“Yeah, Ma,” Mac finally said, “she is. We’ve got an appointment next week to find out exact dates and all of that.”
If the shouts of happiness could have been any louder, Mac’s eardrums would have burst. He accepted his mother’s congratulations, and his sister’s, and then damn near fell off the stool when Cynthia wrapped him in a hug while pressing a kiss to his cheek.
As the two women chatted, lost in their own excitement, Mac slipped out of the kitchen and then out of the house altogether.
While he was visiting his mother to share the news of the pregnancy with her, he also had to chat with the enforcer he had posted outside of her house.
Just to make sure shit was good.
He found the man in his car, doing his job, thankfully. Some enforcers liked to slack a little when they thought they could get away with it. Mac had to keep up on that shit.
His enforcer rolled down the window as Mac approached.
“How’s it been?” Mac asked.
The guy had been put on detail after he’d pulled Enric to work on guarding his wife.
“Quiet,” the man replied.
“That all?”
The enforcer shrugged his big shoulders. “That fuck up you call a father came around last night, but he didn’t stay long after I told him to scram. Although, your mother was already in the process of doing the same thing. That woman is the strangest—”
“Back the fuck up,” Mac interrupted.
“Seriously,” the enforcer continued, “she brings me out cake and bread, or coffee, and then swears like a goddamn sailor at your father when he comes here drunk in the middle of the night.”
Mac’s hand slammed hard on the hood of the car. “Back. The. Fuck. Up. My father was here?”
The enforcer blinked up at him. “Yeah, but your mom said it wasn’t the first time and not to worry about it.”
After Mac had bought his mother her new house, he had been very careful about keeping the information from his father. Not that James Sr. couldn’t find where the house was and visit, but it wasn’t for him, and he knew to stay the hell away.
What was more concerning, was the fact that his mother didn’t feel the need to mention her estranged husband was still coming around.
“Next time, don’t let the bastard get anywhere near the front door,” Mac told the man.
Spinning around and not even waiting to hear the response of the enforcer, Mac jogged back to the house, entering and heading straight for the kitchen where he could hear his mother and sister still talking about baby-related things and family names.
The moment he was standing in the entry way, his mother seemed to know.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
Mac tried to school his features.
He didn’t want to be angry with his mother.
She was only doing what she had always done in regards to his father.
“James was here?” Mac asked.
Cynthia waved a flour-dusted hand high as if to wave off his concerns. “It’s no—”
“Don’t say that it’s nothing, Ma.”
Victoria frowned, giving Mac a pointed look. “He didn’t even get inside, Mac.”
“This time,” Mac argued. “This time he didn’t get let in because an enforcer is outside. How many other times has he showed up, forcing his drunk ass into your house and making demands? The old house is one thing, Ma, because his fucking useless name was on the deed. This house is for you—it’s yours, not his.”
“Watch your mouth,” Cynthia said weakly. “No swearing in my kitchen.”
“How many times, Ma?” Mac asked, determined to get an answer.
“It’s nothing important, really. I let him fumble and stumble around before he passes out, and then he’s gone before morning. He rarely makes it past the living room.”
“Ma!”
Cynthia’s gaze flew up at Mac’s shout, meeting his warily. “I—”
“How many times?”
“It’s just been the last few months,” Cynthia admitted quickly. “One night he came with dog bites up his arm, he clearly needed medical attention and …”
Mac wasn’t sure when the realization hit him.
At the dog bite statement, maybe.
He distinctly remembered the fact that Luca’s dogs had gotten the person who killed Matthew—or at least, bitten them a few good times before the killer got away. At first, it had been assumed the dogs had attacked Matthew, which was why Luca had been so adamant that night that Matthew was on the path and the dogs wouldn’t have attacked.
“When was that?” Mac asked.
Cynthia shrugged. “The morning after your wedding. I came home and he was at the old house. His arm looked terrible, but he tried to hide it.”
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck … FUCK.
Mac knew what he was missing, now.
It had been his father.
All the issues …
The attacks …
He’d thought his father was too much of a fuck up to really be able to pull something like this off, and he’d totally overlooked the man. Still, the bomb made no sense. James Sr. had no skill of that sort, but maybe he knew someone who did.
Nonetheless, his mistake was James Sr.’s gain.
Mac already had his back turned to his mother, readying to leave.