43. Tyson
Tyson
O livia, Ansel, and Diva have been gone most of the day. I sit in the rocking chair on the front porch, watching the front gate for any signs of them returning, while thinking of what she told us this morning.
You are not worth my time.
God, that hurt. And it’s not like I have the right to complain, not after what I did, but it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Levi is right. I have to get my knees ready. I wonder, if I present her with my heart on a silver platter will she consider listening to me? What exactly am I going to tell her, huh? I need to get my shit together and win my girl back. She might never forgive me, but she is the one I want.
It’s past dinner time, and night has already fallen, but the lights coming from the house illuminate the front yard all the way to the fence.
Olivia hates me.
A few days ago, I would not have cared, but now? It’s pure agony.
The front door opens and Rueben steps out onto the porch with two glasses of whiskey in his hands. He hands one to me and sits in the other rocking chair, close to me.
“You look like you need a drink and some company,” Rueben says when I stare at the amber liquid in the glass. It reminds me of Olivia’s eyes. “So, what’s been eating you all day?”
As if he doesn’t know.
I stretch out my legs in front of me. “How do I make Olivia forgive me?”
Rueben takes a sip from his drink. “I don’t know. I’ve never asked for forgiveness in my life.”
“Yeah, me neither. But we need to start somewhere.”
Rueben takes his time to think. “I think your plan of bringing her the heads of those who raped her is a good start.”
I laugh nervously. “Did you know she always wanted a big family? At least five babies. Now she doesn’t want any.”
“Do you blame her after what Malaky did to her? Us? And God knows what else she’s had to endure all these years.”
“And we never once believed her. We accused her of enjoying being fucked by all those old geezers. What the fuck was wrong with us?” I drain all my whiskey in one long swig. “Jason used to drug Olivia. Do you think he did the same to us?”
“I don’t see how.”
I rub my temples. “There is something there and no matter how hard I try to catch it, it evades me. Why do I still think Olivia is a whore? It’s driving me crazy. Something is wrong with me, man.”
Rueben slowly savors his drink. “Do you think we should go to the Elders?”
The lights coming from a car reach me before I can hear the engine. Finally, Olivia is back home. I won’t lie and pretend I wasn’t scared she would leave without giving us a chance to make things right with her, because I was shitting my pants. But thank fuck she is home. Now I can start thinking about how I’ll fucking grovel.
“I think it would be for the best,” I say, as I get up and go to the main gate and open it. Seconds later, a car enters and parks in front of the house. Not Ansel’s car but one that I swear I saw before but can’t remember where. The driver’s door opens and a woman climbs down. Great, just fucking great.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Alma?” I snarl.
“I came to check on Olivia because you assholes took away her phone, the one I brought for her the last time I was here. Since I have no way of knowing if she is dead or not, I came to see her.”
“Go home,” Rueben tells Alma. “Besides, Olivia is out shopping with Ansel.”
“Shopping. Right,” Alma says sarcastically. “Like I would ever believe a word coming from your mouths.”
And with that Alma quickly climbs the stairs and enters the house before Rueben can stop her.
I rush after her because I want her away from here by the time Olivia returns. “Woman, why can’t you understand that we don’t want you here?”
Alma sits on the couch next to the fireplace. “I don’t care. I also came to see Mose since he didn’t even bother to show his ass at work today. Where is he anyway?”
“Probably making dinner,” Rueben replies as he closes the front door.
Alma smiles. “Dinner sounds lovely.”
Knowing Alma is not going to leave any time soon, I turn on the music system. A song I haven’t heard in years starts playing. Evil by Hish.
Alma takes out her fancy phone and starts texting.
I take out a cigarette and light it. After a few drags, Alma suddenly looks up at me, coughing. “That is rude.”
I shrug. “My house, my rules.”
“I don’t know how Olivia puts up with you and your blood-brothers,” Alma huffs.
Rueben drops into one of the armchairs. “You better ask yourself why no man is willing to put up with you.”
Alma flips him the bird. “Fuck you, Rueben.”
I take a puff and before Rueben can say some snarky remark, I say, “Not tonight.” My head starts to feel funny before a wave of anger hits me. “I don’t feel like putting up with your shit right now.”
Suddenly the lights go off.
“What the fuck?” Rueben mutters.
“It happens when you don’t pay the bill,” Alma comments.
I don’t get worried, not when we have a generator that should kick on any moment now. Plus, a fire is burning in the fireplace.
Mose and Jasper walk into the living room.
“What are you doing here?” Mose asks Alma.
“Came to help you pay the electricity bill.”
The generator doesn’t kick in.
A figure passes by the window.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My hand goes to my holster. “Something is wrong.”
The front door is kicked open and several smoke bombs are thrown inside. Some of the smoke enters my lungs, leaving me and my demon weak as fuck.
“Cover your faces!” Rueben yells as we quickly rush to take cover.
I hold my breath while I take out my gun before pulling my t-shirt over my mouth and nose. My eyes start to water.
Around ten men wearing gas masks enter the house.
