Page 1 of The Heir

Chapter One

Blaze

No matter how much fury my mother’s pristine, blue eyes projected, Oak still answered her with the same patient, loving tone that he always did. Somehow, he had even managed to keep the damn car on the road, in the correct lane and moving at a legal speed, despite the palpable tension she’d created for the past two or three hundred miles. She hadn’t had an explosion since before we crossed the Tennessee state line, which meant she was due for another anytime, if that Illinois sign was any show of things.

Shit, even if it weren’t I could tell by the way her veins were pressing out at her throat, that we were edging toward the mother of all outbursts. Her nails began to tap out a deadly beat on the car door and she was staring at Oak so hard, I wasn’t even sure she was seeing him.

Karlotti, my seventeen-year-old younger sister, was looking at me in the same way, with those same blue eyes. I squinted at her and shrugged.

As if any of this were my fault!

She didn’t have the same savageness in her that our mother did. Thank fuck, she’d inherited her father’s temperament. She was playing with the shredded part of her pant leg and nibbling her lower lip like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to scream at them or burst into tears.

“Oh, honey…” Oak started, when he spotted her in the rearview mirror. “Hey… It’s okay, baby doll. Everything is going to be–”

Before he could get that next word out for my sister’s benefit, our mother launched across the middle console and attacked him.

“Daddy!” Karlotti shrieked far too late in warning, causing me and Oak both to flinch just before my mother swiped her nails across his face in a smack, or maybe it was a grab? I wasn’t sure what the fuck had happened. There was a crack and now there were claw marks rising angrily on Oak’s cheek.

His massive arm shot out, pushing my mother back onto her half of the car while the other clutched the steering wheel.

“Crystal!” he snapped, but it didn’t do any good.

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” my mother roared. “You cannot take him back. We cannot go back! What are you thinking? What are any of you thinking? You’re not! What the fuck, Oakland?”

She hadn’t stopped swinging, and every other word was emphasized by a pop or two.

Oak made a low growling sound as he absorbed the blows on his shoulder, and the side of his head while trying to maintain control over the vehicle and safely navigate us off the road. To his credit, the route was pretty smooth, until he found the culvert. It launched the car up a bit on one side and Mom smacked her head off the roof.

“Fuck!” I spat, before reaching forward and jerking her back toward the seat.

She grabbed the dash like she might launch at me next. Instead, when she focused on my face, her features crumbled, and she started to sob.

Oak kept his hands in the air, on either side of the steering wheel. His wide eyes slowly blinked, and his face was a mask of shock. It took him a second to snap out of it, like he was still trying to inwardly take inventory of everything, reassuring himself mentally that we were all still alive. When he managed to look at my mom, his face twitched with poorly concealed disbelief and disgust. He was trying to keep it at bay, I knew he was. Oak never lost his temper, ever, but his face was flushing deeper by the minute.

“Are you fucking serious right now, Crystal LaDawn?” His voice was a calm rage that shook me a little.

I’d heard he used to be a drill sergeant amongst other things, in the service, but I’d never seen anything near that side of him until today, and he’d been my stepfather for something like sixteen years, now.

“Woman, I better be choking or having a goddamned anaphylactic reaction behind the wheel, before you ever go to snatching at my face while I’m driving our children again.”

It must have shocked her to hear it, too. She blinked, rather than answer.

“Do you hear me?” His tone rose for the first time since he’d addressed her. “Look, I’m not playing about this. You know what… No.” He grabbed his cell phone from the cubby beneath the radio. “I knew I should have just put him in a plane with me and had Daisy grab us at the airport.”

“Like fucking hell!” She let loose again, coming back to her senses, and whirling to confront him face to face. “Don’t you ever call him your child again.”

Oak froze with the phone in his hand, his eyes locked on hers.

I’d never seen them like this.

These two were what ride or die love stories were made of, riding off into the sunset together and all that shit.

“That ain’t your choice.” I piped up, causing both to jerk around and look at me.

“Stay your narrow butt out of this, Blaze,” Oak warned, returning his livid gaze to my mother.

“Yeah. All due respect, fuck that.” I carried on, drawing a sharp gasp out of Karlotti.