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“Still protecting me,” I murmur for Tim. “You’re the oldest, and until Cato, I was the youngest. It’s why you followed me to Copeland, and it’s why you stay close enough to watch over me and Mayet. But I’m not sixteen anymore.”
I circle the bed and note the stench of urine in the air. The nurse keeps Dad clean and comfortable, but there’s only so much she can do when the guy can’t control his bodily functions.
Stopping beside Felix, I feel a slight pang of sympathy at the way he watches our father. None of us will miss the old prick, but losing a parent is still losing a parent, and after tonight, Felix becomes the Malone figurehead for as long as Tim refuses the position.
“You doing okay?” I press my hand to his shoulder and squeeze. “You wanna step out?”
He shakes his head and reaches up to pat my hand.
The side of his face is bruised. Cuts from Tim’s attack remain a constant reminder that Felix is somewhat slow on the self-preservation front. But he’s still my brother, and right this minute, he’s having a crisis.
“Where’s Cato?” he mumbles.
“Coming.” Tim sits on the chair on the other side of Dad’s bed. Lifting one foot, he rests an ankle on the opposite knee and blows out a breath that speaks of exhaustion. “He’s still a kid, so I don’t…” He shrugs. “I dunno. You know him better than I do, so you can probably decide if he should be here for this. But at the same time, I figure seventeen in our world isn’t like seventeen in the rest of society.”
“He can handle it.” Felix steeples his fingers and looks to the monitors as our father’s pulse falters.
It slows. Slows. Slows, as each day progresses. But now it speeds, though it seems weaker.
“I’m here.” Cato skids through the bedroom door in a full suit and with his dark hair gelled back. In shiny black shoes, he stops in the center of the room and looks to the only parent he has left.
The only parent any of us has, considering our father bedded, impregnated, and then murdered each of our mothers once their usefulness had come to an end.
“He’s already gray,” Cato murmurs. Stepping closer, he stands over our father’s bed and looks closer. “His fingers are blue.”
“His blood pressure is dropping,” the nurse explains gently. “His heart is no longer strong enough, and his pain is too much.” She pushes a little more morphine through the drip hanging above the bed. “He won’t wake again. So you should say your goodbyes now if you wish to.”
“He won’t answer?” Looking across to the woman, Cato asks, “He won’t wake up?”
“No.” She appears genuinely sad. Or at the very least, sympathetic. “He’s come too far, and his reliance on morphine is too great.”
“Why is his heart rate so fast?” Felix asks. “The fucker is dying, so why does he sound like he’s getting better?”
“It’s the way it goes,” Tim answers instead. “His body is dying, but survival instinct says he has to fight, so his heart is doing everything it can to keep going.”
“But it’s not sustainable,” the nurse adds. “This is the last push before the end.”
Stepping away from the bed to give Cato room to move closer, she pats his shoulder and heads to a counter filled with instruments a little like the table Minka has in her autopsy room. But where my wife has tools for torture, the nurse has bags of meds, supplies for infusion, and a lethal dose of morphine that’ll end this once and for all.
“I’ll remain nearby,” she hums. “I’ll need your permission at the end.”
“Permission to kill him?” Cato’s voice breaks, surprising us all—most of all, Cato himself. “Will you overdose him with meds until he’s officially dead?”
“It’s the most humane way,” Tim answers. “He’s already fucked. In pain and waiting till his heart gives out.”
“Could take hours,” I murmur. “Or days, maybe, if we’re really unlucky.”
“He deserves to be in pain.” Clearing his throat, Felix reaches up and scrubs a hand across his face. “He deserves whatever is coming for him.”
Looking across to me, he studies my eyes. “He bragged about what happened to Jill after you left.Bragged,” he repeats on an almost whisper. “He considered it a lesson for me and Micah: don’t fuck around with someone else’s family and expect not to lose your head.”
“Asshole.” I look to my father and feel nothing but hatred. Anger. Disappointment that I never truly got to stand up and take back my power.
I ran away when I was sixteen. I chose a new life and lived it like I wasn’t related to a family in New York who dealt in weapons and dead bodies.
In my father’s eyes, no doubt, leaving was the worst of all sins. But in mine, it was that all I did was hide.
“He hurt her for the sake of hurting her.” Shaking my head, I think back to that girl, her innocence and her kindness. Then I replace her face with Minka’s. Her strength. And my inability to risk her. “It sucked what he did to Jill. She deserved better.”
