Am I like my father?
How far can I go before I become him?
Have I already crossed that line?
“Did she like it?” Josh asks, and I punch him again. “What? It’s fucking relevant.”
“He’s right,” Liam says, softer. “It’s relevant.”
“She was wet, if that’s what you’re asking. She came around my dick. I could make her beg for it again tonight, if I wanted to, but that’s not the goddamn question.”
“You’re not like him.”
“You don’t even fucking know him,” I say, louder than I meant. A honeymooning couple from the next table glance over, and I look away. Shit. I’m losing my composure. Not a good sign as I get ready to walk into a deadly situation.
Liam tenses. “You’ve never told us. What was it like after we left?”
It was already pure hell when my brothers had been home. Our father had a particular dislike of Liam. Liked to throw him down a well and make him wait hours or even days to pull him back up. Then when he’d gotten older, he’d started throwing me and Josh in the abandoned well instead. He’d left us to cry, to drink the fetid water and then vomit it again, while Liam was forced to listen from the ground, unable to help in any way.
Then Liam turned eighteen. He enlisted.
And then Josh turned eighteen. He enlisted.
It was just me and the old man for four years before I could do the same.
“We don’t need to talk about this,” I say.
Josh runs a hand over his face. “We really don’t. What is this, some kind of intervention? A family reunion? We don’t know how to do the hard shit, so why bother trying?”
“It’s the reason he doesn’t trust us,” Liam says to Josh, his voice low, his gaze a rich emerald like our father’s. “He knows our secrets by now, but we don’t know his.”
“There are no secrets,” I lie. “You think the old man suddenly grew two heads after you left? No, he was the same bastard he was before that.”
Josh nods, looking relieved and exasperated. “That’s true. He didn’t magically change.”
Liam appears unimpressed. “Something happened.”
“How do you know?” Josh asks.
“Because there was not a single child services call, not a single police report, not a single record of Elijah at the hospital.” My oldest brother leans forward. “So if our father did not magically change into a half-decent parent after we left, how did that happen?”
My throat feels tight. “You don’t get to know the answer. You left.”
Josh’s expression takes on a begrudging approval. “How the hell do you do that? It’s like a carnival trick. Instead of telling fortunes, he can ferret out deeply buried secrets.”
I look away at the glittering surface of rocks and water. It’s a beautiful setting, but all I feel inside is dread. The same thing I feel whenever I think of the past.
Is it too much for that shit to stay buried? Is it too much to want to know my brothers without revealing all the toxic shit? Probably. Yeah, I have a tendency to want too much.
Same thing with Holly. I want her too damn much.
I swallow down the rest of the water and stand. If anyone attacked us right now, I’d be completely dependent on my brothers, because I’m moving blind and slow.
Underwater in the miasma of memories.
I knew Liam wouldn’t let that shit rest forever, but I didn’t expect him to bring it up in the wide-open sunlight of the Amalfi coast. That kind of thing deserves nighttime and a dark, scary setting. It deserves blood and gore.
Liam comes to stand on one side of me. Josh on the other.
“Now, let’s go over the plan,” Liam says again.
“I’m taking Holly.”
“I don’t understand why we can’t come too,” Josh says. “A party’s a party.”
“Because Taggart will bolt. You know that.”
“So we pin him down. Put a bullet in his brain.”
There’s that tug in my chest again. I feel it whenever I look at Holly. I’m looking at her now. “I don’t want her to be afraid of me. If I kill him, she will be.”
“We’re not murderers,” Liam says.
That’s the problem, of course. He’s wrong. I am a murderer. That’s one of the secrets I’m keeping from him. It would only pain him if he knew the truth. “Besides, that will make her a target for anyone loyal to Taggart. I want her free and clear of this shit.”
“And if something happens to you?” Josh asks.
“I don’t give a shit about me. He touches a hair on her head, you burn him to the ground.”
I leave them standing on the rocks and stride to the edge of the water. Holly looks up from where she’s floating, her hair a mass of curly wet, her eyes sparkling like the sea. She’s a siren drawing me away from my ship, toward a violent death. I don’t give a fuck.
My boots come off with a few kicks, and I’m left in socks and long combat pants. Not exactly the ideal swimwear, but I walk straight into the lapping waves. She meets me with joy in her expression, laughing, and I have a sudden desire to throw off the meeting tonight. Let’s fuck and fuck and fuck. Let’s forget about the rest of the world in the Mediterranean Sea.
She throws her arms around me. “Hello, Mr. Serious.”
That makes me grin. “Mr. Serious?”
“That’s your superpower. Being serious.”
“You’ve met Liam, and you think I’m the serious one.”
“Well, superpowers run in the family,” she says in a reasonable tone.
God, I love this woman. The words come to me in a swell of affection, and I have to turn away quickly to hide my shock. I don’t love her. I can’t love her. That means this terrifying obsession will never end. It means we’ll be forever locked in a grid of resentment.
“What were you three talking about?” she says, gesturing to my brothers.
“The plan for tonight,” I manage, my voice gruff.
“You got them to agree that it should just be the two of us?”
“I wasn’t exactly giving them a choice.”
“That was a lot of talking for such a simple conversation.”
“Logistics,” I say, which is a lie. We went over that already in the house. We’ll go over it again before tonight. The truth is we were talking about all the ways I would horrify her if she really knew me.
He knows our secrets by now, but we don’t know his.
“Logistics,” I say again. “That’s all. Now onto the more important questions. We’re walking into a dangerous situation tonight, Ms. Frank. Do you know how to shoot?”
“A gun?”
“No, a basketball. Of course a gun.”
She shivers, and I see the memory of last night in her eyes. “No.”
“The logistics are pretty easy. Point and shoot. The question is, can you kill a man?”
CHAPTER TEN
Holly
We make the climb up a winding staircase with crumbly stone steps and a wobbly metal railing. None of that scares me as much as what’s coming next. London goes upstairs for a nap. I have no idea how she can rest with what’s happening tonight. The other men disappear to make plans. Then it’s only me and Elijah behind the house, where a large lemon orchard suffuses the air with a sweet citrus.