54. Torin
FIFTY-FOUR
torin
“You told her what?” My perplexed eyebrows clash together, nursing a beer while I watch Cairo make us dinner.
His words: “it’s time you assholes eat more than chips and alcohol.”
However, I could give a fuck about food while he’s over here playing a different game than the rest of us.
“I’ve already been over this shit with you,” he replies, reaching for the olive oil and ignoring the three stares he’s getting from Reeve, Oz, and me in the living room.
“Are you looking for her to pay attention to you or something?” I bitch, eyes clinched because I know damn well it’s not something he wakes up every day pondering about. “An alliance so Wallace can finally get what he wants and bury us all in shallow graves?”
“He might get you,” Reeve mutters, lips wrapped around a blunt at my side. “You’re the dumb fuck who took her sisters away and threw him in jail.”
Who the fuck cares?
“They all got out, didn’t they?” I flick my attention to Oz. “Knight in shining fuckin’ armor over here.”
“You want out from Emilio or not?” Cairo clips out, loudly dropping something metal in the sink to express his frustration. “I’m tired of being the only asshole around here who’s left to worry about it. If you two want to stay where you are—fine. Because I’m ready to drop all of you on your asses. I don’t want to play Emilio’s lackey and be at his every beck and call anymore.”
“Don’t act like you’re doing it just for our sake.” I kick my feet out onto the coffee table because this isn’t just candid bullshit.
This is his Titan seat.
One he’s taking very seriously right now without consulting anyone about shit.
Cairo drops what he’s doing and rounds the kitchen island, finally giving up, because he’s going to waste making good food when no one here is going to eat it.
Stopping in front of Reeve, Cairo plucks his blunt from between his fingers and puts it between his lips.
“ Hey ,” he whines, reaching for it. “Grab your own shit, man.”
“You’ve had enough,” Cairo grinds out, sitting on the coffee table in front of Reeve and me so we can talk the rest of this shit out. Ozzy is doing what he does best, hovering over the three of us like we need protection from ourselves or each other. “Alright…tell me what you want to do. Because if you guys want out of prying from Emilio, let me know.”
“Why?”
He looks over to me. “Because I need to know if I’m dealing with just my family or with my brothers, too.”
I tow my eyes to Ozzy and set my unhappy glower on him. “What do you plan on doing, Cairo? Because I’m not eating out of this bitch’s hand.”
“We need South Shore. We need their allegiance.”
I rock my head back and forth because that idea is already fucked. “You’re never going to get it. Not with Wallace in the way.”
Not when I tried to kill her.
Cairo inhales deeply on Reeve’s blunt, and then asks like an unknown moron, “Why? It’s not even?—”
“Because if she tells Wallace I almost ended her in the Atlantic, on top of me shooting him the other week, then it’s really game over, brother. You don’t stand a fucking chance in hell.”
A deafening silence fills the room, and I can hear my blood pumping furiously in my veins before Reeve shifts a bit on the couch next to me like I’ve officially lost it.
I did.
A long time ago.
“What the fuck did you do?” Reeve presses, acting as though he didn’t hear me right when I’m the one with the hearing impediment. “When did you?—”
“Weeks ago. I snapped.” I do exactly that with my fingers. “I wanted her gone. I still want her gone. I just couldn’t…”
I just couldn’t.
There’s no world for me where she doesn’t exist. I thought I could disassociate my emotions from her to be loyal to my family.
To Judah.
A righteous man would be able to handle business. I notice Ozzy step a bit closer, but he doesn’t make any other move or say anything.
“You literally…” Reeve gapes at me from my peripheral as if my words are a hazy fog. “What the fuck did you say you did?”
His voice dips, just enough for me to know that he’s high and about to do something extremely fucking stupid.
Like jump my ass and break some shit .
He may be insanely pissed at Bay, but he’d never press the button to knock her off the face of the Earth.
But I planned to.
Almost did.
Stepping in between us, Cairo towers over me and beats down a glower. “Are you fucking stupid or just suicidal? Emilio would…dude, he’d off your ass.”
“That’s the thing, Black,” I snarl out, clutching my fingers tighter around my beer. “There is no going back after this. She’s gone. And whatever little thing you thought was going to happen—some fuckin’ miracle about us working together—you can consider me out.”
“You’re not out ,” Cairo sneers. “We’re a brotherhood.”
It doesn’t matter what Cairo wants to believe. A brotherhood isn’t going to save us from what I’ve done. My brain battles with itself every single fucking day. On every piece of decision-making that has led me to this point.
Judah versus Bay.
My loyalty versus the love I had for a girl who used to look at me like I was the world.
