One More Taste (37 page)

Mostly, his temper howled at the heavy weight of responsibility pressing on him. He held the Briscoe family's future in his hands—their legacy, their livelihoods. The future of people who'd lied to him, who'd marginalized him. The biological father who'd rejected him before he was born, and who rejected him now. Someday, Knox wanted to find out why. But he couldn't think past his outrage at the corner he'd painted himself into.

If he wanted to save the resort, he'd have to put his reputation and career on the line to drum up enough money. He'd have to pour his entire net worth into this place and these people who'd betrayed him. Did he even want to? Maybe selling to Lux was the right choice. Maybe he needed to let it all burn to the ground. Like Emily had so many years ago, the Briscoe family legacy could rise from the ashes of a sordid and cruel past into something new and beautiful. Maybe it was time to let Briscoe Ranch go.

He let the fury of betrayal seize hold of him. With a curse, he slammed Ty into the wall again. “Were you ever going to tell me the truth? Were any of you?”

Ty shoved him back. “No. Never.”

“Knox, let him go,” Emily said. He felt a tug on his belt, as though she were trying to pull him away. But Knox was nowhere near done. He could hear that she was trying to talk him down, but he could barely make out the words over the rush of adrenaline in his ears.

“Why not?” Knox spat at Ty. “Why cover up the truth in the first place? I have a right to know who I am, goddamn it.”

“Knox!” Emily called again. “The police!”

No sooner had he registered her words than strong, male arms looped around his chest, dragging him back. A loud voice barked at him to get back before he was charged with more than just assault. The Sheriff's department had arrived.
Just fucking fantastic
.

“It's about time,” Ty said to the deputy. “Thanks for getting that animal off me.”

Knox flexed his fist. Fuck it all; prison would be worth getting another good punch in.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Briscoe. We're just happy we got here in time,” the deputy said.

Ty brushed imaginary dust off his shirt, the picture of civility. “When you get back to the station, be sure to give Sheriff Mendez my regards.” To Knox, Ty added, “You might think you hold all the cards, but guess again. You're about to find out what my longstanding reputation in this community is worth.”

“I'm assuming you want to press charges?” the deputy who was restraining Knox asked Ty.

With harnessed anger and pride, Emily stepped between Ty and the deputy. “Don't. Do. This. You're his—”

“I'm his nothing. Yes, I'm pressing charges, Deputy Thurman. Nobody assaults me and gets away with it.”

Seething that his own biological father would have him arrested within minutes of the truth coming out about his parentage, Knox played the last card he had as the deputies dragged him out of the lobby. “If they arrest me, I can't stop the sale.”

Ty followed them out, strutting like he owned the place, Emily on his heels. “As if you would stop it,” Ty said. “As if you haven't been trying to stab me in the back since I brought you on board. I'm done with your lies.”

The fragile strings of Knox's composure snapped all over again. “My lies? You're done with
my lies
?”

“Sweet Mother of God, Ty. Knox. What the hell's going on?” A pale-faced Decker jogged to meet them at the curb, where they stood next to an idling patrol car. “Knox, are they arresting you? What happened?”

Emily braced her hands on Decker's shoulders and shook them until she had Decker's attention. “Are they all right? Carina and the baby, did they make it out of surgery okay?”

Decker cast a sideways glance at Knox as a deputy strong-armed him into the backseat of the cruiser. A tentative smile kicked up at the corners of his lips. “I've got a son, and he's good, strong. Eight pounds, probably thanks to all that good food you fixed for Carina. And as for Carina, she's a tough one. They have her in a recovery room and the baby's taking a brief detour to the NICU since his heartbeat was so erratic in the womb. But that's just a precaution, they said.”

Ty took off back in the direction of the lobby.

Knox bit his lip, disgusted that his only option out of this pissing match was to swallow his pride and beg Ty to direct the officers to release him. Was he really prepared to invest the bulk of his wealth to take on full ownership of a resort with crumbling foundation that would need a complete overhaul? Was he really willing to risk everything to be a part of the family that shunned his and lied to him about who he was?

Don't do it for them. Do it for Emily.

