’d buried their lives in the bottom of a bottle and now needed to pay the mortgage, and not one of them had ever done anything but beg. It made a man feel big.

Powerful.

But standing there, watching his son stand tall . . . Hell, if he weren’t in such dire straits, he might be tempted to hug the little shit.

He’d raised an ass kicker.

“Look, all I need is a bit of blunt, and I’ll get out of your life.”

Fender stood, coming around his desk to stand by the door. “You get nothing.”

Trent eyed the BMW once more, rapidly cycling through his options. The whole trip back to Brooklyn had been a crap idea and he needed to get out. His contacts had all died or gone to jail, the new guys running the neighborhood didn’t have any respect for the way things worked, and even women were hard to come by. Before leaving Ohio he’d toyed with moving to Florida permanently—a guy he knew ran numbers down in Hialeah and needed a bruiser—but he’d had some romantic notion of coming home.

Fuck that.

He needed some cash to get set up and settled, and he could build a nice life for himself in Florida. The state might be a fucking swamp, but he’d never be cold.

Bright side.

“You’re doing well. Least you could do is give the old man a piece of it.”

“Why?” Fender cocked his head, his stare dead on. Trent remembered those eyes. Fender’s mother had them, too. That crazy, crystal green, and direct as a gun to the head. He’d never known what she would do and, for a while, he’d found that unpredictability sexy. He got over it real quick when she ran off and left him with the kid.

“Why what?”

“Why should I help you?”

“Because I’m your father.”

“You’re really not.”

Something about the casual response, coupled with that dead-eyed stare, pissed Trent off. Yeah, he was desperate. And he needed the money more than he could say.

But he’d be damned if he was going to take that shit.

“Never did know your place. You’ll show me some respect.”

“When hell freezes, old man.”

Just like that, he was back in the old apartment he’d shared with the kid. Little shit needed to learn some manners.

Some respect.

The present folded in on the past, and Trent moved before he could check the impulse. He leaped around the narrow space of the desk, dragging at Fender’s shirt collar. He had a good grip and managed to pull the kid forward, slamming a fist into his stomach. That was the last solid punch he got before his hands were trapped against his sides, held tight so he couldn’t move.

Fender kept on moving, the hard strength of his hold matched to the force of his motions, and Trent stumbled forward as Fender slammed him into the wall. His cheek rubbed against painted concrete as he struggled against the hold.

“Let me go.”

“Listen well, old man. You’re going to leave here, and you’re going to get the fuck out of Park Heights. I don’t care where you go or what you do, but I want you gone.”

“You need to learn some respect.”

“I don’t think so.” That hard grip tightened another fraction. “It’s your turn.”

Trent said nothing, just stood there breathing hard and trying to figure out what he was going to do. Unbidden, the memory of that campaign pamphlet in Fender’s kitchen came back to him.

Along with an idea.

As it took shape and grew, Trent knew how he’d get his money so he could hightail his ass to Hialeah. And he’d get to give his kid one more lesson in the process.

On who was really boss.