Page 64 of Severed Heart

“My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless.”

My father is living that chant right now—believing it. Believing he’s nothing without the uniform. Institutionalized in his thinking.

I feel that truth in the depths of my soul. Lost would not be the word I would use to describe what I saw. It’s the utter fear and devastation in his expression that guts me again and again. A blunt knife to the stomach continually stabbing into me as the gurney bangs loudly against the edge of the ambulance bed before they secure him inside.

I’d been balls deep in Kayley and arguing with my mother about his worth while my dad was ... unraveling. He’s been at war, in his mind, inside himself this whole time. But I pathetically had tosee itto finally understand just what that hell looked like, let alone imagine what it felt like.

“I still can’t find the front door.”

But I’ve seen that hell in another face—the same haunted expression, the same unmistakable pain, in a woman who fights it daily to help me, to shape me.

“Such a shame,” our neighbor Carrie whispers to another, just feet away. “He just hasn’t been the same since he came back ... Regina!” She pitches her voice. “Honey, let us know if there’s anything we can do.”

I turn on her then, fury lighting up my veins as I stalk toward her, and her eyes widen. “How about stop talking about him like he’s useless cattle being sent out to fucking pasture!”

“Tyler!” Uncle Gray snaps, striding toward me with the cops on his heels as the medics slam the back of the ambulance closed. And with it, I feel my own snap.

“He’s a human fucking being!” I shout as rage swallows me—blinds me. “A human being who put his life on the line for two decades so no one can dictate what comes off your waggling fucking tongue!”

Mom calls my name, the sound of it distant as Uncle Gray clamps his arms around me, whispering fast in my ear, but it’s too late.

BLINK.BLACK.

“Seventy-two hours under observation.” Uncle Gray’s muffled voice brings me to where I sit in Dad’s recliner. Shifting slightly, I can feel my T-shirt stuck to my sweat-dried back as his voice filters in, clarity in his words.“...and then we’re going to transfer him into rehab.”

“They can’t afford it,” Aunt Rhonda whispers back to him from where she scrubs Mom’s counters in the kitchen.

“They’re paying,” Uncle Gray states.

“They fucking better,” Rhonda counters with unmistakable animosity. I don’t have to hear more to know she’s relieved Uncle Gray got out of the Corps when he did.

Thoughts heavy, nausea threatening at the ingrained sight of Dad at that table, I stand and excuse myself.

Uncle Grayson eyes me as I give him a nod, a lying gesture that tells him I’m good before stalking out of the house and making the call.

Twenty minutes later, I’m standing in the woods, staring at the full moon between two trees in the night sky, when I feel him approach. Not long ago, we gathered in this exact spot to map our plan. A blueprint Tobias had no idea that Sean, Dom, and I desperately needed, grappling with our current, directionless lives. Plans I cling to now with an alteration in mind—my own purpose.

“I have a stake in this,” I tell him, chest still pumping from the long run to get here.

“I’m listening,” Tobias says. “But first, tell me what’s happened, brother.”

Ignoring the shake that he can clearly see in my posture as hot tears line my jaw, I muster the words. “It’s my dad, I ... I think I caught him in the nick of time tonight. I’m not sure, but he was ... I barely even recognized him. He’s under observation now and going to rehab after.”

“Jesus Christ, Tyler, I’m—”

“Don’t,” I say, finding the resolve I’ve been searching for as the very last tear I’ll shed evaporates on my skin. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry, T.”

I turn to see him looking well put together in one of his suits. A look he’s adopted in recent years, and I can’t help but admire him, knowing that whatever he’s doing, he too is taking steps to alter his mindset to become whatever version he’s created of himself for the future. Even though he’s often present, he’s still become something of an enigma to us. Dom has hinted here and there that he’s involved in something overseas, but I’ve never pressed him for what. He’s too used to being big brother to all of us. That has to change between us tonight in order for my own plan to work.

“I don’t want your sympathy. I want you to tell me you’ll back me up on this. I want you to tell me you’ll do whatever it is within your power to help me see this through—to the very fucking end. But before we start, this secret, until I decide otherwise, stays solely between us.”

“I swear it.”

“Then you need to come clean with me. I need to know every facet of what’s going on, of the totality of your plans, not just what you pick and choose to let us in on, and that, too, will be our secret.”

He crosses his arms, his eyes trailing down me curiously. “Why the need to know?”

“If I’m to build our army and oversee its integrity, then I need the full picture, and that’s half of what my stake is in this. With what I have in mind, I’m going to be the one you rely on most. You and I, we can’t keep any secrets between us if it’s going to work. If you want my allegiance, my fealty, my loyalty, then give me this, and you’ll have it.”