Broken Promise (The Denton Family Legacy #1)(2)

Jacob couldn’t argue with his brothers. Landon had an easy, quick temper that had caused their parents a headache a time or two. He seemed to like to take a beating, and once that was done, he’d smack the shit out of them. Since Landon had made it to high school, he’d gotten into over a dozen fights, and put three guys in the hospital. Maddox had to pay a shitload of money out in compensation, to keep Landon from going to prison or juvy. Only a woman would be able to tame the monster inside Landon, but it was something none of them could get him. They could supply him with all the pussy the city could buy, but if his woman wasn’t a whore, or fucking easy, then they couldn’t do it.

“Thank you all for coming. I expect big things from Landon, and you be sure to talk about the latest addition to the Denton Empire,” Maddox said. The crowd went wild, and then they were moving toward their exclusive rooms.

“What the hell was that?” Charlotte asked.

Landon sat down on a bench, unwrapping his hands as he spat blood onto the ground. “Fucker had it coming.”

“Watch your language,” Maddox said.

Charlotte took the first aid kit from the doctor and got to work fixing up her son. Even though they paid a lot for the best doctor it was always Charlotte who fixed them up. Their mother was once a trained nurse, and even though she no longer worked in a hospital, she kept her license and training up to date.

“That fucker as you call him, Landon, is a Moore boy.”

“Moore?” Jacob asked. “Fuck, I should have known.” The Moores were a mixed bag of good and bad. They were a family who dealt with fights, but they also created a lot of enemies.

“His family is known for their skill at fighting. He’s an expert, and he offered to go into the ring with you when no one else would. You fought dirty tonight, and not like a Denton.”

Once their mother got started on a tirade, it was best to see it through. At fifty-three years old, she was still a beautiful woman, but then she hadn’t allowed their lifestyle to lure her down the spiral of drugs and booze. She didn’t go out spending thousands of dollars on shit she didn’t need. Charlotte still cooked for her family, and made sure they didn’t allow the power they all had to go to their heads. She kept them stable, which also unnerved their enemies. They were unpredictable and deadly without the need for narcotics.

“You may think you won that fight, and you made us proud. You may have even made your father proud, and those people out there all happy with the latest addition to the family empire. As far as I’m concerned, tonight you put shame on the Denton name. When a man is down, you walk the fuck away, do you hear me?” She grabbed Landon’s face and forced him to look at her. “You’re better than an animal, Landon. Do not ever let me be ashamed of you again, do you understand?”

“Yes, Mom,” Landon said. There was no attitude or tone to his voice. He’d been stripped down.

Maddox squeezed her shoulder. Over the years Jacob had noticed those little touches. His father couldn’t go any length of time without touching his woman. It was like he couldn’t help but reach out to her.

His parents’ love had kept them all safe, and if anything was to ever happen to his mother, Maddox would go crazy. The Dentons lived with a legacy to love one woman, and in their history, it showed they went off the rails if something was to happen to that woman.

Jacob didn’t know how he was ever to find the one woman meant for him, but his father, and uncles all told him that the moment he saw her, he’d just know. There would be an impulse, a need to have her, to take her, to care for her. There would be no stopping in his need to claim his woman.

In the last thirty-five years he’d experienced lust and even believed he was in love, but he’d never been consumed by the way his father and uncles were with their women.

There were times like now when the world was moving around him so fast that he wondered what it would be like, to experience such need for another. The women he’d fucked had held his attention for as long as it took to fuck them and forget about them. He loved sex. He loved fucking, and he loved women that were easy. It was the one area where he was the cliché crime boss. He had a little black book full of sluts who’d take his cock without any question. There had even been women he called who were in the middle of fucking one man, and they’d climbed right off to come to him.

He was an asshole, arrogant, and he didn’t give a shit what people thought about him.

“Good. I only want to hear the best of my sons.” Charlotte stared at each of them. Tamsin, their baby sister, was the only one missing, and she was at home with the babysitter.