Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 136425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 682(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 682(@200wpm)___ 546(@250wpm)___ 455(@300wpm)
“When did she have Cooper?” Devi asked.
Lacey whistled. “You are excellent at putting ice on your words. Zach, do you need a jumper?”
He frowned Lacey’s way. “We don’t need your sarcasm.” He turned back to Devi. “After she got tagged the second time, my aunt left the military so I wouldn’t go into the system. I was very young. I don’t remember much about my father beyond the fact that he would show up every now and then and scare the hell out of my aunt. The longest time my mom did was for my dad. She took the fall. Not like she had a choice. She was in jail when she found out she was pregnant. By then she had figured out Ray sold her out to the cartel they were working with, and she was terrified. That was when she and my aunt decided to find a family for the baby.”
“They sent him away to protect him but kept you in the line of fire?” Devi managed to sound irate on his behalf.
The inequity was something he let go of a long time ago. “Ray already knew about me. My aunt managed to pay off enough people in the prison that they kept my mother’s pregnancy secret. From what I’ve been told she didn’t show until late in pregnancy, and she spent the last six weeks in solitary. The baby’s adoption was arranged by a private broker.”
“Did Uncle Alex buy a baby on the black market?” Devi asked.
“All right, how big is this family?” Lacey asked. “And does that make you cousins in some way?”
“No,” he and Devi said at the same time.
“Alex McKay is my uncle’s best friend. He was very much a part of my childhood. We had a lot of adults around who we weren’t biologically related to, but they were family,” Devi explained and then frowned. “And now I realize how I could have handled talking about my cousins. Anyway, I don’t expect you to understand. I know the world values blood.”
“I think I understand more than you can imagine,” Lacey replied quietly. “From what I’ve been told the adoption was perfectly legal, and Mr. McKay had no idea he was adopting the child of someone who knew who he was.”
“My aunt worked with Big Tag in the Army. She liked and trusted him. She heard from some of their Army buddies that his best friend was trying to adopt,” Zach explained. “So she made it happen.”
And now she would put it all together in her angry brain and come to the conclusion that everyone in his family was trying to use everyone in hers. She would be right back to the whole he was going down the line of Taggart women looking for a way in.
He only wanted inside one of them, and she would probably shoot him if he tried. Or sic her recently acquired attack cat on him.
“So your mom was worried Coop would be one more thing your dad could hold over her head?” Devi asked carefully, as though weighing her words.
It was better than the bile she’d been spewing all day. “Yes. I was a toddler at the time, but everyone in the cartel knew I was her son. She thought if she could get Cooper out, he would be safer.”
“And your aunt went to the man she trusted,” Devi continued.
“Ian doesn’t know. I mean he does now, but he didn’t know at the time,” Zach explained. He didn’t want her lumping her uncle into the lying pile of shit men she had now. “Ian had no idea I’m Cooper’s biological brother. I didn’t know he existed until years and years later.”
“Did your dad use you against your mom?”
He didn’t like to think about how shitty his childhood had been. “Mom was out for a couple of years while he was in South America working. He came back to the States and picked me up from school one day. Charmed his way in, explaining he was my dad and only had a few days before he had to be back to work. I’m fairly certain the woman thought he was being deployed or something, though I assure you my father would never join the military. Too much sacrifice. He took me to a motel, and I don’t remember a lot except that I ate pizza and watched cartoons and my mom cried and shook when she finally got me back. And she agreed to start working on a project for my dad’s new bosses. She drifted in and out of my life after that until I was fourteen. I didn’t see her again, though she would send money back and talk to me every now and then on the phone. I didn’t lay eyes on her until I was twenty-two and starting to work intelligence.”