Page 40 of Overkill

“No.” Marcus shook his head. Slowly at first, then faster and faster.

I felt awful for him. I did. If nothing else, he loved Luke. Looked up to him. Wanted to be like him.

Which made me glad he was dead.

“No! That…No!” He rose to his feet, his chair scraping back and falling to the floor. “He can’t be! Grays can’t drown! Grays know how to swim. We’re boat people.”

“But that Gray did,” I said quietly.

Good riddance.

“No! It can’t be true. You’re lying!” Every emotion crossed his face. Denial. Anger. Fear. Disbelief. Finally, it morphed into…hatred.

Of me.

“This is your fault,” he said. I flinched. Like his father, he had the ability to cut like a knife with a single look. “He was distraught when you left. He kept paying your bills, your school, your dorm, and you never said a kind word to him. You just left! What did you say to him? He wouldn’t have gotten drunk if you hadn’t said something. What did you say to him!”

He was red-faced, fists shaking. Ready to strike me.

All I could do was stare at him, my heart breaking for how little he resembled our mother. He was Luke, through and through. But also, not. Marcus could be the greatness Luke wasn’t. He could achieve the potential my mother had seen in Luke, if it hadn’t been for the corruption of privilege and prestige.

The same type of corruption my stepfamily would infect Marcus with, like a cancer. They’d turn a good man—a good boy—into something twisted and broken. The kind of broken that hurt others.

The kind of broken I was trying not to be.

“What did you say to him?!” he yelled, his voice breaking from puberty and from grief. A reminder of how young he truly was. There was still hope for him. There had to be.

“Marc—” I began.

“This is your fault! It can’t be him! Uncle Turner was right! You’re the problem, and you always were! You’re ungrateful, and mean, and…” Tears streamed down his eyes as he grit his teeth. “I want to stay with Uncle Turner.”

I clenched my jaw and took a deep breath, curling my hands into fists. My nails dug into my palms until they bled.

“No,” I said.

“You can’t stop me!” He slammed a fist on the table.

“Yes,” I repeated. “I can.”

He was furious. I felt for him. He

“I am your legal guardian.” I pushed everything down. The pounding of my heart, the fluttering in my stomach, the way my blood made my fingers shake with all the pent-up pain and rage. The feeling of all the secrets wanting to burst out of my skin. “From now until you are eighteen, I am your guardian, and I’m sorry—”

I really, really was.

“—but you will live under my rules. And I’ve decided that—”

“That you’d isolate us! That you’d keep us from our own family? You just want control! Dad was right. All you want is to control people and manipulate them. You’re sick! You’re evil! You’re…”

He went on and on.

And I took it. Because his anger needed to go somewhere, and it should be me. Because I did kill his father.

We lived like this because of me. I kept him from the only family we had. Some days, I know why I do it. Some days, my resolve to keep him away from that family is stronger.

Other days, I wonder…if my life would be better if I did send them both to them.

“You’re right,” I said when Marcus finally paused to take a breath.