He spun about, faced Archer. “Because he told me I was a worthless sack of shit.” I gasped and his feral eyes looked to me. “That’s right, daddy dearest didn’t like me.”
“Why is that?” Archer asked. He was prodding Patrick, getting him to talk, but he was also directing the conversation, getting him to go where he wanted. I had no idea where that was, but it seemed he had an idea. It was as if he knew something, something big and was trying to get Patrick to admit to it. Perhaps my seeing him right after the tire blew was the puzzle piece Archer had been looking for.
“He never saw me. Never paid me any attention. Hell, I got the job here just to be close to him, but he didn’t even recognize me.” He laughed. “I’m his son and he didn’t recognize me! So I killed that cow. That got his attention.”
“You broke open the fence and let the stud horse in with the mares in the paddock,” Sutton added from beside me.
“That was a good one, too, right? If they’re going to fuck, why keep them apart?”
A sound of disgust came from Sutton’s throat, but he said nothing. Didn’t even move. He was in charge of the horses here, but I wasn’t familiar with what that entailed. And I had no idea why getting a stud horse in with a bunch of mares was bad, but it sounded like it was.
“You sabotaged shit to what, get Aiden’s attention?” Jamison asked.
“He figured out it was me and he confronted me. I told him the truth, that I was his son. That he’d fucked my mother and left her to slave over two jobs just to support us. That he’d known she was pregnant and abandoned us both. And then…then, he said a man who stoops to killing and putting horses in danger isn’t worth being his son.”
Patrick was insane. He’d killed a cow to get his dad’s attention.
“I’ve known Aiden a long time,” Jamison said. “He was a grumpy fucker, but he would never have left a woman pregnant and alone. He might not have married her, but he’d have done right by her.”
“My mother said—”
“Maybe your mother’s a liar,” Archer snapped.
That only enraged Patrick even more. Had it been intentional?
“Fuck you! And Aiden Steele can just rot in his grave.”
“A grave you put him in. Right?”
The room was dead silent because of Archer’s words. Only Patrick’s riled breathing could be heard.
Patrick killed my father? Our father? Had Archer known? No, but he was figuring it out pretty d
arn fast.
Patrick grinned then. Widely. Wickedly. Oh shit. He had killed Aiden Steele.
“Let’s just say it wasn’t a heart attack that knocked him off the horse.”
“Oh fuck,” Sam murmured. He pushed me back behind him now that we knew Patrick wasn’t just a ranch hand. He was a murderer.
14
NATALIE
* * *
“You killed him because you hated him,” Archer continued. “And you killed him because you wanted everything he had. If he wasn’t going to give you love, you’d take everything else, right?”
“Exactly. He didn’t want anything to do with me. He wouldn’t tell anyone I was his son.”
“So you took what he wouldn’t give you.”
Patrick nodded. “That’s right. I earned it! It’s mine.”
“But then you found out it wasn’t just you who inherited the land, but five sisters.”
Patrick spun about, put his hands on the counter. Everyone stared at his back, watched, waited. I didn’t even think anyone was breathing.