Page 18 of Man of Lies (Vendetta Kings #2)

Chapter Eighteen

MASON

The day had spun down to a hazy tangerine glow by the time the Scout rumbled down Eden's manicured drive. Deep blue shadows were starting to paint long stripes across the grass as he pulled off beneath a copse of live oaks and killed the engine. My legs were sore as I climbed off the bike and tugged off my helmet.

He took one look at me and laughed.

"Got a little something on your face there, counselor," he teased, scraping a flake of sunscreen off the bridge of my nose. His own complexion was a healthy, sun-burnished tan, but I wasn't used to spending an entire day outside. After only a few hours, my office pallor had turned pink, and then red at the edges. We'd stopped at a shop called Risky Bob's for a tube of sunblock, and Silas pinned me in the grass and straddled my hips until I submitted to his scandalously thorough application. But it came in handy when we stopped in a park just outside Cypress Lake, rolled up our jeans, and went creek-wading like a couple of kids.

Except I'd never felt so carefree when I was a child. I couldn't remember a time life had felt this easy. This safe.

"You sure know how to make a guy feel special, McKenna," I said dryly, brushing his hand aside.

"I don't fuck around with trouble—and you? You're gonna cause me plenty." His eyes were twinkling in the gathering gloom. A sarcastic retort was on the tip of my tongue, but before I could unleash it, he slid a hand around the back of my neck and reeled me closer, brushing his lips across my cheek in that casual, infuriatingly intimate way he had. "Yeah, you're special," he murmured against my skin.

His kiss was soft at first, the featherlight skating of his lips down my jaw to my mouth, a lingering taste of him that made it too easy to forget the rest of the world. The house was lit up like a Holiday Inn through the screen of my half-closed lashes, and an extra car was parked at the base of the porch, but I didn't have enough neurons to link together to wonder why. I didn't care about anything but the satin texture of Silas's lips and the way his hand rested warmly against the back of my neck.

We broke apart just long enough for a sip of air, and I took a reluctant step backward, but Silas caught my wrist, pulling me right back in.

"Not done yet," he whispered.

We kept kissing, sweet and languid, like we were teenagers again, standing on the edge of our first time, knowing that we'd experienced something that was ours alone. Nobody else could touch it. Each kiss was another link in the chain tying me to him, pulling me deeper into this bubble we'd created where nothing else mattered but him. The world around us faded. It was just the two of us, the breeze in the oaks, and the quiet hum of the summer evening.

For once, I could forgive myself for ignoring the rest of the world. I didn't want anything to interrupt the way he made me feel. Yeah, special—though I'd never admit it.

When I finally pulled away for real, the ache in my chest told me I was leaving something important behind. But Silas's eyes were still locked on mine, like he was waiting for me to say something?—

Just as I opened my mouth, a loud crack pierced the air, followed by the wind-chime-in-a-hurricane sound of shattering glass.

Our heads jerked toward the house just as Dominic flew through the front window in a jagged spray of shards. His body hit the ground hard. Gage followed a split-second later, leaping through the gaping maw of the centuries-old broken window and landing on Dominic like a crashing meteor. The sickening, wet-sounding crack of knuckles striking bone followed, loud enough to reach us at the end of the driveway.

Silas was the first to move, all instinct, racing down the driveway like a damn bullet.

"Stay back!" he shouted.

Like hell. This was my home—and I was faster. Years of running from shit that didn't want to be outrun gave me a head start, and I pushed off the gravel, overtaking Silas in an instant.

Nothing mattered more than getting to my brothers. We'd grown up scrapping any time tempers flared, but this was more serious than that. They wanted to hurt each other. I couldn't even tell whose blood was streaking the grass anymore.

I threw myself at Gage, hooking an arm around his throat, arms burning with the effort of yanking him off Dominic.

Gage snarled, and suddenly, the world spun. One second, I was hanging off his shoulders, trying to force him back, and the next, he ragdolled me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing. It all happened so fast, I didn't even clock flying through the air—only the thud of landing. It felt like being slammed into a boulder.

My lungs seized, and for a moment, nothing existed beyond a breathless, paralyzed gasp. Then I wheezed, clawing at the grass and dirt, desperate for oxygen that wouldn't come. My lungs had turned to stone, refusing to inflate no matter how hard I struggled.

