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To my father, I’m certain he considered it the equivalent of banishment. A punishment. But to me, and apparently to Cato, it’s an island in the depths of enemy territory.
Stopping in front of my old bedroom and setting my hand on the knob, it takes me only a moment to release it again. Muscle memory saysgo right in, but reality reminds me this isn’t my island anymore. Not my space. Not my home. So I knock instead, two quick raps that echo along the hall and alert everyone in residence to my location.
“Cato?” I call out when no one answers.
I don’t hear footsteps on the floor, or whispers inside the room.
“Hey, Cato, are you—”
The door swings open so the breeze hits my skin, and on the other side stands a gangly, seventeen-year-old boy who stretches damn near as tall as me, and whose hair hangs in his jaded eyes.
There’s no affection in his stare. But there’s no animosity either. Just the look a stranger gives another in the street.
“Shit, Cato…” I bring my free hand up and press it to my chest. He was an infant the last time I saw him. And now… now… “You grew the fuck up, man.”
“It happens.”
His voice is deeper than I expected, but his skin is clear. None of that awkward teen acne most kids get.
Releasing the door, he turns on his feet and heads back across the room in loose jeans and a Knicks shirt that hangs past his ass. He doesn’t invite me in, but he doesn’tnotinvite me in, so I cross the threshold and enter what was once my only safe haven inside this hell.
Four walls. A bed. A half-bathroom that meant I didn’t have to come out nearly as often as I would have, had there been no toilet.
Knicks merchandise covers every wall. Signed posters, and game balls in neat racks. Hoops of varying sizes litter the space: some for paper to be tossed through, and some only big enough to dunk a hacky sack. But a full-size hoop has been installed above his bed. Regulation height, and bolted into the house so it’s solid.
“Basketball?” I slowly cross the room and slip my gun back into its holster. “You any good?”
Chuckling under his breath, he flops onto his mattress and looks up at the bottom of the hoop while I cross to his messy desk. “You’d probably know the answer if you ever remembered I existed.”
A well-aimed jab, I let silence hang as I make myself comfortable on his chair.
“It’s been a long fuckin’ time, Arch.”
“Do you have any memories of me?” I ask. “Real memories, not stories you were told over the years.”
“Nope.” He pops the P on the end and tilts his head my way. “Not a single one. But I watch you on TV sometimes. I see youpretendto give interviews about your cases, but you don’t actually tell the media shit-all.” Turning back to study the ceiling, he grins so I see the side of his lips curl up. “I see your wife, too.”
“Don’t—”
“She’s cute,” he laughs the way Felix does. “For an old chick.”
“She’s not old!” I snag a ball from the desk and peg him in the ribs, eliciting another laugh from deep in his chest. “She’s twenty-eight, asshole.”
“And you’re thirty-two.” Picking up the ball and rolling it in his hands, he throws it through the hoop above. “And I’m seventeen. Tell me I was an accident without saying I was an accident.”
I snort. “We were all accidents, bud. Except maybe Tim.”
“We were trophies to be sold,” he corrects, a thousand times more mature than I might’ve expected. “Each of our mothers sold us back to the old fuck for money, trinkets, and eventually,” he scoffs, “death.”
He’s not wrong. Though, I’m certain my assessment of us being accidents is.
Timothy the Second treated those women—five different mothers for five different sons—as nothing more than broodmares. Fucked her, with or without her permission, created another soldier for the Malone empire, then disposed of her and raised the boy to become one of the family.
The fact Cato came fifteen years after my birth says our father panicked. His sons were rebelling, and he didn’t have control over the family the way he wanted. Four of us already in line, and the youngest—me—refused to conform.
Timothy the Second is nothing if not thorough.
Cato was created to lead the family if the four before him couldn’t do the job right.
