His brothers didn’t even flinch at the hundreds lying on the filthy floor, money that would be swallowed up the second the boys stepped away.
“I’d like to see you try,” Cooper said with just enough of a mocking glow to his eyes to really infuriate the man. “Follow me.”
His muscles were coiled and he was more than ready. He headed toward the door. He could do it in the bar or flatten this guy outside. Either way was good with him.
“You gonna leave the convoy behind, or do you need your brothers to save your ass?” the man taunted.
The fact that this piece of garbage was questioning his honor infuriated Cooper even more. He took a second before answering, not even turning around to face the drunkard.
“You obviously don’t know me at all if you think I need any help kicking your flabby ass,” Cooper told him. “Chicken ass,” he then mumbled, knowing it would push this piece of trash over the limit.
The air stirred against his ears, alerting Cooper of the attack coming toward him. They’d barely made it out the front doors before the man swung, thinking that because Cooper was ahead of him he would get a cheap shot from behind.
He wasn’t counting on Cooper’s rage, or his soberness.
Spinning around, Coop threw all his weight behind a punishing blow that made brutal contact with the drunk’s face. The resounding crack of Coop’s knuckles breaking the man’s nose echoed across the parking lot.
The man spit blood as he tried to get up before falling back to the ground. Cooper didn’t give him a chance. In half a heartbeat, he was on the ground, slugging the man again and again.
“Should we stop this?” Maverick asked, leaning against the outside wall of the bar as patrons poured out to watch the fistfight.
“Not a chance. Hell, I’m hoping someone else mouths off so I can get a punch or two thrown in,” Nick mumbled, looking around.
“It’s my turn next,” Ace grumbled.
Maverick held his brother back. “You’ll get your turn,” Maverick promised him.
No one was paying the least attention to the other brothers as the fight in front of them continued on the ground and Dave got in a good punch to Cooper’s face.
Within a couple minutes, though, the fight was over. Dave was knocked out on the ground, and with the show over, the patrons of the bar lost interest and went back inside to their cold beer and stale peanuts. The brothers watched as Cooper slowly stood while spitting out a stream of saliva and touching his swollen lip.
A couple of men picked up Dave and quietly hauled him away. The brothers didn’t even bother watching them go.
“Should we go back in?” Maverick asked.
“Yeah. I’m done with this trash. Maybe there’s another idiot inside looking for a reason to get a nose job,” Cooper said.
Before Nick or Ace could respond, Nick’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and sighed. It rang twice more before he answered.
He was silent for a moment as the caller spoke. Then he nodded, though the person couldn’t see him. “Yes, Mom. We’ll be there.”
He hung up. “We have to go back home,” Nick told them. Even without the call, Nick was always the voice of reason.
“I’m not ready to go back there,” Ace said, his eyes downcast.
“I can’t,” Cooper admitted. He couldn’t allow the adrenaline high to stop, because then . . . then, he might actually feel real pain instead of anger.
“It’s time,” Nick said again.
They didn’t want to listen, but they knew their brother was right.
It was like a parade down the green mile as they moved back to the car and piled in. They drove much more slowly toward home than they’d driven away from it, taking their time, none of them speaking.
When they pulled up in front of the large mansion they’d grown up in, they remained in the Jag, none of them wanting to be the first to open their car door. Finally, though, Nick got out, and the others followed. Their passage into the mansion was quiet, their shoulders hunched.
“Where have you been?”
They stopped in the foyer as their uncle Sherman busted down the stairs glaring at them. The urgency in his voice had them terrified. They knew time was running out.
“We had to blow off some steam,” Maverick said, his hands tucked into his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels.
“Your father’s been asking for you,” Sherman scolded. “And there isn’t much time left. Your mother will need all of you.”
“We’re sorry,” Cooper said. The others seemed incapable of speech and just nodded their apologies.
Sherman sighed, not one to stay angry for long.
They followed their uncle up the stairs. None of them wanted to walk through that bedroom door. But they did it. Their father, who had once been so strong, was frail and weak now, the cancer taking everything from him, leaving him a shadow of the man he’d always been.
“Come here,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
Slowly, the four boys surrounded the bed, facing the man they would soon lose.
“Time is running out so I can’t mince words,” their father started.
“Dad . . .” Cooper tried to interrupt, but his mother put her hand on his arm.
“Let him speak, son.”
Her voice was so sad that the boys turned to look at her for a moment, their shoulders stiffening before they turned back to their father and waited.
“I’ve done wrong by all of you,” he told them, disappointment on his face. He looked extra long at the blood on Cooper’s eye and sadly shook his head. “All of you.”
“No you haven’t, Dad,” Maverick insisted.
“Yes, I have. You’re men now, but you have no plans for the future. I wanted to give you the world, but you’ve only learned how to take because you haven’t learned how to earn anything. I know you’ll grow into fine men. I have no doubt about it. But please don’t hate me when I’m gone,” he said before he began coughing.
“We would never hate you, Dad,” Nick quickly said.
“You might for a while,” their father told them. “But someday you will thank me. I’m doing what I’ve done because I love you.”
“What are you saying?” Ace asked.
“You’ll know soon, son,” their father said.
“Dad . . .” Maverick began, but their father shut his eyes.
Cooper willed himself to say something, anything to break this awful silence. But he just stood there, anger, sadness, fear flowing through him.
And then it was too late.
Not a sound could be heard in the room when their father stopped breathing. For the last time in each of their lives, the boys shed a tear as they looked down at their deceased father.
Then Cooper turned and walked out. He didn’t stop at the front door. He didn’t stop at the end of the driveway. He kept moving, faster and faster until he was in a full-blown sprint with his gut and sides burning. He tried to outrun the fact that he was a disappointment, that he’d failed his father. What if the man was right? What if he never became half the man his father was? He ran faster.
Still, he wasn’t able to outrun his father’s last words of disappointment . . .
“. . . And for my boys, I leave each of you, Cooper, Nick, Maverick, and Ace, a quarter of my assets, but there is a stipulation . . .”