Gerard by Kathi S. Barton

them places, he’d smelled like raw meat and dirty grease for hours after he’d gotten off work. One day working that shit had made him see the light. Robbery was the only way to get ahead in this world as far as he was concerned.
    He had standards too, by God. And they didn’t have him working in a fast food place. He ate there, he didn’t fucking work there. Not in this lifetime , he thought.
    He leaned back against the headboard and tried to think what he was gonna do now. There wasn’t any way for him to get credit. His money was all gone, too. Ernie had spent it for the gun he’d had to have almost as soon as he’d been released. He wasn’t supposed to have it, being a con and all, but he wanted it and had bought it. Nobody was going to tell him what to do.
    There was the possibility that he could go out and stick a place up, or rob some shit that had more money than he did smarts, but that would require him to get up and move. And right now, Ernie was comfy right where he was. He kicked off his shoes and wiggled his toes. The hole in his sock made him laugh, but he only had the one pair. Life had to get better soon or he was gonna be naked, he thought.
    The real money was in the fucking daughter, but figuring out how to get to her and get it, that was the question. He was her sire, as well as the one she answered to, and she’d better by God remember that. But she was slick, he’d give her that. Making sure she was put with him in the same prison had cost him, and it hadn’t even worked out that way. All the work he’d put into her getting caught and all was wasted. Bitch.
    The monitor on his ankle burned him, but he didn’t give two shits. He hated to have it on him, someone knowing where he was all the fucking time, but it wasn’t as bad as being at one of them halfway houses, and a damned sight better than being in prison again. So long as he was out and not in one of those monitored houses, he could put up with a little discomfort. And what did he care if they wasted their time by putting it on him? He knew for a fact that they didn’t really monitor them. He’d been all over this city since he’d been out, and not one cop had come to ask him what he was doing.
    He glanced over at the bag that his first and only purchase had come in. The gun, bought and paid for with money the state had given him when he’d been let out, was to make Susan do what she was told if she gave him any shit. And he was almost hoping she would try it.
    Just before she’d run off when she’d been a kid, he’d beaten her. Maybe he had gone a little over the top with his fists, but his cat had wanted more, so he let him have a go at her too. Frowning, he remembered something else about that day, something that had made him not try to find her for a while. She’d healed.
    As his daughter, there was no way she could heal herself after he applied his superiorness to her. Smiling, he knew that his cat was bigger and meaner than she’d ever be, and he was positive that so long as she lived, no male would ever get close enough to her to become her mate. She was pretty enough, he supposed, but she was weird. And men, especially ones he knew, did not go for weird. Then there was the added fact that he had final say over everything she did. She was his.
    The phone ringing startled him. He knew that it could only be one person…his parole officer, or in this case reporter. Neither the guy he’d been dealing with in finding Susan nor the girl herself had his number, but he did have the burner number, the phone he’d picked up a week ago, to make his calls. Picking it up, he didn’t say a word until the person on the other end either hung up or spoke first. He wasn’t above playing petty games.
    “Then I guess you don’t want what I know.” The man then hung up. He had no idea who it had been, and he felt a slight tremor of fear slide over his body. What did he want? And more so, how did he get this number? He’d been told