12. Brody
brODY
I park at our house, then make my way towards the Bloom residence next-door. I set my sights on Lola. She is like a comet falling into the dark.
Lurking in the shadows like a fucking wolf, I make the path around the side of the house, but something stops me in my tracks. I see a man. He is crouched near a bush, with a camera, taking photos of something.
I follow the angle of the camera. It is aimed at her. Bambi.
Fuck no. That motherfucker. The thought of somebody else watching her, stalking her, taking fucking photos of her, sets my blood on fire.
I walk towards the crouched man, careful to keep my steps quiet and close the gap until I’m right behind the fucker.
The click of the camera is louder than I expected.
He’s so focused on her that he doesn’t sense death right behind him.
I’m closer now. I can see the mesh of his scalp through the thinning hair.
It’s greasy with dandruff caught on his collar.
Grabbing him by the back of the jacket, I wrench him out of the bush.
He yelps, a high, mewling sound. Weak. I slam his face into the mulch.
Twigs snap, and his glasses crack down the nose.
He scrabbles for the camera, but I dig my knee between his shoulder blades and grind him deeper into the dirt, picking the camera in my own hands.
It’s blocky, black, and cold in my palm.
I wrap one fist around it and crunch it against the concrete, glass shards scattering around me.
He struggles, but it’s pointless. I lean forward, all my weight, twisting his arm up behind him.
I want him to scream. I want him to bleed.
He strains to look back. There’s mud in his mouth and panic in his eyes.
“Jesus, please, please, I just work here, I’m nobody, please don’t hurt me, man, I swear to god I’ll go, I’ll never come back I swear it, fuck, please. ”
I put my mouth right next to his ear. “Who sent you?”
He’s shaking so bad his words rattle. “A guy called, said to sit here and take pictures. Just pictures! Nothing else! No address, no names, just cash to be delivered if I watched the girl and reported back. That’s it.”
I squeeze his wrist and pull. Ligaments pop. He howls. It’s delicious.
“Who hired you?”
He’s crying now, spitting out his reply, desperate to live: “Voss. Mr. Voss, he said his name was Mr. Voss, I swear!”
My father. Of course. I see red. Nothing clever left; just pure, simple violence.
I yank him up by the hair. His face is smeared with snot and tears, glasses long gone. “You like spying on girls?” I hiss. “You like being a pathetic worm for money?”
He begs. Of course he does. “Please, don’t, I’m not—I’m nobody, I have kids, fuck, please, please, I won’t even tell, I’ll leave town, I swear just let me go, please sir.”
His skull feels hot in my hand. Fragile.
I slam his face into the bark, then the sidewalk, faster and harder, until the wet meat of his mouth pulls loose, teeth scatter, skin splits.
The sound is soft, satisfying. His final noises are thick, gurgling.
He tries to scream, but he’s choking on his own blood.
I don’t stop until the violence burns through me.
When it’s done, my hands are shaking and soaked.
The concrete shines red, blood pooling like paint.
I watch the life pulse out of him. The body twitches, once, then nothing.
For a second there’s no sound. Only the pulse in my flesh, the high from ending something that didn’t deserve to watch her.
I want to keep going, to drag this carcass into the street and leave it for the dogs.
My heart pounds like a war drum. I want more. Always more. But her window glows above me. She’s moving inside, unaware. It’s better this way. She doesn’t need to know what I do for her. What I kill for her. She ruined me, but I still have to make sure she survives.
I wipe my hands on my jeans, smearing red into the denim.
Glass crunches under my boots as I double check the ground.
Nothing left but a dark smear and shattered plastic.
The body is limp, forgettable. Nobody will find this fucker before I want him found.
Nobody touches Bambi. Not unless I give them permission. Not unless it’s me.
Circling the perimeter, I check every shadow, every side of the house. I stare up at the window again, breath barely even. I imagine kicking the door in and dragging Lola to the floor. Making her watch what I do to the world for her.
Control is an illusion. Obsession is the only thing I have left.
I cross the yard, stomping the mulch out of my boots onto our porch. My house looms, the lights off except for the flick of TV glow from the living room.
Inside, it’s silent. I yank the door open. The echo rings down the hallway. Sophie’s on the couch, blanket tight to her shoulders, eyes glazed to cartoons flickering on the screen. She blinks when she sees me, zones in on the red streaks, her mouth opening.
“What the hell, Brody?” Her voice is tiny.
“Not your problem,” I say. I don’t pause.
She reaches for me, some old habit. I jerk away. She can smell it. The blood, the hate.
She recoils. “Are you okay?” She tries again. Won’t quit. Annoying, helpless.
“Go back to your show.” My voice cuts, flat and robotic. “Forget you saw anything.”
She tries to protest. I ignore it. My head is a furnace. My fists drip. I want answers and I want them now. Dad’s home. His office door is shut but the lamp underneath leaks yellow. I don’t bother knocking, kicking the door open. It slams against the wall.
Richard is at his desk, sleeves rolled. He doesn’t even look shocked by the blood as he looks up like he’s been waiting for this.
“You spying on her?” I’m nearly shouting. The words rip out of me. “You send some asshole to her house with a fucking camera, is that your game now?”
He blinks. Doesn’t flinch. “Had to make sure she was contained. You don’t do your homework, I hire someone else.”
I slam both fists on his desk, papers explode everywhere. “You don’t watch her like that. Not without going through me first.” My pulse is thunder. My fists ache to break something.
He licks his lips, slow, predator in a better suit.
