The Prison Guard’s
Son
Young Guns Book 1
Ursula Sinclair
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement (including infringement without monetary gain) is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.
Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, or other status is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 2016 by LaVerne Thompson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever known, not known or hereafter invented, or stored in any storage or retrieval system, is forbidden and punishable by the fullest extent of the law without written permission of the author. LaVerne Thompson [email protected]
Editing done by- Leanore Elliott
Model- Zack Williams
Cover Artist- Fiona Jayde
Photographer- Hilary Shreve
DEDICATION
For all those who were told they couldn’t and did in spite of it. For all those who were told they could and did. Rock on! Thank you also to all my beta readers, you ladies are awesome. Cherryce you rock.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I finally have a chance to put my legal background to work in a storyline and have fun with it. For all the recovering lawyers out there. Rock on too!
CHAPTER ONE
Pike
My earliest memories are of noises really, more than images. The images are kind of jumbled together, all these—at least for a kid—giant people surround me. Some smiling at me others with mean looks on their faces, all really scary and I was terrified. But the sounds. Those I would never forget. The clamor of metal makes when it strikes against more metal. The clang of a gate being slammed shut.
I remember turning around and wanting to run back the way we’d come. But my dad held tightly to my small hand in his much larger one and tugged me behind him, not once breaking stride. When I began to cry, he ended up picking me up and I wrapped my arms around him, burying my face in his neck.
“It’s going to be fine John. You want to see your mama don’t ya?”
“No! Don’t wanna. Wanna go home.”
“We will son, but…well your mom, she wants to see you. She wants to say goodbye before she goes away for good.”
“She’s going away. Where? Is she coming home with us?”
“No son.” My father’s voice kinda sounded funny.
I raised my head to look at him and touched the side of his face. “Why?”
“She can’t. But she wanted to see you…to say goodbye and so that you won’t forget her.”
“I don’t ‘member her.”
He pulled me against his chest and shook.
That scared me more than anything. My dad never cried and even as young as I was I knew that’s what he was doing, so I cried too. By then I’d noticed we’d walked into a room where there was a bed and a woman lay on it.
He put me down and wiped his face. Taking my hand, we walked over to the side of the bed and the woman on it.
This time it was I who held tightly to him. “Is she sleeping, Pa?”
The woman’s eyes suddenly opened, they were the same gray green as mine.
“Are you my mama?” I asked.
Then she too, began to cry. She raised her hand to touch the top of my hair, there was some kind of wire and tubes attached to her arm.
I touched one. “What’s that?”
“An IV,” she said in a whispery voice.
“What’s it for?”
“It’s making sure I’m here long enough to see you one last time. And yes, I’m your mama.”
“Pa said you’re not coming home with us. Why? Don’t you like us?”
“I love you both. So much. I want nothing more than to come home with you—but I can’t.”
At this, something really strange happened, my dad dropped to his knees beside me and no longer tried to hide his tears. He held me around the waist and held onto my mama’s hand and they were both crying now.
As young as I was, sadness overwhelmed me and all I could do was cry too.
The memory slammed into me when I came home and found my dad in bed crying. He would do that from time to time for as long as I can remember, or stare quietly off into space. Not as much in the last few years but still.
Now, my dad used to a big man, six five two hundred plus of solid muscle. So to see him in this state again, I wasn’t always sure which sight was the most unnerving. Maybe the staring, cause at those times I knew he wasn’t quite here, he was in some memory from a time before I existed.
He always seemed to carry this sadness deep inside. All you had to do was look into his eyes. Unlike others who though the dullness was from drinking too much, although some of it had been, and the reason for the flesh that now wrapped around a slender frame. I knew the truth. It was also because he’d lost the love of his life. My mother.
Oh yes, the one thing I knew was that my dad loved my mom and she loved him. I guess it was one of the reasons I wasn’t as ashamed as some folks thought I should be. Given the fact, I was born in prison to a convicted felon.
Not something I advertised, but in the small town we lived in some folks had long memories. The only good thing most had moved on or died. My dad had always lived in Troy, Virginia. He used to be one of the prison guards over at the all women’s prison before it was shut down years ago. It had been where he’d met my mom. She’d been convicted as an accomplice in a robbery. She’d been in the car when her boyfriend at the time, robbed a store and they got caught. She testified against him and got a reduced sentence at a medium security prison. That’s where they met. Her first day there.
He told me he’d loved her the first time he’d stared into her wide scared strangely colored ice blue eyes. Same as mine. He said every time he looked at me he saw my mother in them. I know it caused him both pain and pleasure. Yet, he loved me just the same.
