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“Good fucking idea.” I lift the bottle and silently cheer as Kaiden joins me on the sofa of our sanctuary. He takes the whiskey from me, pours us both a glass and drinks.
He sighs deeply, but I don’t have it in me to care. I can’t take on any more problems. Not when I’m drowning in the ones we already have.
Eventually though, Kaiden speaks.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No. You?”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
Well, that was easy. We fall back into a melancholy silence, sipping our whiskeys and ignoring our problems.
“Zie go home?” I ask several minutes later.
“Yeah. He’s gutted,” Kaiden replies.Him and me both.
“Better me be the father than his dad.”
“Truth.”
I know I need to talk to Kaiden and Zie, and Odi, but the mere thought of it makes my chest tighten with anxiety. I don’t know where to begin. It’s like we’ve all been dancing around each other for so long, hiding behind our own walls and secrets and good intentions, that even now, when we have more reason than ever to be honest, we’re still struggling to find our way.
But as Kaiden and I sit there, drowning our sorrows and avoiding our problems, there’s a shift in the air. It’s like thewhiskey is finally loosening the tight knots in my chest, and the silence between us is no longer suffocating.
“Do you ever think about what life would be like if we weren’t part of this?” Kaiden asks suddenly, breaking the silence.
I raise an eyebrow, surprised by the question. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if we weren’t born into this life, if we weren’t groomed to be the perfect soldiers and assassins and front men, would we have had a chance at a normal life? A chance at love, and family, and all that shit?”
I think about it for a moment, staring at the amber liquid in my glass. “I don’t know. Even if you take the business side of our upbringings out of the equation, we didn’t exactly have normal childhoods, did we? Even if we weren’t being groomed from the minute we could walk and talk, we still wouldn’t have known love and the real meaning of family, would we?”
“Zie aside, of course,” Kaiden jokes. “His childhood was practically a holiday movie compared to ours.”
I nod, knowing that he’s only half joking. Zie’s different from me and Kaiden, and sometimes I feel like we’ve tainted him with our friendship.
I think on Kaiden’s question for another few minutes, still sipping my drink thoughtfully.
“You know, I think even if we weren’t born into this, even if we had a choice, we still would have ended up here. Maybe not in the same way, but we have a hunger for power and control that would have driven us to the top of something, whatever that something may be.”
“Yeah,” Kaiden agrees quietly. “I think you’re right.”
We lapse into silence again, and the weight of our past decisions bear down on me once more. The weight of responsibility for Rose and Odi, the weight of the Holy Trinityand the empire we’re creating, and the weight of our own bloody choices.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit, my voice barely a whisper.
“What do you mean?” Kaiden asks, turning to look at me.
“I mean, I don’t know how to be a father. I don’t know how to raise a fucking kid. And I don’t know how to keep everyone safe in the process.”
Kaiden nods, his eyes sympathetic. “Yeah, it’s a lot.”
“I can’t just abandon my responsibilities, though. Not to The Holy Trinity, not to Odi, and not to Rose.”
“I know,” Kaiden says softly. “But you don’t have to figure it all out right now. Just take it one step at a time.”
