by Melissa Jane
Stricken at the sight of me turning blue, my brother dropped his weapon and charged. We were both knocked to the side upon contact, and I was flung hard against the wall, instant pain shooting through my rib cage. At the base of the stairs, Mason and Borelli grappled on the floor. Mason delivered a series of blows to the face, left, right, left, right. He roared with each strike, allowing over three months of abuse to unfold.
Climbing to my feet, I searched for the cordless phone to call 911, but it wasn’t in its usual place. It was lost somewhere in the chaos.
There was a sickening thud, Borelli repeatedly smashing Mason’s head against the bottom wooden step. His arm was hooked around my brother’s neck refusing to let him go. Mason grew momentarily limp, Borelli gaining the upper hand. He twisted and turned until he claimed top position. His giant bear-like hands pummeled Mason’s face with the relentlessness of a professional boxer. Blood sprayed from my brother’s nose in both directions with each hit, his cheek and lower lip splitting open.
“Get off,” I screamed through tears, but Borelli was zoned, focused on finishing what he started.
I kicked and stomped at him, but he never flinched. He was too much of a Hulk, high on adrenaline to feel anything.
Mason was barely conscious, and I was desperate knowing that tonight would be the night one or more of us wouldn’t survive.
“Luc,” my brother only just managed as a fist smashed into his jaw. His gaze landed on something across the room, his weak finger pointing to direct me.
I fell to the floor searching under the kitchen island until I saw what he wanted.
A chopping knife. The biggest in the set.
It, along with everything else, had been knocked to the floor when Mason swiped at the dishes earlier. Reaching out, my fingers curling around the handle and I pulled it from underneath the bench, its blade now glinting in the light. Rising to my feet, I stood behind Borelli. Both his hands were now wrapped around Mason’s neck.
He had taken to strangulation, his favorite.
He grunted, squeezing the life out of the teenage boy beneath him. Mason desperately clawed at his attacker but to no avail. He saw me, standing shakily, the knife clutched with both hands.
“Do it!” he mouthed his instruction. His face beet red, cut open and bloodied. He was barely recognizable. “Do it,” he said again as his eyes rolled to the back of his head.
I acted out of fear.
I acted out of love.
I lifted my weapon high knowing my brother was only seconds from death. Roaring to life, I plunged the knife into Borelli’s back.
It felt surreal, the knife cutting through human flesh only for it to achieve nothing. Borelli hadn’t loosened his grip on Mason. I became primal, a fearful animal determined to protect what’s his against an unwanted predator. Pulling the knife free, I struck again. When nothing happened, I fell into a desperate frenzy. I stabbed the man over and over until finally, like a wild beast acknowledging defeat, he collapsed on top of Mason, his back a mass of torn flesh and blood.
Blood had sprayed over me during the assault, my hands coated in the sticky mess. I could taste it on my tongue and feel it clumped on my eyelashes. Before shock set in, I heaved Borelli off my gasping brother.
I stood, numb to the carnage.
The life had been sucked clean out of me.
I was now sixteen and a murderer.
~
“Lucas. Lucas!” Mason called, pulling me from the darkness.
I’d fainted. Sitting propped up against the island bench, Mason kneeled in front, running a wet tea-towel over my face. “There you are,” he said, smiling through a mouthful of blood.
“What happened?”
He didn’t need to answer, and for my benefit, he wasn’t going to. I could see for myself. Anthony Borelli’s large body lay dead at the base of the stairs. The house looked like a scene from a massacre, the knife I’d used to end his life now lying abandoned on the floor like it was just some other object.
“Hey,” Mason gently shook my shoulders until I turned my gaze back to him. “Don’t go there, brother. You saved my life. You saved all of our lives. It had to be done. Do you understand?” He waited expectantly, and all I could do was blink. “Lucas! Do you understand? You did what you had to.”
“Yes,” I muttered robotically. Nothing could ever convince me that what I’d done was okay.