He never told me much about her past, but like I said…small town. I didn’t grow up with cousins or grandparents. Both my parents were only children. While my dad lived in Troy most of his life, my mom didn’t. Still, folks knew the story about how John J Pike was fired from his job for knocking up one of the inmates. I was oblivious until about sixth grade. There’d been whispers at school about how my mom was a murderer.
The first time I heard it, I beat the shit out of the little bastard that said it and got sent to the principal’s office.
My dad took me home. I told him what was being said and why I got into a fight. He cried, all the while shaking his head, he spoke one word. “No.” Instead of explaining, he handed me a folder. “Your mom wanted you to have these when you were old enough to understand and began asking questions. Just know that I loved her, and she loved me and you very much. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person. But if she hadn’t been there, God knows I would never have met her. Never had you.”
I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. But it must be important. With trembling hands, I took the folder away from him and went to my room. Our house wasn’t very big, in fact one of the smallest in an already small town of small homes. A two bedroom rambler, only a little wider than a trailer. My
dad added on my bedroom himself. He was good with his hands. Always making things or restoring homes, that’s how he earned a living. I went to my room and shut the door behind me, flopped on the bed and began to read the story of my parents.
My mom made a deal with the prosecutor. She’d been in the car the night her boyfriend robbed a store and shot a customer. The man had later died and she’d testified for the state against her ex-boyfriend and the charges and sentence against her were reduced. The boyfriend got a death sentence. My mom got cancer and died in prison two months before she could have been paroled.
When I was done, I sat staring out my window into the woods for a very long time, without seeing the light of day turn into dark of night. I heard a knock on the door but didn’t respond to it. I was numb inside, I guess. When my father asked me if I was hungry, I didn’t say a word.
Instead, he left but came back a little later and left a plate on my nightstand and a glass of milk for me.
I understood so much now. No, she wasn’t a murder. That’s all that mattered to me. That and she shouldn’t have been sent to prison to begin with, but if she hadn’t she would’ve never have met my dad and I might never have been born. Funny shit life. I pulled out one of my school notebooks and began to write words to capture the thoughts swirling through my head. Poems, I thought they were at first. It would be a few years before I showed them to anyone. Those poems were actually my first songs and I haven’t stopped writing them since.
No, I don’t have a woe is me I had a shitty life story to tell. I refused to think of it that way, regardless of what anyone else thinks. I was not fucking abused. Yes, my dad drank but he drank to forget this deep soul ache that comes when you lose part of your soul. I understood that. Hell, my best songs are about that. Yet, he had a child to raise and he did the best he could, even though most of the time, I really raised myself. In some ways, I took care of him too.
So, while I might have grown up poor, on a patch of land only about an acre of mostly uncut grass. The lawn mower might have almost always been broken, and while I had cheap clothing to wear, I never wanted for food or shelter. My dad owned the land and while the house may have had only two bedrooms, one bathroom and only one level, he’d built the house himself and made it into a home.
While my father loved me, he pretty much let me run wild. But he did the best he could. I refused to be ashamed of that. My agent didn’t always see it that way, the official bio was a bit hazy on details, my mom died from lung cancer when I was born, mostly true, not when or where she died or frankly, where I was born. Most folks stopped asking questions after that about her, and asked about my dad, who was a master carpenter and raised me himself.
Me on the other hand, after watching my dad be this, what I called, the shadow of a man, I had absofuckingly no intention of ever falling in love and having any woman own me the way my dead mother owned him. I loved him though. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of months, since I’d been on an Asian tour, which is why when he wasn’t downstairs to greet me in the new home I’d bought for him, I bounded up the stairs. His car sat in the driveway, so I knew he was home. I didn’t get a reply when I knocked on his bedroom door then I opened it. My heart stuttered when I saw him still lying in bed at two in the afternoon. I rushed across the floor dropping to my knees at the side of the mattress. “Dad!” I touched his shoulder. Thank fuck he was warm, maybe a little too warm even through his t-shirt. I shook him slightly and he opened his eyes.
They were a little red rimmed, it could have been from sleep, or he’d been drinking again.
Yet this time, unlike the others, I caught no whiff of alcohol wafting off him.
“John, John? Wha—what time is it?” His voice sounded hoarse like he had a cold. And sure enough, he coughed putting his hand to his mouth. “Sorry.”
“You okay? What’s wrong?” I frowned and placed my palm against his forehead as he’d done for me as a child. “Fuck, Dad, you’re burning up.”
He tried to sit up but began coughing again. “I’m fine. Just a blasted cold. I was planning on fixing you dinner tonight.”
“I don’t think so. I’m calling a doctor.”
He waved his hand across his face. “I don’t need a damn doctor.”
“Too bad, you’re damn well getting one.” I stood up and pulled out my phone to call my agent, Sol to have a doctor stop by the house. Part of the perks of being rich and famous…I got what I wanted. Right now, I wanted to make sure my father would be okay.