“Ty, the sale. I'll stop it if you don't press charges. I'll find a way. Do it for your girls,” Knox called, careful not to infuse the word with a single iota of desperation.

At the door, Ty stopped and shot Knox a look over his shoulder.

“What sale? And why would Ty press charges?” Decker said, looking more confused by the second. “Did you two get into a fight or something?”

There was no way Knox was going to interfere with Decker's happiness. “Let's just say tensions were high,” Knox said from behind gritted teeth.

Emily must have agreed with Knox's decision because she told added, “Don't worry about it. It was a misunderstanding. We're handling it. You go back in and take care of Carina. Let her know I'll be there as soon as I can.”

Decker only hesitated for a moment before nodding, then pivoting on his boot heel and fast-walking back inside, bypassing Ty on the way.

“Knox is right,” Emily said to Ty as soon as Decker was gone. “Tell them to let him go. Do it for Carina and Haylie. For the new baby. Don't let Knox's arrest and the subsequent destruction of the resort be the final word of the Briscoe legacy.”

Those must have been the magic words because Ty's hard gaze flicked to the officers. He swallowed hard enough that his Adam's apple bobbed and his jaw rippled. “Let him go.”

The next thing Knox knew, Ty had rushed him, wearing a sneer that bared his teeth. “But you hear me out, boy. With these deputies as my witnesses, if you sell the resort out from under my family, I'm going to kill you with my own two hands. And that is not an empty threat.”

And then Ty stormed back into the building.

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

Knox had borrowed a company car to drive Granny June to the hospital. He parked it in the nearest employee parking lot at the resort and left the keys inside, then set off at a run toward the fire road where his truck was parked. Nothing short of a full-out sprint could match the rage pumping through Knox's veins at the betrayal by his dad.

His dad.
What a big fucking joke that Knox still thought of him as that.
Guess what, chump? The man who taught you to hate your grandparents and your uncle—
no, your real father
—is really your uncle. Surprise!

He'd tried, in the only way he could, to prevent Knox from learning the truth about the man he'd groomed Knox to believe was the enemy. Ty, the greedy uncle who'd cheated Knox's dad out of the family fortune. He was the reason they'd grown up scraping the barrel for enough money every month to get by, the reason Knox and his siblings had grown up as the poorest kids in their neighborhood. Ty was the reason Knox's dad had rarely been able to hold down a steady job, the reason he'd let his anger rot his insides until, finally, his body responded with a fatal heart attack.

“Mom always did say those Briscoe boys were charmers,” Knox muttered as he ran. But Knox hadn't put it together until today that she'd been talking about both brothers.

Mom, what did you do?

But Knox already knew the answer. She'd lied to Knox. Just like his dad had. And his grandmother. The whole lot of them. What a fool they'd made Knox out to be.

Seeing his dad's truck parked on the edge of the dirt road just beyond the resort grounds pushed his festering rage out of control. No wonder his dad hadn't wanted his truck to drive onto the resort. No wonder his dad had tried to thwart Knox's every effort.

Knox pounded on the glass of the driver's side window with the side of his fist, over and over, relishing the shot of pain radiating up his arm until his thirst for destruction grew. He grabbed his pocketknife and without extending the blade, pounded the window with the hilt until the safety glass shattered into a flimsy sheet of tiny beads.

“Fuck you, Dad. You coward.” He tipped his head back and bellowed directly at the heavens. “Me coming here was never about getting justice for what the family did to me or Mom or Shayla or Wade. This was all about you, you selfish son of a bitch. And not even for a real fucking reason. You used me to get revenge on your brother for sleeping with your girlfriend! Of all the goddamn things! But you know what? I'm not your goon anymore. I'm not Ty's goon, either. You all lied to me. Every last one of you.”

He cleared the broken glass with the knife hilt, then picked the shards off his seat and got behind the wheel. The truck started on the first try. He threw it into gear, then barreled down the hill in the direction of his house. He was so far out of control that the road was blurry, but he kept his foot pressed on the gas pedal all the way down. What was a little danger now, after everything? He had nothing left to care about anyway. The resort was going to be sold off, Emily was going to hate him, and his family had screwed him over in the worst possible way.

