Page 18 of Vicious Behaviors

For the past five years, I’ve mostly been sleeping at Jude’s place in the city. Which sometimes makes me feel like I’m the cliché fucked-in-the-head little brother, crashing rent-free at his emotionally untouchable, always-has-his-shit-together, older brother’s penthouse, while I try to figure my mess out.

Sundays are the only days I head back home to spend time with my family, do some laundry, raid the fridge, and pack enough clothes to last me a week.

All in all, living in Jude’s penthouse worked when I was a teenager, when I needed space and distance from my family. When I feared the voice might take over at the most inconvenient times and scare them.Scar them.I’m not entirely convinced that I have full control over the beast inside me. Still, I have enough of it to be comfortable spending at least a few hours with the people I love and not worry that I’ll do something stupid—like hurt them.

Today, however, everything feels off. Heavy. Like I’m not quite ready to face anyone, not even Mom, with all her usual fussing over me.

Hmm. Maybe I should skip lunch. They already know I’m going to skip Sunday Mass. And honestly, that’s a new habit Iplan on keeping for the foreseeable future. Or I could just bite the bullet, go home, and ask Mom if she’ll help me find a place of my own.

It’s time I moved out of Jude’s and bought myself a place to live, one that’s solely mine.

I’m not exactly a kid anymore.

Then again, I never really was.

Not afterhecame into my life.

‘Don’t be like that. I’m you, remember? Where in this together,’I can almost hear him, his voice slick with mockery.

However, the devil isn’t awake yet. Not yet. If it weren’t for the nightmares, mornings would be the only peace I have. He doesn’t show up right away after I wake. Not in those first few quiet hours, at least. It’s the rest of the day that is a concern. It’s the rest of the day I have to survive. But I’ve lived with him long enough to have learned a few things. Staying busy and active usually keeps him settled down.

What’s that saying?

Idle hands are the devil’s playground?

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, especially since this particular devil loves to torment me in the quiet moments. It’s in those lulls when my mind drifts off to places it shouldn’t. That, and when he smells blood in the water—the scent of copper in the air is his favorite cue to wreak havoc on my soul.

So I stay busy. As one of the Outfit’s enforcers, I work like a madman during the day, feeding his bloodlust. And at night, I hit the gym, pushing my body until it’s too exhausted to carry his weight inside me.

If I time it right, I can steal a few good hours just for myself, where I’m just me, not him. But today feels like it’s off to a bad start.

I glance at the clock again and verify it’s a quarter to five. It’s early. Too fucking early, which means I’ll have to fight him offsooner than I would have wanted. And with that thought taking root in my head, an all too familiar chill starts to roll through me.

He’s coming. I can feel it. The creeping awareness that soon he’ll wake. And when he does, my incessant torture begins.

My exhausted brain reaches for the only outlet that’s proven to help—my grandfather’s gym.

Maybe if I get there early, burn off the storm building in my chest, I can keep him at bay a little longer, and still make it to Sunday lunch.

Without a second to spare, I grab my gym bag off the floor and rush out the door.

Twenty minutes later, I pull up in front of mynonno’sgym only to see light streaming from the first floor.

Hmm. The gym doesn’t open until nine on Sundays. It’s been like that since forever. My grandfather goes to early Mass, then comes here to open, only to return later in the evening to close up shop. And that’s because Sundays are sacred to us. No business. No work. Family only.

Knowing it can’t be my grandfather up there, I step inside, my movements quiet and careful. After climbing the stairs to the main level, I realize the only light in the building is coming from his office. I head toward it, my footsteps silent against the gym floor, and spot a familiar ponytail bobbing in and out of view through the slats of the office window.

Fuck.

Izzie Graham.

My grandfather’s new hire.

I clocked her the second she walked into the gym a week ago. Not because she was loud because she’s not. And not because she took Rico down in the ring with expert ease in under a few minutes, either.

No. It was the way she moved that caught my attention. She looked like someone trying to blend in but still sizing up hersurroundings to figure out the best way. The way her shoulders squared like a cop, eyes scanning a little too much, a little too fast, put me on edge.

And those eyes… damn.