Page 190 of Stand: Part One

Starting tomorrow, my main focus would center on nothing else other than making that a reality within the next nine months. But first, I needed to get her obedience back on track.

Rising from my seat, I sighed as I made my way down to the infirmary, already irritated by the conversation I would have to endure with my brother.

With his brain injury, we had no idea what to expect, and I really didn’t feel like testing the waters right now, given his “fragile” state.

Bypassing Katherine’s room, I rounded the hallway into our little intensive care unit, finding Daniel sitting up in his bed. He was typing something out on his phone when he looked up and noticed my entrance.

“About fucking time, Darren,” he muttered.

“Shut up. You should be resting,” I clipped as I sat down in the chair beside his bed. He had a white bandage wrapped around his head where the bullet had entered his skull, grazing about a centimeter across his frontal lobe, and then exiting his temple.

“Fuck that. I’ll rest after I finally kill that motherfucker,” Daniel retorted, an irritated edge to his voice. The asshole was lucky to be alive. Again. It was now the second time Matt had almost succeeded in killing him.

“Yeah well, someone else might beat you to it before you get the chance,” I told him.

His brows snapped together. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I cracked my neck, ready for the explosion. “I just put out a four-million-dollar hit on him twenty minutes ago. One million for his immediates.”

His scratched and bruised-up face suddenly turned even redder. “You what?!” he nearly roared.

I tried not to roll my eyes. “Calm down before you give yourself a brain aneurysm,” I warned.

He immediately scoffed. “Since when the fuck do you commission open contracts on people? We always handle our problems ourselves.”

“Since this morning when I decided I had better things to do than waste another second on that spineless little fuck. I want this shit done, Dan.”

He looked like I had slapped him. “Better things to do? You have better things to do than avenge your only remaining brother for the attack on his life, home, and family? Are you fucking serious?”

“Don’t be so fucking dramatic, Daniel. It’s not like I’m calling anything off, I’m actually ramping it up. You’re the one who started this war, if you want to finish it your way, no one is stopping you.”

The scowl on Daniel’s face reflected that of a man unhinged. “It still wasn’t your decision to make, Darren,” he seethed.

I tilted my chin in his direction, leveling him with a glare I typically reserved for lesser men.

“Every decision is mine to make,” I reminded him. “Do you understand me? This is not a fucking democracy, Daniel.”

“And isn’t that the whole fucking problem,” he snapped, the scowl on his face tightening. “Who made the decision to leave for Chicago when I specifically told you not to go? And look what fucking happened! If you’d have been here, we might have actually been able to end Matt when he attacked me, but no! You walked right into the trap I warned you about.”

I tried to suppress the growl scratching up my throat, my hands itching to strangle him. “What trap? The trap that led to Miguel’s demise? That one? Or are you just pissed because you nearly had Matt in your grasp, and not only did you fail to end him but you also lost your home in the process, and a pretty piece of your brain. Am I getting warm, Daniel?”

“Fuck you, Darren! We were outnumbered and yeah, I took a bullet to the head!”

“And you lived! Stop whining because big brother wasn’t there to hold your fucking hand,” I snarled. “You and Matt both failed. Again. And he cost himself a shit ton of resources in that attack. And what did you lose? A house. Big deal. I lost one too, and I’m not crying about it.”

“I almost died, Darren!” he shouted back.

“We almost die nearly every damn day, Daniel. It comes with the job, yet here we still stand. You should be reveling in your obvious invincibility since no one can seem to kill your ass despite the number of times they’ve tried.”

He scoffed and threw his hands up in the air.

“That’s not the point,” he retorted bitterly. “I told you not to leave, and you left anyway. Then we were both attacked. And now you’re making us look even weaker by letting someone else do our dirty work! It makes us look like we can’t handle our own shit, and we can’t afford to look like that right now!”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed, fighting off the growing tension in my temples and the raging desire to break my brother’s jaw just so I could have it wired shut.

“See, this is why I didn’t want to come down here,” I barked. “You’re way too hot-headed to be thinking clearly right now. No one is backing down. You just need to sit back and heal.”

“I don’t need to do shit!” he bellowed, his face growing redder. “What you need to do is find your fucking balls and—” I had him by the throat before he could even finish that sentence, pinning him hard into the pillows behind his head. His eyes widened in shock while his hand gripped my wrist, but he was far too weak to push me off.