9. The Witness
CHAPTER NINE
THE WITNESS
Orion
I take a deep breath and stare at the hospital room door, wondering if I’m brave enough to push it open. Dread curdles in my stomach when I double-check the number, but how could I be wrong when this is the nicest private suite at Cedars? Who else would be in here other than my father?
My phone vibrates, so I step away from the door. Liam’s name flashes across the screen, and I quickly answer the call.
“Hey.”
“How are you doing?” he asks. I can tell from his tone that he’s in a good mood.
“I’ve been better.”
“Everything okay?” he asks, his low voice tense with genuine worry.
The last thing I want to do is worry him. I spent half a decade worrying him, and I vowed to myself when I got sober that I’d never do that to him again.
I could tell him about our father—about how he’s declining more rapidly than the doctors originally predicted. About how his doctor suggested he be transferred to hospice later today. But then I think of how that news would ruin his mood, and how he knows better than all of us how fucked up our father is because he’s the eldest brother.
“Just busy with the new club,” I lie.
“Ah. Well, I’m calling because of that, actually.” I flick my eyes up to the door to my dad’s room when a nurse exits, smoothing her pants and looking flustered. My silence prompts Liam to continue. “Zoe informed me earlier today that she’s going to Inferno later for girls’ night.”
I switch the phone to my other ear. “No problem. I’ll inform the security guards so they can keep an eye on her.”
“Ri, she’s bringing Layla.”
I close my eyes and sag against a nearby wall. “Of fucking course she is.”
“I’ve already told her that she’s going to give you an aneurysm, but she insists that Layla is just curious. I guess she’s been talking to some BDSM influencer, and she wants to learn more.”
Fuck.
How did I not see this coming? Layla is naturally curious, and now there’s a new kink club open that her stepbrother happens to own.
Like a moth to a flame.
“Thanks for letting me know.”
“Sure. And hey, maybe now’s your chance to give her some space.”
“She can have all the space she wants, but I’ll be damned if she thinks I’ll give her space inside my club.”
He chuckles. “Okay, I should go. I’m on my way to the donut shop. Zoe hasn’t left her office for a few hours, and I want to make sure she’s alive. Donuts should lure her out of her cave.”
“Writing deadline?” I ask.
“Yeah. This one is brutal. She called me by her male character’s name last night, and when I went to correct her, her eyes just glazed over, and she walked out of the room without responding, mumbling something about the third-act breakup.”
I laugh. “Tell her good luck.”
“Do you need backup tonight? I’d be happy to come and mitigate it.”
“No. I’ll be fine. We hung out yesterday, and it was… good. I think the ice might slowly be melting between us.”
“Finally.”
“Yeah, yeah. I was a total ass to her, so I don’t blame her.”
“I’m glad you’re on speaking terms again. It means we can all hang out without the awkwardness.”
“That might be giving us too much credit.”
“Right. Well, maybe I’ll see you later. Try not to kill anyone who talks to her.”
The call ends, and I take a deep breath as I’m faced with my current reality again. I crack my knuckles before slowly pushing the hospital door open and walking inside the suite. It’s basic and nothing like a hotel suite but bigger than a normal hospital room. Plus, the window seems bigger, and there’s a flat-screen TV.
My father is sitting up in bed reading the newspaper, and when he notices me, he sets the paper down on top of his frail body, squinting.
He doesn’t recognize me.
I know it’s a symptom of brain cancer, so I hold my hands up. “Hi, Dad.”
“Orion?”
I nod once.
Growing up, my father was tall, handsome, and robust. He towered over all of us at six four, and his striking black hair and green eyes won him a lot of attention when I was young. My brothers and I all share certain traits. Chase has his sense of humor, Miles shares his good looks, Liam shares his protectiveness, and Kai shares his mysterious, secretive side. And me?
I share his possessiveness and obsessive tendencies.
The strong man I knew as my father has been withering away for months, and the man before me looks almost nothing like him, save for the dark hair and the eye color. His face is swollen. The thick black hair he always wore long is thinner and cut short. His shoulders used to be massive, but now they’re narrow without their usual muscles he was so diligent about maintaining.
Tamping down the sick, sympathetic feeling of watching my father die, I clear my throat and stand straighter.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, taking a seat in one of the nearby chairs.