She might not ever admit it to me, and I don’t need her to. Not now, not ever. I’ve done enough already to destroy that story—ours—the one where we made changes and got rid of this rivalry once and for all.
And while that still might be the plan, my heart doesn’t know any differently. It still throbs unceremoniously for the girl who stole my soul a long time ago. Someone who—by the opinions and standards of some people here—didn’t put the last shot in my brother.
That Matteo De Leon is the piece of shit who will do everything he can to sever ties between Bay and my brothers.
And it might be the truth.
Let’s say it is.
It still doesn’t mean this isn’t all fucked-up. I’ve already created more chaos in a situation that plummeted the moment I found out. That De Leon and she were there with my brother when he took his last breath.
She may have not killed him, but she was there.
He died.
And I can’t help thinking if she didn’t try to save him. If she led him on and had him ambushed. If De Leon used her to get Judah into those woods.
“I wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page.”
“We’re not,” Reeve carps out, rising from the couch. “You stupid motherfuck—” Cairo shoves him, but Reeve was counting on that, moving aside and slipping past just to elbow him backward.
Then my brother is on me.
I’m halfway to my feet to meet Reeve, but his weight slams me back into the furniture, and I grunt from all the air leaving my lungs.
He delivers—what some people may call a punch and others a fucked-up attempt to slap—to the side of my head before I’m using his coked-up stupor to launch him off me.
The smashing of glass resonates through the air, but Reeve doesn’t stop in his attempt to fuck me up. No, he wraps his hands around my neck and begins to squeeze at the same moment I throw a closed-fisted punch to his ribs.
Crimson begins to form at his bicep underneath his blue tee, still not stopping his attempt to make me pay for almost murdering the love of his life.
The love of mine.
Cairo then latches onto the back of his shirt, heaving him away before I’m caught with five of his clenched knuckles to the cheek.
That’s going to be a strong hell no for me.
My heel strikes his upper thigh as he stumbles back a bit. My low blow of catching his balls falls short when Cairo tries to get Reeve under control again.
Finally able to get on my feet, Cairo slams his closed fist into my face, causing me to fall back to the couch with a grunt.
Yep.
That’s what I was waiting for.
Not only is it fucking annoying that Cairo thinks he has a say in the matter, but the sophisticated, stay-away-from-her narrative that he’s been preaching at us for months falls short. Especially when he has been nothing but against Bay and me from the start.
I don’t give a fuck what I did. He doesn’t get to waltz in and save her now.
“You don’t pull that shit again,” he chides me like he has any right to while getting on my feet again. “You’re done with that petty-ass—” My forehead slams into his as I launch myself forward and catch him off guard.
I swear to God, it takes everything in Cairo not to knock me the fuck out because he could. I’m not a hundred percent right now because I’m halfway through a bottle of bourbon, but he’s a better fighter than me, that’s for sure.
However, he doesn’t move an inch even though blood is gushing from his nose, and pain is radiating like a bitch through my head.
But I’d do the shit again.
“Go on,” Cairo urges gruffly. “Let’s get this over with and move on unless you all want to continue to go in circles for a few more weeks.”
“That’s the thing, Black,” I leer, clutching my fingers into fists. “There is no going back after this.”
“You did it.”
“Then let me go,” I reply, throwing my arms to the side. “You don’t need me. I dropped her in the middle of the fucking ocean and watched her drown.”
The room goes deathly silent for the second time. We all stand in tandem with what might happen. And with each ticking second, nothing else takes place to my utter amazement.
I’m almost starting to think Oz didn’t hear me for a fucking second or that the words never left my mouth.
But that’s the perfect scenario.
He heard me.
I know he fucking did.
“Get your head out of your ass, Torin,” Cairo warns. “Why would she lie about killing Judah?”
“Maybe she’s telling the truth, and she didn’t. But she was there. He died. She didn’t get him any fucking help.”
“She’s never lied before.”
“She lied about dating or not dating Levi,” Reeve retorts. “Still can’t fucking figure out which one was the lie and which was the truth.”
“Shut the hell up,” Cairo carps out. “That’s so beyond the least of our worries right now.”
“Easy for you to say, Black, when the only thing you’ve loved is your hair.”
“I’d love to see you bleed,” he seethes through his teeth, alluding that he’s getting close to losing his shit with all of us. Cairo has had to carry the weight of all our emotions and babysit Ozzy so that he doesn’t get in over his head with Bay. Can’t say I envy the motherfucker. “Get your fucking emotions together, you weak bitch.”
Reeve shakes his head and begins to leave the room. “Are we done here?—”
Cairo’s arm shoots out to stop him. “We’re not. No one leaves this room until we have a plan and an agreement. None of us is walking out of this house and going off the rails again.”
