Page 62

An eye for an eye.

I’ll take everything you love first.

And then I’m coming for you.

I remember the conversation with Moretti before the funeral. Trig must have hit me so hard it wiped my memory out. I must have had a concussion and it’s all coming back to me now. Once, when we were kids, Paul wrecked on a dirt bike he’d stolen from some rich kid.

He hit his head; blood was everywhere. He was talking nonsense and couldn’t remember a damn thing. Doc said he suffered a major concussion, that one day out of the blue he might remember what happened or he might never. This must be what I’m experiencing.

Thinking about Paul has me thinking about my plan. Everything comes back to me. Every single thing.

“What?” she asks.

“Dear God,” I say, looking back up at her.

“I killed his whole family.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Bones

2019

Hours went by before she stopped crying and I know listening to her was what I deserved. It’s my own personal nightmare. I’ve already got a seat reserved for me in Hell, but this…what I’ve done, it ratifies it and the note in my pocket seals the deal. I went back to the shop after I was sure she’d fallen asleep and what I found…she’ll never forgive me.

I sit outside A-Street Flower Shop, looking at the building from the outside as I smoke. It’s late, but a few cars pass, checking out the place, wondering what happened, not knowing that only hours ago, my little brother was gunned down and the woman I love was almost taken from me.

I open my car door, stepping out, exhaling smoke into the air. Looking around, I walk across the road, lifting the yellow tape, stepping over broken glass. I walk inside, checking out the destruction left behind, my mind reeling. Blood dries on the floor, and flowers hang in broken pots.

I have a lot of enemies; some I don’t even know about. This was always in the back of my mind. This was my worst fear that my actions would cause someone I loved to get hurt. I’m a monster, but even monsters care about something.

Family has always been important to me. Ma and my brothers, Bexley, Sweep, and Trig are the pieces that hold my life’s puzzle together.

Now a piece of that is gone.

And I’m fucking furious.

Anger and hurt collide in my chest, like two fighting demons. I scan the place and my madness grows at what was done here.

They have no idea who they just fucked with. My hands shake. I lift up the table nearest me, along with the chair beside it, tossing them across the room. My hands hang on my hips and I bow my head, running my fingers over my jaw as my eyes land on a bottle.

My eyes narrow. I reach down and pick it up, noticing the piece of paper inside of it. I tip it upside down and dig the paper out.

The sound of the record player switching songs brings me back to the present. I hold the paper in my hand as I sit at the bar. Whoever did this is not so bright. What criminal leaves a note at a crime scene for the police to find? Of course, the police didn’t find it. I did and it’s clear that I’m who it was meant for. We pay the cops off, so eventually this would have been brought to my attention, and something tells me whoever did this knew that. It’s too bad that while they were writing this out, they probably failed to think that they were, in fact, writing out their own death certificate.

My eyes go to the ceiling and I think about Bexley up there sleeping in my bed as I take a sip of my drink. God, how much I’ve wanted her in my bed, but not like this. I didn’t want her heartbroken, under my covers, clutching onto her husband’s wedding band. I didn’t want my brother to die.

It’s a sad reality, and what’s even sadder is I hate how much she misses him. I’m a piece of shit, but I’ve never pretended to be anything better. I am who I am, and I make no apologies for it.

I get why she didn’t want to stay in their house, but my brother wouldn’t be happy about her being here and I think that’s why she was hesitant.

She’s more unavailable now than she’s ever been, and that’s a decision she clearly made. She killed me on the spot when she said she didn’t need me. I guess in the back of my fucked-up mind, I always thought shedid.

Or maybe it was me who needed her.

Bexley and I have always had this fire between us. A light simmer when we were kids, and then when she came back that Thanksgiving, man, what a time we had together. I never thought our lives would turn out the way they did.

I lift the necklace I have around my neck, playing with the knot that binds us. She’ll never forgive me, and I don’t ever expect her to. I hit my smoke, twirling my glass on the bar. The door opens behind me and I turn to see Sweep.