by Evie Harper
Pacer doesn’t move an inch.
“I’m not worried about you. I never have been. You’re not the only one watching, Rex. We know you’ve been here every night since Della was admitted, paying a nurse for information on her condition.”
I narrow my eyes and glance over my shoulder to find Corey behind me, looking at me with a similar sadness Mack had moments ago.
Rex turns back around, “I get it. And if you know that, you know it will never come from my mouth.”
Slater shakes his head. “She needs to know, Rex. I can’t let you leave until she knows who not to talk to, because, clearly I can’t trust Lana with shit.”
I’m beyond pissed. I yank my arm away from Rex and step up. “Slater, clearly you’re angry with me and really I don’t give a damn, but don’t stand there and pretend that you actually believe I would go to the police about this.”
Slater’s lips tip up into a grin and I lose it.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I hiss.
Everyone in the room freezes and it’s Mack who finally lets me know the truth. “It’s not the police, Lana. It’s the mafia, your mother’s family. They don’t let murders go, ever. They ruthlessly, to the ends of the earth, find out who’s responsible for killing one of their family members and they end them, savagely.”
They’re worried over nothing. We’ve not spoken to our mother since she left us, and never had contact with her family. My father used to, but not me and Rex.
Over the years, my father has drunkenly explained to us about our mother’s mafia family. My dad was married in and he wanted to move back to his hometown, which was Parkland. My mother not so much, but she did what any good Sicilian woman would do, she came with her husband and made a home and popped out two children, but she became depressed, started drinking a lot and then one day she was just gone. I was three and Rex was five. I’ve seen pictures of her–Elena. Rex and I have her chocolate brown eyes.
However, my father couldn’t escape the Lucini’s so easily, he was still left with a debt. My mother’s family bought and funded the first five years of my father’s business. And in return, my father would on occasion, receive drugs and place them in certain ‘customer’s’ cars that came in for servicing. Rex and I have no idea how long this debt took to pay off or when it ended.
After my father’s death, I found his contacts book. I was tempted to locate my estranged family and find out if they knew where my mother was, but how could I ever forgive her? There was one letter from my mother to Rex. However, he threw it away, adamant we have nothing to do with them. So I dumped the book and never thought about it again.
“We don’t see our family or have anything to do with them, we never have.” My eyes search out Mack and I’m close to saying, ‘you know that’ when I catch myself. “And Rex and I wouldn’t ever wish that on Della. I doubt they even remember we’re alive, and I’m sure if Rex was going to reach out to them about my father’s death at all, he would’ve done it long before now.” I glance at Rex as I speak for him and see him staring the other way, seemingly unable to look at me. “Rex… tell them.” Rex doesn’t answer me. Instead, he turns back to Pacer.
“Move before I fucking move you myself.”
Stepping away from my brother I whisper, “Rex?” With his back to me, I watch as Rex’s head falls forward and he sighs. My sanity is at breaking point. Every damn step forward has been riddled with lies. My hands are shaking as I demand loudly, “Somebody tell me something.”
Mack’s the brave one who steps to me and with placating hands in the air, as if he’s trying to corner me or keep me from lashing out, he says, “Rex took over your dad’s work with the family when he died. He’s been working closely with the Lucini’s family ever since.”
I spin to my brother ready to ask him what Mack is talking about, but he’s still standing with his head bowed, looking defeated.
Glancing to Corey, he gives me the same sorrowful expression. He knew this was coming, so did Mackson. Time slows. The drugs. The weekends away. The secret phone calls I thought were girls.
“How was I this blind for so long?”
I rush Corey and grab his shirt, pushing him backward. “How could you let him do this? He’s in for life now, how did you not think to tell me. I’m his family, not you or the guys, me.”
Corey frowns.
Weak. I push him back, my face twisting with a snarl. “All these years I’ve worried and planned with you to help my brother, and all along you knew how bad he was getting on the drugs… and now he’s in the mafia?”
Suddenly memories flood through my mind. I gasp out, “Thomas.” A man in his late thirties, maybe early forties, always wears sunglasses, denim jeans, and a leather jacket. I saw him a few times a year, only when I turned up to the garage unannounced and he happened to be there at the same time. I asked Rex about him once, and he told me Thomas was a guy he’d hired to help him out in the garage when it got busy. I had replied saying he didn’t dress like a mechanic, and Rex laughed my comment off. I didn’t question it; the garage, the business was Rex’s territory. He was vehement that I find something I loved and pursue that and leave the garage to him.
“Thomas Cutillo… AKA Bone. An enforcer for the Sicilian Mafia,” Slater informs me.
“This is none of your business,” Rex sneers toward Slater. “Thomas knows nothing. He arrives and leaves on the same day, and has no idea about my war with you all. The Caporegime, Paulie, he asks questions now and again when I go to meetings, but I’ve never led him to Portland. I’m not a snitch and I can dish out my own payback.”
Rex finally speaks to me and his voice is emotionless. “I had a house and business to pay for, and not to mention I had to keep food on the table and you were in college. This isn’t Corey’s fault. There was a choice to be made and I made it… end of fucking story. My guys were told not to tell you, and they followed my orders. They’re my crew, not yours. Now, I’m leaving, with or without you, Lana.”
