Chapter 25. Alex
ALEX
“You know, this is kind of fun,” I say, putting one of the minuscule spokes on the train wheels with a set of tweezers.
My dad leans back in his chair, admiring our handiwork. “Of course it is. It’s a waste of time. Everything that’s fun is a waste of time.”
Dad’s been increasingly … not himself this past year.
It started off with tense dinners, conversations on eggshells and too many refills of his wine glass.
Now we’re lucky to see him at dinner at all.
The twins seem to be the only thing that stops him from flying off the rails lately.
Their second birthday party last week was the first time I saw him smile in … months, actually.
“It’s not often your only son turns eleven,” he says. That infinitesimal hint of pride in his voice has me feeling ten feet tall.
“Unless the new baby is a boy.”
His jaw tenses. I’ve said the wrong thing, somehow.
His palm lands on my shoulder, so hard that if he wasn’t so volatile, I’d tell him it hurt. “I started joining my father in the office on weekends when I was your age.”
“Oh, I …”
“You’ll be fine. You’ll make a fine CEO for Green one day.”
“I … well …”
Another clap on the shoulder, hard enough this time that I realize he knows exactly what he’s doing. “I know you wouldn’t let me down, boy.”
“ALEX.”
I jolt awake, startled by sounds and smells that are so familiar now after the year my mother has had. My breaths are rapid, my dream about my father a memory I’d almost forgotten.
I open my eyes and shit, since when is operating an eyelid this painful?
“Hey.” A gentle hand lands on my shoulder when I try to sit up. I trace my blurry gaze up one thin, tanned arm.
“Fleur?”
And just like that, it all comes back to me. The fight in the elevator, my father’s fist, Ophelia’s appearance, Fleur shooting dad.
Fleur shooting dad.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“Breathe, Alex, you’re okay. Ingrid and the twins will be here soon. Mom’s not really lucid enough to come.”
“Ophelia,” I manage, though my throat is raw.
“I think they sent her for some tests.”
It’s like all the fragmented pieces of myself suddenly pull together to form a single panicked thought. “She’s hurt?”
No, no, no, no, no.
I push myself up in the bed, but Fleur pushes me back down. “It’s just a knee X-ray. She’ll cope on her own.”
“You … oh my god, Fleur, you …”
“I couldn’t watch what he does to you and Mom anymore, Alex. Seventeen years of it was enough.”
“But you …”
“Russell and I were outside when Ophelia texted us for help. I knew Russell’s been keeping a gun in the car since dad went missing, just in case. The rest is a blur.”
“Is he …” Christ, I can’t even form a sentence. Too rattled, too worried for Ophelia, too hurt.
“He’s in a different hospital. He’s definitely going to jail for the rest of his life. Mike’s here, somewhere.”
He’s alive.
Relief courses through me, for Fleur, not for him. I don’t want that weight looming over her.
I want him to rot behind bars.
“What did he want?”
I squint at the dark cityscape outside the window, like I’ll find any answers there. “He was trying to get a flight to Greece.”
He had a whole new life ready to go over there. The final, desperate hope of a coward who’d run out of options. He was having trouble bribing a contact at the airport, needed me to ensure his safe escape.
My vision swims, the pain in my head almost blinding. “Did Ophelia’s knee … is she hurt? Is it bad?”
“Oh man, you’re obsessed.”
“Is she on her own?”
I can’t lose her.
“She asked Brendan to send her the CCTV video of her whacking Mike round the head with a crowbar so she can keep it as a trophy. I think she’s okay.”
I huff out a laugh, but it spreads agony across my ribs. “Are you okay?”
She picks at her cuticles, stares down at her lap. “I think so.”
“You think so, but …” I encourage, hearing the unspoken word dangling from the end of her sentence.
“I think I’m like him.”
“Dad?”
She straightens up, squares her shoulders like this is a thought she’s been trying to face for a long time. “There’s something wrong with me.”
I reach for her hand, desperate for her not to go down this line of thinking, like I have for too long. “Fleur, no.”
“I thought about shooting him for so long. Watched him rant at the dinner table and listened to him shout at you downstairs and just thought how easy it would be to make him just … shut up.”
“That doesn’t—”
She interrupts me with a squeeze of my hand, and the wide-eyed panic in her expression guts me.
“You think you’re the rotten branch. You think you got his bad.
” Her bottom lip wobbles, and God, there isn’t much worse than watching your little sister cry.
