Page 24 of Twins for the Enemy

“I’d rather cut out my own tongue than let him walk free,” Kieran says, his lip curling up in distaste. “If he was inside the store, then he knew people were inside. I’m also going to be fully aware of what I do to him.”

He turns away, heading out of the den. I lurch over to him, grabbing his arm.

“You can’t go after him. You have to forgive him,” I plead.

He stares at me. “That’s the thing you don’t understand, Farah. I don’t have to do anything. But I’m going to. I’m going to burn him until I’m satisfied that he knows what it feels like.”

“You won’t even leave him alone for me?” I ask.

Our eyes lock, the flickering, foliage green against the unrelenting timber brown.

“No,” he says. “I won’t.”

He tries to get past me, but I pull myself in front of him, quickly heading toward the doors. As soon as I’m outside, I take off running.

I need to get to Neal before Kieran reaches him. Again and again, I do the same thing to Neal. I let him take the punches from our father because I was too afraid of pain. I let him take the emotional burden of being fired from my job because I was too weak to carry it myself.

I’ve led violence right to his door again. I thought I’d been falling in love with a man when he was always a wolf, one who only wanted to sharpen his teeth before going in for the kill.

As the cab rushes to my brother’s apartment, all the ways this could end spiral in my mind, and they’re all terrifying.

Kieran and Neal are on a collision course, one that can only end with scraping metal and broken bones. One or both of them will go to prison. Kieran already sees me as an enemy, and Neal will soon feel the same way.

I’ve burned my bridges while I’m still standing in the center of them.

I grip tightly onto my arms, staring out through the windshield like I’ll be able to see into the future and come up with the perfect scheme to avoid disaster.

The only strategies that appear are turning myself in to the police or running for the border.

The driver looks back at me, an uncertain expression tensing his face. I must look like I’m about to do something dangerous—because I am, when I’m planning to throw myself in between two men who would rather die than give up an inch.

I shove my hands into my pockets, trying to relax my shoulders and look like I’m only headed back home, but it feels like the exact opposite. In my right pocket, I feel Kieran’s credit card, my thumb brushing against the diamond in the corner of it.

Diamonds represent so many things: wealth, resilience, commitment, invaluable worth. All qualities I’ve never had.

I thought, at the very least, I could say I was loyal. I thought I was committed to Neal and resilient against the struggles that seemed to swallow us whole.

But a stranger broke down my walls so easily and got me to confess to Neal’s sin that loyalty may as well be an imaginary concept like time travel or getting my life together .

After the driver stops, I hesitate to pay with Kieran’s credit card. I use it, but I vow to pay him back for it. I’m not going to owe him anything. I’ll cut all ties between us like he’s a frayed part of my jeans.

Running up the stairs to Neal’s apartment, I make a checklist of things we’ll need to do to prepare to be on the run.

We’ll grab his clothes and shove them in a bag.

If he has any money in the bank, we’ll get it out.

We’ll get some hair dye and some fake glasses. Kieran could have called his connections to the police already, so we’ll need to be more invisible than I was the first time I fled Chicago.

We’ll need to separate to lessen our chance of being recognized. I won’t tell Neal right away. I didn’t take him with me the first time because I knew he couldn’t handle the changes, but we don’t have a choice this time. I’ll give him time to adjust, then tell him I need to leave .

Maybe that’s not the right choice. I know better than anyone that getting comfortable with someone and losing them is worse than never knowing them. I know Kieran will haunt me for the next decade. I can only hope he’ll fade after that.

I knock on the door, but it sounds so fumbled, I wouldn’t blame Neal for thinking it’s someone drunkenly stumbling against the door.

I knock again, trying to sound more intentional.

The door opens. I take a deep breath, ready to give Neal my itinerary, but it’s not Neal at the door.

Samson, with his long hair and lanky body, stares out at me. I can’t imagine how he’s survived so long as a drug dealer. It seems like other drug dealers will terrorize him for looking less dangerous than them.

Maybe the fact that he’s survived that world while looking forgettable should scare me more.

“Where’s Neal?” I ask.