Rex’s jaw is ticking, his tight, tense body telling me to shut the hell up and go with him now. But his words feel like knives piercing my heart, they hurt me more than the searing slap across my face. I can’t leave yet. I’ve learned more in this crappy bathroom than I have in the past five years of my life. I need to find out one more thing.
“Since taking over, have you seen her? That letter. You told me you ignored it, you told me to let it go.”
Rex’s expression turns pained. He shakes his head and begs, “Not here.”
Betrayal of the worst kind surges through me, and it’s delivered by my own brother.
How could he talk to her after she abandoned us? He was able to spend time with her? Get to know her and never told me. My own brother didn’t try and connect his mother and sister in five years?
Emotions, so many are struggling for control. I’m trying to pick just one, but I can’t, my throat feels as if it’s being strangled.
I wanted the truth and that’s what I received.
“Leave,” I say to my brother in a soft broken voice.
“Lana,” Corey tries to approach.
This time, I shout at him and Rex, “Leave!”
I swipe at my tears with the back of my shaking hands.
Rex rubs at his temples as if in pain and says, “Fine. But remember I came for you.”
You came to tell me your plan, not to save me.
“You don’t want to come home, fuck you then. Become a Kings’ whore, but know this, you aren’t welcome back home ever again.” My brother turns his back on me and walks out of the bathroom, never once glancing at me.
The door bangs closed and it’s as if the room shakes from underneath me and causes my knees to give out. I don’t hit hard ground. I’m caught around the middle and land softly against a warm chest. I have no idea who’s holding me and I don’t care. All I can feel is my chest ripping open, a central part of me I thought was destroyed a long time ago. How wrong I was. This is what a real broken heart feels li
ke, an important part of your soul shattering beyond repair.
Chapter Seven
Brett
“It was Della?”
“The knife, my father, blood was everywhere, yet I don’t think I saw any on you.”
“No, I swear Rex, Della told me herself. They’re trying to protect her from you. I told them you’d never hurt her, but they love their sister.”
She deceived me. They all lied. I saw the signs and ignored them because I’ve been falling for her.
Della’s a killer.
Why would she kill him? Does it matter? She murdered somebody, a father and has let her brother take the fall for it all this time. Piper has been targeted and yet Della still didn’t reveal the truth.
I doubt Slater would let her even if she wanted to.
We’ve become so close, why hasn’t she told me? Della knows I know everything, seen everything. Maybe all I know are lies and she knows that too, which would make me the fool in this scenario.
Fuck. This is not happening. I got too close and now I’m feeling the sting of the inferno.
“Leave!”
Spinning around I exit out of the small entry room before the bathroom and take a quick right, hiding behind a post while I watch Rex and Corey walk out and take fast strides out of the hospital, disappearing from view.
Slater and Pacer exit next, and I decide to waste no time in finding out the truth. I walk over and Slater turns to me, his face strained. He pinches the bridge of his nose and begins to speak, but I don’t let him get far.
“I overheard you all in the bathroom. It was Della all along?” As hard as I try I can’t take the accusing tone out of my voice.
Slater’s head whips up and his eyes narrow, taking on a steely glint.
“That’s family business, and you’re not family. Don’t mistake your place here or the cash I put in your hands. Your only job is to watch Rex and get me information, that’s it.” Slater’s words are laced with frustration and warning.
“I should have known this,” I seethe. “I risked my life going back and forth. I told you from the start, I only work for you as long as I know the truth.”
Slater steps into my space. I hold my ground, balling my hands ready to either block his punches or throw one of my own.
“I’m the fucking leader of a street gang. Did you really expect honesty from me… or from someone else?”
Realization dawns, he’s right. I knew not to trust a soul during this mission. Agreeing to come into the Kings’ world meant constant lies, death threats and selling my soul for gold.
When the fuck did I forget that?
“You’re getting too close to Della,” Slater states as if answering my question for me. “You need to piss off, take some time and get some pussy, then come back with a clear head.”
Leave? Not see her every day? Suddenly taking my next breath is harder than ever before. It feels as if there’s no air left in my lungs. Looking left and right, struggling to regulate my out of control feelings, I think back through the past few months, trying to find the moment where my world turned upside down.
Lies.
Slaughter.
Lust.
I’m losing myself. Watching the Kings, it’s so easy. Looking from the outside in, anyone would be jealous of their devotion, loyalty, and strength. It makes you forget who you are and where you came from.
“I agree. It’s for the best,” I state calmly. “I got a friend I’ve been meaning to meet up with for a while, so I’ll head north for a few weeks.”
I turn to leave when Slater sighs and rests his hand on my shoulder. “I do trust you to a degree, Brett. I’ve been burned too many times to give that over completely to anyone except my family. Maybe one day, you keep proving your loyalty, and I’ll call you family.” Slater pats me on the shoulder and walks away.
It’s too late. I’ve already destroyed that which Slater believes is solid.