“Drop your guns!” someone yells.
I aim at the intruders but my vision turns blurry, even so, I still shoot one of these motherfuckers in the face, blowing up part of his jaw. The bullets I use are modified to cause maximum damage to someone.
Thank fuck Olivia is not home. But where the fuck are Levi and the others? My lungs burn with the need to breathe.
More gas bombs are thrown into the middle of the living room. I manage to get out into the hallway but freeze when I hear, “If you don’t want the woman to die, you do as I say.”
Don’t fucking tell me….
After I take a deep breath of clean air, I go back inside the living room. My blood-brothers are aiming at a man as tall as Jasper holding Alma by her neck, a gun at her temple. Shit.
We might not like Alma, but we are not about to let some asshole kill her.
“Put your hands in the air!”
Alma tries to bite the man’s hand but he hits her in the head with the back of his gun, knocking her out cold.
“Don’t kill her!” Mose screams.
One by one, my blood-brothers and I throw our guns on the floor. The men jump on us, and we are too weak from the gas to fight back. We are tied up and dragged out into the snow, all the way to the pasture, until we come face to face with Senator Deymar. And Rin and the others. Just like us, they are tied up and look dazed. Gags are in their mouths, preventing them from speaking.
Fuck!
Behind the Senator are three cars with their lights turned on. Senator Deymar’s men force us to kneel in the snow, our hands tied behind our backs.
How the fuck did they get on the property and outsmart Rin? He is like a fucking legend at the Blood Lodge. He is never taken by surprise, his demon has a special ability to sense enemies. But even legends go down, I suppose.
Senator Deymar is dressed in an expensive suit and looks at me and the rest like we are filth splattered on his clothes.
“What do you want?” Rueben asks.
We need to bide our time until the effect of the smoke passes.
“What do I want?” the Senator wonders. His men remove the gas masks from their faces. Jason and his friends are among them. Only the guy who has Alma flung over his shoulder keeps his mask on. The Senator paces in front of us a few times before stopping in front of Mose. “My daughter.”
Fuck!
We should have killed Jason when we had the chance. Then he would not have gone running back to Daddy and told him where Olivia was.
“She is not here,” I calmly say. If Ansel returns right now with Olivia, we are fucked. “You can search the house.”
Senator Deymar takes a few steps until he stands in front of me. “And you are?” After a moment of studying my face, he says, “Ah, the Carr bastard.”
I glance at Rueben. Turquoise eyes look at me. The same color as mine. And as Camila’s. And our father. A family trait. This is how my dad recognized me the day I knocked on his door and declared I was his son.
His bastard.
Behind him, his wife, Francesca, fainted. He had no idea I even existed. He met my mother in a bar when he was passing through her town, soon after he separated from his wife, my stepmother, and they went through a divorce. Things were so bad between them that they even had an Elder break their bond.
My mother got my dad so drunk he could barely walk, took him to a nearby hotel, did the deed, and stole his wallet, leaving him passed out. The next day, left without a choice, my dad called his ex-wife, and she went looking for him. They got back together soon after, especially since they had a baby together—Rueben. And they lived happily ever after… until me.
After another altercation with one of my mom’s many boyfriends; I grabbed my father’s wallet from her room—she kept it to remind me that I was just a drunken mistake, and she took it to sell in case she got pregnant because my father and her never used no protection. But no one wanted an old wallet, so I guess she had no money to get rid of me, so here I am—and somehow I found my way to my dad’s place. He lived at the same address that was on his business card.
After the initial shock, my step-mom, who has treated me better than my own mom, took me in, even when my dad said no.
Because he is a mistake, Francesca. A drunken mistake. I don’t even remember being with his mother.
The only person to tell me that I wasn’t a mistake was Olivia. She used to tell me that we were always meant to be and that God never makes mistakes when it comes to babies. That my purpose on Earth was to be hers and her purpose was to love me forever. Fuck. And I ruined everything. Because my mom fucked me up so badly, the moment I saw the video with Olivia sucking dick while wearing the ring I gave her, I lost my shit. My trauma is not an excuse for what I did to her, to the love of my life, but is the catalyst that started my hate for her.
“That’s me,” I say.
Camila and Rueben were the first to really accept me into the family. Probably because I was the sibling that knew a lot of shit and always got into trouble while they got away with a lot of stuff. And then Ansel joined the family, when my dad and step-mom became his foster parents. Since then, the three of us—Ansel, Rueben, and I—have been the best of friends.
“If my daughter is not here, then where is she?” Senator Deymar asks me.
I shrug. “She left this morning.” Thank fuck, because having Olivia here right now would have been a tragedy. I jerk my chin in my blood-brothers direction. “We don’t know where. Maybe she left the state. Hell, even the country.”
“After what you’ve done to her, no wonder.” Senator Deymar pulls out his phone and shows me a video from the shed from when Rueben and I tortured Olivia.
I watch it silently, thinking how the fuck could I have hurt her when I love her so much?