“It’s me. I have all the worst parts of him.
The anger and the bad thoughts and the twisted excitement at the downfall of others.
Pulling that trigger is the only thing that’s made any of it … slow down.”
“Fleur,” I whisper, hardly feeling the pain in my ribs when I drag her into my arms. When was the last time I hugged her? “I used to think that, too. I still do, sometimes.”
Her voice is muffled, arms around my neck. “Really?”
“Really. Shall we find you someone to talk to about this?”
“You’re so boring and adult now,” she groans, seemingly keen for a topic change. “Are you okay?”
Am I? It’s been a long time since I’ve felt okay. But it almost feels within reach. “I will be.”
Fleur stands and leans over to grab something from the table, holding up my phone. “You have over a hundred missed calls from Vincenzo.”
Another one pops up just as she turns the phone to face me.
“Pick it up or he’ll never stop.”
She does, and there’s Vincenzo’s giant, stupid, anxiety-ridden face filling the screen. “Alex, fuck.”
I frown, trying to get my eyes to focus. “Where are you?”
He glances over his shoulder, and I realize he’s in a car.
He pulls over, running two hands down his face.
My chest constricts. “I was driving to the fucking airport because you weren’t picking up and Ophelia said you were hurt and my dad couldn’t find you in the hospital and …
” He gives a rough growl. He looks distraught, shoulders sinking under a decade-long ability to blame himself if anyone he cares about gets hurt. “You look like shit, Alex. Fuck.”
“Wow, thanks,” I say, trying to lighten the mood enough to dislodge this crushing ball of emotion stuck in my throat.
“It’s not funny.”
I swallow. “I’m okay. I’ll call you later?”
His whole body deflates with a huge breath of relief. “Yeah. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Fleur gives Vincenzo a little wave and hangs up. “You have about a thousand other—”
A flash of copper in the doorway catches my eye. Fleur trails off, slipping out the door to leave Ophelia and me alone.
And she looks so fucking beautiful and so … unharmed.
And then it all just hits me. Over a decade of gray gives way to everything I’ve been numb to.
I think about Josie, crying out for a dad she knows no wrong about.
About my earliest memories of my father, dancing my mom around the kitchen, cheering on the sideline of my first football games.
Our first vacation before my dad spiraled into evil, before my mom took such a sharp downturn. Christmases that weren’t spent on edge.
That life died a long time ago now, but this feels like the final draw of the curtains.
I expected anger. I imagined myself on the other side of my father’s jail cell, laughing at him. I didn’t think it’d be grief that has me feeling so broken.
The sob that works its way up my throat is silent, but I hear her soft intake of breath as she runs over to the bed and folds me in her arms. “Oh, Alex.”
I drag her cinnamon scent into my lungs. “I’m so tired.”
Her fingers thread through my hair behind my head. “I know.”
“I don’t think I could’ve shot him,” I manage, like it’s a confession to my worst sin. The air reeks of disinfectant and disgust. “Even after all he’s done, I don’t think I could’ve.”
She clutches me tighter, face buried in my neck. I can feel her tears on my shoulder. “That’s okay, he’s your dad. That’s okay. You’ve been through enough.”
I don’t know what I did to deserve her. This sweet girl who can overlook my father’s sins for a future with me.
“None of it feels like a win.” Dead or alive, imprisoned or on the run, sorry or not sorry. None of it makes anything feel better.
She runs her fingers through my hair, her other hand stroking my back as I drag in a shuddering breath.
Exhaustion saps the life from my bones. “It isn’t a win at all, Alex.
Whoever gave you the impression that this was a situation to be won or lost, they were lying.
” She pulls away, gaze sincere like she really wants me to hear her.
“There is more strength in mercy than there is in cruelty. You stood in front of the man who tried to make you a monster and you showed him that every effort he made was in vain.”
“I know, but he …”
A tender hand swipes my hair from my eye, and I swear I feel a crack in my heart stitch itself together. “Forgive yourself.”
I trail my gaze from her swollen bottom lip to the chest that rises in steady, sure breaths. “Is your knee okay?”
She can’t squash her smile. “It’s fine. Nothing’s broken. And never mind my knee, you should see what I can do with a crowbar.”
I could just ask her to marry me right here.
Not romantic, Alex.
Christ, I love her. I love them all. I love them all so much it aches. I’m desperate to have all eight of them in my arms.
I’m going to get them away from all of this. I’m not going to let any of them know fear like this ever again.