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Lia
Agasp escaped me, and at that point, I almost stopped dead in my tracks.
But I was too deep in now. Following Ty’s outburst on the page was a brief entry from a few weeks later that mentioned Ty had moved to West Carlisle, Massachusetts, and now lived in a big stone house with a nanny named Flora.
It seemed that Ty’s father had a loft in Boston that he preferred to stay at, while his son would stay at his big house out in the country. Ty wrote bluntly that he didn’t like it and was alone most of the time, which was a relief even if it was lonely.
Because he didn’t want his father around.
However, the times when his father was at the house, they rarely got along. Ty didn’t explain what he meant but it was too easy to fill in the blanks.
Worse, Ty explained he’d caught bits and pieces that told him that his father, nicknamed the “Rhino,” wasn’t a good man and didn’t seem to care.
I think my family is in a bad business,he wrote.
There were some brief notes about his new private school and getting into fights with snobby rich kids, then being hauled in front of his father, who wasn’t furious about the fighting but was angry that he’d lost — becausethe son of the Rhino doesn’t lose fights,and Tommasino needed to getthis situation under control.
When I asked what the situation was, he backhanded me.
Guess I’m the “situation.”
My uncle said to my dad, “At least he can take a punch, unlike my useless son.”
By now, Ty had to be about twelve, and his tone had changed, losing the innocence he once had; his edges becoming wry and crooked.
He wrote brief, bitter entries about “training” with his father, which had sounded like an excuse for the Rhino to beat up hiskid. Ty hated the basement and being brought down there to fight with grown men.
His father refused to have weakness in the Michaelson bloodline and his heir would be a fighter, like his old man.
The next entry was a bit longer than the others, dated close to his thirteenth birthday.
Today I met my cousins. I didn’t even know I had cousins. This lady who blinked a lot and bit at her nails was the mother of one of them, Luca. He’s a year younger than me and pretty funny, even though his mom, my Aunt Donna, is “freakin’ neurotic,” as Uncle Sal said. She is high-strung but she’s not so bad, even if she complains a lot for a grown-up. I don’t think my dad or uncle like her husband, because he didn’t come and they made a lot of nasty comments about him.
Later, I also met Daniel, who is gonna live with me from now on. I don’t know what happened to him except that it was really bad. Last week, my dad had to “intervene,” and then he got into a big fight about it with Sal, screaming about Sal going too far and getting CPS involved in family business when they already “had the feds on their asses.”
Sal might be going to jail for a year or so. I don’t know, though. He’s been in a bad mood and I’ve been avoiding him. He’s in West Carlisle a lot lately, even though he says he hates the stone house. He’s always in a suit and usually with the family lawyer, Mr. Jershel. I like Mr. J, as he told me to call him. He’s a pretty jovial guy and smart, too.
I don’t know why he helps my uncle and my dad do bad shit.
Anyway, I didn’t even know Daniel had arrived. I’d gone to my secret hiding room to hide from everyone—the one that Flora showed me—and that’s when I heard a weird sound. At first, I thought an animal had gotten in. But when I yanked open the bottom cupboard doors, I found a little blond kid crying.
He’d tried to crawl away from me, but I yanked him out and asked him what he was doing in there. He hid his face and that’s when I saw the bruises and blood. That’s when I knew who he was—Daniel.
Fucking Sal, as my father would say.
Telling Daniel to stay put, I went and got ice, some antiseptic and bandages. Flora had showed me where they all were and how to use them after dad started training me.
Daniel had crawled back into the cupboard, back in the room but I managed to persuade him to come out with some snacks and stuff. He’s probably four or five years younger than me, but it’s hard to tell. He’s so thin and pale, his eyes are like half of his face.
I managed to clean him up and told him that he’d be living with me from now on. I said that I wasn’t big enough to kick his dad’s ass yet, but one day I would and that I’d always look out for him.
The whole time, Daniel didn’t say a word, but eventually, he kind of crawled into my lap like a little dog and hugged me.
This poor kid. I fucking hate my uncle Sal, that nasty piece of shit.
Sitting back from the book, my stomach roiled with horror. At this point, Ty was barely a teenager and he already sounded so world-weary and cynical, and had been exposed to all sorts of hell from his father and uncle.
The entries went on, shorter and growing more cynical in tone. A few things jumped out, how Ty found that his father hadn’t been aware of his existence until his mother had died because she’d tried to keep it from him. His father liked to throw that in Ty’s face when Ty dared test Tommasino’s authority.
