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“The sun hasn’t risen yet,” Zerro said softly, his voice full of sleep. He placed a kiss on my shoulder, and I swear to God, I melted. We had made love last night, not the kinky kind, not the fuck me against the wall kind, but the slow and sensual kind. The kind that made you not two separate people, but one whole.
“What time is it?” I asked rolling over from my stomach to face him. Today would be one of the hardest days ever. I had come to terms with what Zerro had done to John. I realized he was the bad man in all of this, but somehow, I felt as if I were sleeping with the enemy.
“My phone says four-thirty a.m.” He yawned, apparently still very much tired. I rolled my eyes, even the king of Mafia had a weakness—sleep.
Laughing, I slipped the sheet from my body and pulled myself out of his warm embrace. There was no way I could sleep another minute.
“What’s going on inside of that head of yours?” he asked. He had been asking a lot lately as if he thought I was unstable or something…
“Just absorbing things and wondering where I go from here.” It was an honest answer. I knew I would have to talk to Jared’s dad, my dad… soon. I would have to fill in the missing pieces somehow.
“James will have some answers for you I hope. I’m not sure where he got all his information, but I guess your mom had told him before she passed away.” The air in my chest sat suspended for a second. Talking about my mom’s passing hurt more than anything. Even more so now since I had no way of getting answers to the questions I desperately needed.
“I miss her…” I said aloud. I didn’t mean to, but apparently, my conscious slipped.
“I know you do, and I miss mine, too.” He sounded in pain, so I turned around to see his face. In his eyes, I could see the terror that was always hidden. In the place of the man I loved was the fragile, small boy hiding in a closet. I had been told the story by Mack while he kept me hostage.
“Zerro…” I tried to stop him from heading down memory lane, but it didn’t work. We were two very different people living similar lives. Our pasts matched perfectly—we both had more questions than we had answers.
“People thought I just liked to kill others like it was part of the act. They didn’t know why though. They didn’t know it was my own personal hell or how every drop of blood that touched my skin soothed the monster inside of me. I killed because I had to. It was the only thing I knew.” His voice was rising, and I could tell he wasn’t with me in the room anymore. At least, not in his mind.
“I’m sorry we both have to deal with this,” I said remorsefully. I was more than sorry.
“Never be sorry, Piccolo… the people who have made us suffer the most will soon be the ones suffering.” A seductive smirk pulled at his lips. It had reminded me of a lion right before it sank its teeth into its prey.
“Good,” I simply said. I slipped into a pair of sweats and one of Zerro’s shirts I had found on the ground. I needed coffee and something greasy, like, now.
The house was quiet as I tiptoed out into the living room and headed for the kitchen. I looked at the coffee pot sitting on the counter and smelled the air as the sweet aroma of coffee hit my nose. Turning around, I saw Jared leaning against the wall casually as he smirked at me.
“Good morning, I presume?” Jared asked. I ignored him for the time being as I grabbed a coffee cup from the cabinet above my head. I poured myself coffee, and then headed toward the table where I noticed a cup of cream and sugar.
“You know ignoring me right now doesn’t make it better. It sure as hell doesn’t change things.” I mixed all the ingredients in the cup and waited until I took the first sip to respond to him. I pulled the cup to my lips and sucked in a small taste, savoring the sweetness of the cream and sugar on my lips.
“I’m not ignoring you, Jared. I’m just dealing with everything. I’m absorbing it all, simply because there isn’t any fucking thing else that can be done.”
“Our father is coming today. He says he has something for you and it might bring you more closure.” Taking another sip of the coffee goodness before responding again, I wanted to laugh. More closure? As If I had been given closure to begin with.
“Technically he is YOUR father, Jared. Not mine. As far as family is concerned, I have no one. I know you’re my half-brother and by blood, he is my father. Those things don’t change what has happened, though.”
He snorted. His eyes looked wild. “You think I don’t know that, Bree. How do you think all of this makes us feel? I mean, seriously? We’re in the middle of a full out war and we find this out.”
“I know what we’re up against, Jared. You forget I have been—” In a moment’s time, he crossed the room and came to stand right in front of me.
“I didn’t forget what you looked like when I picked you and Zerro up on the side of the road. I didn’t forget I had lost so much, and I didn’t forget my mom had died. None of those things have changed—even though God continues to throw more shit my way.”
When the words ‘death’ and ‘mom’ fell from his lips, I looked up into a face I thought I knew. It was very apparent to me, though we all seemed to be doing okay on the outside, we were truthfully each fighting our own demons. There might have been a war raging between families, but there were bigger wars waging within each of us.
