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“Open your goddamn mouth and speak, Cal!”
“I did it!” His words echoed in the now silent room; his chest heaved as each breath rushed out of him.
“I fucking did it! I shot her. My own fucking mother. I wanted to kill her!”
Instead of tears to match the anguish etched on Cal’s face, bittersweet laughter spilled out of him, more bitter than sweet.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he sneered. “It was me. Poor little nerdy Calvin Ashby sitting behind his little rat wheel, only good when you need someone smart—which you aren’t!”
I was on my feet in an instant, gun in my hand, aimed right at my baby brother. I didn’t give a fuck. All I saw was red as the words spilled from his mouth, naming him as Sadie’s would-be murderer.
“I’ll fucking kill you myself.”
Virgil beat me to the punch as he barreled toward Cal, armed with nothing but the muscles and skills he’d honed over the decades, the fury he’d built up.
“You did what?” Virgil pulled his arm back and let it snap forward like it was tethered to a fucking band. Landing a hit square on Cal’s nose.
“You fucking shot her?” Another hit in the same exact place, like a robot doing what he was programmed to do.
“How could you,” Virgil roared and hit him again. “She’s our fucking mother!”
Calvin fucking laughed. No, that sound was no fucking laugh. It was a keening howl, a fucked blend of laughter and tears.
“She killed Bonnie. I loved her. I brought her back from the brink of fucking death, and Sadie killed her. What if it was Maisie?”
Cal laughed again, the sound resonating deep as it bounced off the walls. “Yeah, that’s right. Imagine it was Maisie’s head with a bullet hole right through it. Imagine those big blue eyes, dead and vacant, having to identify her pale, lifeless face, no longer full of color and laughter.”
Virgil punched him again, splitting Cal’s lip open while the crazy fuck laughed and laughed. “Don’t talk about Maisie, and don’t change the fucking subject. You tried to kill my mother.”
He flashed a bitter smile. “She’s my mother too,” he said with a drunken sneer. “The same mother who let you get fucked by grown men,” he said, slurring. He looked at me too. “Yeah, you too, Jas. I know all about it.”
Something inside of me snapped, and it wasn’t just because Calvin had tried to kill Sadie. It was the arrogant fucking sneer on his face as he taunted me with his supposed knowledge, the way he reveled in throwing it in my face and Virgil’s.
“You motherfucker!”
I pressed the barrel of my gun against the forehead of my baby brother, the one I held in my arms and promised to protect the day Sadie brought him home from the hospital.
“You have no fucking clue what the rest of us have been through, Sadie included.”
“I know she let it happen.”
I pressed the gun harder to his forehead, leaving Cal trapped between the wall and my gun.
“You don’t know shit because we all protected you. We shielded you from the horrors of growing up in this fucking house. She didn’t let shit happen. She was as much a victim of Colm’s greed and ineptitude and cruelty as the rest of us.”
I shook my head and released the safety, pressing the gun a little harder into his forehead.
“Bullshit. You’re so blinded by your loyalty; you have no clue.”
Virgil stood tall and wide beside me, growling angrily. “You’re the clueless one, little brother. He pimped us out to perverts to pay off his debts, and each time Ma tried to say something or worse, do something, he beat the fuck out of her.”
“Yeah, well, she wasn’t the only one. While you two were out, who got fists to the chest and the stomach for not being manly enough? Who was constantly beat and berated and told he was a pansy-ass little boy? Me. Not you or Sadie, or you Virgil.”
“You think that makes you special? Fuck that,” I roared and raised the gun just above his head, bringing it down on Cal’s cheek.
He smiled as blood poured down his face, not bothering to wipe it as he struggled to stand.
“Maybe not, but I have a right to my fucking anger. Just because you two are willing to sit by and lick her boots, no matter how much hell she put you through, I’m not. I wasn’t.”
Cal had lost some of his steam which was too bad for him because I was still mad.
Mad as fuck. “She avenged us, you asshole.”
Cal stood and stared me right in the face as if we were on equal fucking footing and produced his own gun, matted silver, and pressed it to my temple. “I don’t give a shit. You deal with your trauma, however the fuck you want, and I’ll do the same, big brother.”