Through the haze of my watering vision, I saw Gideon standing in the doorway, framed by a spill of warm light from the house. His eyes were fixed on the fight, but his expression was colder than I'd ever seen it—remote, like he was watching a piece of theater that didn't concern him.

Gideon, the peacemaker, wasn't lifting a finger this time.

There was no time for questions—not with Silas cutting through the fray like a knife. A switch had been flipped, and suddenly, he wasn't just an ex-con with a devil-may-care grin, but a man who knew exactly how to bring order to the chaos. He grabbed Gage's wrist, twisting it behind him in a way that had him growling like an animal caught in a trap.

I recognized the move immediately, the way Silas anchored Gage's arm with his forearm, locking it against a pressure point in his shoulder. I didn't know the term for it, but I'd seen it before in the courthouse when guards needed to take someone down without breaking their necks. Silas performed it without breaking a sweat.

Gage had been a fighter all his life, so he fought back hard, growling like an animal caught in a trap. Silas stepped into him, using his own body weight to drive him to the ground, and jammed a knee into the small of his back. The whole thing was over in seconds—efficient, controlled, and brutal.

"Settle down," Silas said, voice low, the command in it unmistakable.

He looked up and met my eyes from across the yard, and suddenly, it felt like that private bubble was back, surrounding us, shrinking the world to just him. Just Silas—and the electric connection neither of us could ignore.

I couldn't put my finger on when it happened, but somewhere along the line, I'd started needing him. Not just as an outlet to reluctantly blow off steam—but him. The way he moved, the light in his eyes when he smiled, and the way he effortlessly took control when I needed it most.

With his past full of bad choices and prison time, he wasn't made for solving problems, but somehow, whenever I was with him, the weight on my shoulders felt light enough to carry. I'd never asked for a distraction like him in my life. I wasn't looking for it. But somehow, over time, he'd become the only man I could imagine turning to in a crisis. Even now, he was here with me, standing between my brothers like it was nothing. He made it seem easy.

It wasn't easy. None of this was easy.

Gage wasn't ready to quit. He struggled against Silas, face flushed with anger and grief that I couldn't begin to fully understand. Dominic, on the other hand, was still desperate to finish what they'd started. He was older and maybe wiser—but deadlier. We all knew it. So when I saw him head toward Gage, vulnerable on the ground, I didn't hesitate.

I surged forward, locking my arms around his waist and driving my shoulder into his chest, shoving him back with everything I had. Every inch of ground he gave felt like a goddamn victory, but the force of his resistance nearly sent us both to the ground.

"Knock it off!" I yelled, slipping in the wet grass and digging in my heels to keep him from going for Gage again.

"Did you think I'd forget?" Gage shouted, white-knuckling fistfuls of dirt and grass in his rage. He craned his neck, glaring up at Dominic through the blood dripping into his eyes from the cut above his eyebrow. "You think you could just waltz in here like it didn't happen? Like I'd ever forgive you for putting your hands on Wyatt and dragging him through that hell— my hell?"

Dominic didn't flinch, but the set of his jaw tightened. He turned his face away, unable to meet our eyes. Gage was the youngest of us, and in plenty of ways, he'd struggled the most. Dominic had always gone out of his way to protect him, sometimes more than he deserved. Hell, he'd even taken a charge for me when I was caught hotwiring my first motorcycle as a kid. But tonight, his patience was gone.

"You think you've got the high ground, little brother?" Dominic's eyes glittered with ice. "Who gave you that luxury? I'm the one Boone left to make the hard calls once he was gone. That moral superiority y'all enjoy? I'm the one who bought that for you with goddamn blood. You don't have to like it, but I did what I had to do. What I thought was right."

"Bullshit!" Gage spat a mouthful of grass and scrambled to his feet when Silas relaxed his hold, but he didn't try to go after Dom again. Silas still had a warden's grip on the arm he was twisting behind Gage's back, so Gage just stood there, wiping at the stains on his jeans with scraped and trembling hands. "You're so far gone, you don't even have a clue about right and wrong—if you ever did. You hurt the one person I love more than anything. We—we can't ever come back from something like that."

Guilt flickered in Dominic's eyes, but he hid it fast, burying it under layers of pride and self-righteousness so deep that most days he was probably able to convince himself he didn't feel it at all.