Soft wails filtered from the living room. My mom sat on the sofa rocking back and forth, staring at the rug as if somehow it was going to give her some answers.
“She woke up not long ago,” Mason muttered. “Crawled over to him, cried, and then moved over to the sofa to cry some more.”
My heart twisted hearing that. She was happy to cry over a monster. And yet, she didn’t care enough to check on her children. I was broken by this. This wasn’t the mother who had raised me.
“Ignore her,” Mason encouraged while heaving me to my feet. We turned to face Borelli, both overwhelmed with the amount of blood and gore.
“What are we gonna do?” I asked weakly.
“We’re gonna get rid of him.”
“What do you mean? We can’t just get rid of him. People will come looking.” I was becoming frantic. Frantic because I was the one who repeatedly drove the knife into his back. “They’ll trace him back to us.”
“No one is going to trace anything back to us. He took Mom’s car when he last left, and he returned in Mom’s car. There’s no bus ticket and no vehicle of his own to dispose of. The fucker barely left a trace.”
I was unconvinced. Just as I was about everything else to do with this.
“Stay here and watch Mom.”
I watched numbly as my brother ran out the back door and into the rain. He disappeared, and I began to shiver uncontrollably.
Mason barged back through the door holding a blue tarpaulin Dad had used to patch the roof once when a storm tore through. “We’ll wrap him in this,” he said, laying it out as best he could before gripping Borelli’s shoulder. “Grab his legs and roll him onto the edge.”
Doing as I was told, I waited for Mason to count to three before we rolled the dead weight onto the tarpaulin. Borelli’s hand flopped onto my foot, and I shuddered. It was a hand that had caused so much pain and injury. A hand that had connected on many occasions with my face. And now it was lifeless. Useless.
We moved robotically until Borelli was in place. All I wanted to do was curl up under my blanket and cry. Instead, my mother’s cries grew louder as she mourned for a man who cared nothing for her. She had turned a blind eye to her children being assaulted, and now she had the nerve to behave as if she had raised monsters for children who’d taken the love of her life away. I had blood on my hands, and she was still blinded by love.
“Lucas. Hey? Look at me…” Mason gripped my face until our eyes met. “He was going to kill me.” He glanced down at the rolled tarpaulin. “The fucker deserved to die.” A wide smile formed, and Mason laughed maniacally as if the whole thing entertained him. “You fucking did it like a pro, brother.”
“What?” I spat, angrily. How could he see humor in this? “This isn’t funny, Mason. I… I just fucking killed a man.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, sobering up more so for my fragile state. “That could be me in there right now if it weren’t for you.”
I took an urgent step away, my stomach lurching. Lunging for the sink, I brought up the night’s devastation. Mason saw this as being something honorable, something that would define us as men. I saw this as a terrible mistake done in the heat of the moment to save the ones I loved. No matter which way I looked at it, killing Anthony Borelli was a life sentence.
Chapter 31
THEN
MASON
The rain fell heavy and fast, the droplets feeling more like razors slicing through our skin. Large puddles had formed over the backyard and driveway making shit even more difficult. I’d wrapped rope around the tarpaulin securing Borelli’s body as we
dragged him toward the car. In the dark of night, we heaved and pulled in unison, our tired muscles struggling with the weight.
Lightning lit up the sky illuminating everything and exposing us to our neighborhood’s watchful eyes. I stopped and stared at my brother, breathless, watching the rain wash the blood from his face before we fell into darkness once more. He was struggling, mentally and physically.
“I’ll never get away with this,” he said, defeated. I watched and listened to my brother’s voice. “I’m still a juvenile. If I confess, I may not be tried as an adult.”
“It’s murder, Lucas. You’re of the age when it can go either way.”
My brother muttered something incomprehensible through sobs.
“I need you to stay together, Lucas.”
“If I hand myself in now, it’ll spare us being hunted down in the future,” he continued.
