AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In the dead of the night, they’d come, visions of terror and brutality overtaking my mind.
Carnage.
A sea of rage and anger took hold of me. I started failing my classes because I couldn’t sleep due to all the nightmares.
Memories.
Mom put her hands on both my arms, and Sloane was standing up. The only person still sitting was Wolf, and he appeared completely dumbstruck. He didn’t understand what I’d said, and I probably wouldn’t either. This was me, and though raising my fists in the past when I believed in something wasn’t a foreign concept, the things I’d been doing during my nights while away at college had been. I’d beaten some dudes down almost to the point of death.
I always knew that point and didn’t go that far. The fight would stop then, but it was never me to stop it. I’d always been in a haze and borderline blacked out.
“Fighting, yes, I…” I tried to focus on my mom’s eyes and less on my siblings’ stares. I wavered a little, though, and Dad guided me to sit.
Everyone was sitting then. Like they were the audience and I was some fucked-up storyteller. Dad raised a hand. “Let’s back up. You were fighting? Did you need money, son? Was it money you were fighting for?”
That would make sense, wouldn’t it, and though I spent the money, I certainly hadn’t needed it. My parents provided everything I needed while away at school.
The bulk of the money had gone back into training for my fights. I’d fought guys two and sometimes three times my size. The size hadn’t mattered in the end. I trained hard, got big, and they always went down, always.
I shook my head, kind of ashamed it wasn’t about the money. That would be a sane reason.
I put my face in my hands, and someone put their hand on my back, rubbing. I didn’t want my family’s sympathy.
“Why were you fighting, then?” Mom asked, and when I glanced up, she had her eyes on Dad. My siblings’ focus was glued to me. Mom cocked her head. “And you got kicked out of school for it?”
I’d come to find out my university had a zero-tolerance policy for that shit. Illegal betting. Fighting.
Sure didn’t stop me.
Again, it was the only thing that could distract me from the visions in my head. Whenever I closed my eyes at night, I saw suffering and an old man’s pleas. I saw the whites of his eyes before I pulled the trigger and unloaded a gun in his old fucking chest. He was the man who hurt my sister and nearly destroyed all our lives.
A man I’d called a friend.
I had allowed a nightmare into my sister’s and my life back in high school. He’d been responsible for taking her away from her true family, the Mallicks, when she’d been a baby. The fucker would have hurt her more had I not stopped it, and I didn’t regret what I’d done. I would have done it ten times over.
Killed him.
“Yeah, I got kicked out. School had a zero-tolerance policy for fighting and illegal betting,” I explained, suddenly feeling crowded. I got up so I could breathe, and the rustling around me let me know my family was getting up too.
“Bru, we don’t understand.”
That was my sister’s voice, and it physically pained me to hear the concern. Concern for me. She finally got her perfect life, and I didn’t want to ruin it with my shit.
I turned to find she’d been directly behind me, and our parents were behind her. They were all waiting for answers, and though Wolf clearly was too, he stayed back. His fingers clenched like he was at war.
Wolf’s jaw moved. “Was it because of me? Me and everything that happened last year with my cancer?”
Everyone looked at him and appeared even more confused. Maybe because they didn’t get why my brother falling ill would ever be the reason I started fighting. Their brains literally didn’t think to go that route, but Ares’s did.
This didn’t surprise me. I’d gotten to know my brother and, hell, our friends a lot since they’d come into my life. Thatcher, Dorian, Wells, and Wolf all tended to deal with their problems in anger.
Violence.
They didn’t deal with their feelings. They avoided. It was a bond I hadn’t been sure I shared until I had gone away, but the desire to deal with shit that way hadn’t always been there. I hadn’t always been fucked up.
Death. Carnage.
I closed my eyes and couldn’t even look at my brother, ashamed. I shook my head. “Nah, Wolf,” I said, then faced our parents, and I swallowed. “And I fought people… hurt them because I liked it.”