We no longer lived in that tiny two room house, in fact we no longer lived in Troy. Instead, my dad now lived in a nice townhouse community in McLean, Virginia and sometimes, on Cove Island on the Chesapeake Bay. I now owned three houses in the US and one in Italy. But this place was home. Wherever my father was for me was home.
CHAPTER TWO
Eryn
Without opening my eyes, I reached over and touched the screen to shut off the alarm and give myself another ten minutes for my brain to reboot. I’d been at the office until mid-night last night going over a new contact. I needed to nail this deal. If I landed this account, it would be one of our biggest and most lucrative clients at the law firm of Gunn, Gunn & Gunn. Or the young Guns or those damn Gunns as some people liked to call us. As a compliment or not, depending on which side you ended up on.
At twenty-five, while I might be one of the youngest lawyers in the firm, I was also a partner. The youngest but I came from a long solid line of lawyers. Myself and my older cousins began this firm when they were still in law school and I was in college. Mind you, I graduated college at 16, law school at 19. While I couldn’t sign off on legal documents until I was 21, like my cousins before me I apprenticed with other family members.
This new firm my cousins and I started had been in business now for nine years, a small boutique firm specializing in entertainment law. Most people in their twenties, early thirties, look for people who can identify more with them and their needs. Having a kick ass website and social media presence, didn’t hurt either. So yes, our clientele were young but so were their lawyers. It was what drew the hipsters, millennials and wealthy to our door. It wouldn’t last, of course, but we would grow with them, because what would make them stay was the fact they were well taken care of. Our little boutique firm ranked in the top one hundred law firms for multi-million dollar revenues.
Most of our clients were in sports, athletes of all kinds, we brokered and helped them manage all of their contracts with agents and teams, whatever they needed, we even offered real estate planning or branding advice. We’d even been known to get one or two out of jail on occasion. Our contracts however, were damned good. It took a Gunn to break a Gunn was the saying around town. And the family stuck together like glue and there were a lot of us. At one time, seven brothers all lawyers, only six still alive. Yeah, I had six uncles all married with offspring. I might have been an only child but I did not lack for companions my own age or older to boss me around or younger to take care of.
My cousins and I, while continuing the family tradition, did it in our own way. Hence, why none of us stayed within the expected fold. I wanted us to get more into movies and the musicians’ side of entertainment law. That’s where some serious money lay.
This is my area of expertise the music industry and I’d slowly been bringing in a few bigger new clients. While some of the ones we already had were beginning to make a name for themselves, GG&G was beginning to get noticed in those industries too.
It all began for me while attending UVA undergrad, where I met quite a few of my classmates who were singers or in bands trying to make a name for themselves. I would help them negotiate with the local bars to play there, or even arranged some touring for them. But I didn’t want to manage them and would sometimes connect them with other family members or friends who were business management majors. Of course, I wrote up the contracts for those too, always representing the best interest of the band or individual.
That was before
I even got to law school. Given my family history, I ended up graduating from Georgetown Law and maintaining the contacts I’d made from undergrad. I always knew I would be a lawyer. My God, I argued enough. Although, not so much in my house while growing up, that was a no-no. My mom was on the quiet side, some think she’s shy, but she’s not. She’s broken inside. Thinking about her, I reached for my phone, I checked the time and knew she would be up.
My dad died before I was born, he never even knew he was going to be a father. I think my mom really loved him. At least that’s what I believe. Since I have no real memory of him, she and my uncles would tell me stories about him as I was growing up. I do miss the man I never knew, and I follow in his footsteps, so could only imagine how my mother felt when he died.
“Hi Mom, just calling to confirm I’ll be there on Saturday.”
“You sure you can’t get down here Friday, sweetie?” she asked. “You have always worked way too hard for one so young. You need a life.”
I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see it. “Look who’s talking.”
My mother wasn’t fifty yet, and still a beautiful woman. She’d remarried of course, family put pressure on her and she didn’t want to be alone is what she told me. It’d been just before I went off to college. I barely met the guy, never really liked him. Apparently, in the long run, neither did Mom, she divorced him two years later and has been alone every since. Oh, yes, my cousin drew up the pre-nup. We protect our own.
“I’m your mother, I can talk. Take some time sweetie to meet a nice young man to bring home for me to meet.”
“As soon as I meet one Mom, you’ll be the first to know. I’ve got to run now. See you soon.” I hung up the phone and smiled. I could have argued farther about her dating habits or lack thereof, but I knew it would do no good to do so. Or worse, she would claim pot calling kettle black. I had no time for relationships. I had a rep to build. Thank goodness though, she didn’t argue, she would just go her own way and ignore us all.
The Prison Guard's Son: Young Guns Book One Page 1