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I laugh, but there’s not much humor in it. “Yeah. It definitely fucked me up for a while, thinking about it. He told me that he was just going to fucking abandon me when my real mom died, but Diana told him she would raise me.”
Malice nods, looking down at the table as his fingertips drum across the surface. “That sounds like her.”
“She loved you,” Vic adds quietly. “That was obvious to all of us.”
“I know. Knowing she did all that and raised me as her own, even though I was the product of our shit stain dad cheating on her? It just made me love her even more. Made me want to kill that bastard even more than I already did.”
“He got what he deserved.” Malice clenches his hand into a fist, banging it lightly against the table, and we all drink to that, passing the whiskey around again.
“You kept it to yourself for a long time,” Vic observes as he sets the bottle down.
I shrug. “I didn’t know how to say it. And I guess I had to deal with my own shitty feelings about it first. I mean, you two are twins, so you’ve got this connection, and I already felt weird being the youngest for a while. Add onto that that I wasn’t even your full brother…” I shake my head. “It was a lot.”
“Like we said before, we don’t give a shit if you had a different mom,” Malice tells me. He grins, the same one I recognize from when we were growing up and he would tease me about something. “You’re still our annoying little brother.”
I roll my eyes at that, reaching over the table to punch him in the arm. He chuckles, but then grows serious.
“Our mom loved you,” he says. “We love you. That’s good enough. It’s all that matters.”
“Yeah, I know.” I settle back into my chair. “I love you assholes too. I’m not messed up about it anymore. I just wish it was that easy for Willow, you know?”
Malice’s lip curls back in a snarl. “Death was too easy an escape for the fucker who did this to her,” he grits out. “Fucking piece of shit.”
I take a deep swig from the bottle, letting the whiskey burn down my throat. “I was happy to let the two of you torture him at the time, but goddammit, I regret not getting in a few shots of my own now. We could’ve kept him alive for days, dragging it out, and itstillwouldn’t have been enough.”
Vic taps his fingers together, glancing in the direction of the bedroom. “You’re not wrong. But we need to focus on Willow now. Bringing up Troy, even to say we wish we’d tortured him more, is just going to make her keep thinking about him. And she’s having a hard enough time with this already.”
“I can’t even imagine how she must feel,” I mutter, raking a hand through my hair.
My brothers both nod, the atmosphere in the kitchen turning grim. When Vic plucks the bottle from my hand, and I can tell how agitated he is, because he doesn’t even bother to wipe the neck before taking a swig.
“The good news is, we made good progress today,” he says. “I’ve got a list of potential allies, people who have reason to hate Olivia and also have the skills to back us up when we go after her. We can start reaching out to them tomorrow.”
“Good,” Malice mutters. “Because knowing that Willow is pregnant raises the stakes on all of this. If her bitch of a grandmother finds out about it, that will probably only give her more reason to want Willow and the baby dead. We have to end this… before Olivia does.”
30
WILLOW
The next morning,I wake up to an empty bed.
I know the guys came to sleep last night because I half remember waking up in the middle of the night to them coming in, whispering amongst themselves.
Which means that they’re already up and getting started for the day.
I curse under my breath, throwing the blankets back and shuffling out of bed. I don’t want to be the weak link in the team just because I’m pregnant. I don’t want them to think I’m too weak to help out now.
There’s a little nausea as I get dressed, but I take some deep breaths, pushing it down. I don’t have time to be sick right now.
When I step into the kitchen, Vic is already there, and it smells like he’s been cooking. I wait, wanting to see if the smell is going to turn my stomach, but surprisingly, it doesn’t.
“What’s all this?” I ask him.
He smiles a little. “I did some research on foods that are supposed to be good for settling morning sickness. And healthy for pregnant women. You’ll have to let me know if it helps.”
I can’t help but grin at that, taking in the small spread he’s laid out. There’s a fruit plate laid out, each piece of fruit cut into neat, equal pieces. Toast with peanut butter on another plate, next to more toast, smeared with what looks like avocado. Next to all that is a steaming cup of tea that smells gingery when I pick it up.
“Thank you, Vic,” I tell him, taking a small sip of the tea.
