“Do you really want to know?”
“I want to know everything about you. Anything you’ll tell me.”
My lips press to his forehead, and I close my eyes. “Fine. I was eighteen, watching my brother through the glass. He was down there, and I was high above him. He had no fucking idea I was there, or he’d die …”
15
TATE
18 years old
At least, that’s what I think he’d do. Luke chose this form of fucking martyrdom, fighting in Uncle Jasper’s underground ring, and I’m left with little choice but to let him have it. The man is older, but Luke’s bigger. More skilled. I don’t worry about his body when he fights; he can handle the beating, but how many more punches can his soul take?
It weighs on him, punching people. Luke’s not like me. I don’t think twice about punching someone in the throat if I need to. That’s what happens when you’re not powerful enough. You’re forced to do another person’s bidding, feed them tiny pieces of your soul until you’re running on fumes and mercy.
Once I’m like Uncle Jasper, I’ll beat him at his own game. My soul will be dead by then, snuffed out, but Luke’s will live on. He can have enough soul for both of us, and that will have been worth losing my own.
The door bursts open. I do a quick brush-down on my suit jacket, smoothing it in place. Uncle Jasper expects perfection. If he doesn’t get it, there’s hell to pay. But it’s not hard for mesince I expect so much from myself. What I don’t like are all his fucking rules. I might be eighteen, but I’ll never be out from under his thumb until the bastard dies. When I demanded he teach me everything he knows, I didn’t expect to become his life-long protégé.
Clarence is to his right, always flanking him when he’s at these events like a lovesick puppy, always turning his nose up at me. Half the time I’m in trouble with Uncle Jasper; Clarence is behind it somehow. One day I’m going to fuck him up so bad for that.
There’s a stormy look on Uncle’s face, his steel-blue eyes and white hair making him look like a mafia version of Jack Frost. VanCourts are large creatures, generally, but Uncle Jasper towers over us all.
“Uncle, you wanted to see me?”
“Yes. I’m here to give you the verdict on draft season.” Clarence’s smirk isn’t comforting. He knows what’s coming for me. “You’re going to college instead. You can play hockey there.”
“Sir, I can be drafted and defer so that I can still attend college if that’s what you’d prefer,” I say as if he doesn’t know. He fucking knows.
“What I’d prefer is for you to do what you’re fucking told. You were in charge of the alcohol for this weekend’s event, yes?”
He’s just being an obtuse prick. We both know I was—despite the fact that I’m underage. Not that I’m drinking any of it. Luke would fucking kill me. “Yes, sir. I secured the order. It should have been delivered last night. I planned to check on it after our meeting.”
“No need. It didn’t arrive, and it’s not going to. You bought from the Salvatores, I told you to deal with the Kanatovas.”
“Those goddamn assholes. I assure you I’ll deal with them, Uncle.”
“I’ve already dealt with the situation. Why didn’t you obey me?”
“The Kanatovas were overcharging. The Salvatores were giving us a deal.”
“The Salvatores are unreliable, and if you’d looked at the records of our past interactions with them, you would have known that.”
I’d speak, but my fucking heart’s about to stop. Maybe it already has, frozen in my chest. I was meticulous, I’m always meticulous. Ididlook at the records—every godforsaken record we had about alcohol, or so I thought. I couldn’t find anything about the Salvatores.
Uncle Jasper won’t be interested in my excuses. I missed something, end of story.
“I was trying to save you money, sir.”
“Save me money? I’m out a ten-thousand-dollar liquor order and the sales for tonight.”
Clarence’s smug little smirk makes sense now. He must have been dreaming of this moment all day, me humiliated, stripped of what I want most.
“Sir, I deserve to be punished for my fuck up, but barring me from the draft altogether? That’s overkill.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not your punishment. It’s good sense. You’re not ready to be me, and you won’t be if you don’t learn some goddamn discipline. You’re going to college, you’re getting the degree I tell you to fucking get, and then I have plans for you.”
This is how I know the string of “experts” Uncle Jasper took me to is right about at least some of their diagnoses. There’s rage and frustration, but instead of defeat or the cavern of self-rumination that the rest of the world would fall into, my mind spins with every possibility, every angle to turn this back into my favor. The irony that it was Uncle Jasper who taught me how todo that effectively isn’t lost on me. But once his mind is made up, that’s the end of it.
