by Zoe Hill
“Stirling.” Dad gestures in the direction of the office once more. My mother stands when he does, and I observe the silent interplay between them, hers pleading and his resolute. It drags on until Mom breaks their connection by dropping her gaze to the floor. “Son, join me for a nightcap.”
My father rounds the end of the table and touches my shoulder when he draws level with me. “You, too.”
The pressure he applies with his grasp sets off my haphephobia instantly. Having my dad this close to me is akin to a nuclear detonation because he’s so similar to my abuser. Each cell flares into flames that race through me with a slithering, sidewinding, serpentine wave that ripples under my skin and singes me from the inside out. I do my best to disguise my need to smother my arms by fisting my hands and leaning away from him. Shuddering, I try to disguise my counting with a cough, but no one buys my act.
My mother gasps when Dad growls with displeasure and Stirling freezes in front of me. I screw my eyes shut and try to block out the palpable rage that flows from my father.
“This shit needs to stop. Once this next job is over, I’m sending you back to that institution for as long as it takes to make you normal. You’re a fucking embarrassment to the Greaves name.”
Dad’s pronouncement hangs in the air with a noxious veracity.
“Which is why he doesn’t use our name,” my mom retorts. “I consider myself lucky that he even kept my name after all that’s happened.”
“My point still stands,” Dad argues.
When my mother glares at him with barely suppressed tears in her eyes, he digs his fingers into my muscle. I can’t defend myself because I know if I open my mouth, the only words that will come out will be numbers. If he hears my faithful coping mechanism out loud, it’s liable to set him off even further.
Moving out of his reach is off the table too. When I’m like this, I defend myself with a disproportionate amount of violence because Trigger pushes Spenser away to seize complete control. He’s my protector and main coping strategy. Counting and listening to music works when I’m around low-level threats. Nothing about my dad is subordinate. He’s a predator of the highest degree. If I move or speak, someone in this room will die.
That can’t happen because every person here knows that the Devil who spawned me will take his revenge on my twin.
I refuse to put Stirling in that position.
He’s the only person in my life that I trust.
“Jesus Christ, Dad. Lay off.” My brother recognizes the warning signs and forcibly removes our dad’s hand from my shoulder. “Can we do this without you making it worse than it needs to be?”
“Fine,” Dad huffs. Turning to my mom, he adds, “Off you go, Sophia. I told you that I’d deal with this.”
Mom leaves, albeit reluctantly, if the way her shoulders slump is an accurate indication. My mother wouldn’t normally speak up as much as she has tonight, and it’s her strange behavior that gives me the strength to push past Trigger’s protective instinct to march into Stirling’s office after my father with Spenser in control.
My brother brings up the rear. He locks the door once our motley trio is assembled. Dad sits behind my brother’s desk, taking possession of the room like he owns it. I perch on the edge of the antique leather Chesterfield, and Stirling chooses to sit on the same sofa instead of taking the lone armchair in the opposite corner.
When I try to catch his attention, he stares straight ahead in a way that tells me he’s deliberately ignoring me.
“I have a job for you,” Dad states. He pins me to the spot with his narrow-eyed glare. “You’ll leave tonight for New Haven, Connecticut. We’ve had one of our bolt holes cleared out as your base. I don’t want to see you back here until it’s done.”
“Sure,” I agree, easily. My father holds out a Manila folder. When I don’t reach for it, Stirling stands and retrieves the file. He passes it to me, resettling himself even closer to me when he retakes his seat. “Run your eyes over that, tell me if you have any questions, then get the hell out of here.”
I open the dossier and scan the contents. Normally, I’d wait until I was alone, but an order is an order plus Dad’s behavior has aroused my suspicions enough to concede without a fight. If my father has come here to deliver this dossier himself and lock us away with Stirling as a buffer, this isn’t an ordinary job.
