Vic Vaughn is Vicious

But that’s not really who they are. Not even who they were.

Ronin, Spencer, and Ford got away with murder when they were in college. This is no-shit real. And everyone knows they got away with murder because evidence was dismissed on a technicality. But the asshole who died truly was an asshole, so no one wanted to take a closer look at things.

If that was where it ended, eh. It’s kind of a weird footnote in the history of these people. But that’s not where it ended.

Turns out someone did care about that murder because the three of them stole a lot of money in the process. Not just any money, either. They stole money from the US government, specifically the FBI. And the FBI, at least around here, is as crooked as they come. They wanted it back. This led to a whole string of events that involved… I look around and find…

Sasha.

She is a whole other level of… how to even put it? Dangerous, I guess. She’s pretty normal now. Two kids. Married to, of all people, an FBI agent. She was even an agent herself, for a short time, anyway. But mostly so she didn’t get charged for assassinating the world’s most wanted criminal out in Kansas about ten years back.

I never really wanted Sasha’s whole backstory. Not that Ford, her stepfather—a whole other rabbit hole that no one has time for—would even tell me the full details. They are a very tight bunch and everything between them is all hush-hush and need-to-know.

Once you include Sasha into this little circle of family and friends that Ronnie has going on here, you begin to unravel things and immediately start wishing you had left that dangling thread alone. Because Ford’s wife, Ashleigh? She comes from the Hong Kong underground. Her father was a full-fledged member of the Triad.

Jax isn’t just an FBI agent, his stepfather was in charge of a black ops org so deep inside the US government, even he didn’t know about it.

Then there’s that whole ‘Where did Sasha come from?’ can of worms.

This is when I checked out. I was done asking questions.

And I didn’t figure I needed to know all the details about Sasha’s ‘side of the family’ because things settled down and all the weird shit that was happening in the quaint town of Fort Collins, Colorado just disappeared.

They all look normal now.

Ronin and Rook own the Fort Collins Theatre, a sort of coffeehouse-dinner theatre kind of place that sits diagonal to Sick Boyz.

Ford and Ashleigh are really just a couple of rich fucks who like to ski in Vail, raise face-eating German shepherds, and dote on their genius kids.

And Spencer and Ronnie have settled into a life of custom motorcycles, princesses, and farm animals.

But. I do have to say, if you’re going to have people on your side, you really can’t go wrong with this bunch here.

So I don’t worry about it.

We’ve all done things in our past.

If they got past them, so can I.

CHAPTER TWENTY - DAISY

This day is a gift. I have never felt so welcomed. Ronnie pulled me in the moment we met. But making a single new friend is one thing. Getting her girl-pack to love me as well? That’s nearly impossible.

But this is what happens at the farm today.

Ashleigh is a small woman with dark hair and soft eyes. She’s Ford’s wife, Kate and Five’s mother, and—surprise—Sasha’s adopted mother.

Sasha is about my age, married to Jax, and she has two children—one of them, Lauren, is a couple years older than Vivi. Plus a toddling baby boy called Justin. I’m not sure how exactly Sasha came to be adopted by Ford and Ashleigh, since they are not that much older than her, but it feels like a very long story no one really wants to get into at a Sunday afternoon pool party.

Rook is Ronin’s wife. Two kids, Sparrow, a new teenager, and Starling, same age as Vivi.

This is when Ronnie admits that she has bribed the admissions people at Saint Joseph’s to get Vivi a spot in Starling’s class. She’s hesitant to tell me this because maybe she feels like she’s stepping on my toes. And last week, this would’ve pissed me off. But the thought of Vivian not going to school with the rest of these kids physically makes me ill.

“Don’t worry about tuition,” Ronnie tells me. “Trust me. Vic can afford it.”

And I guess he can. He bought seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property this week. Cash. So I don’t worry about the money. And I get a little lost picturing my Vivi dressed up in one of those uniforms, sitting over at the Fort Collins Theater sipping smoothies with her… cousins.

I have to let out a sigh just thinking that word.

The show the kids put on was adorable. It was everything you imagine packs of kids who live on farms get up to in the summer when they are surrounded by nature and aren’t on the phones or socials.