Page 8 of Nightmare’s Playground

I closed my eyes.

Fuck me.

The last thing my sister needed was some truancy officer breathing down her neck because her kid was missing school for no good reason. She had enough people breathing down her neck as it was.

“What’s wrong, Uncle Jax?” Samuel asked, patting my cheek with his sticky hand.

“Nothin’, bud.”

Angel shuffled into the living room with Mathew on her shoulder. The baby was wailing, and my sister looked like death warmed over.

Taking her in, I frowned.

She looked bad. Like bad, bad.

Hair up in a topknot on her head, her eyes were glassy and her nose was red.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She turned her head and coughed into the crook of her arm. “The flu. I’m pretty sure Memo’s client yesterday gave me this shit. The man sneezed on me twice. Don’t people know when they’re sick they should keep their asses home? The rest of us don’t want to share their germs.”

I agreed one thousand percent.

Until a few months ago, my sister had been a stay-at-home mom. Then her husband walked out, and she had to figure out real quick how to feed three kids and put a roof over their heads.

Pee Wee, my other sister’s husband and the VP of the club, had put in a good word with Memo, and now Angel was answering his phones and helping him organize his new office above Heaven’s Door.

“Hear anything from you know who?” I asked, my eyes sliding to the boys to make sure they weren’t listening.

Angel’s red, glassy eyes narrowed. “No. He isn’t returning my calls.”

I was going to have to do something about her no-good husband—soon to be ex if I had anything to say about it.

I’d never met Jake. He’d come and gone while I was sitting in Potosi prison, but from what McKenna told me about the man, he was a fucking bum.

He was apparently always drinking, had a mean temper, and couldn’t hold a job longer than two months. Then he’d stepped out on my sister after Mathew was born.

She’d followed him to a motel off the highway and sat in the parking lot until he’d come out of a room with another woman. She confronted him about it, and he didn’t even bother to deny it. Then, like the little bitch he was, he packed a bag and left.

Fucker.

Angel shifted Mathew to her other shoulder and swayed on her feet.

“Whoa,” I hurried over and took the baby. “Pack ‘em a bag. I’ll take ‘em to my new place for the night.”

My sister’s whole body wilted with relief. “You’re a lifesaver,” she said, already rushing down the hall.

The baby stopped crying the second he hit my chest. He blinked up at me with big wet eyes, hiccuped, and shoved his fist in his mouth.

“Yeah,” I told him. “I know.”

His momma needed a break.

While I waited for my sister to gather up stuff for the boys, I dropped down onto the edge of the couch and looked around.

“Jesus.”

The place was a fucking wreck.