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My retinas burn. I turn my head away from the light. “Our mother.”
He gives no real reaction. His face remains hard as steel. His voice too. “She visits you often, does she? What did she say this time?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It must matter if you were screaming at her. What’d she say?”
A twitch develops in my only cheek. The other is a gaping hole that feels as though air blows through. I take my time considering whether I should tell him about the conversation—my brother’s no stranger to my delusions. I’ve been haunted by them since we were boys. Though he’s never understood the extent to which I experience them, he knows it’s a part of my condition.
“She told me to beg for mercy.”
The corner of my brother’s lip lifts. “She always was a glass half full kind of woman.”
“If you’re here to pour more acid or amputate more limbs, get to it.”
“As enjoyable of a pastime as that’s been, it’s not why I’m here. This time,” he answers. He towers over me, immaculate in his all-black suit and dark scruff on his face. Women have always thrown themselves at him; they’ve always recoiled from me, even before my deformities.
We’ve never been more different despite sharing the same blood. The same DNA.
He’s the King ruling over the world. I’m the monster dwelling underground.
“Should I care?” I ask, peering up at him from my cot.
The cell smells like shit. In the corner is the pot I use. Sometimes it gets emptied. Yet another form of torture—enduring the foul stench. My brother does a good job of pretending he doesn’t notice it.
Either that or he relishes making me suffer through it at all hours.
“It doesn’t matter if you care,” he says. He kicks the leg of my cot. “Get up. You’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“We have one last matter of business to handle.”
“Is there a reason you’re being vague? Is this where you finally end it?”
“It’s where we settle what’s going on.”
My gaunt, bruised face twists with suspicion. “Why?”
“Because,” he says with a pause, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “Iknowit wasn’t you.”
His admission is so unexpected, it takes a second to understand. He’s figured out it wasn’t me who tried to kill him. It never was, and though I took his throne and forced myself onto Falynn, the origin of this feud has been mistaken.
“This involves you as much as it involves me,” he says. “The wool has been pulled over both of our eyes. You’re going to come with me. And we’re going to end this once and for all.”
“You’re serious?”
“Get up,” he repeats. As my heavy, injured body lumbers, he holds up a warning finger. “But you and I will never repair our brotherhood. For what youhavedone, I will always make sure you suffer.”
In his own twisted way, it’s as best of an olive branch as my brother’s going to extend. Considering I’m not innocent—I did hurt Falynn, and I did attempt to steal every aspect of his life—I understand why. My brother can never forgive me. We can never coexist. There can be only one.
But this…this is our last brotherly moment together. I know it before we even leave the cell.
Whatever comes after will be permanent.
Our father’s funeral is attended by hundreds. Members of the family and friends of the family. Business associates and acquaintances from the many decades of his life. They come and pay their respects to Don Sorrentino and the long success he had ruling our family’s crime empire.
My brother and I are absent. We don’t attend—not to be seen, anyway. We remain at a distance, watching the mourning event from afar.