“Your bro is here.” He cranes his head to look down the hallway, his eyes darting toward the stairways. “ Your man that is friends with Delgado—he ain’t here, is he?”

I look down the hallway, almost half-expecting Kieran to arrive. But he wouldn’t be coming here to save me. He’d be coming to burn Neal alive.

It seems like a bad idea to leave now. A worse idea to stay.

But now Neal has the threat of Samson and the threat of Kieran stalking around him, and I can’t leave him with that.

“Can I come in?” I ask.

“Your man made it clear that if I fucked around with you, he’d send Delgado after me. I’d rather not be slowly decapitated while I’m still breathing.”

“I won’t tell him,” I say. “I swear.”

“You can send your swears up your ass.”

“Farah?” Neal’s voice comes from inside the apartment. His hand appears on the door, and he opens it wider. His hair is sticking up in dramatic angles, and deeper shadows are under his eyes, but he appears unharmed. “Samson, we should let her in. That guy is rich. She can get money from him.”

“I’m not letting her in,” Samson huffs. “Christ, it’s like you want Delgado to get me. Do you want that, Neal? You think you can eliminate your debt by eliminating me?”

“If you don’t get the money, the cartel is coming for you. Just let her in,” Neal says. “She won’t tell that guy. You know my word is good.”

“Your word is shit.”

But Samson steps away from the door.

I step inside, but Samson barely moves, putting us uncomfortably close to each other. After I close the door, the air feels thicker inside. I avoid Samson’s eyes, looking over at Neal.

“Are you good?” I ask. He nods but gives half of an attempt at a smile.

“So, you gonna get me this money?” Samson asks. “This buddy of Delgado’s? I’m adding even more interest now because your man put a threat on my head. A grand.”

“A thousand dollars?” I ask. “That’s—that’s not going to happen.”

“Call him,” Samson demands. “He’s sweet on you. He’ll give it to you.”

Two things settle in my mind like rocks in mud:

Kieran would give me the money. Standing back here with Samson, I remember Kieran’s rage at him grabbing me. But more than that, I can reach into the memory and feel that the rage was fueled by fear. He’d seen a threat to me and reacted.

Just like he’d reacted to Neal when he saw him as a threat to me.

The other thing is that I’m not going to call Kieran.

I’m not going to do it because I love him.

As damnable as it is, I love him too much to involve him any further.

A smaller pebble settles next to this one: this is exactly how Neal should have felt about me. He shouldn’t have asked Samson to let me in. He should have told Samson to keep me out of their business.

“I can’t call him,” I say. “But we can find another way. I’ll get you the money over time, and I’ll add on even more interest. I just need some time. If you—”

“No,” Samson says. “I’ve run out of time, which means you and your bro have run out of time. I get the money tonight, or I start carving into your brother like Thanksgiving turkey. Call your man and tell him to give you the money.”

“No.”

Samson swings out. I flinch, but he doesn’t hit me. His fist hits the small TV on the dresser. As it crashes down, Samson reaches for one of the top drawers on the dresser, yanking it out and slamming it on the floor. He picks it up again and smashes it against the mirror hanging on the wall .

Neal launches forward, trying to yank the drawer out of Samson’s hands, but Samson doesn’t let go. They glare at each other over a drawer filled with underwear and packets of gum.

“Do not threaten my sister,” Neal hisses. “Just go. I’ll get her to come around.”

Samson narrows his eyes, the edge of his lips curling up to show his teeth. Silent seconds pass. Samson’s shoulders slowly lower, and he opens both of his hands, letting the drawer drop. Neal’s underwear tumbles out.

“Fine,” he says. “But you know the price if you fail.”

Samson winks at me before lumbering to the door. As he leaves, he slams the door shut.

I should be terrified of Samson’s threat dangling over us, but Neal’s intervention felt like a step back in time, when he would have walked through hell to protect me from our father’s rage.

I grab onto him, hugging him tightly.

“Thank you,” I say. “I’ve missed you. ”

“I’ve been right here.” He smiles at me as I pull away. “You’re the one who left. But he’s right. If he doesn’t get the money, some bad people are coming after him. And if I don’t give him the money, he’s coming after me.”

