Laughing again, I said, “You’d use any excuse for a drink, but I’m down. Let’s drink!”

“Wait,” said Zara. “At least tell us the sex was awesome. There’s gotta be one good thing from all this, right?”

My core lit up just thinking about how good the sex had been. “Best sex I’ve ever had.”

“Thank goodness for that! At least the man gave you some good memories you can call on in lonely times.” Zara winked at me as she said this. She was right – I would definitely use Griff for inspiration when I had to rely on BOB.

One of the other party guests bomb dived into the pool at that moment, distracting us from our conversation, and completely covering us in water. As Tania and Zara grumbled about being wet, I jumped up and dived into the pool. If you couldn’t beat them, join them.

“Come on!” I motioned to the girls. “It’s beautiful in the water.” The heat of the day was forgotten as I did a lap of the pool.

Zara and Tania eventually joined me, and we got a game of water volleyball going. One way or another, I would put Griff out of my mind today.

12

Griff

As I stared out at the tree in my backyard where my family’s ashes were buried, the brutal humidity clung to me, but I hardly noticed it as memories of my father filled my mind. These memories were the reason why I only allowed myself to think about him once a year. My father had been a hard man. A man with his own demons; a man who struggled with how to cope with those demons. And in the end, history repeated itself and the sins of the father became the sins of the son as he did to his children what had been done to him.

I took a deep breath.

Fuck.

I swallowed the rest of my drink and turned to go back inside and came face to face with my cousin who had been standing behind me.

“Michael.”

I scowled. It had been two years since he’d cut me out of his life, and he was the last person I wanted to see today. “What are you doing here?”

He’d aged quite noticeably since I’d last seen him. Grey peppered his hair, lines etched his face and the weight had crept on. The life of a cop was not kind to the body. I knew that from my father, too.

“It’s ten years today.”

“Your point?” I fought to remain calm as the rage built in me. I wasn’t sure if this current rage came from the ten years or the last two.

“I thought you might be one of those sentimental bastards who marked these kinds of things.” His shoulders were tense as if he were ready for an argument.

“Sentimental and me don’t go in the same sentence. You should know that by now.”

“The Michael I knew is long gone; I’m not sure of anything about you anymore.”

“You’re the one who walked and chose not to know anything about me anymore so don’t come here and give me that bullshit.”

He shook his head. “No, you’re the one who chose Storm and they’re the ones who changed you.”

Pain shot through my head as a headache began to take shape. The tightrope of control I walked threatened to snap, and I clenched and unclenched my fists in an attempt not to use them. “Storm were the only ones who accepted me for who the fuck I was, Danny. And as much as you never wanted to acknowledge it, the great and fucking almighty Rod McAllister made me into the man I am. Don’t put that shit on my club.”

He scowled. “Your father was a good man. So he believed in punishing his kids when they did something wrong…that didn’t make him a bad man.”

The ghosts of my past collided with the self-control I dedicated hours to daily. I stepped closer to him, and snarled. “Taking to a child with a belt over and over is not punishment for being naughty. Locking a child in a dark cupboard for hours isn’t either. And tying them up and ridiculing them sure as fuck isn’t written in the Good Parenting manual.” My head felt like it would explode off my shoulders as I got to the family history that fucked me up more than my own experiences. “Having to watch as your father did the same to your brother, but worse because he believed your brother was a little ‘cock-loving shit’ – as my father called him – was like a living hell. My father may have been respected by his cop buddies and adored by those higher, but in my house, there was no respect and no adoration for that man. And if you think Storm has made me into who I am today, you wouldn’t be far off the mark. My brothers have shown me what it’s like to have a family who give a shit about me and they’re teaching me to give a shit again.”

My cousin was an asshole. Growing up, we’d been close and he’d had my back, but I’d figured out a couple of years ago just how much the badge can change a man. I’d seen it at the academy in my time there, and my decision to leave was the best damn decision I’d ever made in my life. Danny stood in front of me now, listening to everything I’d said, but I knew the truth still wouldn’t alter his perception of my father. And I was right. “Why did you avenge his death then? If you hated him so much, surely you would have been celebrating his murder.”

“For a smart man, you can be dumb some times. I did that for my mother and brother.” Images of their tortured bodies flooded my mind, and I sucked in a deep breath as the rage swam behind my eyes. I could have cared less that my father had been tortured – he deserved every second of pain he went through. But my mother and brother should never have been subjected to any of it.