Chapter 29 Ransom
RANSOM
I hold Willow’s gaze, seeing all the emotions in her beautiful eyes.
She knows what it means for me to be saying this out loud in front of my own brothers, but I want to prove a point to her.
I need her to understand that just because Troy is the father of her kid, that doesn’t mean her child is going to be anything like him.
Blood only goes so far.
I know she probably already grasps that truth, deep down. But right now, she’s got all of this fear, anger, and anxiety eating at her. And this admission is the only way I can think of to remind her that family is what we make it, not what’s forced upon us by our DNA.
In all honesty, I never really thought about how I’d tell my brothers the truth about this. How, or if, I would reveal that I’m only their half-brother. I definitely wouldn’t have imagined it would be in a moment like this, but Willow needs to hear me say it.
Stepping back from the circle a bit, I take a deep breath.
Malice and Vic look between Willow and me, clearly understanding that something is going on here.
“What is it?” Vic asks. “What did you tell her?”
“So, the thing is…” I clear my throat. “I know a lot about how blood isn’t the only thing that can make someone family. Because of our shitty dad, but also because… we don’t have the same mom.”
Malice’s eyebrows shoot up, and Vic’s furrow as they take that in. I run a hand through my hair and press on, needing to get it out.
“My mom was different from yours, someone else our dear old dad treated like shit. But in the end, that woman died, and Diana offered to raise me.” I clear my throat.
“I’ve known for a long time, but I just never wanted to bring it up.
I guess I didn’t want you to see me as anything other than your true brother. Your full brother.”
I shrug a little awkwardly, waiting for their response. Luckily, the thing about Malice is that he doesn’t hide his emotions well at all. He looks confused for a second and then surprised.
“What the fuck would that matter?” he asks finally. “You’ve been with us forever, and that’s more important than anything else.”
Vic nods. “And Mom loved you, so that’s what counts. We could see how much she cared, even if you weren’t her son by blood.”
Something aches in my chest at the memory of the woman I’ll always consider my mother. “She was a fucking saint,” I murmur.
Malice nods, his jaw clenching. His eyes burn in the way they always do when we talk about our mom, gleaming with love and fierce devotion. Vic makes a sound of affirmation, and when I glance over at him, he holds my gaze, speaking in a low voice.
“You’re our brother,” he says. “No matter if we share two parents or one. Family doesn’t have to mean blood. It’s about who loves you.”
“A-fucking-men,” Malice agrees. “And about who you can trust to have your back. That’s always been you, Ransom.”
Willow lets out a soft sob, stepping forward and burying her head against my chest. I wrap my arms around her, feeling her tears soak into my shirt.
“I told you,” she whispers. “I told you they wouldn’t care.”
“I know.” My voice turns raspy as my throat goes tight. “You were right, angel. Of course you were.”
Something I didn’t realize I’d been carrying falls away from my shoulders as I tangle my fingers in my beautiful girl’s hair, holding my brother’s gazes over her head.
I know my father only told me the truth about my real mother as a way to fuck with me, a way to get into my head and make me doubt myself.
And for years, I tried to tell myself that there was a good reason not to share this knowledge with my brothers.
I told myself it didn’t matter, or that I didn’t want to burden them with it.
But the truth is, I was scared.
Some part of me, however small, always feared that they would see me differently or treat me differently if they knew I was only their half-brother.
I’m relieved to have it out in the open now though. And I’m even more relieved that they don’t care. I didn’t really think they would, but there was always a part of me that felt a little ‘less than’ because I wasn’t as closely connected to them as they thought I was.
But after hearing Willow worry that we would turn on her or her unborn baby because the father was a monster, it clarified everything for me.
Parentage truly doesn’t matter.
Leaning back a little, I brush Willow’s cheeks with my thumbs, wiping away the tears there. Her brown eyes are swollen and bloodshot from crying, but just like I told her when we woke up earlier, she still looks beautiful to me. She always fucking will.
