Page 51 of Blood Ties

Kai

T hump, thump, thump .

Each thud of my head sends fresh agony jolting down my spine. I force one eye open, and then the other, the world spinning around me upside-down. I’m being dragged—

Thump .

—down the stairs. My head thunks against each one, jarring the side of my skull that’s already wet and cold where it hit the nightstand.

“Here,” says my dad’s voice. “Good.”

I blink away fog, trying to sit up, but my body won’t listen. We’re in the kitchen. The easiest room to clean up , my dad always says.

Dad’s face enters my line of sight, his bruised face swimming in and out of focus. The whites of his eyes are stained red.

Somewhere off to the side, I hear Frank groaning and retching. A wet splatter against the tile.

“Is that blood ? The fuck is wrong with you?” Dad asks. He glances his way, then back at me. “The fuck did you do to him?”

I guess the rat poison worked a little, but not enough to take my uncle down. I should’ve known. Frank’s huge.

“Get him up,” Dad says.

Huge, calloused hands grab me by the arms and haul me to my feet. I catch a glimpse of Frank’s face, blood streaming from his nose and staining his mouth, before my head lolls forward. I dangle like a ragdoll, boots scraping against the tile without finding purchase. My stomach churns.

Fingers grip my chin, and my dad forces my head up to look me in the eye. “You still with us?” he asks, searching my face.

“F...” I struggle to get out. “Fuck... You...” My mouth won’t cooperate, just like the rest of my body. My head hurts real bad, every small movement sending fresh pain smashing through my skull. Even moving my eyes hurts.

“Good.” Dad looks somewhere above me, nods. “Hold him, Frank.”

Uncle Frank’s grip on me tightens — one arm across my neck, the other around my torso.

He’s grunting and whimpering, his breath labored.

But even with poison making a mess of his insides, he’s still plenty strong enough to hold me.

I can barely move, and my body is quickly giving out on me after that fight with my dad and the blow to the head.

My dad limps out of sight and then returns, hefting something. A wrench.

“Knew this day would come eventually,” he says, slapping the heavy metal tool against his calloused palm.

“Just like I challenged my own Pops when I knew the time was right.” He moves closer to me, presses the metal under my chin to force my head up.

“But before I did it, my brother Judd tried it, y’know.

Had to go runnin’ off with his tail between his legs after, and start all over on his own. ”

He smiles, a vicious baring of all his crooked teeth. There’s a bloody gap where I knocked one out.

“I ain’t givin’ you that chance,” he says. “You’ve been doing such a good job with the grunt work since your momma died.” Even though he’s still smiling, his eyes are cold, calculating. “But we can’t have you gettin’ ideas like this into your head.”

I glare at him, gritting my teeth as I breathe hard through my nose. Whatever he does, I’m not going to scream and cry. I know how much he likes fear and pain. I’m not gonna give him the satisfaction.

“That’s what I mean,” he says. “Still too much fight for my liking.” He looks me up and down in icy assessment.

“I went too far with your momma. She was useless after the amputation, even before the infection killed her. But...” He tightens his grip on the wrench, lifts it over his shoulder. “You don’t need two legs.”

The wrench whistles through the air and directly into my kneecap.

A scream tears out of my throat, a raw, painful noise I hardly recognize as my own.

When he hits me again, I don’t even remember why I was trying not to scream.

The pain blasts every thought from my brain, leaving nothing behind but shrieking agony.

I wail and sob, struggling against my uncle’s ironlike grip.

My left boot squeaks against the tile. My right leg is nothing but red-hot pain.

When I try to look down at it, all I see is blood soaking through my jeans, my leg bent at an angle that doesn’t make sense, and a white glint of bone breaking through.

“What the fuck is going on?”

Knox . His voice registers through the red haze of pain, and I reach for him like I would when I was a helpless child. Frank yanks me back, his forearm pressing harder on my neck, choking me. He lets out a wet cough, and more blood splatters across the floor, but his hold on me doesn’t falter.

“Your brother tried to stage an escape,” Dad says. His voice is even and conversational, like this is all normal. “Needed a reminder of who’s in charge around here.”

Knox stares at the ruin of my leg, the blood on the floor. So much blood.

He’s going to kill me, I want to say, Help me, Knox, he’s killing me. But the words won’t come. When I try to speak, all I manage is a pained little wheeze.

“Go find that girl,” Dad tells him.

“Handled her already.” Knox’s eyes stay on me even as he talks to Dad.

I stare at him, heart sinking, trying to determine if he’s telling the truth. But his face is stonelike, unreadable.

“Then go handle the body,” Dad snaps, impatient.

Knox’s chin juts out, stubborn as always. “That’s Kai’s job.”

Dad sneers. “Your brother’s indisposed. Get out of here, Knox, and make yourself useful, ‘less you want to catch a beating yourself.”

Knox looks at him, looks at Frank, looks at me. I try to speak again, but Frank’s meaty arm crushes against my neck, stopping me. Help me , I try to beg with my eyes.

“You need a reminder of who’s in charge too?” Dad asks, lifting the wrench already dripping with my blood.

Knox shakes his head, scowling in disgust, and turns to go.

“Knox,” I manage to wheeze out, before Frank chokes me again.

He pauses in the doorway. Sighs and rakes a hand through his hair. “You really made a mess this time, Kai,” he says, and leaves me here.

Dad grins at the look on my face. He bends down, uses the bloodied wrench to push my chin up again.

“Did you think he was going to help you?” He huffs a laugh.

“Your brother has always understood the way things work around here, Kai. That’s the difference between the two of you.

” He removes the wrench, and my head slumps toward my chest. I don’t have any fight left in me.

