Mel’s eyes closed briefly. “If he’s back then he wants money. You should know he’s going to try to blackmail you. Whatever he comes at you with, just tell him no and I’ll take care of the situation. You boys don’t have to worry about anything. Just concentrate on your wedding.”
“He’s done this to Ma before?” How much had his mother kept from him?
“Every now and then he gets out of jail and he comes looking for cash. When you two were kids, he would threaten to have her institutionalized so she would lose custody unless she gave him everything she had. She would save up money for years at a time, and he would walk in and take it all because she didn’t have anyone to lean on.”
“I’m going to kill the fucker.” Wolf practically growled beside him.
“No you are not because if anything happened to either one of you, your momma would lay down and die. She spent her whole life protecting you.”
“Did he hit her?”
“Yeah,” Mel said, taking a deep chug off his water bottle. At least Leo hoped that was water.
Well, he’d always wondered why his parents had split. His mother wouldn’t talk about it, preferring to discuss alien invasions when he brought the subject up. He’d had a couple of theories. He’d always worried that she’d driven him away with her special brand of crazy, but now he was pretty sure he knew the truth and it made him love his mother so much more. “She took it until the day he hit me.”
“Leo?”
It was a dream he’d had since childhood, but now he realized it was more like a memory. His father standing over him, a shadowy figure with no real substance. His mother screaming and then telling him everything would be all right.
His mother had been stronger than he’d ever given her credit for.
“You made her strong, Leonardo. Her love for you and Wolfgang made her real strong, and you have to honor that by staying away from the bastard. It’s what she fought all her life to do. She gave up everything so you wouldn’t have to know the truth about the man who calls himself your father.”
“Shit.” Wolf let his head drop to his hands. “How could we not have known about this? Chase told me about the police report, but I didn’t think it was so bad. She only filed the one.”
Leo hadn’t seen the report Chase had compiled for Julian a few years back. When he’d come out of the main building feeling completely vulnerable because his junk was hanging out, he’d found Chase and Wolf discussing the facts of the case. It hadn’t surprised him that Julian already knew everything. His boss would never hold shit like that against him. But hearing it from someone so close to his ma somehow made it more real. “Mel, we can’t let him hurt her anymore. We’re not children. It’s time we took care of her.”
“No.”
“You can’t just say no.”
“I sure can. Your mother belongs to me now, and this situation is something for me to take care of. And I am serious about that.”
If he knew Mel, Mel would probably handle the situation by calling aliens down on the asshole. “I don’t want Ma to know he’s here.”
“She won’t. I’ll take care of it before the wedding. Don’t worry about it.” He sat back. “Now, are you sure you two know about orgasms? Because they’re very important to women. They get real nasty when they haven’t had one in a long time. And the women around here have guns. They ain’t afraid to use them on a selfish son of a bitch.”
“Mel, you can’t just throw that information out there.” They needed to talk about this.
One of Mel’s surprisingly muscular shoulders shrugged. He actually didn’t look as skinny out of his normal coveralls. “Sure I can because I have it handled. Don’t you go worrying about it. I told him what would happen if he came back.”
“He’s come around since we grew up?”
“Sure. He got out after doing a stretch for bilking old ladies out of their social security checks. It was right after Wolf had come home from the Navy, and Cassidy was real worried about him. Robert threatened to reconnect with his poor injured kid.”
“I wasn’t so injured I couldn’t have shot the shit in the face.”
Wolf had been a little lost after his injuries cost him his SEAL career. Leo knew exactly why Robert’s threat would have scared his mother. Wolf had been vulnerable, looking for something to make his life meaningful. A good con artist could potentially have worked Wolf over. “Did Ma pay him off?”
“Nah.” Mel waved that thought off. “She came to me. She wasn’t alone this time, and she was smart enough to not try to hide it from me. She knew I would take care of the problem for her.”
“Okay, well, he never contacted me, so I have to assume you did something,” Wolf said.
“Sure, I did. I sent the fucker back to jail. He was on parole. I made sure he missed a parole meeting. While he was my guest, we talked about a couple of things, including what would happen if he ever approached my woman again. It looks like I really should have been more detailed about my threats. Cassidy says I get too focused on one thing and forget about how important the details can be.”
“You distracted him so he couldn’t get to his meeting with his parole officer?”
Mel shook his head. “Oh, no. He was real insistent about making that appointment. So I tied him up and we had a nice long talk. But I’m not a horrible son of a bitch. I also told him about the alien invasion. This time I’m just going to let the fuckers take him, if you know what I mean.”
Mel was crazy, and that was kind of cool. Maybe Mel and Julian had more in common than either would admit.
“You totally kidnapped him,” Wolf said, respect plain in his voice.
“Nah, not according to some very carefully selected alibi witnesses. And there were plenty of people at Hell on Wheels who saw him drinking. That Sawyer fellow is a good man no matter what Nate says. He’s been real nice to our whole hunter society. He also sets up a real nice sweat lodge.”
Leo laughed. He’d spent time being worried about his mother and crazy Mel and it turned out that crazy Mel took damn fine care of her. He looked over at his brother. “What do you think?”
Wolf smiled, wiping a hand across his hair. “I think we’re getting married tomorrow and we should trust our Ma to know what she wants.”
And she wanted Mel. Mel had been the one standing beside her and taking care of her. Leo turned to him and gave him a deferential nod. “Thank you for taking care of this, Mel.”
Wolf held out a hand. “Thank you.”
Mel shook it. “That’s real nice, boys, but I’ll always take care of your momma. I love her. I’ve loved her since I saw her across the crowded medical examination room the aliens were holding us in. She was so beautiful in the stark white lights. You see, they think they can blind you with those lights, but we hunters have trained ourselves to be able to see through it.”
Mel started in on how he’d met their ma on an alien research ship.
And Leo forced himself to listen because sanity, he’d learned, was sometimes in the eye of the beholder.
And his mother had more than earned his respect and love and tolerance.
If he could show her that by accepting her nutty, loving, protective boyfriend, then Mel had just become family.
Chapter Fifteen:
Stef and Jen
Jen stared at her sleeping husband and wondered why she asked a man to do anything. She’d asked them to bring him in and help her get him tied down. It was a simple operation. No fuss. No muss. There were two Harper twins and only one Stef. It should have been easy.
They had shot him with a tranq gun. That was their brilliant solution. To shoot him. With drugs.