He shrugs. “Could be worse.” Training his critical eyes on me, he lets them wander over my leather jacket and black pants before giving me an approving nod. “You look well.”
I don’t respond. Instead, I look up at the television, which is playing Bloomberg and running over the financial market news of the day. Something about knowing he’s checked in even though he’s dying… I swallow. Even at the very end of his life, my father is apparently relentless in his pursuit of making money.
The idea makes me feel empty—and it makes me feel bad for him.
“Have you spoken to your brothers?”
I steady my breathing and turn back to face him. “No.”
Anger flashes over his expression. Even now in his seventies, even sick with terminal brain cancer, he still has a temper.
“And why not?” he practically spits.
“Because they don’t want to talk to you, Dad.”
There. I said it out loud—the thing I’ve been insinuating ever since Miles cut him off a couple of years ago. I’ve managed to brush him off every time we talk, but he deserves the truth.
“Then I’m ashamed to call them my children. I am dying . Doesn’t that count for something?” he growls.
I shrug. “Their reasons are valid.”
“Then tell me, why the hell do you still talk to me?”
I study his face—the scowl and the furrowed brows. The clenched fists at his sides. The flared nostrils. His anger completely distorts his face. A quick flash of a memory pierces through my brain. I’ve worked so hard to forget my life before I turned fourteen—telling myself it’s for the better. But the memory plays before my eyes like a sick movie I don’t consent to watching.
Kai, Chase, and I were sitting at the dining room table, and my mom was upstairs with one of her headaches—which I now know was her only way to get away from her verbally abusive husband. It was about a year before Mom left Dad. My dad is on his fourth drink, and he’s slurring as he asks eighteen-year-old Malakai about his first-semester college exams. Chase is sixteen. I remember that he was usually at Jackson Parker’s house, but tonight, he was home. And I was eleven or twelve.
By this time, Liam and Miles had moved out of Ravage Castle, but the three youngest brothers remained.
“I’m dropping out of college.”
Dad goes still, and his hand grips the crystal tumbler tightly. “And why the hell would you do that?”
Kai puts his napkin on the table. “God has been speaking to me lately, and He says we need to turn this family around. I want to help. I want to help you, us ? —”
“No son of mine has an ounce of holy blood in their bodies,” he growls.
Dad’s face twists with hatred. He slams his fists on the dining table, making Chase and me jump in our seats. “But do you know what we do have? Money.”
“I don’t care about money,” Kai grits out. “I just want to do some good in the world to rebalance the scales.”
“You want to do some good? Good things come to those who work hard, Malakai.”
“I don’t need money or material things. Julian says that discontent is not satisfied by material things ? —”
“Julian?” my dad hisses. “Do you mean that flamboyant boy you constantly surround yourself with ? —”
“I hope you don’t expect me to sit here and let you insult my best friend.” Kai, who is usually so even-tempered, instantly pushes away from the table.
“Very well,” my dad muses. “You are welcome to leave.”
“Fine,” Kai sputters, throwing his napkin down.
“Don’t think that you can ever come back with that attitude.”
My mouth drops open, and when I look over at Chase, his eyes are wide as they flick between our dad and our middle brother.
“Very well. I’ll go say goodbye to Mom and pack my things.”
As Kai storms off, my father takes another sip of his straight vodka. Pointing a steak knife at Chase, his face is still transfigured with brute anger.
“Eat your steak, Chase. Don’t let it get cold.”
I look down and eat as my father and my older brother do the same, knowing that for the rest of my life, I will have to regulate my emotions and the emotions of my father, or risk being ostracized.
I think back to my father’s question: “Then why the hell do you still talk to me?”
My father’s a narcissist, and I know that now. Growing up, we were enmeshed as a family—always touting closeness but never really having it. We were stuck together in an unhealthy dynamic until my mother chose to leave him right after Chase went to college, taking me with her. It wasn’t until I was older that I began to look at my dad as someone who gave me life rather than a father figure. We weren’t close, but we weren’t not close either.
And I suppose I always felt like I had to keep that tether to him because he’d never done anything to give me a reason to walk away from him. I know my brothers feel differently, but I always justified it because of that.
One of the first realizations when I got sober was that my seeing him probably hurt my brothers, and I’d been too deluded with alcohol to see it. I never really stopped to consider why they had to walk away from him. If they did, they must’ve had damn good reasons for doing so.