I’m sorry, Riley, I think. I’m sorry, Momma.

In the end, I was too weak to save anyone. Stupid of me to think otherwise.

Dad lifts the wrench again, rolls his shoulder back. “You’ve always been too dumb to understand—”

A gunshot deafens me.

I fall to the tile, head spinning, unsure what the fuck just happened.

My ears are ringing so loud I can’t even make out what my dad is shouting.

I roll onto my side and look up to see that Uncle Frank has staggered back against the counter, his face twisted in shock and pain, one hand against the fresh hole in his gut.

He groans in pain, red-tinged froth bubbling out of his lips.

I swing my head to the side, and see Knox standing in the doorway with a gun in his hand.

It takes me a second to recognize it — it’s the gun he stole from that girl in the kitchen, one of the ones we killed together.

He swings it toward our dad, finger still on the trigger.

But the barrel of the gun trembles slightly, and he doesn’t fire again.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Dad shouts, his voice finally clearing through the noise in my head. Frank is howling like an animal in the corner.

“Same thing I always do,” Knox says. He glances at me. “Get up.”

I grab on to the edge of the counter and haul myself up, teeth grit, straining with the effort. But I don’t dare put pressure on my messed-up leg.

“Come to me,” Knox says, keeping the gun trained on Dad.

“Where do you think you’re gonna go?” Dad asks. “You two idiots can’t do shit by yourselves.”

“Kai,” Knox snaps. “Let’s get out of here.”

I slowly lift my head. “Where’s Riley?”

A muscle twitches in his jaw. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

Leaning heavily against the counter, I reach over and slide the biggest knife out of the butcher block as I meet my brother’s eyes. “Where is she?”

“We’re not doing this right now. Come on. I just saved your ass.”

My grip tightens on the knife’s handle. Knox’s eyes widen, slightly, as he sees the look on my face. It feels like it’s just the two of us for a moment, face to face. Dad is just a blip on the periphery of my vision, still gripping the wrench. A tense silence stretches out to its breaking point.

I realize, a second too late, that Frank has stopped wailing, and that neither Knox nor I are looking at him. Knox seems to realize it at the same instant, and we both turn, just in time for him to get on his feet and lurch toward my brother, much faster than a man his size should be able to move.

He slams into Knox like a truck. The gun goes off, sending shards of tile flying. I stumble out of the way, off-balance, just as Dad lunges at me with the wrench.

I can’t dodge. Not with this leg. So I brace myself, turning my shoulder toward him to take the blow, and then grab onto him and bring us both crashing to the floor.

Snarling, he draws back the wrench and hits me again, a skull-rattling blow across my jaw.

My teeth cut into my cheek, and my mouth fills with blood, but when I turn back to my dad I’m grinning.

He pauses, looks down, and finally registers the knife in my hand, sunk deep into his stomach. I twist the handle and shove it deeper, and he coughs up a mouthful of blood in my face. He tries to lift the wrench again, but I yank out the knife and shove it between his ribs.

He drops the wrench, fumbles with weak fingers at the knife’s handle. I grip it hard, refusing to let go as I watch the color drain from his face.

“You... useless boy...” He gasps out. “Never shoulda... let you live...”

He slumps to the side, taking my knife with him.

For a moment I lay on the tile, breathing. It’s hard to believe he’s really dead. My father, the source of pain and fear for such a long time. The man who killed my mother, beat me, kept me pressed under the heel of his boot for all of my life.

I’m free.

I feel a flicker of triumph, but then it’s smothered by the darkness pressing in on the edges of my vision.

I’m still bleeding out fast, and right now it’s hard to bring myself to care.

A part of me always knew it would end like this.

There was never gonna be a happy ending for someone like me.

The best I could hope for was taking my dad down with me.

But one last worry presses through the haze of blood loss. Riley . Was Knox being honest? Did he really...?

Oh, fuck. Knox.

I strain to lift my head from the tile. My whole body feels so fucking heavy, but I manage to drag myself out from beneath my father’s body and drag myself toward the living room, where Knox and Uncle Frank disappeared.

It’s so quiet in there. I know what I’ll find, but I still need to see it.

I drag myself through the doorway on my hands and my working leg, and then stop at the sight of Knox’s boots.

He’s laid out on the floor facedown, very still, blood pooling around him.

I spare a glance to verify that Uncle Frank is slumped against the wall unmoving as well, and crawl toward my brother.

He killed Riley, a voice whispers in the back of my mind.

He saved my life.

He’s a murderer. A rapist. A psychopath.

He’s my brother.

“Knox,” I whisper.

No response.

I drag myself closer. It’s getting harder to move, harder to breathe too. I have to fight for every gasp of air, like there’s a great pressure atop my chest.

My body gives out entirely when I’m a few feet away.

My chin hits the floor, and I groan, more in defeat than pain.

I’m somewhere beyond pain. But I force myself to stretch my arm out with the last of my strength, and touch Knox’s hand.

He doesn’t move as I wrap my fingers around his and let myself sink into the floor.

“I’m here,” I say. Or maybe I just say it in my own head. Everything’s awfully murky right now.

With my free hand, I reach into my pocket and take out my lighter. It takes me a couple times to get the flame to catch. Then I toss it across the room, onto the gasoline soaked carpet.

My eyes drift shut as the fire flares. But right beforehand, I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Not Knox, but Uncle Frank, lifting his head.

I don’t have any fight left in me. I let go and drift into the black. But right as I’m on the verge of unconsciousness, I swear I hear something familiar but out of place. A low rumble of a sound that I can’t... quite... place...

Darkness swallows me.