I find a typical brief, identical to what I’m provided before every job, except there are two surveillance packages in this folder. Inside the top packet are details of an MC based in Connecticut; two young, female NYC detectives, one tall and one short; and a young girl posed in front of the main entrance to Stanford University. My eidetic memory files the finer details away for later reflection and I move onto the second envelope.
As I extract it, I spot a photo of my uncle Harrison clipped to the front. It leaps out at me. With a yell, I toss everything on the floor and stomp over to the door. My entire body is wracked with trembling and my mind is screaming at me to get out of here. When I twist the knob with shaking hands, it refuses to open, so I spin around and advance on my twin.
“Give me the fucking key,” I spit from between gritted teeth. My other persona is in control, and the longer I remain in this office, the more blood he wants to spill. “I won’t take a job if it brings me anywhere near him.”
Stirling shakes his head, then holds his hands up on either side of his head. I spot the key dangling from one of his fingers and it enrages me. “Just listen, Spenser. Please. I promise it’s not what you think.”
I bear down on my brother, expecting him to fold in the face of Trigger’s fury. He doesn’t. Instead, Stirling tosses the key to our dad. Changing my path toward my father, I decide that I don’t have a problem beating him to a pulp for the key, despite any potential ramifications for Stirling.
Now that it’s clear that he’s a part of this ambush, I’m done protecting him.
He can die for all I care. I’ll piss on his grave, then grit my teeth and fuck his spineless wife to further the insult.
“Please, Sabra. I swear on the lives of my children that I’m not trying to hurt you,” Stirling pleads.
His use of the nickname he christened me with during our childhood in Israel makes me stop to look at him. Since I was always the quick to anger, but quicker to apologize brother, Stirling christened me his “prickly pear.” He said I was thorny on the outside but soft on the inside, and for many years, I wore the moniker like a badge of honor until, like everything else, it was tainted by our uncle.
In a tight voice, Stirling tries to reason with me. “I think this will be a good job for you. It’ll give you some closure.”
“Why?” My voice is little more than a whisper. Hope is a dangerous thing in my world, especially when it comes to the only thing that could cause me to abort my current suicide mission. “How?”
My brother glances at our dad. I brace my shoulders before I follow his gaze. For a second after we lock eyes, my father shows me a measure of empathy by softening his regard. It’s gone in the next heartbeat and his usual disdain slips back into place as we stare each other down.
Despite Stirling’s pledge, I will never trust my dad.
My father has always avowed my wish to seek revenge on his younger half-brother as prohibited due to a bullshit mandate the Coalition made when he requested permission for me to take Harrison out. Personally, I have my doubts that he even asked. My father lives in a different realm as me. His priorities have always been my mother, the Coalition, Stirling, the rest of the organization and his family, then at the bottom, me.
Along with his blood-splattered refusal to allow me to leave the family when I was eighteen, and his ongoing threats against my twin, his denial of my need for vengeance has been the main bone of contention between us for most of my adult life.
When I was an eleven-year-old boy, I learned that my suffering would never supersede my parent’s loyalty to the Coalition.
The day I turned eighteen, my fa
ther left me with a permanent reminder of his brutality when he amputated my trigger finger at the first knuckle in response to my foolish request to emancipate myself from the Greaves name, and in turn, the Coalition.
At twenty-one, he proved to me how low he was willing to stoop to consolidate his place in the Coalition when he tortured my twin in front of me until I agreed to kill the seventeen-year-old daughter of his enemy.
Zoran Greaves is a motherfucking monster.
Yet, I’m willing to overlook that if it means I have permission to murder the only person I’ve ever wanted to kill.
“Stirling is telling the truth,” Dad confesses. The hope I’d been tamping down blooms in my chest. I ignore the warmth, bracing instead for the other shoe to drop. My father juts his chin out and announces in a voice I’ve never heard from him before, “If you complete the first packet, then Harrison is yours. He’s become too sloppy with some of the merchandise we move, and the Coalition has decided his time has come.”
