Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 56395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 282(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 282(@200wpm)___ 226(@250wpm)___ 188(@300wpm)
The same stubbornness drove us when we established Black Castle Security, combining real operational experience with the preparation and discipline most private firms only promised in expensive brochures. Rook Holdings grew around the company and the club afterward, creating a legitimate structure that employed veterans, funded our community projects, and ensured none of us ever needed to touch drugs, trafficking, or any other business that preyed on people too vulnerable to fight back.
Everything I had built carried some trace of what Otis had taught me, which was probably why the memory of finding him refused to loosen its grip. We’d planned to meet for breakfast at the diner like we had so many times before, and by eight-fifteen I already knew something was wrong. Otis had been many things during the seventy-eight years he’d walked this earth, but late wasn’t one of them.
I had paid for my untouched coffee, walked out, and drove directly to the ranch. The cold unease spreading through my gut had already become certainty by the time I turned beneath the weathered wooden sign at the end of his drive.
The kitchen radio was playing when I entered through the unlocked back door, the announcer’s cheerful voice scraping against the silence while a scorched smell drifted from a coffeepot that had boiled nearly dry. One of Otis’s ceramic mugs lay shattered beside the table, and he was on the floor several feet away, his body twisted awkwardly with one hand curled against his chest and the other clawing weakly at worn boards.
I was beside him before the door stopped swinging behind me, checking his airway, breathing, and pulse while I used my free hand to call Reaper first. He was our club doctor, and I’d trusted him with my life long before he’d become one of the best trauma surgeons in Southern California. He lived at the clubhouse, so he was closer than the nearest ambulance and was already moving before I ended the call.
Otis’s speech was incomprehensible. One side of his face had gone slack, and his unfocused eyes kept trying to find mine as I gave Reaper the symptoms and the approximate time Otis might have gone down. I contacted emergency services next, pressed the switch that unlocked the gate, and followed Reaper’s instructions while every controlled breath I took scraped through lungs that felt too tight.
Reaper came into the kitchen minutes later. He dropped to his knees, assessed Otis, and began working with the cold efficiency that had saved more lives than anyone outside the club would ever know. By the time the paramedics arrived, he had stabilized enough of the immediate crisis to give the old man a chance, then climbed into the ambulance with him while I followed close enough that the flashing lights painted the hood of my truck red and white all the way to the hospital.
The doctors took Otis for imaging almost immediately, and within minutes, a surgical team was rushing him through the corridor. His eyes found me as they pushed the gurney past, and his fingers moved restlessly against the blanket until I closed my hand around his. The grip he returned was weak, but the urgency in it punched straight through the control I’d held since I found him on the kitchen floor.
“Stryker.”
“I’m here.”
“I…need to…call Jack.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Ranch.” His lips struggled around the word, and the muscles along his throat worked as he fought to force out more. “Jack doesn’t know…about our deal.”
“You can tell Jack yourself when you’re back home.”
His fingers tightened once before his strength began to fade. “Call.”
“You can do it later. You’re too damn stubborn to let that ranch go before you’re at least a hundred, so stop worrying about it and let them fix you.”
One corner of his mouth had twitched, the smallest trace of his usual dry amusement appearing beneath the damage the stroke had done to his face. The surgical team pulled the gurney away before I could say anything else, leaving me beneath the harsh corridor lights with his warmth still lingering against my palm. I stood there until the doors closed, then forced my hand open and reminded myself that he had survived long enough to reach surgeons who knew how to give him the best chance possible.
Otis hadn’t needed to explain what he meant by our deal because I remembered the first time he’d mentioned it years earlier. Otis had studied the compound taking shape beyond the trees that lined the Black Crowns property at the edge of his land. He had watched the crews pouring foundations and running utilities for a moment before informing me that he had already decided what would happen to the ranch after he died.
“If Jack doesn’t want the ranch when I’m gone, you get first crack at it.”
“I’m not taking property from your family.”