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“Father has his reasons.”
“And is he going to come down here and explain them?” Theo asked.
“Eventually.”
“I see.” Ever so discreetly, Theo had been inching forward, so that most of his left shoulder and half his torso protected me. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit, then?”
“Simple. I want to know how you found me. Was it your little mistress?”
Trace’s anger could be felt through Theo’s suit, through hisbodyand into me. Hot pinpricks, sharp needles, it was all directed at my old wound. Trace hadn’t forgiven me for the drug botch years ago, and I hadn’t expected him to. But what I feared was that he’d torture me for it.
Where was Gordon? I needed them both here.
“Don’t do her any favors. You leave quite a trail, if one knows what to look for,” Theo said. “Blood. Trauma. Beaten up females.”
“I’m getting a sense of deja vu here. Aren’t you?” Trace asked us both.
“You’re not touching her.” Theo growled the words, like they’d been etched into his windpipe and he had to grind them out of the tissue.
“I thought Scarlet means nothing to you?” Trace asked.
“She doesn’t. But I don’t enjoy watching women suffer.”
“Yes. Lauren. I remember. I’m so sad I wasn’t a part of that.”
Theo’s muscles bunched under his torn, filthy suit. I laid a subtle, calming hand on his lower back.
Trace’s attention slid over to me. “But I can be a part ofthis.”
“Where’s Papa Saxon in all of this?” I asked. Having Trace look at me like that … he might as well have knives in his hand and start carving. “Isn’t he overdue?”
As if I’d snapped an elastic at him, Trace blinked. “Do you remember, brother, how we used to play?”
The change of subject didn’t throw Theo. “It’s not easily forgotten.”
“Do you ever watch MMA fighters?” Trace asked me. I shook my head in response.
“But you know what they are, I assume,” he said. “That’s what Father did with us. As children. He had us fight other kids, with he and his buddies placing bets on us. Orphans, street kids. Sometimes abducted ones. Remember all that, brother?”
“What are you getting at, Trace?”
While Theo sounded exasperated, a quick study of his eyes and they were sharp as a jaguar’s.
“Ward got out of it. Because of you. Always the protector, my brother. Never the protected.”
“No, he didn’t. He still had you to contend with.”
Trace shrugged with one shoulder. “Well, a boy needs to practice on something.”
“You were beaten just as badly as me. Worse. Why you still enjoy imputing it to other, smaller, vulnerable people, is well beyond my understanding,” Theo said. “But I’ve stopped trying to understand you.”
“We stopped being brothers decades ago, haven’t we, Theodore?”
For an instant, I watched Trace’s lips fall, his cheeks sink, his eyes droop. Crestfallen. In the same second, his features cleared, but it was the biggest clue I’d ever noted inside this barbwired prison of a man. I was convinced it was a hallucination. There couldn’t be any humanity left in a person like this.
“We went through the same things,” Theo said, “yet turned out so different. For so long, we’ve enjoyed our separate paths. So why don’t we go back to that? You go your way, I’ll go mine. The only reason we’re together again is because of Father. The only reason we’re pitted against each other is because of Father. You said it yourself. He enjoys watching us fight. One day it will be to the death.”
Theo stepped forward, away from me, toward Trace.
