Malakai

Malakai Sins of the Fathers Book 1 Autumn Bridges Copyright Copyright © 2023 Autumn Bridges Cover Copyright © 2023 Autumn Bridges All rights reserved This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The purchase of this ebook allows you to only one legal copy for your own personal reading on your own personal device or computer. You do NOT have resell or distribution rights without the permission of the publisher and copyright owner of this book. Do not copy in any way. Warning:This book contains scenes of sexual situations between two or more consenting men. Contents 1. Chapter One 2. Chapter Two 3. Chapter Three 4. Chapter Four 5. Chapter Five 6. Chapter Six 7. Chapter Seven 8. Chapter Eight 9. Chapter Nine 10. Chapter Ten 11. Chapter Eleven 12. Chapter Twelve 13. Chapter Thirteen 14. Chapter Fourteen 15. Chapter Fifteen 16. Chapter Sixteen 17. Chapter Seventeen 18. Chapter Eighteen 19. Chapter Nineteen 20. Chapter Twenty 21. Chapter Twenty-One 22. Chapter Twenty-Two 23. Chapter Twenty-Three 24. Chapter Twenty-Four 25. Chapter Twenty-Five 26. Chapter Twenty-Six 27. Epilogue About Autumn Bridges Chapter One The sweet, cool air of autumn blew through Malakai Brent’s greasy hair. It was always greasy, even five minutes after washing it, and working at the local greasy spoon didn’t help. The smell of bacon grease and onions always clung to him like a spoiled child. He drove his old Dodge Ram pickup down the bumpy dirt road toward the house that he shared with Dutch. Dutch Connors was a pitiful brute, fists before words, snarls before smiles. Mal had begun to hate the guy about three minutes after they got together, but it wasn’t like he had an option. Who’d want an overly tall, overly skinny, pimple faced freak like him? That was how Mal saw it and he’d had very little feedback to the opposite. His friends at work, sure, they told him he was better than he thought, but they were his friends. They were supposed to say things like that. The house where he stopped needed a paint job badly. Malakai could barely tell it was supposed to be blue. Right behind him, the mailman, Carl Rodriguez stopped and instead of placing the mail in the box at the end of the drive, he got out of his mail truck and started toward Mal. He was a jolly man with the belly to match, and as he made his way up the little slope of the driveway, he waved the mail at Mal. “Hi, Mr. Rodriguez.” “Hey, Mal, my boy. How is the diner?” He moaned playfully. “It’s a diner. Meatloaf special today, so we had a lot of people. I’ll never get why they like that stuff so much.” “Now, listen here, kiddo,” he began as his bushy salt-and-pepper brows creased hard. “I used to love the stuff. Miss it! The missus won’t let me have red meat anymore. Cholesterol and all, you know. My mother made a meatloaf that just made ya feel all warm and loved. Memories, Mal, that’s why people eat a lot of the food they do.” “Comfort food, they call it. Right?” “Yessiree, fella.” After grabbing Mal’s hand, he slapped the stack of envelopes there and started back to his truck with a wave. “Thanks, Mr. Rodriguez!” The stack included the usual; bills, second and final notices, of course. The problem with Dutch, well, one of the problems with Dutch, was that he worked sporadically and he drank what he made. In fact, he drank what Mal made too, so Mal would have to take extra shifts to make up for it. It looked like he’d be working plenty of doubles for the next couple weeks. He came across a letter that wasn’t one of the former, not a final notice, and in fact, wasn’t from a creditor at all. “Shuster and McMillan,” he read from the return address. “Weird.” After getting into the backdoor, the hinges squealing in protest as he opened it, Mal slid his bony finger under the glued flap and quickly got a paper cut. “Damn!” he spat offhandedly, and without looking, opened the screen door and stepped into his self-made prison. Setting the rest of the mail on the wobbly table, trying not to see the pile of empty beer cans littering the kitchen counter in the corner of his eye, Mal finished opening the envelope and accidentally dropped the keys to the linoleum. “That you?” he heard from the next room over the sound of WWF grunts and groans on the television. “Yeah,” he said aloud, and then under his breath, he whispered sarcastically, “Like who the hell else would come here?” Mal pulled out a legal document from the envelope, and suddenly it became clear what this was about. Just then Dutch came into the kitchen, holding another empty. “What’s that shit?” Being too late to hide it, Mal handed over the letter and started collecting the empties into the trash can. “Just a letter from a lawyer.” “I can see that, idiot. Who’s this Constantina Leopold?” Mal had heard of her, sure. That was his mother’s bitch of a mother. Or so his dad had said enough times. Mal may have met her but he didn’t remember it. He’d lost his mother at his birth and his father had hated him since. Mal took the letter back timidly. Mal had killed his father’s beautiful love. “My grandmother.” Dutch snatched the letter from him and mocked, “Fancy-smancy lawyers. Maybe she left you a shitload of money. I sure could use that.” Barely keeping his mouth closed, biting back the words he wanted to spit at Dutch, Mal gently took back the letter from him and read the time and place. Four-thirty on Thursday, their offices in Denver. “I sure