“We could leave. Get out of the city. We may need to any—”

“No, Farah.” He combs his fingers through his hair. “Running isn’t going to help. You can just ask that guy for money, can’t you? That money is nothing to someone like him. It’s a penny. Less than a penny.”

I shove my hands in my pockets again, my fingers curling around Kieran’s credit card.

“I don’t want to owe him,” I say.

“Do you want me to owe Samson? Because that’s the kind of loan you can’t default on.”

I look away from him. So, he wasn’t leading me out of hell. He just wanted to soften the blow when I made a deal with the devil .

He’s not the brother he used to be. I should know we can’t go back to who we once were.

“Will you go to rehab after this?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says, putting the drawer back into the dresser. It scrapes loudly as he shoves it in. It doesn’t escape me that he doesn’t look me in the eye. He picks up his scattered underwear and packets of gum.

“Kieran and I were fighting about not being honest with each other,” I say. “I found out his sister was Helena Porter.”

Neal’s head jerks up. “What? Isn’t his last name different than that?”

“They’re foster siblings.”

“Hm.”

Neal returns to collecting his things and dumping them in the drawer.

He’s strangely methodical for someone who has a half-full milk carton sitting on top of a laptop, which lies on top of a pizza box, which lies on top of a binder with the label taxes?

It’s a tower of disorderliness, and he’s rolling up his underwear to press into the edges of a drawer.

“I feel like I lost someone important,” I admit.

“You’ll find someone else,” he says.

It’s meant as a reassurance, but as the words permeate the barriers in my mind, I’m even more certain that I won’t find anyone else. There could be other men in my future, but they’d just be filling up space. They’d be temporary distractions.

“Do you think about the fire?” I ask. “About Helena?”

He closes the drawer and twists the knobs on the drawer like he’s testing their tightness. “I think it’s better to leave the past in the past.”

“It seems like the past is chasing us down,” I say. “Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe we should take responsibility for our choices.”

“Farah, you are torturing yourself.” Neal glances at me but quickly turns to open up the next drawer and starts rolling up his socks.

“It’s… it’s not great that woman was there that night, but co llateral damage happens.

It’s your boss’s fault. If he hadn’t been treating you like shit, this wouldn’t have happened.

Sometimes, when you’re taking care of family, your hands get dirty.

And I got my hands dirty for you. That was me taking responsibility. ”

I look over at the mirror, which has a long crack in it now. One shard of it slightly juts out, but I imagine it could stay like that forever—broken but held together by habit.

I need to leave the city.

I can’t keep saving Neal, and I don’t want to be in a city that has Kieran’s fingerprints all over it—the roads remind me of our night driving when we left the hospital.

The foliage reminds me of having sex in his car at the Astasio Botanical Garden.

Any sight of the skyscrapers reminds me of the view of the city from the hotel balcony.

Even this parking lot reminds me of how he’d protected me from Samson .

I check out the window. No sign of Kieran yet, but I know it can’t be long. At most, he’s waiting for his moment to leave Helena’s engagement party after I ruined it.

“Kieran may be coming after you,” I say. “He knows about the fire.”

Neal straightens up. “What? How? You told him? Why the fuck would you do that?”

“He figured it out on his own.”

“Bullshit,” he snaps. “What? You were angry at me? You wanted him on your side to keep that piggy bank open? What is it, Farah? Am I not suffering enough for you? Do you want me to overdose so you can run away with your Prince Charming?”

His face is scrunched up in rage, making him look much older. He doesn’t look anything like my brother. His words should make me lash out like him, but seeing how much he’s changed, it just feels like freedom. My foundation has vanished from underneath my feet, and I don’t mind free-falling .

“Get some help, Neal,” I say.

As I turn away, I let out a slow breath. I open the door and step into the hallway. As I walk away, I put my hands back into my pocket. In the left pocket, I run my fingers over the edges of the compass.

I may be falling, but I’ll find where I’m meant to be when I get back on my feet.