Liam: Branded Brothers by Raen Smith Page B

and the jackass
she was going to remarry. Turned out the love of her life was really some guy
named Ken who owned a chain of laundromats. Liam had never seen Ken, and he
sure as hell hoped he never would. He knew it was hard for Genevieve when he
was deployed, but he never knew it was that hard. If only she’d told him.
    Damn . It’d been two years since she left him and his
wounds were still fresh, no matter how hard he tried to ignore them. Genevieve was
his first love and his soul mate, or so he thought. They’d married under the
stars in an open field the night before he left for the Marines when they were
eighteen. He could still smell the sulfur of the fireworks and feel the bangs
in his heart. He’d met his share of women over the last two years, but none of
them compared to Genevieve. She was beautiful and smart, a combination he
found to be like some goddamn mythical existence at the Dirty Leprechaun. That
is, until Charla Taylor. She was gorgeous, smart, and one tough woman if she
was willing to put up with a stubborn Irishman with Alzheimer’s. Charla Taylor
was a triple threat. He could only imagine what Jack was like. Liam once tore
out an IV when he was in the hospital coming out of surgery for a football
injury in high school. He was later restrained to the bed by four nurses. It
wasn’t one of his finer moments.
    Liam slid his nine millimeter out of his holster and double
checked the rounds. He’d never had to fire his gun during one of his
collections, and he wanted to keep it that way. He was pretty lucky by the
standards of the profession. He was good at negotiating with the presence of a
deadly weapon, thanks to the military. Everyone he encountered knew he wouldn’t
be afraid to use his gun.
    He opened the van door and stepped into the cool darkness of
the early morning. He guessed it would be a few hours before Charla even awoke.
He tried to push the thoughts of her and her tight ass out of his mind. Damn
it. He had a job to do.
    He shut the door silently and crossed the street. He crept
onto the lawn, moving along the chain-linked fence running between the two
houses. He was just beginning to feel the dew soak into his sneakers when the
sudden bark of a dog erupted next door.
    “Damn,” he cursed, shooting a look of disdain at the
backyard of the neighboring house. All he could see was two glowing eyes. They
were stopped about ten feet from the house, which meant the dog was tied up.
There wasn’t a dog the first time around so either they were new neighbors or
they got a new dog. The bark was low and menacing, broken only by intermittent
growls. Most of the drug dealers in the area had a penchant for keeping
Rottweilers, which meant that Rich Horton had new neighbors AND a new dog.
    Liam shoved his hand in his jacket pocket and retrieved a
bag of leftover chicken wings from the bar last night. He wound up and heaved
them over the fence. The growling deepened before it stopped. The early morning
was silent again.
    He leaned against the fence and sighed with relief. He never
went on a run without a bag of chicken wings. He learned the hard way on his
third job and still had the scar on his thigh to prove it. Jerry had laughed
when Liam told him he'd gotten ten stitches because of that damn Rottweiller. Hazard
of the job , Jerry had said.
    Hazard was right , Liam thought as a light flicked on
in the faded yellow house. He wasn’t in the mood to chase down Rich Horton. He
wanted to get in and out so he could focus on what he needed to do the rest of
the day. It was hard enough sleeping last night knowing he had two brothers out
there somewhere. He grew up as an only child and was envious of his friends who
had brothers. He wanted to beat up on a younger brother or look up to an older
brother. He wanted something , besides his adoptive parents, not that he
had any reason to complain. They loved and supported him, but they were older
than all the other parents. They were as old as most of his