Legacy Read online

  Legacy

  Steel Brothers Saga: Book Fourteen

  HELEN HARDT

  This book is an original publication of Waterhouse Press.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

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  Copyright © 2020 Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Design by Waterhouse Press, LLC

  Cover Photographs: Shutterstock

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  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic format without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Continue reading the Steel Brothers Saga with Book Fifteen

  Message from Helen Hardt

  Also By Helen Hardt

  Acknowledgments

  About Helen Hardt

  To all survivors of mental illness. I’m humbled by your strength.

  Prologue

  Brad

  Present Day…

  Other than Talon, my children don’t visit me in prison.

  Not that I blame them. I’ve betrayed them. I’ve betrayed their mother. I’ve betrayed the legacy I wanted more than anything for them.

  Ryan and Ruby had their child—a little girl they named Ava Lee Steel. One of the guards got wind of it and told me.

  My sixth grandchild, including Marjorie’s stepson, and I’m certain more will come.

  If only I could be the doting grandfather they deserve.

  But even if I weren’t incarcerated, their parents wouldn’t let me near them.

  How can I blame their thinking?

  I wouldn’t let me near them either.

  Do they take the children to see their grandmother? Daphne won’t know them, but somewhere inside her, she’ll remember how much she loves her children, and by extension, her grandchildren.

  How well I remember the first year of Jonah’s life. Daphne chose his name because it meant “dove.” She’d taken to calling him “little dove” as he grew inside her, and when he was born and we saw he was a boy—as she’d always suspected—she told me his name.

  She insisted his middle name be after me. Who was I to say no? At that time, I thought I’d be his hero.

  For a while, perhaps I was.

  Now?

  I’m no one’s hero.

  Not my wife’s.

  Not my children’s.

  Not my grandchildren’s.

  Most certainly not my own.

  No one’s.

  No one’s hero.

  Chapter One

  Brad

  I stood and followed Jonathan back into the house.

  “About that nightcap,” he said.

  “No, thank you.”

  “You don’t have to have one, but I do, and we’re not having it here.”

  “You want to go somewhere?”

  “A little Irish pub about a mile away from here. I want to talk to you in private.”

  Jonathan ordered an Irish whiskey, and I decided to join him. One drink wouldn’t hurt, and I could use a little relaxation. Jonathan seemed so serious.

  I took a drink of the liquor and let it burn a trail down my throat. Then I turned to him. “I really do love her, Mr. Wade.”

  “Jonathan, please.”

  “All right. Jonathan.”

  “I know you love her, son. She’s a very special girl.”

  “She is.”

  “It’s soon, but I see it in your eyes. You want to take care of her.”

  “I do. And I will.”

  “I believe you want to. I truly do. You certainly have the means, and I believe that you used protection.”

  “I did. A condom, like I said.”

  “Things happen,” he said.

  “Yes,” I agreed, not sure where he was going.

  “So you love her, but you haven’t known her long, and you’re both so young. Is this really what you want?”

  “It is, sir. I’ve thought of nothing but Daphne since I first laid eyes on her. Would I have liked to go a little slower? Of course. But what’s done is done. It can’t be undone.”

  “Well, it could be.”

  “Neither of us wants an abortion.”

  “I understand. And adoption?”

  “We talked about it. But I love Daphne, and I want her to be my wife. I’d hate knowing we had a child out there who wasn’t in our home.”

  He nodded, took a long drink of his whiskey, and set the glass down on the wooden bar. He turned to me and met my gaze. His blue eyes were stern. “I think you’re a good man, from what I can tell by only talking to you for a couple hours. I do think you mean well.”

  “I do. I love her, and I already love this baby.”

  “I want you to succeed. I want Daphne to be happy.”

  “That’s what I want as well.”

  “Then there’s something about Daphne that you need to know.”

  Chapter Two

  Daphne

  My mother didn’t speak as I helped her clear away the dinner dishes and load the dishwasher.

  She didn’t speak as she wiped down the kitchen and then removed the tablecloth from the dining room table, took it outside, and shook off the crumbs.