I still hadn’t had the courage to have a real conversation about it.
Maybe one day, I’d ask what happened to make them walk away.
“You’re so much like her,” my dad adds, shaking his head. “Your mother. Always worried about hurting my feelings. At least have the balls to walk away like your brothers did.”
His voice changes tone in the last few words, and he looks away.
“You think I’m scared to go no-contact like them?” I ask incredulously. “You don’t scare me, Dad.”
He turns to face me with narrowed eyes. “Then why are you here, Orion?”
It hits me then—yes, he’s cruel, but he’s also scared. Knowing that… makes him seem so much smaller than I’ve ever seen him.
“Because you’re dying,” I say simply. “Even the worst criminal doesn’t deserve to die alone.”
He huffs a laugh before breaking into a coughing fit. The cancer is in his lungs now, and he’s been coughing up blood for days.
“You’re a better person than I am,” he says after a minute, closing his eyes.
“I know,” I tell him.
I’m not sure I believe it, but I’m working on it.
“And how’s the ballet dancer?” he asks, looking away.
Grinding my jaw, I look down at my hands. “She’s fine.”
“Such a pretty, little thing,” he murmurs wistfully.
“I don’t want to talk about her with you,” I grind out.
“Come on. Man to man. I can appreciate a fine specimen when I see one, and she’s?—”
I stand abruptly, nostrils flaring as I glare down at the man before me. “I said I’m not going to talk about her with you.”
“Layla,” he says slowly. “That’s her name, right? I met her once, you know. Attended one of her performances a long time ago. Even got to go backstage to meet her and the other performers.”
I’m seething.
I didn’t know this, but the thought of my father anywhere near her makes me sick.
“Stop,” I growl.
“Perfect fucking tits,” he adds, and I see red.
“Goodbye, dad.”
I don’t even care when the door slams behind me on the way out.
A few hours later, I’m brooding and walking toward Inferno with an extra angry bounce in my step. I know my father only says this stuff to spur me on, but it doesn’t matter. Since I’m the only child still in contact with him, all of his attention falls on me. And since he’s adamant that Kai won’t ever settle with someone, that leaves me for him to focus on in his final days.
After I’d left, I’d gone on a two-hour bike ride around LA. Now that it’s well past six, I make my way to Inferno in order to intercept Zoe, Remy, and Layla. I’ve already spoken to my security team, so I know they’ve just arrived.
Layla will expect me to lose my cool.
For years, I took it upon myself to ensure she was safe, healthy, and happy. The role of big brother came easily to me, and growing up, I wanted to cage her to keep her safe. And then that asshole of a football player touched her without permission—cornering her and violating her. It makes me sick to think about it.
He got what he deserved, and I’ve dedicated a lot of my free time ensuring he’s as miserable as possible.
And hearing my dad talk about her like that … it made my blood boil. The way he let those words slip out, like he had any right to speak about her that way …
It made me want stake my claim even harder.
She’s mine, not his—not anyone else’s.
The thought of anyone else even imagining her that way is enough to make my fists clench. She belongs to me, and I’ll make sure everyone, including him, knows it one day soon.
But I have to admit, even though I feel this possessiveness, I know deep down I don’t really have the right to think of her as mine anymore. We’re not as close as we used to be, and she’s her own person now. Kai was right; that’s the Layla I used to know.Even if I’ve kept track of her since our falling-out— then tasted her only months ago— she’s blossomed into a woman I don’t fully recognize.She doesn’t need my protection anymore. She’s fully capable of looking after herself. And while I really fucking hate the idea of her possibly getting approached tonight, I know she’s here because she’s really good at following directions. My directions. I’d told her to do research, didn’t I?
She’s going to expect me to be mad.
But… what if I’m not?
She’s getting closer to Starboy, but I can’t let that overshadow whatever we had between us as Orion and Layla. Because if I’ve learned one thing about us, it’s that there’s… something there. It’s not all one-sided as I assumed for so long. She feels something, too.
Perhaps it’s time she confronts the feelings she has for her dear stepbrother.
She can’t hide the stares and ogling for very much longer.
As I get closer, my foul mood begins to dissipate. By the time I walk through the back door, I’m practically grinning.
I have the perfect plan, and it includes charming her as Orion.
She thinks she likes Starboy?
I’ll have to show her a bit of the man behind the mask.