Heartless (Steel Demons MC #6) - Crystal Ash

Prologue

MARIPOSA

FIVE YEARS EARLIER

“Now this is a surprise.” My dad grinned cheekily as he set two shot glasses on the counter.

“I have to take the opportunity while it’s here,” I said, parking my butt on the stool across from him.

“And here I figured my twenty-year-old daughter would have better things to do than drink with her lame old dad.” He twisted the cap open on the bottle of reposado and started pouring carefully, shooting me a dad look. You know the one. “I could get in trouble for this, you know.”

“What, like the militia are gonna peek through our windows, know instinctively that I’m underage, and toss us out into the street?” I rolled my eyes, but neither of us laughed. It wasn’t a joke anymore, but a reality.

The latest push from our wannabe governor had been to make drinking illegal for women only. Apparently, it made us unfit to be wives. That crazy old fundie from the newly formed territory of Texahoma had been trying to absorb our county for six months. His utterly insane proclamations weren’t laws for us yet, but thousands of others weren’t so lucky. So far, Warsaw County’s little rebellion had been able to hold the border, but that could change at any time.

Dad didn’t respond to my retort, but smiled at me fondly as he sliced limes for our drinks. “So what’s on your mind, mija?”

He always asked me that when he’d started letting me drink with him, ever since I was sixteen. This was our time to open up, to let me vent without judgment while he listened. My mom would always be a mom to me, but the ever-increasing hostility in our society made me grow up fast. Mom wanted to shield me from it all, so I could have a normal childhood. But Dad took a different approach. He started treating me like an equal and became my friend.

“I, um.” I grabbed one shot glass and slowly pulled it toward me. “Carlos broke up with me last week.”

“Aw, mijita.” Dad’s smile fell, his eyes warm and sympathetic. “I’m sorry that didn’t work out.”

“I’ll be okay. I just didn’t expect it to hit me like it did.” My face tensed like I expected tears to come, but I knew they wouldn’t. I had cried them all out already. “Like, I knew we probably weren’t gonna get married or whatever, but it still fucking sucks.”

“I know it does,” Dad said. “It doesn’t feel like it now, but you’ll see it was for the best. Besides,” he smirked before putting on his stern dad face, “you should be focusing on school. You don’t need some boy distracting you. Your career field is going to make a real impact when you graduate.”

“He told me I was too focused on school and didn’t make time for him,” I grumbled. “I confronted him about getting cozy with some girl at a party and he told me that shit.”

“Even better,” Dad huffed. “A boy like that is not worth your time.”

“I know you’re right, just why does it have to hurt so much? I don’t want to miss him, but I do.”

“Emotions are weird, mijita. Hell, people are weird.” Dad took a small, thoughtful sip of his reposado. “I’m sure this guy cares about you. He probably just wasn’t mature enough to tell you how he really felt.” Dad put his glass down and suddenly released a sigh that made him look a lot older. “When people can’t communicate properly for whatever reason, we sometimes end up hurting the ones we love.”

Neither of us said a word, but I knew what we were both thinking about. On his second day home this week, he blew up at Mom over the tea kettle whistling. One minute he was fine, reading the paper and having his coffee. The moment that high-pitched whistle sounded, he started yelling a bunch of nonsense at her, completely unprompted. It was like some uncontrollable violent force had possessed my gentle, mild-mannered father. Mom and I were dumbfounded, and she was most definitely hurt by it.

He calmed down later and apologized, but everything had felt off since then. Awkward, like we were walking on eggshells. I attended a seminar on PTSD last semester, and had tried to broach the subject gently with my dad the last time he came home and started displaying symptoms. But he brushed me off, the machismo of his upbringing causing him to refuse to see it as a treatable medical condition.

Only during these