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“I want you to know,this will pain me.” Jimmy sighs. I open my eyes to find my blindfold removed and Jimmy sitting across from me within arm’s reach.
Chilled.
Unreadable.
Just like my Jimmy always is. His ankle rests on his knee, his pristine black slacks rising slightly to reveal polished black shoes and folded black socks. And a pretty knife strapped to his calf. I quickly survey the cold concrete room - the killing floor. In each corner is a guard, ready with a bulletproof vest and a handgun held in front of him. I wonder if any of those fucks were at my house earlier today.
“I care for you, my boy,” Jimmy states, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve worried for a long time about you,se?I think you may be sick in the mind.” He tilts his head, offering a quick glance to the body on the floor - the sad fuck who thought he’d execute me. I grin, tasting his blood in my mouth, the dried fluid coating my teeth, making them rough.Fuck.What must I look like - as crazy as I feel, I suspect. “You see. You chewed out his windpipe. I might have been impressed once, but now. . .” Standing up, he walks over to a table in the corner. “Now my ways are more elegant. You love your brothers,se?” he mutters to the table and then turns, his hollow brown eyes finding mine. “I am doing this for them. For my family. You will get them killed. You will affect our whole operation. Trust, it is important to have trust in a fami-”
I cough up a bit of blood, a mist of crimson floating in the air, cutting off his sentence. “Jimmy, spare me the narcissistic bullshit, will you?”
His lips twitch, and I grin wider. The old boy hates it when his insightful monologues are interrupted.
“I did a lot for you,se?I looked after your girl. I knew that day when I sat with you while you grieved that she was your soul,se?I knew I had to watch over her. And Perry owed me a great deal of money, but I took a lossfor you.To keep your girl happy.” He strides over to me, stopping in front, forcing me to lift my chin to keep my eyes on the sly prick’s face. My mind howls with hysterical laughter, my muscles burning with the need to rip his head from his spine. A slow smile pulls at the left side of his lips, and I fight my own grin to stay steady. “I made sure she was warm at night. Well cared for. Wellfucked.”
Fuck, I’m burning everywhere, my mind frying in the heat of pure rage.
He sighs. “But the girl is exquisite and as smart as a woman can be. So, of course, he fell in love with her. I may have too if I were him. If I was inside her every night.” Amusement engulfs his face as he measures my response to his words, as I begin to outwardly pant with restraint. He smiles, he fucking smiles, and I flare my eyes, seeing only a corpse.
A dead man.
A man who I love.
A man who I hate.
“That’s good news,se?It wasn’t all a lie. His love for her wasn’t. He wanted her for himself, to make decisions for her without me interfering and so, in exchange for his compliance in a. . .medicalproject I’m investing in, I gave her to him.” He pauses, making a pyramid with his hands, pressing his fingers to his lips. “I gave her to him by having her father and sister driven off the road. She was so young. She needed him so much more after that.”
The energy is charged.
I can’t think of anything except his death. His eyes are pinned on me. “Nothing to say now, my boy? No jokes? You think I’m the enemy, don’t you? Your own–” He reaches for the words.”Misguidedmind has confused you, my boy. It’s a dangerous thing, your illness. You don’t even realise what this is, do you, my boy?"
My face begins to tic. Years of listening to him preach and guide me, I consumed all his advice. Lived it in my bones. In my core. Used it to protect my brothers.Fuck, I believed in it.
He sighs with derision. “Clay found Salvatore’s body.”
My grin drops.
“You are a liability to this family. To his family.”
The heat in my veins freezes over.
“He will run the District one day and you’re a burden to his campaign.”
The laughter in my head slowly sinks to a cold dark place in my mind, to being alone and having the weight of Max’s life in my young hands. I shake my head, dragging myself out of the bathtub and back to the ominous abattoir killing floor. Forcing sanity, finding rationality in my confused bloodied state, I tell myself that he’s full of shit. Has to be.
My brother would never betray me.
He’s a Butcher.
“Trust me, Bron.”
Then the door opens.
Tears flood my face when Clay steps inside, his eyes sympathetic but cold - schooled and controlled and ever more my beautiful, unreadable big brother. My heart wilts. It was all for them. Everything I ever did. All for my brothers.
And Jimmy. . .
Jimmy’s respect.