"I'm not looking for forgiveness," he said, so softly he might as well have been talking to himself—but he was staring directly at Gideon when he said it.

Gideon's cheek twitched.

They stared at each other for a beat, but even with all my experience interviewing witnesses, I couldn't read them. As the two oldest and the first to be taken in by Boone, they'd always been able to communicate without saying a word, but tonight, it felt different. Alien. Gideon's face was carved from granite, and the look in Dominic's eyes…it was pure violence. Whatever silent communication passed between them, it was enough to chill the blood in my veins.

"Come on, Dom," I said diplomatically, pulling his focus back to me. "We can work this out, but you've got to give us some time."

Dominic didn't reply. His eyes flashed to me and then back to Gideon. One corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer.

"I'm done trying to make peace," he said, cold enough to sting.

What I saw in his face right then was deeper and more virulent than anger. More dangerous. It was resentment. The same resentment I saw in Ben whenever I tried to help, something festering beneath the surface for so long that we'd all stopped noticing.

He wasn't just frustrated; he was exhausted. I could see it in the set of his shoulders and the way his hands shook before he shoved them into his pockets. Whatever had happened between him and Gideon, it was pushing him further away from us.

Gideon's face tightened, his mouth pressing into a thin line, but he didn't flinch. Of course, he didn't. I'd never seen anything break that aloof facade of his. He stood there like some avenging angel cast from marble, with an expression colder than I'd ever seen. After a long moment, his attention shifted to Gage—as if Dominic wasn't even there.

"Get this mess cleaned up," he ordered harshly, "before the kids see it and start asking questions."

Then he turned his back on every one of us, shoulders stiff, and retreated into the house without a backward glance.

I stood there, frozen, while the pieces of the moment slipped through my fingers. No matter how I scrambled after them, I couldn't make sense of what was happening. Growing up, we'd always had scraps and arguments. It was inevitable with five headstrong boys living under one roof, but Boone always kept us in line. He'd taken a bunch of troubled kids, lashing out at the world, and focused us on something productive. Without him…we were lost. Lost and lashing out at each other.

Silas's rough baritone pulled me out of my spiraling worries. Just like always. "You gonna behave if I let you go?"

"As long as he never comes back," Gage spat, lifting his chin and glowering across the yard at Dominic. "I want nothing to do with him."

"Likewise, little brother," Dom retorted coldly.

"You don't mean that," I said in a low voice pitched just for him. Dominic's whiskey-colored eyes flicked toward me, the first acknowledgement I'd received all night, but he didn't reply. The empty look in his eyes chilled me.

I gripped him by the back of the neck and tugged his face close to mine, hissing, "We're family, Dom. We don't have to keep doing this. Whatever's going on—we can work through it."

"You can't fix everything, Mason." There was something dark in the way he said it, a hollowed-out finality that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I wanted to reach out to him, but I knew better. There was no reaching for something that wasn't even there.

"I can damn well try."

"You can't even figure out what's happening right under your nose."

"What the hell does that mean?" I asked, brow furrowing.

A bitter, humorless smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. I followed his gaze over my shoulder, but only saw Silas, restraining Gage with one firm grip on his arm.

When Dom spoke again, he sounded like he'd dragged the words over broken glass. "I'm done carrying the weight for everyone. You don't want my help? Fine. Figure it out on your own."

Silence rang in my ears, but I couldn't break it. None of us could. We had nothing left to say. With a derisive scoff, Dominic shook his head and walked away.

It felt like the end of an era.

I stood there, frozen, staring after his back until he slid behind the tinted windows of his black Jaguar. I couldn't chase after him even if I wanted. All I could do was watch as another of my brothers slipped through my fingers.

I was so lost in thought that I almost missed Silas's approaching footsteps until his rough voice spoke over my shoulder. "You good?"

"No."

There was no fixing it—not this time. Not with Dominic, not with Gage…and not with Ben. I couldn't do it alone anymore.

I turned and met Silas's eyes, dark and steady and filled with quiet understanding. Eyes that always made me feel like he could see right through me. And for the first time in years, or maybe a lifetime, I dared to wonder what it would be like to have someone to share the weight. Someone with a devilish grin and shoulders broad enough to carry any load.

"I'm not okay," I admitted, sucking in a bracing breath. "But I will be."