“My daughter might be a whore, but she is still a Deymar. I would have let you go unpunished, but then you went ahead and killed one of my men and put videos of you fucking my daughter on the internet. You see, it ruins my image. So I’m here to teach you what happens to those who cross me or try to harm my family,” he tells my blood-brothers and me. “You also torture my son and for that, you all will pay a high price.”
Who the fuck put videos of Olivia on the internet?
“The bastard shot Brayan in the face,” Jason says.
Senator Deymar narrows his eyes. “Did you now?”
“He kicked in my door and got mud all over my rug,” I reply. “How did you get that video?”
The Senator smirks. “I have eyes and ears all over the place.”
That means there are spies among us. Someone close to us. Not one of my blood-brothers, that’s for sure. But who?
“I never understood why my daughter liked to spend her time with you lot,” the Senator narrows his eyes. “But since you think you are so smart, we are going to play a game. Get up,” he orders me.
“Make me,” I dare him.
“Jason,” the Senator says.
Without skipping a beat, Jason pulls out his gun and shoots Gavin between his eyes.
Isak and Steven scream in their gags as the link between them breaks, while the rest of us are too shocked to react.
“Don’t make me ask again,” Senator Deymar says. Not wanting anyone else to die because of me, I rise to my feet. “Untie him.”
When my hands are free, the Senator gives me a baseball bat. “The game is easy. You get to sing ‘Eeny Meeny Miny Moe,’ and when you are done, you get to break the bones of one of your friends.”
The blood drains from my face. “You are sick in the head.”
“I don’t think you understand how this works,” the Senator says. “The moment I say something, you do it. Unless you want Jason to shoot everyone and leave you alive so you can remember how you failed them. Bastard.”
Shit. Shit.
“I don’t know the song,” I say, hoping he will stop with this sick game.
The Senator tilts his head to the side. “I say the song, you hit with the bat. How does that sound?”
“No,” I shake my head. “There’s no—” My words die on my lips when Jason shoots Levi in the stomach. “Fine! I’ll fucking do it. Just don’t kill anyone else!”
“See how fast you learn?” Senator Deymar chuckles and takes the bat from me and points it at Jasper. “Eeny.” He moves one. “Meeny. Miny. Moe,” he keeps saying as he keeps pointing the bat at Rueben, Mose, and Isak. “Catch a tiger by the toe.” My hands start to shake. “If he hollers, let him go.” The entire thing feels like deja vu. Like I have seen this scene in a movie. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” Like I have gone through this situation before. “My mother told me.” Which one? “To pick the very best one.” I need to find a way to stop this. “And you are,” the bat points at Jasper, “it. There, we have a winner.” The Senator shoves the bat in my hands. “I want you to crush his left knee.”
Not Jasper.
I can’t harm him.
My fingers tremble.
“Do it,” Jasper tells me.
“You know I can’t,” I whisper.
“So you can torture my daughter but when it comes to your blood-brothers and friends, you can’t do the same. Very well. Grab him!”
Two men grab me by my arms and force me to lay my hands flat on the hood of a car. I don’t try to fight them because it will only make things worse.
“My father always told me that if I want a job done right, I have to do it myself,” the Senator says before crushing the fingers from my right hand with the bat. I grunt in pain.
“Tyson, do it!” Jasper yells at me.
I’d rather die than harm Jasper.
“Do you want me to break the rest of your fingers?” the Senator asks.
Fuck. Fuck. How do we get out of this mess? We have no guns. Gavin is dead and Levi has been shot, slowly bleeding to death. If I don’t do as asked, more people will die. I grab the bat with my good hand and go to Jasper, who already has his left leg outstretched. “I’m sorry, man,” I say as I bring down the bat on top of his left knee. Jasper yells out in pain as the bat slams into his bad knee.
“Again,” Senator Deymar tells me.
And I do so. Until I am told to stop when Jasper’s knee is completely shattered and sweat covers him. I feel like vomiting. My heart aches.
“I’m going to sing the song again,” the Senator says. This time, the bat stops in front of Rueben. “Perfect. Brother versus brother. How about we make this more interesting?” He has Rueben untied and gives the bat to him. “Hit him in the head, really hard.”
Rueben being the motherfucker he is, hits me so hard on top of my head that I fall on the snow. I don’t lose consciousness, but suddenly, I can’t see. I try blinking, but everything around me is dark. At least I can still hear. I try to get up but I fall back onto the snow. Something warm runs down my face. Probably blood.
“Atta boy,” the Senator says. “I heard one of you is a chef.”
Mose confirms it. “That would be me.”
“It so happens I have a very sharp knife right here and I want to see how you use it on the back of your blood-brother,” the Senator says.
Some commotion happens before I hear Rueben grunting in pain. Whatever is happening is bad.
But at least Olivia and Ansel are not here. And if Ansel is smart, he already took her far, far away from here. If there is one person who can keep Olivia safe, it’s Ansel.
When the Senator speaks again, I know I’ll do anything to bring him down. “How about I sing the song again and when I’m done, I want to see some brains scattered all over the snow. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”
To be continued…