Page 87 of Beautiful Scars

Fair enough. Helen’s good. Really good. And Meisie has given no clues. Not that I’ve really pushed her on it much. In fact, we haven’t mentioned it since that night.

That night.

The night that changed everything, and nothing.

I’d like to believe it was a turning point for us... like what I told her could have been true. That broken people can be fixed just as easily as broken forts. But I don’t know if I really believe that anymore. When I woke up that night I had the best of intentions. I was going to take her up the stairs, give her a bedroom. Make this easier on her.

I didn’t do any of that.

I didn’t take her upstairs and give her a bedroom for a whole fucking week.

I didn’t do much of anything other than fuck her for a whole fucking week.

Meisie had a nightmare? I bent her over and fucked her.

Started staring into space? I tied her to the bed and fucked her.

Burst into tears for no reason? I gave her something to cry about.

Does any of that make sense? Highly fucking doubt it. But it gave her something else to focus on. It gave her someone to be angry at who wasn’t herself or her cretin of a mother. Or the bastard before me who made her this way.

“And this Alex cunt?”

“Nothing yet,” he says, taking another sharp inhale. “I have a contact in Joburg who’s trying to put the pieces together. That’s how I found the lead on the sprog, but their records down there are a nightmare.”

I nod my head. It’s only a matter of time.

The pair of us stand in silence for a while before the heavy warehouse door swings open and out strolls my brother.

“Smoke,” he demands.

“That was quick,” I tell him, shoving the packet into his outstretched hand.

“Dimitri Vasiliev. That’s who’s paying him.”

“Fuck me,” Derek says.

Dimitri is the head of a wanna-be West Coast organization, as Russian as he sounds, and a perpetual pain in our arses. There was supposed to be an agreement in place. We’d put all of our shit aside until this business with Ford was dealt with.

Apparently gentlemen’s agreements aren’t enough for crazy Russian bastards if he was indeed responsible for busting our shipment the night I met Meisie.

“I want his head, Kill,” Cole says.

As if I don’t have enough on my plate. “You’ll get it. But we have bigger problems.”

Cole blows out his draw and stares at me with a look that would frighten anyone not blood-related. “And who’s fucking fault is that?”

I take a step forward. That’s all it usually takes with my brother. He can do whatever he wants with words, with orders, but at the end of the day we both know which one of us keeps themselves stable enough to come out on top.

“Cillian,” Derek warns.

Cole snaps his head around, giving Derek the same look as he just gave me.

“I said you’ll get his head, and I’ll give you it,” I tell him.

He throws his cigarette onto the ground and crushes it under his shoe. “Good. Now we have a rare old mess to clean up in there, and I need to go and see a man about a dog. If there’s nothing else?”

Cole doesn’t wait for a reply before he turns and walks away, his BMW X7 lighting up the street with a press of his key.