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Doubt you take a punch just to see her. Doubt you use the pain like a riding crop. Doubt you like the reminder that the past is real.
“Yeah.” I put the glass down, to move, and avoid idle hands. “I’m sometimes that kid locked in a wardrobe after a punch.” I see anger swirl inside his eyes like a dark wormhole. So, I add with a smooth tenor, “You and Bron got me out so many times, mate. Took so many beatings for me.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Do what?” I ask although I know.
“Thank me for being your brother.”
I swallow, my throat choking on the statement. “You were never weak around her,” I add, the haunting memories crashing through me. She needed my praise. My love. I thought it was… that—love.Abuse=boxing. Love=fucking. It’s my construct. She did this. “I don’t remember you ever telling her how beautiful she was right after she fucking beat the shit out of you. Can’t even remember you ever speaking with her.”
Max folds his arms over his chest, which always makes him expand and look tougher, each visceral mass protruding like the fucking hulk. He’s our dad, through and through. His eyes punch right through mine, into my skull, to my broken fucking brain. “It’s pathetic,” I bait, needing him to agree with me.
He hums. “I wasn’t a good son.”
“She didn’t deserve a good son.”
“She didn’t deserveyou.”
I laugh, but I don’t feel it. At all. “Are we talking about her now?” I ground my voice with doubt. “Is that what this is? Mate, usually I have to detonate you to see what is inside. You gonna open up willingly because of the damn CTE?”
His jaw pulses. “You want to talk, buddy?”
Yes!Fuck.Shaking my head, I gaze to the heavens.God, give me fucking strength with this lot. “Fucking hell, yes. I want to talk about it.”
“Tell me what you want to talk about.”
“Clay finished her, Max!” The words should slice right into his lungs and force a gasp, but he barely twitches. So, I continue, “You know that, right? You and Bronson both know that he had something to do with her death, right? Let’s talk about that!”
The energy sits heavily between us, my declaration thickening the air. He nods slowly, eyes skewered through mine. Cracking his fists, he looks down at the one adorned with his wedding band. He does that a lot. All his answers lay in his love for Cassidy. The band is screaming ‘What Would Cassidy Say?’ She is the angel on his shoulder.
“I have everything I need, buddy,” he states to the ring. Then he returns his gaze to me. “You’re included in thateverything. Victoria never was.”
“It’s my fault,” I hiss through displeasure, remembering weeks ago when I finally admitted to Clay that she used to beat the crap out of us. Clay, who spent most of our childhood at boarding school, groomed to be Don, kept from us to keep him focused and single-minded. I know this. But I told that man, and inadvertently, I told the Don ofCosa Nostrathat my mother—his mother—was a liar, volatile, and abused his brothers. That must not have sat well. He took it into his own—infallible—hands. I’m fucking certain of it. “I told Clay that she used to beat us up. Now she’s fucking dead, Max.”
“You feel guilty.” He scoffs once, the cruelty evident, but it’s not meant for me. Out of all of my brothers, Max is the most intimidating. He doesn’t hold the power that Clay does or the insanity that Bronson airs, but he’s unforgiving and callous. Bar a handful of people, he genuinely does not give a shit about anyone else. He’d be the one in a zombie apocalypse that survives. He has no time to help the family on the side of the road—the one who is bait for the ambush lying in wake. He’s too focused on making sureweall survive. And his conscience is clear as fucking water. “You felt guilty she was left alone when you were a child, and you feel guilty now she’s dead,” he states, pinning me back in the conversation. “I don’t talk a lot. Don’t think the silence is improved by my bullshit. I will say this, we all blame ourselves for something. Butch. Me. Bron. You. You know who never did…Victoria.She just blamed us. It’s time to let it go, Xan. Time to lethergo. Look what you got.” I follow his focus to my wrist, to the black rabbit drawn below my tattoo. “Shesuits you.”
Well, son of Butcher.
“You’re right, Max.” I fight a building smirk. “The silence isn’t improved by your bullshit.”
He grunts through a subtle smile. “Shut up, dickhead.”
Is he right?
Should I just let this go?
Maybe the memories can go, too?
We don’t talk much more, but my big brother stays with me for most of the morning, putting me to use on a spur-of-the-moment renovation of the third floor.
Mum’s floor.
Max is an architect, managing the city’s building covenants and regulations alongside Clay. They have the entire building industry in the city wired under a planning scheme that benefits theCosa Nostra.
He designed this house a decade ago, and every time something big or life-changing happens, he starts rearranging it. He’s like a chick needing a new hairstyle after a breakup. The last time this happened, he found out Cassidy was pregnant.
His mum’s dead.
