The Dark Prince's Prize

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Outside Casper, Wyoming

“Samara! Samara! Where in the hell are you?”

Rob’s loud, angry voice shattered the peaceful morning. The screen door slammed, punctuating his foul mood. A moment later, Samara heard heavy footsteps on the wooden porch.

She grimaced when Rob yelled for her again. Pursing her lips, she tightened the last bolt on the new alternator she had just installed. Closing the hood of the old Ford truck, she grabbed a stained towel from the bench and exited the mechanic’s garage.

The truck was the only thing of value Pa left her when he died three years ago. Everything else—the house, the auto repair shop on the same lot, along with their contents, and the ten acres of land surrounding them had gone to her brothers. Well, all of them except for Wilson.

Wilson didn’t get a damn thing but his freedom. He had disappeared one afternoon four years ago after a fight with their father. Personally, she thought he got the best deal of the entire family. They hadn’t heard from him since. Samara didn’t blame Wilson for wanting to escape the hellhole they called home.

As for her, she focused all of her energy on saving every penny she made working at Paul Grove’s ranch. She started working there when she was sixteen, after she got her driver’s license. Fortunately, she didn’t live too far from the ranch—twelve miles as the crow flies, but longer on the winding roads of Casper Mountain. Paul’s ranch covered thousands of acres.

Samara’s thoughts grudgingly returned to her home. It was only a matter of time before her remaining four brothers lost this repair shop. None of them had ever held a job for more than a few months before they quit or were fired. They wouldn’t even consider working on any kind of engine. They couldn’t be bothered to change the oil in their own cars, and they weren’t about to do it for someone else’s vehicle.

Her Pa, Samuel Lee-Stephens, had inherited the house and the old auto repair shop just outside of town from his dad. Pa had been a hard worker, but his luck was lousy. Every time he had come close to paying it off, he would have to borrow against it again. The last time was to pay for her mom’s medical bills.

Pa was too stubborn to sell the family’s roots here. He was born and raised in Casper and said he would die here. The sad part was he died not long after making that statement.

Her brothers hadn’t sold the property because as long as they made the minimum payment each month, they had a place to hide all the illegal s**t they were doing. That was another reason Samara wanted to get out—before the Feds and local law enforcement descended and discovered what true lowlifes most of the Lee-Stephens’ men were.

She wiped her dirty hands on the stained rag and walked across the yard. She pursed her lips when she saw Rob’s disheveled appearance. His light brown hair was sticking up, his plaid shirt was hanging open to reveal the beer belly he no longer bothered to hide, and the button on his jeans was undone.

I don’t know why I made Mama that promise, she thought as a wave of disgust filled her.

For the hundredth time, she wished her dad had been more like Paul Grove. Maybe then she could really do something with her life. As it was, her biggest fear was ending up like her Ma—pregnant, married to the wrong man, and almost grateful when the doctor told her she had brain cancer.

Even the thought of being stuck with a man like her dad made her want to swear off men forever. Some women were destined to make bad choices when it came to men. Her Ma had and so had her grandma. Angelina Lee-Stephens said it was the curse of the women in their family.

Once again, she felt envious of Trisha Grove. Trisha had an awesome dad in the good, attentive, and loving Paul Grove. Samara’s father had been so mean that the only ones to show up for his funeral other than herself was Paul Grove—out of respect for her—and the attorney hired by Pa to redo his will after Wilson left. A week after he changed his will, Samuel Lee-Stephens died while working on an old tractor he was hoping to sell.

Her brothers did what they had always done—they played poker, got drunk, and ended up in jail. She had been half-tempted to leave them then and there, but she had promised her Ma that she would watch over them for as long as she could. It didn’t matter that they were all older than she was. It looked like that promise was about to come back and bite her in the a*s again.

“What do you want?” she called out before Rob opened his mouth to yell again.

Her brother’s dark brown eyes still had a slight glaze to them. He also had a whopper of a black eye and a busted lip. She wiggled her nose with distaste when he reached into his pants and scratched his crotch.

“You got any money? Jerry and Brit need bail,” he said.

She shook her head. “Nope. My truck needed parts,” she answered.

Rob’s eyes narrowed at her obvious lie. “If they don’t show up at work in an hour, they’ll be fired. Where’s the title?” he asked.

Anger built inside her. “You aren’t pawning my truck to bail them out. I need it. If they don’t show up for work, that’s not my problem,” she retorted.

Rob pulled his hand out of his pants and stepped to the edge of the porch. He had that mean gleam in his eyes that always made her wary. He had never hit her, but he had come close a few times—as evidenced by the holes in the walls throughout the house.

“Without their pay, we can’t make the mortgage payment. If we miss the payment, you’ll be living in that piece of s**t on four wheels,” he snapped.

“What happened to Gary? Why don’t you ask him if he’s got any money?” she demanded.

“He lost it—plus some last night. He was on a winning streak and some two-bit asshole played him like a fiddle,” Rob replied.

She shook her head and waved the dirty rag at him. “I’m done with the lot of you. If you guys lose this place, that’s not my problem anymore. Mr. Andrews said I could move into the apartment in the barn over at Paul Grove’s Ranch,” she lied.

“You promised Ma, Samara!” Rob yelled before he cursed. “Damn it, either you bail them out or….”