As disbelief courses through me, I snort, “Well, isn’t that just dandy. Fuck little kids and you’re golden. But, don’t you dare cost the Coalition any money… you’ll be killed for that.”
My father rests his elbows on the desk in front of him. He lifts his eyebrows at me and smirks. “So, now you’ve got that off your chest, do you want the jobs or not?”
“Jobs?” I can only contain my optimism because I know there has to be a catch. The locked door and Stirling’s worried expression tell me that. “Isn’t it all different segments of the same job?”
“No,” Dad admits with a slow drawl. “Dealing with the Samaritan’s Soldiers MC and the Tennyson family is a job all of its own. They’re the reason our merchandise is being lost. The Coalition wants you to use them to send a message, but only after you’ve discovered how much the detectives know about our activities. The white one is a Tennyson—”
“Poppy,” I interject, rolling my eyes. Now I have permission to take out Harrison, I’m impatient to get to New Haven. “Yeah, I’ve got the gist. Surveil the detectives, destroy the evidence, then kill them all. How’s about I do my part, and you order the body bags we’ll need for the clean-up?”
I hold my hand out for the key.
Stirling stands. He touches my left hand once, specifically what’s left of my maimed finger. “Do you remember why this happened?”
“Of course, I fucking do,” I growl, then point at my dad. “I wanted out of this fucked up family and he said no.”
My brother takes hold of my mutilated hand. I tense up but manage to fight off the worst symptoms of my condition by imagining Harrison Greaves on his knees in front of me with the muzzle of my pistol pressed against his forehead. He’s crying, begging for the mercy he’s never shown anyone else. I will relish every ounce of his pain because before I end his poisonous existence, I’m going to make sure he’s a broken mess and a shell of a person… just like he made me on too many occasions to count from the age of seven to a month before I turned twelve.
I’m barely listening when Stirling pushes the point. “But, do you remember why you wanted out?”
Dad pounds the table. Jabbing a finger toward my brother, he shouts, “Just leave it alone! He’s already agreed.”
The hostility in his reaction jolts me out of my visions of easy vengeance. I squeeze my twin’s hand then push him out of the way. Leaning across the desk, I seize the lapels of my father’s dinner jacket. He makes a choking sound as I yank him over the wooden expanse, scattering Stirling’s paperwork and photo frames. My injured ribs flare. Instead of letting the ache slow me down, I luxuriate in the pain.
The end is so close that I can taste it, yet it’s never been further away.
“You told me that the Coalition stopped sex trafficking a decade ago. You fucking promised me it would stop if I stayed.” Twisting the thick material in my hand, I smile when Dad’s tie pulls tight, and his treacherous face begins to take on a grayish sheen. “Did you really think that I’d willingly eliminate your competitors in the sex game and save your greedy fucking organization just because you dangled him in my face?”
I shake Dad when he doesn’t answer. “How stupid are you? I should kill you on principle, but that’d be too easy. It’s better to keep you alive, so I can grate your nerves with the knowledge that I actually have morals and think exploiting women and children is disgusting. I will stop you… you fucking monster.”
“Let him go,” Stirling demands. He tugs on my arm, trying to loosen my grip. “It’s not what you think.”
“And, you?” I elbow my twin off me with my free arm and continue strangling our father with his own tie. Spittle erupts from my mouth when I turn back to Stirling and snarl at him, “I thought you were better than this, but you fucking knew…”
My twin responds by punching me in my broken ribs. I absorb the first strike, however, the second, harder jab sends me to my knees. I crumble to the floor with our dad’s gasping body on top of me. His weight trapping me sets off a panic attack. Skin burning, I immediately begin slapping the hell out of myself as visions of Harrison rush out of the vault I’d locked them in, and the memories of my abuse lodge like concrete in my mind. Every inch of my body is alight. I can’t smother the flames with my hands, so I begin rolling on the floor.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” my brother promises. He throws himself on the ground next to me, then gathers me in his arms. Rocking me back and forth, he chants, “One, two, three, four, five, six…”
It takes me a minute or so to find enough control to join Stirling’s chanting. As I intone the numbers from one to twelve over and over, I’m vaguely aware of our father limping out of the office. Cursing loudly, he slams the door behind him, and I’m finally alone with the one person who understands me.