“No matter what you decide to do, we’ll support you,” I tell her, tucking her tangled hair behind her ears. “We’ll love you. And if you decide to keep this baby, we’ll love it too.”
“Truly?” Her lower lip quavers, and she traps it between her teeth.
“Of course.” I chuckle, and although there’s no humor in it, there is warmth.
“My brothers and I had a terrible father, I don’t remember my actual mother, and your grandmother is one of the most god-awful people I’ve ever met.
But all of us turned out okay. Hell, you turned out so much better than okay.
You’re the best person I know, angel. We love every damn thing about you, and we definitely don’t hold Olivia against you.
So why would we hold Troy against your baby?
Your blood family may be fucked up, but you have a real family.
” I jerk my chin, encompassing myself and my brothers in a single gesture.
“Us. We’re right here with you, and we always will be. ”
She leans her face into my palm, closing her eyes like she’s trying to ground herself through that touch. Some of the tension slides out of her shoulders, and as they slump a little, I share a look with my brothers over her head.
We can’t fix this in one day, and we definitely can’t heal her trauma with one conversation.
But no matter what happens, our family will stick together.
After we finally break apart, we take our time getting cleaned up and properly dressed. My brothers and I all watch Willow like hawks to make sure she doesn’t suffer another bout of morning sickness or seem to be falling back into a panic.
Once we’ve gotten some breakfast in our systems, we decide that Willow has had enough excitement for one day. She insists she doesn’t need to be coddled, putting her foot down and refusing to go back to bed when there’s still planning to do.
“We can’t take a break. Not even for this. We can’t let this slow us down,” she says, looking at us defiantly. “The sooner we find an enemy of Olivia’s that we can recruit to help us, the sooner we can end this. For good, this time.”
Her voice drops low on those last words, and the determination in her voice is hot as hell.
Still, Malice looks about ready to throw her over his shoulder and cart her off to bed himself, until Vic slides in smoothly with a compromise.
He sets up a nest of blankets and pillows on the couch in the living room for Willow to curl up in, getting her water and snacks, making sure she has what she needs before he goes and gets his laptop to set up near her and work at the coffee table.
She gives him a grateful smile, and then we get back to the planning.
It all comes down to being able to find someone who can help us against Olivia. Without that, it’s going to be hard to find a way to take her out before she gets to Willow.
“We need a backup plan,” Malice says, pacing in front of the massive TV. “Just in case.”
“You’re starting to sound like me,” Vic replies. But he nods. “I’m working on it. It’s just difficult because there’s a lot of information we don’t have. Nothing that’s publicly available about Olivia is going to get us what we need.”
“We should just take a hit out on her,” Malice mutters. “Give the old bitch a taste of her own medicine.”
Vic types something on his computer. “I’m adding that to the list, just in case.”
We go back and forth for the rest of the day, hashing out what we can and coming up with contingencies for what we can’t control. Which is most of it.
Between bouts of planning, we take care of Willow. The three of us trade off getting her things to eat and refilling her water. One of us is touching her at all times, stroking her hair, holding her hand, just making sure that she knows we’re here.
She seems better than she was this morning, but I know it’s still going to take a while for her to truly come to terms with it. So we’re all focused on making sure she doesn’t have a reason to doubt our love and support for a second.
Later that night, when she starts to nod off on the couch, Malice does pick her up and carry her to bed, tucking her in despite her protests that’s she fine.
I head into the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets for a bottle of whiskey.
“Fuck it,” I mutter under my breath, going to sit down at the table without getting a glass. It’s been one of those drink it straight from the bottle kind of days.
Malice comes in and sits down across from me, putting his elbows on the table.
“How long did it take for her to fall asleep?” I ask.
He snorts. “About thirty seconds after her head hit the pillow. She was worn the fuck out.”
“Can’t blame her for that. It’s been a hell of a day.”
“Yeah.”
I swig from the bottle and then pass it across to Malice, who does the same.
We sit in silence for a bit, both of us lost in our own thoughts.