“How am I going to face Mom?” he growled, strangling the steering wheel in his grip. “Did you think about that, Dad? How am I going to look at her and not hate her for this? She's my mother, goddamn it. How can our relationship ever recover?”

In one mighty swoop, he'd lost his mother, his father, his career. Everything he held dear.

It was all gone. He hit the steering wheel with his open palm and ground his teeth together, fighting the urge to scream.

At the lake, Knox stopped at the very same place the truck had backed into the water on Knox's first day at the resort. Leaving the engine on, he rolled the passenger window down, shifted into neutral, and stepped out. “Is this what you wanted all along, Dad? Is this what you were going for? Holding me back, taking what I cared about? Ruining my fucking life?”

The words echoed off the surrounding hills. Somewhere nearby, a flock of birds took flight.

“I worshipped you, old man.” A bubble of hysterical laughter escaped his throat. “And you're not even my father. You're my goddamn uncle.”

With that, he gave the truck a shove, putting all his weight into it until the wheels rolled forward. As it had that first day, the truck gathered momentum down the hill to the lakeshore. It splashed into the water and kept rolling. And like last time, much to Knox's anger, the wheels snagged on the rocks. Another bubble of hysterical laughter had Knox doubling over. “Fine. I'll do it myself.”

He dropped to the ground and took off his boots, then shimmied out of his pants, ready to brave the cold water to finish the job he'd started and push the truck all the way under. He had one foot in the water when the sound of splashing as a fish jumped out of water caught his attention. Phantom.

Yes.

That would satisfy his howling thirst for destruction far better than trying to dislodge the truck from the rocks. With his mind nothing but a storm of rage and hurt, he ran up his driveway and into the kitchen. Emily had caught Phantom's attention with Fritos, so that's what Knox would use. He found a partial bag in the pantry, then raced to the boathouse and threw his fishing gear into the rowboat.

It felt good, being at the top of the food chain again. Controlling the outcome, instead of playing the chump. Maybe he'd burn the boathouse down after this, rid it of his dad's carved name, that symbol of innocent boyhood before betrayal and vengeance had poisoned his life and the lives of his children.

After so much hard work and planning, Knox had nothing to show for all his ambition. Healy was right; the resort was a money pit, the land beneath it worth more than the business ever could be. It was time to stop fighting fate. It was time to give up on the resort and walk away to start fresh somewhere else. Maybe razing the buildings down to nothing was the answer. Maybe then, Knox would find the peace that had eluded him all his life.

*   *   *

The hospital room's clock struck eleven, but Emily was anything but tired as she sat in a chair in Carina's hospital room, holding the most perfect little human being she'd ever seen. Samuel James Decker, born at one p.m. and clocking in at eight pounds right on the dot. Eight pounds that Emily liked to believe she had a lot to do with.

Throughout the afternoon, she'd kept her distance from Ty, watching him with his family from afar and waiting for them to leave before slipping into Carina's room. Hence, why she was still there long after visiting hours had ended, rocking in the slider next to Carina's bed, holding the baby while Carina dozed. The whole world seemed to go quiet, save for the whir of machinery and muffled nurses' voices from the hall.

Decker returned to the room with a cup of coffee in a paper cup. He smiled at Emily behind a thick coat of stubble, then crossed the room and perched on the glider arm.

Emily would never forget the sight of Decker's tears or the look of fear on his face when the baby's heartbeat couldn't be detected. One of the strongest men she'd ever met brought to his knees in terror, and then again in reverence at the sight of his son in the NICU, where he'd been taken for observation, though all his vitals were normal and he clearly had a healthy set of lungs on him.

Seeing Samuel, and Decker's reaction as a father, had put Ty's cruel behavior to Knox into stark focus. There were so many awful fathers in the world that wore their anger and pride like heavy yokes across their shoulders. Decker was a reminder that it didn't have to be that way. That even out of a dark and toxic situation, there was hope to be found, and good men who took care of their families in gentle, loving ways.