  She didn’t speak as she laid the cloth back on the table and straightened the chairs.

  She didn’t speak as she returned to the kitchen, opened the cupboard above the refrigerator—my mother was as tall as I was—and withdrew a bottle of liquor.

 
; Vodka. My mother wasn’t a drinker, but she’d turned to it more and more lately, it seemed. I didn’t remember her ever drinking before my junior year of high school.

  “Mom?” I finally said.

  “What, honey?”

  “I’m…sorry.”

  She poured the clear liquid into a glass, sniffed it, and then took a drink, wincing. “How could you let this happen?”

  “I didn’t. He used protection.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I saw him take the condom off when we were done.” I winced this time. Describing that to my mother felt all kinds of wrong.

  “You wouldn’t lie to me.” More a statement.

  “That’s right, I wouldn’t, especially not about something this important.”

  She sighed and took another drink, grimacing once more. “I’ll never get used to the taste of this stuff.”

  “Then why drink it?”

  She sighed again. “It takes the edge off, Daphne.”

  The edge. I didn’t have to ask. I was the edge. Me. She’d sent me off to college with Dr. Payne’s blessing, and I came home pregnant after three weeks.

  Not what she had planned.

  Not what I’d planned either, for that matter.

  One more sip, and she turned to me, her dark eyes unreadable. “Please, honey, don’t pin all your hopes on this boy.”

  “Boy? He’s a twenty-two-year-old man, Mom.”

  “Twenty-two is still a boy. He may look like a man, even act like a man, but inside, he’s still a boy, just like you’re still a girl.”

  “I’m eighteen.”

  “God, Daphne, that’s a baby, especially after…”

  “After all I’ve been through. Yeah, I get it, Mom.” Now I kind of wanted some vodka myself, but drinking wasn’t the answer. It was never the answer, and my mother should know better.

  “I don’t mean it that way,” she said. “I just mean… I wish you’d waited a little longer.”

  “Why? How old were you when you had sex for the first time?”

  It was a daring question. My mother and I didn’t discuss this kind of stuff. We used to, before junior year. She was always open to talking about boys and sex and my body when I had questions. Now, she seemed to clam up at the thought.

  “That’s not really relevant.”

  “Sure it is.”

  She took another swallow. “If you must know, I was eighteen.”

  I couldn’t help a slight scoff. “I see.”

  “But I was different. I didn’t plan to marry the guy, and I didn’t…”

  “Get pregnant?”

  “No, I didn’t, and if I had, I would have—”

  “Gotten an abortion? It wasn’t even legal then, Mom.”

  “No, I wouldn’t have gotten an abortion, Daphne. I hate the thought of abortion for you or anyone. I would have seriously considered adoption, though.”

  “I did seriously consider it, but Brad and I want this baby.”

  She stayed silent for a few minutes and finished her drink. Then, “Just don’t pin all your hopes on this. If it doesn’t work out, Daddy and I will take care of you.”

  “It will work out,” I said adamantly.

  “But if it doesn’t,” she insisted, “we’re here for you. You can live at home this year and have the child. We’ll find a nice couple to adopt it, and you can start college next year. You’ll still have your scholarship, and you’ll only be a year behind. Everything will work out.”

  “Why are you doing this, Mom? Why are you assuming Brad and I won’t work out?”

  She didn’t answer again for a few minutes—a few minutes that dragged much like the minutes while I was waiting for Kathleen at the student health center to give me my pregnancy test results.

  Finally, “You’ve only known him three weeks. You don’t know anything about him, and he doesn’t know anything about you.”

  Ah. That was what she was getting at. “For your information, I told Brad the truth about junior year. He still loves me, and he still wants me. So there.”

  Yeah, the “so there” was childish and immature from a woman about to become a wife and mother, but I couldn’t help myself.

  Again, she was silent. Her arm trembled as she reached for the vodka bottle. I placed my hand over hers.

  “Don’t, Mom. We’re going to be okay.”