There’s something nostalgic about it, reminding me of those days when we would do this back at the warehouse.
Sitting in the kitchen sharing a bottle or some food.
Or when the three of us would congregate in the living room to drink and hash out our latest plan. Or just shoot the shit.
I’m glad that some things haven’t changed, even though so much is different now.
“So, how long have you known about your real mom?” Malice asks after a while, breaking the silence.
“A while,” I admit. “Dad told me. A few months before we killed him.”
“Fucking bastard,” my brother mutters. “I bet he did that shit on purpose.”
“Yeah, I think he did. I was too young to remember my real mom, and I guess he just wanted me to know that as much as I loved the woman who raised me, she wasn’t actually my mother by birth.”
Vic comes walking into the kitchen as I finish speaking, shaking his head.
“Emotional abuse was his specialty,” he says dryly.
He sits down at the table, accepting the whiskey when Malice passes it to him. He glances toward the cabinet as if he’s considering grabbing a glass, but then settles on wiping the neck of the bottle clean before taking a sip.
I laugh, but there’s not much humor in it. “Yeah. It definitely fucked me up for a while, thinking about it. He told me that he was just going to fucking abandon me when my real mom died, but Diana told him she would raise me.”
Malice nods, looking down at the table as his fingertips drum across the surface. “That sounds like her.”
“She loved you,” Vic adds quietly. “That was obvious to all of us.”
“I know. Knowing she did all that and raised me as her own, even though I was the product of our shit stain dad cheating on her? It just made me love her even more. Made me want to kill that bastard even more than I already did.”
“He got what he deserved.” Malice clenches his hand into a fist, banging it lightly against the table, and we all drink to that, passing the whiskey around again.
“You kept it to yourself for a long time,” Vic observes as he sets the bottle down.
I shrug. “I didn’t know how to say it. And I guess I had to deal with my own shitty feelings about it first. I mean, you two are twins, so you’ve got this connection, and I already felt weird being the youngest for a while.
Add onto that that I wasn’t even your full brother… ” I shake my head. “It was a lot.”
“Like we said before, we don’t give a shit if you had a different mom,” Malice tells me. He grins, the same one I recognize from when we were growing up and he would tease me about something. “You’re still our annoying little brother.”
I roll my eyes at that, reaching over the table to punch him in the arm. He chuckles, but then grows serious.
“Our mom loved you,” he says. “We love you. That’s good enough. It’s all that matters.”
“Yeah, I know.” I settle back into my chair. “I love you assholes too. I’m not messed up about it anymore. I just wish it was that easy for Willow, you know?”
Malice’s lip curls back in a snarl. “Death was too easy an escape for the fucker who did this to her,” he grits out. “Fucking piece of shit.”
I take a deep swig from the bottle, letting the whiskey burn down my throat. “I was happy to let the two of you torture him at the time, but goddammit, I regret not getting in a few shots of my own now. We could’ve kept him alive for days, dragging it out, and it still wouldn’t have been enough.”
Vic taps his fingers together, glancing in the direction of the bedroom. “You’re not wrong. But we need to focus on Willow now. Bringing up Troy, even to say we wish we’d tortured him more, is just going to make her keep thinking about him. And she’s having a hard enough time with this already.”
“I can’t even imagine how she must feel,” I mutter, raking a hand through my hair.
My brothers both nod, the atmosphere in the kitchen turning grim. When Vic plucks the bottle from my hand, and I can tell how agitated he is, because he doesn’t even bother to wipe the neck before taking a swig.
“The good news is, we made good progress today,” he says. “I’ve got a list of potential allies, people who have reason to hate Olivia and also have the skills to back us up when we go after her. We can start reaching out to them tomorrow.”
“Good,” Malice mutters. “Because knowing that Willow is pregnant raises the stakes on all of this. If her bitch of a grandmother finds out about it, that will probably only give her more reason to want Willow and the baby dead. We have to end this… before Olivia does.”