BLOOD TIES (Decklan Jennings Thriller Book 1) by Philip Duncan (book recommendations for young adults txt) 📕

He managed to pull into his driveway and get out of his truck. Now he was standing in front of his door, still not wanting to go inside, but he had no choice. He swung the front door open and looked inside his empty house.

For you, my bride. For you, baby girl. For you, my son. I will do whatever it takes to make things right. You will soon be able to rest in peace. I promise.

CHAPTER 6

This is the first night that Decklan would have to sleep, or try to sleep, in his house since losing his family. He wasn’t sure how he was going to manage to get any rest, let alone sleep through the night, but he knew he had to try. Although he had trained his body and mind to run on little to no sleep, thanks to the special forces, he knew sleep was better than no sleep. He needed to be as sharp as possible mentally and physically if he was going to track the killers down and not die in the process.

Unfortunately, this would be no easy feat. He couldn’t get his mind to turn off for even a second. He just kept replaying that video in his head over and over again, and blaming himself for not being there to protect his family.

He just kept thinking about how he would never hear his little princess laugh again. The laugh that would light up his whole world on his worst days. How he would never get to teach his son how to be a man and more importantly how to treat a woman. How he would never get to hold his wife again and tell her how much he loved her and how she was his saving grace. His wife was the only person in the world who could talk him off a cliff and calm him down no matter how bad the situation was. She was the only one who could contain his demons, and she was the reason he didn’t drink himself into an early grave.

But none of that mattered now. No one was here to keep him in check. He had a way of spiraling out of control like a category four hurricane, destroying anything in his path and leaving nothing behind but destruction.

His destructive streak started in high school when he and his little brother were left alone after both their parents were taken from them in a fatal car crash. It was then that he experienced his first loss, and he didn’t handle it well. He quickly turned to alcohol and sex. He was drinking any chance he got, and showing up to school drunk half the time.

On top of that, he was sleeping with most of the girls in school, which was like playing a game of chance. Make one wrong move and everything changes, which is exactly what happened. He got a girl pregnant, but she lost the baby twenty weeks into her pregnancy. His second experience with loss. After continuing with his destructive behavior, he decided he needed a fresh start. He needed to get away and go somewhere new. Right after graduation, he enlisted in the military.

He told Parker what he was doing and left no room for discussion. He was leaving and Parker would be on his own. Decklan leaving was the main reason for their strained relationship, even after all these years.

The military was the first place where he felt like he could be his true self. He could channel all his rage and energy into being a soldier. And he loved it. Being a soldier gave him purpose and drive, and he was a damn good soldier.

Special Forces Army Ranger was his choice. He could remember seeing a YouTube video one time about these guys and he thought they looked like the baddest, toughest, hardest men alive. So this was who he wanted to become. And that was exactly what he did. He graduated at the top of his class, despite not being the fastest guy, or the strongest, or even the smartest. But he had something that very few people have in this life: a relentless will to succeed no matter what.

The forces taught him many things that he carried with him into his life afterwards. They taught him discipline, but more importantly self-discipline. They taught him how to take extreme ownership of every situation, no matter what, because the buck stops with you. And they taught him loyalty, which was important not only in war but in life.

He was deployed three times in the span of four years. He got to experience war in the truest form. He lost a lot of friends along the way. After his last deployment, Decklan was almost numb to the feeling of loss. The chance that every soldier would make it back home was almost nonexistent. Unfortunately, no amount of lives lost in battle could have ever prepared him for this. It wasn’t fair, but then again, what did fair even mean?

Now what? he thought to himself as he was drinking his black coffee at his kitchen table. I have to figure out my next move.

He still didn't have the first clue who could be behind this. He figured it could be someone from his past that he pissed off, which was easy to do in his line of work. He’d been tagging and bagging bad guys for years. The only thing he could think to do was trace his jobs backwards, starting with his most recent one.

Okay, two months ago I busted some scumbag drug dealer in New York. He was pissed off and made many threats that seemed baseless and far-fetched. Also, he wasn’t exactly the kind of guy with enough connections or enough street cred to track me and my family all the way down here in South Carolina. Next.

He ran through job after job in his head and none of them seemed like