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“My father and I were close, but ever since he’d married Isabel Frost, there’d been a distance between us that hadn’t been there before. It was almost as if he had no time for me like he expected Isa to be a replacement family.” He sipped at his drink. “We called each other brother because our parents liked it that way, but we weren’t brothers. And we were never really family.”
Brothers didn’t fuck each other.
“But Hunter and Meg…” She’d been crying for him by the end of it, heavy sobs making it next to impossible for her words to be understood. “If their dad had really fled, it was just the two of them, and she’d come to the mansion, one of the most dangerous places on Sanctum, to beg him to leave with her before my family found out. Anyone could have overheard as I did, but she’d taken the risk anyway.” For Hunter.
“They would have done anything for one another,” Odin mumbled. That’s what he’d respected so much about the Thorns. That’s what had drawn him to Hunter in the first place, that day in the garden, watching as Hunter wrapped his arms around his sister and held her close. As he’d shushed her cries and stroked the back of her head.
He’d been bigger than Odin back then, and all he’d been able to think about at that moment was how no one, not his father, mother, or brother, had ever held him like that before. With all the tenderness and caring that a true family member should.
This low-ranking mafia member, someone whom outsiders would consider nothing more than a thug at his level, the one who was always quiet and stiff and unimpressive…he was cradling his sister and soothing her warmly in the middle of the Faraway Mansion, a place that up until that point, had never seen real love before.
“You were envious,” Wren surmised, startling Odin a bit out of his reverie.
“I wanted someone to look at me like that,” he admitted. He’d never said it out loud before, but since it was just the two of them here in this room… “Not even Isa did.”
“You wanted warmth,” Wren nodded his understanding. “You were a kid, Odin. Of course that’s what you wanted.”
His parents had married out of convenience, and his father’s marriage with Isabel Frost had been more of a merger than anything else. All of the Brumal brought around him were there for protection or doing their jobs, and the mafia wasn’t in the business of showing their softer sides, of hugging and staring longingly at one another.
Odin had seen the love between those siblings, seen the love that Hunter was capable of giving, and while he’d been content with Isa as his lover, at that moment, something had shifted inside of him. He’d wanted something he never had before.
He’d wanted that kind of attention, and since Hunter was the only one he’d ever seen capable of giving it… It’d been a no-brainer to his sixteen-year-old self. From that moment on, he’d gone out of his way to silently keep Hunter as safe as he could, to draw him near without making it obvious.
“It wasn’t a crush,” he explained. “I wanted something from him, but I never considered that he might want something from me in return. I didn’t know then what I know now.”
“The King of the Red Light District, not understanding tit-for-tat.” Wren laughed. “Imagine if that got out?”
“We were all young and naïve once,” Odin stated, not rising to the bait.
“True.” He blew out a slow breath and shifted into a more comfortable position. “What about now? What do you want from him now? You saved him last night, which means you must want something.”
“You sound like Corbi.”
“She’s a brilliant woman, that one. Actually, I’ve always had a little thi—” Wren held up both hands in surrender when Odin glared, laughing again. He’d been goading him to distract him and nothing more, and that was apparent. “In all honesty, as your friend, I think you need to figure your shit out. Originally, you were after him for revenge.”
“I still want that,” he argued, only for Wren to cluck his tongue at him.
“If that were the case, you would have allowed Isa to turn him to ice last night. You didn’t. And where is Hunter now?”
“Resting.”
“Where?” Wren picked lint off his pants. “As I recall, there’s a rather lofty dungeon beneath this club.”
“He’s upstairs,” Odin gave in and stated. He’d walked Hunter back to his room last night and left both twins in the hall with instructions to get him immediately if Hunter showed any signs of still being affected by Isa’s power.
“You’re angry with him,” Wren said, but the sound of his voice changed some, turning patient. “You’re angry with him for what he did in the past, and you’re angry with him for last night, even though you know, deep down, that in both instances, there is really only one person who deserves the blame.”
Odin had been drawn to Hunter because of his love for his sister.
Isa had used that love to his advantage.
He still meant what he’d told Hunter: he should have come straight to him and asked for help. That things now could be very different, but…He had to admit, it was petty of him, hypocritical even, to have admired that sibling bond so absolutely only to then hate Hunter because of what that bond had driven him to do.
“I’ve never loved anyone like that,” he admitted. “Perhaps…He was too afraid to risk his sister’s life to come to me.”
“You were good to him,” Wren said, “but what were you really? The son of a Dominus, the future leader of the Brumal. Unobtainable. Hunter would have known that back then. I thought the same, and I got to run in the same social circles as you. And everyone knew what was between you and Isa—even your parents had started putting two and two together by then. Why would he think for even a second that you would believe him? If he’d come and told you that Isa wanted you dead, you would have taken your anger and disbelief out on him.”
“Would I have?” Odin asked, but he was pretty sure his friend was right. He was stubborn now, but he’d been worse back then. No one could get through to him if he didn’t want to listen, not even his father.
