About a year ago he started coming around the house, spending a lot of time with our mother. She used him for an ego boost and some fancy restaurant dinners before dropping him like bad meat. But Gaps wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge and he always nodded in our direction when he saw us around town. Apparently the family connection went deeper than a short affair with our mother. He stopped by our cell, explaining in hushed whispers how he was still buddies with the legendary Deck Gentry and had promised to keep an eye on us. Stone raised an eyebrow at that and we’d glanced at each other with an unspoken acknowledgement. It was another piece of evidence that we were fathered by one of those wild desert Gentrys instead of the steadfast Elijah. This wasn’t the time to start musing over that possibility though. Not when we were behind bars, our stomachs growling and our pulses racing. Gaps told us a little small town nepotism could come in handy sometimes. He had a relative who was a judge and Deck was owed a lot of favors for things I couldn’t begin to guess. All that added up to a break for us, as long as someone showed up at the Emblem jail with a stack of green paper. I almost despaired over hearing that because even if my mother had the money I doubted she would part with it for our sake. It turned out she wouldn’t need to. Even though Gaps hadn’t been able to reach Deck, he’d talked to Cordero, one of the triplet cousins I barely remembered. They’d lived way out in the desolate hinterlands of outer Emblem, where most of the Gentrys had squatted and lived and died for generations. There were still some left; chronic troublemakers who had made our last name a local curse. Cord and his brothers, Chase and Creed, had famously run out of town the first chance they got but their parents remained. I saw them sometimes – ruined Maggie and violent Benton.
What do You think about CROSS (A Gentry Boys Novella)?