“It’s more than that, isn’t it?” I push on through the eerie silence that follows. “It has to be. You’re smarter than all of us to stay the hell away from her.” I glance over at Ozzy. “Even fucking Judah was dumb enough to care about her. He even wrote it down. Then something went wrong, and he wanted to save her as we tried to do. What you’re trying to do. And she’s that goddamn stubborn that she fucking killed—she’s involved with my brother somehow.”
Ozzy doesn’t break his stare. The black ink littering his body bestows an even more mysterious venture on what’s going on in his head right now.
I’ve failed him.
I fell short of my own expectations and let my guard down. I let Reeve fall in love when I should’ve tried harder to protect him, too.
And now he’s one more line of cocaine away from overdosing or doing something so stupid he’ll never come back from.
Cairo was right the whole time; she is going to destroy us all. One female when we’ve gone through and fought with so much more.
My cousin studies me, maybe calculating what to say or do next. Maybe he understands where I’m coming from and how, for once in my life, I’m fearful of how this is all going to turn out in the end.
Emotionally, he’s the weakest link and can’t carry such a burden. I fucking hate saying it like that, but I need to watch him, more so than ever, because we can’t fail him again.
Bay Astor isn’t Vivian.
She’s worse.
“You fell for it, didn’t you?” I press, stepping closer to him, and he’s only a few feet away, but I’m feeling nostalgic for all the times he and I used to hang out. That I safeguarded him until I didn’t. “You’re trying to prove her innocence, thinking we’re going to be a happy family again. That you’ll be in the picture this time.”
“Torin—” That comes from Cairo, but I’m not done making sure he understands all of it even though I’ve said it all already.
I’ve made my intentions known, my hurt is evident, and Bay still plagues me every day I wake up either from being hungover or when I’m just too tired to keep my head up.
“It doesn’t fucking matter what you do,” I emit, reaching him and stopping within an arm’s length. “We’re done. She and I—there is no happy medium. She will forever hate me, and I won’t…” My nostrils flare as my temper begins to reach a new fucking high. “Don’t bother, Oz. It doesn’t fucking matter anymore.”
For the first time, he averts his eyes, and it’s a relief to know he comprehends all that’s happening here.
That Reeve and I, we’re hanging on by a thread.
That he has made sure we’re in the know and has been our greatest weapon thus far.
However, he’s too close to the target, and one bat of her eyelashes and sway of her hips and he may fall victim just as Reeve and I have.
Ozzy moves swiftly, and I don’t feel anything at first.
Nor the second time.
But when Ozzy stabs me on the third round, I can feel the dizziness permeate through my head and the warmth of blood filling the cotton of my shirt.
My cousin is jerked back by Cairo as my palm touches one of the wounded places just to come back filled with bright red blood.
I guess his head is exactly where I thought it was.
With her.
“Drop the fuckin’ knife,” Cairo orders, his voice pitched and posed to no more bullshit, but it’s done.
We’re all done.
Nothing can bring us back together after the handful of events that happened. How Reeve and I both took this. We’re severed and broken, and she did what she sought out to do.
“You stupid prick,” Reeve barks, and as I raise my chin, he’s swinging at Ozzy’s jaw.
Cairo has no more control over the situation. It’s done.
Reeve still has a bone to pick with my cousin because he married her, and Reeve was in love with her. Their little fight got broken up over the first bitch that caused my cousin to go down the rabbit hole.
Now, it appears like he’s back at it again.
Reeve flies backward, crashing into the coffee table and sending the whole thing to the floor with an unforgiving smash of wood and the air knocked out of him.
Cairo shows up in my peripheral as a shield, but it won’t stop my cousin from coming after me if that’s what Oz wants to do.
“This shit stops now,” he snarls out. “You got it out.”
“Come over here, you quiet piece of shit.” Reeve slowly tries to regain his footing, but he’s too fucked up to jump to his feet. “I hope she burns you.”
Geezus fucking Christ.
“ Enough !” Cairo again. “Ozzy, we can’t do this.”
He already did.
And I’m not even completely pissed about it. I’m more disappointed than anything. However, it could be the whiskey floating through my veins that I’m not wishing to put a bullet in his head to save him from the heartache of what Bay can do.
“Torin, dude, let’s get you to the hospital.”
I locate Cairo’s eyes, which hold more color than Ozzy’s pitch-black ones. The shade they turn when my cousin is ready to kill someone. “Get someone else. I’m not going.”
Not when shit has officially hit the fan.
He glowers at me and utters under his breath, “Motherfucker.”