  “I hope so, honey. I truly do.” Her gaze seemed to go through me, as if she were seeking something she couldn’t see. “Your dad and your boyfriend will be gone awhile.”

  “So? They’re getting to know each other.”

  She nodded. “Yes. Getting to know each other.”

  Her words skated over me in an eerie way.

  As if they had some deeper meaning.

  Chapter Three

  Brad

  “Okay,” I said. “What is it?”

  Jonathan Wade stared down at the clear glass holding his Irish whiskey. “It’s about her junior year of high school.”

  Was that all? He probably thought Daphne had told me the London lie. She had, at first, but she’d come clean before we made love.

  “She told me.” I smiled. “I guess you brought me here for nothing.”

  “What exactly did she tell you?”

  “That she spent much of the year hospitalized for anxiety and depression, and that there’s a lot she doesn’t remember because of the medication she was on.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m okay with all of that. My mother spent some time in a facility herself. I understand a lot about what Daphne went through.”

  “Oh? What happened to your mother?”

  “Exhaustion, mostly. Neither she nor my father was ever the same after the accident that left her unable to have more kids. My father blamed her, and it wasn’t pretty. My mother broke down when I was in high school and spent nearly a year at a mental hospital, or a sanitarium as my father called it.”

  My mother’s hospitalization had affected me more than I knew at the time. I got involved with the Future Lawmakers during that time, made decisions I now regretted. Looking back, I saw clearly how her absence had taken its toll.

  “Does Daphne know this?”

  I nodded. “When she told me her story, I told her my mother’s. It helped us both.”

  “And how did you deal with your mother’s absence and your father’s…”

  “The word is abuse. I told you it wasn’t pretty, though the physical abuse had stopped by then.”

  “Did he abuse you as well?”

  “Not physically. Maybe mentally or emotionally, but he did it to make me strong. It worked.”

  My mind raced briefly to the two calves I’d grown to love when I was a kid. My father had forced me to go with him to have them slaughtered. I never forgave him for that, but I never got close to another one of our animals. I also could never forgive him for how he treated my mother. I’d put a stop to it once I was big enough.

  Despite his flaws—and his flaws were many, some horrifying—I’d learned to have an odd respect for the man who’d taught me…well…everything. Especially since he’d helped me have Wendy Madigan put away so that Daphne and I could marry and have our baby in peace.

  “You’re okay, then? You’re strong?”

  “I feel like I am. Don’t get me wrong, Jonathan. I know I’m twenty-two and have a lot to learn about life and everything else. But I can run that ranch when my time comes, and I can take care of Daphne and our baby.”

  He nodded.

  “Daphne also told me she sometimes has strange dreams that scare her, but when she wakes up, she can’t remember them.”

  He nodded again. “Did she tell you anything else?”

  “Just that you guys made up a story about her living in London for a year.” I swirled the whiskey in my glass. “Oh, and that her best friend moved away after sophomore year.”

  “Yes. Sage Peterson.”

  “Daphne said she and Sage lost touch.”

  He didn’t re
ply.

  “I suppose it’s hard when you’re young, writing letters and all.” I took a sip of my drink.

  Jonathan cleared his throat. “Sage didn’t move away, son.”

  “Oh? Then why did—”

  He gestured me to stop talking. “Sage didn’t move away. She committed suicide.”

  My eyebrows nearly flew off my forehead, and my heart thudded. I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t form the words.

  “Sage was a lovely girl, very smart. She and Daphne met in kindergarten and were inseparable through sophomore year.”

  “Why didn’t Daphne tell me?”

  Jonathan sighed. “About the suicide? Because she doesn’t know.”

  Huh? I wrinkled my forehead. “How can she not know?”

  Jonathan drained the last bit of his whiskey and set down his glass. “Listen, Brad. I want to make this very clear from the start. Lucy and I will always take care of Daphne. No matter what. You have my word.”

  “Of course. She’s your daughter. Why are you changing the subject? You can’t drop a bomb on me like that and not tell me what’s going on.”