“Or what, Rob? You and the others have sold everything of value. The little bit of furniture that’s left won’t get you twenty-five dollars. You’ve got nothing left and you’re sure as hell not getting my truck,” she snapped.

Rob looked her up and down. A shiver of unease swept through her when he shoved his hands in his pockets and looked over her head. She warily waited for him to drop whatever bombshell he thought would force her to help him.

“I told you that Gary lost his paycheck plus some,” he said, looking at her again.

She shifted agitatedly from one foot to the other. “Yeah, so,” she replied.

“The plus some was an IOU,” he said.

“So? What’s that got to do with me? What’d he promise this time? His first born? The kid would probably be better off,” she retorted with a shrug.

Rob shook his head. “Nope—you,” he answered.

Samara staggered back and shook her head. There was no way Rob could have just said what he did. Gary—her own brother—wouldn’t sell her to cover a poker debt.

“You’re lying,” she finally responded through gritted teeth.

Rob shook his head again. “Nope. If Jerry and Brit work, and we sell your truck, we can pay back part of the debt this month and more each month until it’s paid off,” he said.

“How much? How much did Gary lose this time?” she demanded, clenching her fists.

For once, Rob had the decency to look ashamed. He bowed his head and scratched the bottom of his bare foot on the edge of the porch. She silently hoped he would get a splinter.

“Ten grand,” he mumbled.

She blinked, wishing she had misheard him. “Ten thousand dollars? Gary lost ten thousand dollars in a poker game?” Her head felt light, and she was worried that she might faint. That frightened her more than dealing with the situation. If she fainted, who knew what her freaking brothers might do to her? She shook her head to clear it. “Gary doesn’t make that much in six months! Hell, the lot of you combined barely bring that home! How could he be so stupid? Why the hell did you guys let him do something that stupid?” she demanded in a faint voice.

Rob angrily waved his hand at her. “I told you, Gary was on a winning streak. Hell, he had already won more than that when the city slicker started buying drinks for everyone. What was he supposed to do, walk away?”

“Uh, yeah,” she retorted with a contemptuous glare.

Rob pursed his lips. “None of that matters now. We’ve got to get our hands on as much cash as possible. There’s a guy down at the distribution center who will pay top dollar for your truck. I know you’ve been stashing the money you’ve been making. I can ask Teresa for a loan. She’ll give me a hundred or two,” he said.

“Teresa won’t give you s**t. You burned your bridges with her a long time ago. The only thing she wants from you is s*x, and I know that can’t be worth two hundred bucks. Where is Gary? Why isn’t he taking care of the mess he made?” she snapped.

Rob glared at her as if all of this was her fault. “He’s in no shape to help at the moment. When he couldn’t pay up, that’s when the fight broke out. How do you think I ended up with a black eye and a busted lip and Jerry and Brit in jail? Turns out the guy Gary owes money to is pretty powerful in Vegas. If we don’t pay up, it’ll be more than this place and your truck, Samara. It’s our lives—and I mean all of us,” he stated.

Tears of anger and frustration blurred her vision before she blinked them away. She turned her back to Rob and slowly counted to twenty. Ten thousand dollars was more than she had. She had been saving every penny since she was ten years old, hiding it away in the garage where no one could find it. Despite the years of doing anything and everything she could to earn an extra dollar, including the four years of working part-time at the Grove Ranch, she didn’t have that kind of cash.

“I won’t sell my truck,” she said, not looking at him. “Once this is over—I’m done with you and the others. Wilson was right to get out of here. I don’t care if I have to live in the f*****g woods, do you understand me?” She turned and faced him again. “I’m through trying to save your asses when you don’t give a s**t about anyone but yourselves. If you want to waste your life, that’s your business. Keep me out of it.”

Rob smiled. “How much do you have?” he asked.

Samara stared back at Rob. He was very lucky she wasn’t holding the shotgun she kept under her bed for protection. The smug look on his face made her sick to her stomach.

“Twenty-five hundred,” she lied. “You, Jerry, and Brit can cough up the rest. You might want to start by selling that fancy new truck you’ve been hiding over in Teresa’s garage.”

A savage satisfaction swept through her when Rob’s smile turned into a scowl. She walked back to the garage. In minutes, she was holding the box containing every penny to her name. Glancing at her watch, she realized she would have to call Mason and tell him she would be a little late.

Samara would go to town and bail out her brothers. If Gary was lying low, he would be at Pat’s place above Teresa’s garage. She would never know what Teresa and her sister, Pat, saw in her brothers. She would give the money to help pay Gary’s gambling debt to Pat. There was no way in hell she would ever give it to her brothers. They would just gamble or drink it away.

“This is it, Ma. I know I promised you, but I’m never going to let Rob and the others use me again. I’ve got to make a change, and the only way I can do that is to end the cycle of bad decisions. I’m not carrying the Lee-Stephens baggage anymore,” she vowed, resting her hand on the old, rusted metal money box that once belonged to their mom.

She stashed the metal box under the driver’s seat of her truck and climbed in. By the time she pulled away, Rob had disappeared back into the clapboard house that desperately needed a coat of paint. The old truck bounced when she hit a pothole in the dirt driveway. She stopped the truck, looked both ways before turning right onto the highway, and headed to town.