Regret invades my mind and tries to drown me under the weight of the past and the damning knowledge that I incorrectly judged Stirling.
My twin’s presence tonight finally makes sense.
He wasn’t here to ambush me.
He was here to put me back together because he knew how I’d take learning that not only is my brother an active participant in their crimes, but he is a willing accomplice to their hypocrisy. I’ve killed hundreds of people over the last decade and a half to keep him free from the Coalition’s filth, yet he’s been tainted by them the entire time.
It’s a failure I can’t help but take personally.
What was this all for if he’s already one of them?
“I knew this would be a hard choice for you, Sabra, but I still believe it’s your choice to make. Harrison is yours if you want him.”
Lifting my head, I meet his eyes. They’re exactly like mine, except for one thing. While mine are filled with ghosts of the past and haunted by the betrayal of the present, his are guilty yet sympathetic, belligerent but sincere.
Stirling escaped the atrocities of our childhood, only to lose his soul to the Coalition’s never-ending pursuit of power anyway. While I have never begrudged that he avoided our uncle’s evil ways, it empowered me to know that he remained pure. Turns out, I was wrong, and he’s as murky on the inside as I am.
“I can’t believe you’d be a party to this.”
“We’re all part of this. It’s in us from birth. Even death won’t provide escape because the Coalition controls our souls for eternity. It’s the price we pay for the sins of our forefathers.”
“Bullshit. You could’ve stayed out of this if you wanted to,” I snarl. Jerking my chin toward the door our father left through, I add, “You let him infect you… now you’re as dirty as the rest of us.”
“Jesus, Spenser,” Stirling hugs me tighter, then he puts enough distance between us to stop my skin from burning. “Stop idolizing me. I’ve always been the same as you, underneath it all. I might play the part better, but I’ve never been better than you.”
“Believing you were free of all this shit kept me sane.”
“There’s nothing but insanity in this world. It�
��d do you good to remember that.”
“I want out.”
Surprise ripples across his features until understanding settles in his gaze. “Don’t you want revenge anymore?”
I swallow hard as I ponder his question. Revenge has been one of my dual driving forces for as long as I can remember. Except, now that it’s at the end of my fingertips, it doesn’t feel as sweet as I thought it would.
“If you knew that vengeance would cost more lives, would you do it?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he replies, although his inability to meet my eyes tells me that he’s trying to dodge the question. “I try not to think too hard about everything the Coalition is involved in.”
Shaking my head, I push the point. “Be honest, Sparrow. What would you do?”
“Jesus Christ.” My twin leans his forehead against mine. For once, the flames don’t burn quite as hot. “You haven’t called me that for at least twenty years.”
“I’ve been angry for twenty years.”
Stirling softens under the weight of my admission. He pulls back so I can see his face properly. “If it was me, I’d kill an entire nunnery to get to him. Do it, Sabra. Take your revenge. You fucking deserve it.”
EIGHT
“Smile at strangers and you just might change a life.” ~Steve Maraboli~
POPPY
“I’m going out.”
My announcement is met with silence by the few remaining stragglers in the Samaritan’s Soldiers’ main bar. I take that as my cue to leave while they’re too in shock to stop me. After three days cooped up with these people, discussing how to make a public announcement of Ollie’s death and his upcoming funeral, I need to get out of here. If I don’t, I’m going to say something I regret, and the argument we had the night I arrived will flare up again.
Only this time, Mom won’t be able to diffuse it by dropping a bombshell that brings me to my knees and silences my little sister.