Page 2 of Unraveled

“Chicago isn’t home,” Cara snapped.

Tommas took a sharp inhale. Cara was even surprised at her outburst, colored heavily with anger. Her brother’s silent response was answer enough. Cara wished that she could check her temper toward her brother, but she didn’t have anything to give him, but for her anger.

Her brother—more than anyone left living that she loved—knew how she felt about Chicago. Or … her parents.

Or rather, the remaining parent she had left.

Addiction, hate, and pain. That was all their childhood had ever been. It was all that was left in Chicago.

“Ma would like to see—”

Cara stopped her brother before he could even attempt to say more. “I don’t give a shit about Ma, Tommas.”

Tommas cleared his throat. “She lost her husband. Give her a break, Cara.”

“A man she hated. A man she only pretended to love and only when she was drunk. A man she beat on. A man she put first before her children. So, her husband is dead, big fucking deal. I doubt she feels even an ounce of the hell that I’ve been living with for four months.”

“We don’t know what goes on inside Ma’s head.”

“I don’t need to know. Her soul is black. Her heart is black. She should be dead like he is. We would all be far better off without them both.”

“Cara.”

The truth hurt, but it was better than a blissful lie. Those hurt worse in the end.

Cara and Lea had been eighteen years old when they’d left. Dual Canadian citizenship and the family ties they had in Ontario got them away from their abusive, alcoholic parents. Tommas, however, had been long gone from the house by the time the twins left.

Tommas also had ties to the Chicago Outfit—a criminal organization that had been bred deep into their family’s blood and name for decades—like their father. It was all he knew. Leaving Chicago, and the Outfit, had never been a thought in her brother’s mind.

Now, seven years later, Cara was twenty-five, their sister was dead, and nothing was going to ever be the same again. Tommas thought going back where she hated the most, to the people of the Outfit that he called family and the place that had taken Lea from her, would fix this.

It never would.

“I’m not going back to Chicago,” Cara said after a long stretch of silence.

“Ever?” Tommas asked.

There was no judgement in his tone. He’d asked it with very little emotion, as though he already knew exactly what her answer would be.

“Not if I can help it, Tommas.”

Cara waited for those words to sink in, hoping that her brother finally got the point. She loved Tommas, even if their relationship was strained from years of separation and the past. She knew that Tommas loved her, too.

“I don’t think you understand how difficult it is to get up in the morning. I pass her bedroom and try not to breakdown. I still have all of Lea’s things. They litter this apartment from top to bottom.” Cara couldn’t bear the thought of getting rid of any of it. But she could barely stand to look at it all, either. “The apartment—and even Toronto—is basically the same thing. I struggle daily, to even leave the apartment and get done what I need to do. Every place I visit, all the sights I see, are touched by a memory of Lea. And that hurts,” Cara said quietly.

There was a lot she didn’t say, too.

Her college marks were suffering, her dream of becoming a therapist diminishing with missed classes. Frankly, she needed to be the one talking to a therapist, but that meant opening the front door and going outside.

It felt like her heart was ripping apart at the seams, the second her hand touched the front doorknob. She was leaving behind the only tangible ties to her sister that were not merely memories.

She was so useless like this.

Broken.

Incomplete.

Without.