WARNING: Weight of the Badge is for a mature audience.
Introduction
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the Everyday Heroes World!
I’m so excited you’ve picked up this book! Weight of the Badge is a book based on the world I created in my USA Today bestselling Everyday Heroes Series. While I may be finished writing this series (for now), various authors have signed on to keep them going. They will be bringing you all-new stories in the world you know while allowing you to revisit the characters you love.
This book is entirely the work of the author who wrote it. While I allowed them to use the world I created and may have assisted in some of the plotting, I took no part in the writing or editing of the story. All praise can be directed their way.
I truly hope you enjoy Weight of the Badge. If you’re interested in finding more authors who have written in the KB Worlds, you can visit www.kbworlds.com.
Thank you for supporting the writers in this project and me.
Happy Reading,
K. Bromberg
Dedication
I dedicate this book to all the loved ones who lost their LEO to suicide. Law enforcement officers are people, just like any other person, and society tends to forget that.
#ProudLEOWife
Law Enforcement Oath of Honor
On my honor, I will never betray my badge, my integrity, my character or the public trust.
I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions.
I will always uphold the constitution, my community, and the agency I serve.
A Police Officer’s Prayer
Lord I ask for courage.
Courage to face and conquer my own fears.
I ask for strength.
Strength of body to protect others
and strength of spirit to lead others.
I ask for dedication.
Dedication to my job, to do it well.
Dedication to my community, to keep it safe.
Give me Lord, concern for others who trust me
and compassion for those who need me.
And please Lord, through it all, be by my side.
-Author Unknown
Prologue
Kade
“Promise, jerk-face,” my best friend Deacon says while he has me pinned to the dewy grass as we wait for his driver to pull the Bentley around. Goading Deacon, especially when it comes to his younger sister, is one of my favorite things to do, but today he’s in rare form.
“What? All I said is that Britney looks good without her braces.” Repeating what got me laid out in the first place warrants his knee to my right side. “Alright, alright. I promise. You need to calm down, bro.”
“Say the whole promise or I’ll—” He pauses, thinking about how he wants to finish his sentence. “Or I’ll kick your ass right now.” It takes everything I have not to laugh. Does he realize he sounds like a teenage girl?
“Do I need to pinky swear?” I ask, poking fun at him. Regardless, I can’t help laughing at Deacon’s threat. He may be an inch or so taller than me, but I have him beat when it comes to strength and endurance. The only reason I haven’t flipped him onto his back to show him who’s really the boss is that I’m bored, and the look on his bright red face is comical.
“Fine. I promise to never hook-up with your sister,” I concede to Deacon’s request only because I noticed Britney approaching, and frankly, the damp grass is starting to penetrate through my school-issued blazer.
Deacon leaps to his feet and holds out his hand to help me up. I reach up, and we lock our hands around each other’s wrists, and he yanks me to my feet. I straighten my clothes and grab my backpack off the ground.
“What’d you do now?” Britney’s question is directed at me as she approaches us with caution. She learned the hard way never to get near Deacon and me when we’re rough-housing. Brit’s been tripped, kicked, elbowed. You name it, and the poor girl has endured it.
“Nothing,” Deacon snaps out. Britney raises an eyebrow at her brother and shakes her head. At this point, she knows not to press him for details when he’s in one of his moods.
Deacon and I have been best friends since kindergarten, and we all go to the same private school. Britney is a year behind us, and now that she’s growing out of her awkward stage, it is proving to be difficult not to look at her differently. I’m a guy. That’s what we do. Deacon doesn’t want me to think of his sister in any way other than off-limits.
From where I stand, my peripheral vision allows me to catch Britney staring at me instead of the phone in her hand. When she realizes she’s busted, her cheeks blush, and at that moment, I regret making that ridiculous promise to Deacon. I’m so screwed.
1
Kade
Present
Dinner at Beaumont Manor, as I like to refer to my parents’ estate, is the same old shit just a different day. My father, Arthur Beaumont, continues to ride my ass for dropping out of Harvard my junior year to join Deacon at the police academy. He thinks I’m wasting my life in a mediocre career, whereas I know I would be miserable in a suit and tie sitting behind a big desk in an office with a view doing mundane crap every day.
Yes, Deacon and I grew up privileged, but we weren’t blind to the world outside of our gated estates and top-notch private school education. Just because our fathers built their empires doesn’t mean the rest of the family, like Deacon’s uncle, wasn’t living out in the real world. Ever since we were kids, we hung on Uncle Bennett’s every word when he would tell us patrol stories. I should have known then that I wanted to be a cop and not my dad’s puppet.
It wasn’t until winter break in my junior year when I went on my first ride-along with Deacon’s uncle while Deacon rode with his beat partner, Officer Coronado. It didn’t take long for either of us to decide that we didn’t want to follow in our parents’ footsteps and that we wanted to make a real difference in the world.
It’s been just over four years since I became one of Los Paloma’s brothers in blue, and Arthur won’t let it go. He keeps insisting that I quit my thankless, blue-collar job to work under him at Beaumont Global, taking every opportunity to remind me of what I had been groomed for since I could walk. But the tech industry is my father’s thing, not mine. Dear ol’ dad doesn’t acknowledge that I’m S.W.A.T and in the Violence Suppression Unit, which is the fancy term for the gang unit.
My mother, Beth, on the other hand, worries about my safety, and that is the only reason she disapproves of my career path. She sees my pride in being a law enforcement officer, and that it makes me happy, which makes her happy.
Don’t get me wrong, the job sucks a lot of the time, and the media is no help. A pro-police news anchor can report a story that will show the officers are the heroes who helped save a woman who was getting carjacked. The flip side, the side with the cop-hating news anchor, will paint the officers in a bad light, claiming they used excessive force to take down the armed carjacker. Sadly, more cop haters are out there than I care to admit. My father isn’t one of them. Simply put, he hates that I chose the badge over him.