Page 104 of Beautiful Scars

“Fucking hell.”

He smiles, but it’s not a happy one. “That wasn’t even the worst one. I remember one time sitting in McDonald’s because he’d won some money on a horse, and he pointed to this woman at another table and told us that was her. She looked nice, all posh with her laptop. But by that time we’d learned his games.”

“That explains a lot,” I tell him.

He narrows his eyes at me from across the car, and instantly I regret saying it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just mean... Cole.” I’ve only met Cole a handful of times, and my opinion of him hasn’t changed since the first day I laid eyes on him.

He chuckles and looks back at the road. “Cole’s complicated. I know you don’t like him—I don’t like him either.” He shakes his head. “But he can’t be blamed for the way he is.”

“Then how come you’re not that way?” I hope he knows what I mean. Cillian’s fucked up, but he’s better than Cole. I wouldn’t be sitting in a car next to his brother if they paid me a million Rand. Make that a billion, given the exchange rate these days.

Cillian lets out a sigh. “I learned to switch it off. Cole didn’t.”

“So why do you listen to him?”

“That’s a long and fucking complicated story, Meisie.”

I spread my hands, trying for casual. “Got nothing but time, Don Cillianos.”

When he swallows instead of chuckling like I’d expected him to, my chest tightens up. Before answering, he lights himself a cigarette. When he opens both the front windows with a switch on his door’s console, fresh air and tobacco-tainted smoke pummel into me, sending my hair flapping against my face.

“You need to understand our dad. He was a fucking cancer. I see a lot of him in Cole, but Dad could turn into me with the flick of a switch—cold and ruthless—and that’s a terrible combination. He’d do little games to turn us against each other.”

“Like what?”

Cillian shrugs, and I hold on to my seatbelt while we take a roundabout way too fast. “Like, he’d lock one of us in a cupboard, and give the other one a new bike. He’d throw us out of the house and only let one back in. If one of us fucked up, he’d take his belt to the other one and pretend he’d forgotten which one was which. Cole spent a lot of time jealous, which he’s never managed to grow out of.”

“Good God.”

“Aye. We were ten when Cole decided I needed to kill him.”

My mouth drops open, but I quickly cover it with the palm of my hand.

He looks over at me and chuckles. “Well Kill is my name, so it had to be me. Can’t beat a ten-year-old’s logic, right?”

I have no idea where I dredge up the courage to ask. “Did you?”

He just looks straight ahead out of the window without answering, the wind snatching smoke from his lips.

I slide my hand across the car and rest it on his thigh. I don’t know why I’m doing it, but it just feels like something that needs to be done.

He looks down at my hand, just a glance, and then clears his throat. “We stole a bottle of Vodka from the shop and waited for him to get home. You should have seen the look on Dad’s face—proud as punch. Cole loved it, sat on his knee and watched the boxing with him while Dad drank it straight. I thought Cole was going to back out, because he was in Dad’s good books. So I just did it. Without thinking twice. When he finally passed out, Cole fast asleep in his arms, I stole his lighter and set the curtains on fire. Woke Cole up, and we both ran out of the house and watched it burn down from the neighbor’s front garden.”

I swallow. There’s no emotion on his face. Not a flicker. Not even a wobble in his voice. Only facts. Black and white. “And you’ve just been listening to him ever since?”

“It’s what we do. He thinks shit up, and I implement.” He turns and winks at me. “We’ve made it this far.”

* * *

It’s only when we pull up to a brick-face building and Cillian stops the car that I realize I haven’t been paying attention to where he was driving.

Tell me, Meisie, are you still sure you want to escape?

I push Trish’s voice right the fuck out of my mind.

“This it?” I duck my head, trying to spot the restaurant’s name, but it looks like Cillian’s driven us into the middle of a warehouse district, despite the handful of cars dotting the curb here and there.