We lowered the body by the car, and I took the opportunity to talk sense. Grabbing Lucas’s shirt, I pulled him close. “That’s bullshit. If you hand yourself in now, we’ll all go down for this. Listen to me, Lucas. That fucker deserved everything he got, and I’m not about to have him continue to destroy our lives.”
Another flash of lightning and my brother recoiled from me. I was further scaring him in a situation where he was already terrified. But I couldn’t stop. Borelli had been right about one thing. Weak people are the first to go, and I wasn’t about to let this happen to him. Lucas had always been the faint-hearted one. I was the brother who carried a chip on his shoulder, harassed the teachers at school and terrified the neighborhood elderly with my impulsive outbursts. And now as the lightning spotlighted us, rain running down our battered faces, Lucas could see just how unfazed I was by a murder that took place in my own home, committed by my own brother, to save my own life.
I didn’t feel remorse like most would.
I didn’t feel the type of guilt that would plague someone for the rest of his life.
I wanted Borelli dead, and now I had my wish. If Lucas hadn’t done it, I would have.
A flash of lightning revealed my brother’s trembling lower lip. A deep rumble of thunder followed. At least the earth would be soft.
I knocked his shoulder, drawing his waning attention back to me. “Stop fucking wallowing and help me lift this asshole into the trunk.”
Conceding defeat, Lucas took the tail end of Borelli and together we struggled to lift him off the muddy drive.
“Higher,” I demanded, not quite able to reach the tray.
“I can’t. He’s too heavy.”
“I have the damn heavy end, so fucking lift this fucker.”
The tarpaulin slipped through Lucas’s fingers causing me to drop my end, Borelli’s wrapped head thumping on the tow bar on its way down.
“Fucking deserved that.” I smiled at Lucas who shook his head in shame.
“That’s not funny, Mason.”
“Sure as fuck is. Now go again. Lift.”
Once more, we heaved and grappled with the body using our knees for balance until we could roll it into the trunk.
We stood catching our breath, wiping the mud off our hands.
Someone was watching us.
I could feel it.
They’d watched our every move.
Glancing up to the window next door, I’d found our culprit. The sky lit up in a spectacular light show, revealing the frightened face of Gemma Sinclair. When our eyes met, she ducked out of view, but it was too late. She’d seen us drag Borelli’s wrapped body to a car.
“Fucking Jesus,” I mouthed, and Lucas followed my gaze.
“She didn’t see anything,” he almost pleaded.
“She saw fucking everything.”
Lucas placed a firm hand on my shoulder, thunder cracking above us. “Leave her out of this, Mason.”
“Go inside, Lucas.”
He didn’t move, his confidence returning. “Promise me you’ll leave her out of this?”
“She’ll talk.”
“No, she won’t. She won’t know what was in the tarpaulin. Promise me you’ll leave her alone?”
The night was fucked up enough without Lucas becoming emotional over some bitch.
“I promise,” I lied. Lucas dropped his hand, foolishly appeased. “But what happened tonight, no matter who was responsible, this shit dies with us, Lucas. We carry this secret to the grave.”
I cast another glance up to the window. “And that means saying goodbye to Gemma Sinclair. Forever.”
Chapter 32
NOW
“Gemma Audrina Sinclair,” Lucas gently teased. “I know when you’re peeking.”
I laughed at his reprimand as he guided me down a small slope. He had blindfolded me, and I had no idea where I was or where we were going. All I knew was that the sun was warm on my shoulders, the air fresh, soft waves rolling onto the shore somewhere in the distance.
“Lucas Aaron Carter, how can I possibly peek when you have both my hands?”
It was almost two weeks since the fateful night at the cabin. We’d both stayed in the hospital while being treated. Me, for a severe concussion that had me in and out of consciousness, and Lucas for his multiple gunshot wounds.
It was there, when the nurses had announced lights out, that Lucas joined me on my hospital gurney and filled me in with what had happened that stormy night ten years ago. He spared no detail and despite it all, accepted full responsibility.
