3. Cash #2
“By shooting my own fucking brother?” I shouted, losing my shit.
“I already pulled the trigger and killed one member of my family. Now you want me to do that again?” I turned to Knight, equally pissed at him for agreeing to this.
“Is that really what you fucking want? To end up dead with your wife at the mercy of these assholes?”
“She won’t because you aren’t actually going to kill me.”
“Yeah?” I scoffed. “And you can predict what a bullet will do once it enters the body? What if I hit bone and it ricochets into your fucking heart? What if they tell me to point the fucking gun at your head?”
“They won’t tell you how to do it,” Shadow said quietly.
“And you’re willing to risk your other son’s life on what you believe they’ll do?”
“Well, he never really thought of me as a son,” Knight smirked. “Did you, Dad?”
“You know it wasn’t like that,” Shadow snapped.
“Do I?” Knight’s gaze slid from our father’s to mine. “I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t,” I spat, angry that he was putting me in this position.
“If anything goes wrong…” I shoved my fingers through my hair, tugging at the strands.
“They’ll ask me to fucking prove my loyalty by killing you.
And I won’t be able to hesitate. I would have to fucking pull the trigger.
I would have to risk the fact that I might kill you. ”
“And you’ll fucking do it,” Knight snapped. “Because if you don’t, our families will never be safe. My wife and kids will always be at risk. Eva and your kids will never be safe. Izzy ? —”
“I fucking know!” I shouted, spinning away from him. “Fuck!” I spun and kicked the chair across the room. It splintered into two pieces, but that wasn’t nearly enough to quell the anger burning inside me.
“You can’t ask me to live with that guilt,” I whispered.
“Don’t ask me to pull the trigger on you.
I can’t—” I sucked in a breath as Rafe’s pleading eyes flashed in my mind.
It would never fucking end. Even when all was said and done, I would still have those memories, the flashbacks that taunted me on a daily basis.
I felt Knight’s hand on my shoulder and he squeezed hard, pulling me out of my depressing thoughts. “You can do this. You have to. There’s only one way to ensure our family’s safety, and that’s by ending this once and for all.”
I finally looked up into his eyes, terrified I would find judgment, but all I saw was the same steely gaze that always looked back at me. How could he not fucking blame me? How could he sit there and pretend that we were still brothers?
“I fucking told you to do it,” he spat. “Stop looking at me like you want to turn the gun on yourself.”
I shook my head, desperately trying to wrap my mind around the insanity of everything that had happened recently. I was losing my fucking mind, barely holding it together with each day that passed. I missed my family. I missed the simple life I had before Rafe came along and blew it all to shreds.
Why did I ever have to find out about what he was really after? Why did I have to find Izzy? Fuck, I knew there was nothing that would have stopped me if I’d found out about her sooner, but now…now I just wanted to go back in time and have a do-over.
“So, what’s the plan?”
“I have to leave for a meeting tomorrow morning.”
“Where?”
“Toronto,” I said, shoving back my chair. I walked over to the counter and grabbed two glasses and a bottle of whiskey. Beer would probably be better, but I’d killed a man today, and even if he deserved it, it still felt like it stained my soul.
“How’s the family?” I asked with a little too much bite in my voice.
“Holding up.”
“And you?” I asked, turning and sliding a glass over to him. “How’s the bullet hole?” I nearly choked on the words, but covered it up by swallowing the whiskey in one smooth gulp.
“Healing. I’m not as young as I used to be, which pisses me off. But I’ll be fine.”
I nodded, staring into the empty space of my glass. “And Kate? How is she taking all this?”
He sighed, glancing away from me. “Is that what you really want to talk about?”
“Yes,” I snapped. “Because if I have to talk about strategy or who I’m going to kill next, I’ll go insane.”
He didn’t know what it was like to be gone for so fucking long, to know that I had essentially destroyed my family and walked away. He had everyone he loved and all his friends supporting him. I had no one.
“Kate’s dealing with it,” he answered. “We went to your funeral.”
I scoffed, shaking my head as more amber liquid filled my glass. The bottle clanked to the table as it slipped from my hand. “That was fucking stupid.”
I tipped the glass back, enjoying the way the whiskey burned my throat. I was relieved to feel anything other than desperation right now.
“I was covered. Besides, if I wasn’t there, you wouldn’t know that your guys started a fight at your funeral and knocked over the casket, revealing your dead body.”
The huff of laughter that escaped my lips felt like relief after such a long time without the simplest smile in my life. “Who got in a fight?”
“Red and Kavanaugh.”
My gaze jerked up at his words. “Kavanaugh was there?”
He nodded. “Can’t say he was too happy about that, but I have a feeling that was more because of how the last funeral ended for him.”
Right. The one where I shot him.
“He was looking for you out there.”
“Did everyone believe it was me in the casket?”
He shrugged, pouring himself another drink. “Sure as hell looked like it. Where’d you find the body?”
“You don’t want to know.”
His eyes flicked to mine and something stirred in their depths. “Eva was pretty shaken.”
I knew she would be. Or maybe I hoped it. Because if she was shaken, that meant there were still feelings buried somewhere in her heart for me. Maybe she would be able to forgive me when this was all over.
If this thing ever ended.
“Well, I guess that’s that.”
“And what was the point of all that?” Knight asked, his tone growing angry. “Why the fuck would you put your wife and kids through that?”
“Because they have to believe I’m dead. Everyone has to believe that I’m gone. It’s the only way to keep the Shadow Government off my back.”
For the first time since this shit began, Knight sighed and looked truly worn out from everything. Mentally, this was fucking with me, but physically, it nearly took his life. We were both paying in different ways.
“What do you need from me now?”
“Nothing.”
A low growl emanated from his throat.
“Seriously. It’s not that I don’t need your help, but there’s nothing you can do without raising the alarm.
As I already said, it was really fucking stupid for you to show up here.
If anyone’s watching me, they’ll know that not only are you not dead, but that the whole fucking thing was a ruse. And then what was this all for?”
“I don’t get caught,” he said calmly. “Never have. Never will.”
I hated his confidence because that would get him killed one day, and then I’d have another fucking brother to bury. My family tree was growing just a little too thin at the moment.
“I have to get to sleep.”
“Do you do that anymore?” Knight asked as I walked past him.
I paused for only a minute before continuing to my bedroom and shutting the door. No, I hardly ever fucking slept. Nightmares plagued me and scenarios constantly ran through my head, telling me all the ways I might fuck this up for everyone.
But when it was quiet and the lights were off, I could close my eyes and think of Eva. She was the one constant in my mind, pulling me through the darkness when all I wanted to do was drown.