My heart is tearing in two. One side is set in stone. Justice must be served, she’s a killer. Yet the other side, which can’t seem to let her go, is about to be blown to pieces by my own predestined disloyalty.
Chapter Eight
Mackson
I storm into the garage, slamming the glass sliding door behind me and halt at the workbench. I lean over the greasy surface, my hands bunched into fists as I desperately try to calm my rapid breathing as my heart struggles against my body and mind. I’m fighting every fiber in my muscles and veins, they’re like tiny magnets that are stretching through my skin, trying with all their might to propel me out of this garage, through my house and straight to Lana.
She didn’t say a word on the way home from the hospital as if there was nothing left inside of her anymore. I know her heart is truly my other half, because I swear I could hear the fracture through her chest echo around the bathroom when my heart broke alongside hers.
Growing up, I never saw Lana stand up for herself, she let things happen and she didn’t change them. The woman I saw today is far from that insecure girl I left behind. She took a hit, and still stood strong wanting to help her brother. I wanted to carry her out of the bathroom and demand she never see him again. It took everything for me to remember I’m not her knight in shining armor, I’m the man she didn’t believe in, someone she let go all too easily.
Anger seeps into every crevice and vein in my body. I can’t hold it in any longer. My heart beating uncontrollably, I slam my hands along the workbench, shoving all the tools and engine parts in my way to the ground. Thankfully the thundering of metal hitting the concrete floor drown out my tormented roar. My chest rises and falls painfully. I turn around and stare through the glass doors, up at my home. My eyes feel as if they could burn a hole right through the wall to the bedroom, where I know Lana is probably curled into a ball, crying.
In a perfect world, I’d take her to my bed and make her forget. My fingers would caress every inch of my Dove’s skin, and my stare would convey the thoughts in my mind as I’d remember each and every moment I fell more in love with her. Each thrust inside her would be a new promise that my devotion is forever. My rough kisses would sear Lana’s memories, causing the ashes of the past and present to float away. They have no place in the world or the future I would build just for her. She would never need another person again.
But the world I live in is far from perfect.
***
Dark shadows begin to creep over the engine I’m working on. Work has been a great distraction to stop my mind from wandering back to Lana. I think about turning on the garage lights to keep going, but I decide it’s time to call it a day. If I could stay out here until I know my brothers are asleep to avoid their knowing stares, I would, but I’ve held myself off as long as I can to go in and check on Lana.
I hope she’s eaten, showered and talked to one or all my brothers. I hope she gets all the shit she’s been through today off her chest because I don’t know if I can keep my distance if I see her break down again.
I scrub my hands with soap in the garage sink, dry them and walk out through the glass door I almost shattered earlier when I felt so raw. Walking across my backyard, the first thing I notice is the fresh-cut grass. I shake my head, surprised I’d gone so far into my own head that I never once heard one of my brothers use the mower. Almost to the backdoor, the smell of fryer grease and spices hit me. My stomach rumbles, reminding me I haven’t eaten since breakfast.
I step inside and as I do, Kelso’s horrible out-of-tune singing voice hits me and I cringe at the sound. He’s doing equally bad dance moves standing over the stove with earphones in. A soft giggle to my right gets my attention and I find Piper watching Kelso while she stands behind Pacer at the entry of the kitchen. There’s a phone in Pacer’s hand, the camera pointed directly at Kelso, who must be making his favorite stir-fry, the one he puts a fuck-load of spices into.
I can’t help the grin that appears on my face, because when Kel finds out Pacer filmed him, it’s going to be on. Last ti
me those two went at it, they almost broke all the photo frames in the house. Della had a shit fit and tipped the television forward and threatening to break it if they didn’t stop. Slater put the boys on their asses quickly at that point. We all know not to mess with Slater’s favorite toys. And after his Chevy car, that’s the television and PlayStation. Well, except our little sister, she can get away with pretty much everything.
My guess is that Piper and Pacer are using Kelso for their entertainment because Slater’s pride and joy big ass flat screen was destroyed in the shooting Rex ordered. We’ve managed to get the windows replaced and Pacer has started filling the holes in the drywalls with plaster and sanding them back. There’s no new television yet as we need to get the outside and inside back to normal first, so when Della comes home, there’s nothing to remind her of the shooting.
I sense someone beside me and glance to my right. I find Piper staring up at me with a strained smile.
“Just thought you might want to know that Lana hasn’t come out of the room today… not once.” Her voice drops until it’s merely a quiet mutter. “She must be starving.”
My heart grows heavy and sadness floods my chest. As much as Lana hurt me—ruined a piece of me that will never look toward the future for anything bright again—I know she’s also been destroyed time and time again by her mother, father, and now by her brother.
Enough is enough. My heart might still be broken, but I don’t want my name added to that list. At the end of my life or Lana’s, that’s not how I want her to remember me.
“I’ve tried to speak to her,” Piper adds. “Either she’s not ready to talk or I’m not the one she wants to talk to.” Piper shrugs and walks out of the kitchen.
For someone who claims not to be nosey Piper sure as shit has a lot to say. I walk further into the kitchen and witness Pacer almost falling on his ass from laughter, while struggling to hold the phone up and continue to film.