“You can’t say a word of this to anyone,” I’d warned, trembling from his admission.
It was self-defense.
It all came down to survival.
Just like it had at the cabin with Mason.
Survival.
That no longer sat well with Lucas. He’d just killed his brother on top of the secret he’d been harboring for a decade, and the guilt was destroying him. From the hospital, Lucas organized Mason’s funeral, determined to still bury him in dignity, but refused to attend. The toxic mix of hurt and anger was too much.
Lucas could never forgive Mason.
He could barely forgive himself.
Detective Kinross often visited, sometimes for a casual check-up bringing bouquets of flowers, other times hoping more pieces of the puzzle would voluntarily be put together. On the last day he visited, he entered all smiles, but when he returned from talking privately with Lucas, I knew the truth had been revealed. Kinross gave a small melancholic wave as he backed away, now carrying the burden of putting a man in jail for simply protecting his family on both accounts.
That afternoon, Lucas didn’t come and visit.
I cried endlessly.
Fearful I would once again lose him, this time to the system.
I waited anxiously for an arrest, but nothing. We were discharged from the hospital, and after gathering a few possessions from my apartment, Lucas stole me away out of town. A few hours out of NYC in Maryland, Lucas pulled over and blindfolded me. Only minutes later he was guiding me down the slope.
“Are you ready?” he asked, finally bringing us to a standstill.
“Yes. Show me already.”
He laughed while removing the silk from my eyes.
I froze, mouth agape.
“Oh… my… Lucas!”
“For you. For us.” He draped an arm over my shoulders, his thumb caressing my bare skin.
I stared ahead at the most beautiful cabin I’d ever seen. It sat perched only meters from the water’s edge, beautiful blue crystal water. Colorful flowers were in bloom, some having fallen from the lush trees dotting the green lawn like ruby gemstones.
It was magical.
And then my eyes saw it.
The plaque by the door.
Gemma.
“This is the one?”
“The one and only.”
I was breathless. “It’s absolutely gorgeous.”
Lucas took my hand and led me inside. It was clean, fresh and cozy, decorated like something out of a magazine. It was also twice as big as my apartment.<
br />
“You did all this?”
He smiled warmly, his fingers grazing my cheek. I loved when he did that. “I had inspiration.”
The entire back of the cabin was framed with glass, allowing the perfect view of the glimmering lake. I could see why he had such a passion for what he did.
Lucas reached into his jeans pocket and pulled a small velvet box free before asking for my hand. “Gem, I’ve waited for this moment for what feels like my entire life. I honestly believed it was never going to happen, but now that it has, I’m sure as hell not going to lose it again. Open it.”
I swallowed hard, and with trembling fingers, I opened the box.
A key.
A beautifully carved, Victorian-style key.
“I want this to be yours, Gem. I want to spend the rest of my life with you in a place we love, making up for the time we’ve lost and creating new memories.” He took the key and placed it in the palm of my hand along with something else that flickered in the light.
I lost my breath, my heart galloping. “Lucas, what are you—”
All I could do was stare at the stunningly gorgeous diamond ring waiting to be eagerly slipped onto my finger. I met Lucas’s gaze, his eyes loaded with sincerity, love, and adoration. The same look he gave me when we were just kids.
“Truth or dare, Gem?’’
“Truth,” I smiled.
“Would you like to become my wife?”
My heart rejoiced. “Truth, and yes! Of course. Lucas… it was only ever you,” I admitted through sobs. “Always only you.”
Lucas slipped the perfectly-sized ring onto my finger and pulled me forward until I molded against his body. Cupping my face, he kissed me with a passion that always had me weak in the knees. A passion so raw, demanding and yet so gentle.
“I’ve waited so long to tell you I love you,” I murmured against his lips.
“And I, equally as long.”
Lucas nibbled gently on my bottom lip, and I groaned with pleasure feeling his cock stirring. Wrapping arms around his neck, our bodies practically begging for each other.