Beneath The President's Patch

Ten years ago, I held Owen Vasquez the night after his mother's funeral, and I never told him what that night made. I raised our daughter alone in a small mountain town, built a quiet life, and told myself he was better off not knowing. Then the president of the High Sierra Reapers walked into my library to find a book about his own mother, and he saw my daughter's photograph. She has his mother's eyes. He wants to meet her. He wants to know why I left. And the man who murdered his mother just got released from prison on a technicality, which means the family we're finally trying to build is the family he's coming after next. I've spent a decade keeping Owen out of my life. Now I need him in it — for our daughter, for the man I never stopped loving, and for the family we should have had all along.