Twisted (Steel Brothers Saga 8)

“So she got some male patient to make the call. She’s smart, cunning. That’s been apparent since we’ve known her.”

“She gave me up.”

“She did. For Dad. The one thing we know about Wendy is that she would have done anything for Dad. And I think that makes one thing abundantly clear.”

“What’s that?”

“Dad wanted you. He wanted you raised here, with us. And he paid Wendy handsomely to make sure that happened.”

“Yeah. Doesn’t make me feel any better, though.”

“Why not?”

“Because apparently Dad is just as screwed up as the rest of these people.” The grainy image of the future lawmakers club popped into my mind. I’d used a magnifying glass the last time I’d looked at it, and I’d noticed Dad and some of the others were wearing matching rings. I hadn’t been able to make out the design on the ring, though.

“Yeah, he might have been.” Talon stood. “Hey. Why don’t we head over to my place and take a look through that shit in the crawl space? You know, the boxes where Jade and Marj found Mom’s real birth certificate. Maybe we’ll find something. Like that ring.”

“Dad never wore a ring. He probably got rid of it a long time ago.”

“Then we’ll have Bryce search for his father’s. Come on. Maybe we’ll find something else. It can’t hurt.”

I wasn’t much in the mood to go riffling through my father’s old shit, but sitting here feeling sorry for myself wasn’t cutting it. Plus, I wanted to get a look at my father’s will, if possible. “Okay. Let’s go.”

* * *

The boxes Jade and Marjorie had gone through months earlier were still sitting in the room. They were full of old documents and yielded nothing new. Talon and I crept into the crawl space and lugged out several more old cartons.

Upon opening them, we found more old documents. Chattel mortgages, deeds of trust… Man, our father never threw anything away.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” I said.

“Well, I’m not stopping until we get through every fucking box,” Talon said.

I sighed. “All right. Let’s keep digging.” I opened another box and took out the first file folder.

And gasped.

“Tal!”

“What is it?”

I held up a document. “It’s a quitclaim deed signing over the Shane ranch to the Steel Family Trust.”

The Shane ranch was a small operation adjacent to ours. I’d had a relationship with the owners’ daughter, Anna Shane. They’d sold out quickly a couple years ago and moved to Hawaii. Though I’d attempted to get in touch with Anna a few times, she had never responded. We’d already ended our relationship amicably, so

I figured she just didn’t want to stay in touch.

When I first told Ruby about Anna and how she and her family had moved to Hawaii, Ruby had been skeptical about the whole thing. Now I wasn’t sure what to think.

“We bought the Shane ranch?” Talon said.

“It appears so. Why would they transfer it with a quitclaim deed? Seems someone should have insisted on a warranty deed.”

“Dad would have insisted on a warranty deed,” Talon said. “How could we not know about this?”

“Quitclaim deeds are more often used for gifts,” I said. “The Shanes wouldn’t have just given us the ranch.”

“No.”