“Control your temper. Sit down, Brody.” I don’t sit.
I want to throw this desk across the room.
I want to wrap my hands around his throat, see if he’s as tough as he pretends.
“If you were competent, I wouldn’t have to hire anyone.
You let your dick and your feelings get in the way.
Don’t be sentimental. It’s embarrassing. ”
Sentimental. Fuck him. I want to beat his head against the wall.
I lean in, sweat streaming down my jaw. “You don’t fucking touch her.”
His mouth curls. “She’s nothing, Brody. Leverage. If Marcus acts up, she’s bait. If she flips, she’s a liability. That’s all. You want to protect her? Fine. Do your job because if you don’t, I will.”
I slam my fist down again, harder. A pen cracks under my palm. The blood on my hands leaves stains on the white pages. “You think I can’t handle her? You think you’re the only one who knows how this works?”
He is silent, a beat too long, calculating, always calculating. “You’re unpredictable. That’s why you’re useful but not reliable. You let emotions rot your spine. Just like her. Just like your mother.” His voice scrapes.
Everything in my head is red. I laugh. “That supposed to hurt me? You’re pathetic. You think being empty makes you strong?”
He tilts his head like a reptile. “It does. Weak men die. I taught you that.” He stares, icy. “Do you remember your mother at all? She was always so sure she could fix things with hope and tenderness. Look where it got her.”
He says “her” like she’s a stain he can’t wash out.
I snatch a folder off the desk. “You want Lola spied on, do it yourself. You want her erased, tell me yourself. No more middlemen. No more creepy bloodless rats with cameras.”
He shrugs. Unmoved. “You care so much about her, but you don’t even know what she is anymore.”
“She’s mine. Doesn’t mean I still care.”
He smirks. “Not for long.”
The urge to bash open his skull is so strong I see stars. But I just stand there, shaking, vibrating with hate. He studies my wounds. The blood, the way I barely hold myself back. He likes it. He thinks it means he’s winning.
He lowers his head to the paperwork. “You’re not the worst thing to come out of me, but you’re not my equal. Don’t pretend you ever will be.”
He’s a monster.
I stare at him. My father. The man who crawled out of whatever black lake and called it ambition.
Richard Voss, king of nothing, sitting behind his desk like he owns the city, but I see the veins in his temples. Pop. Pop. He wants to think he’s a slab of marble, but rage always gets in. Rot will ruin even diamonds, if you give it time.
I grip the folder with shaky hands, blood smearing. Hate is a physical thing. It lives in my jaw, in my fists, in the spike in my skull that wants to pound the desk straight down to the dirt.
He ignores my stare. He’s drawing a line under a contract. Even after all that noise, the blood, the threat, he’s just bored. Annoyed. Nothing gets through. Not since Mom. Not since her bones left stains on the tow truck ramp.
My mother is still everywhere. The way her perfume clings to the carpet, somehow, after years.
Her voice in the back of my skull: ‘Don’t be mean Brody, you’re not broken, not like him, please try to be good.
I know you killed that boy in our old town, but that was an accident. You have good in you.’
And then the accident. Black glass, a red smear, the sound of her name on the phone. No comfort. Not from him. Never from him.
Richard leans back in his chair, shoes up, careful with the cuffs. “Clean yourself up,” he says, still not looking at me. “You drip on the paperwork again, we’ll need forensic specialists to scrape it out.”
I want to lunge across the desk. I want to grab his throat, squeeze until his pupils burst. See what color his soul leaks.
But he isn’t scared. He never is. I was barely out of my teens the first time I realized he’d let me die to win another round against Marcus.
He’d let anyone die. My mother. Me. Lola. Just pieces to be moved.
“They’re going to pin this on you if you keep being sloppy,” he says, eyes flat. “I don’t care about the body. You leave any part of yourself at the scene and you’ll make it harder to fix. Do you want me to fix it? Or should I treat you as a loose end next time?”
I almost gag, but I can’t stop listening. Can’t stop wanting approval, one scrap, one crumb, like the sad dog he thinks I am.
I want to say his bloodline is infected. He’s the source of every bad thing. I want to crack open my sternum, show him what grows in the dark. It’s all him. The need to hurt. The joy I find in bone and screaming.
I wipe my hands on the folder. The red stains go pink in the grain of the cardboard. There’s nothing clean about any of this.
“You think Marcus did it?” I ask.
He laughs. “Marcus doesn’t get his hands dirty anymore.
He has people for that. His daughter. His whores.
His companies. NorthLine, the Bloom Network, all of it.
” A pause. He tilts his head. “She’s not just his puppet, Brody.
She’s a part of it. NorthLine, the girls that he trafficks and uses, the eyes on every street.
You need to wake up and see what’s right in front of you, for once in your wasted life. ”
I want to throttle him. Pull the teeth right out of his lying skull. He hates that Lola is still tangled in my head. He hates that I can’t cut her loose. I hate it too. But the more he tells me to kill the feeling, the sicker it gets.
“She’s weak, Brody. Marcus made her that way. Use it. Don’t let her use you.”
I’m not listening. Not really. All I see is a white flash—the car, rain-wet glass, the moment my mother’s head hit the dash and her eyes went empty. The hydraulic whine of a tow truck. I wanted to die. I wanted to kill. Even then, the world just moved on.
Richard didn’t even shed a tear. He said, “That’s the price.” He taught me to shove grief down. Crush it down until something worse takes its place. Now I can’t feel anything except this need. Lola in my hands, Lola on her knees, Lola screaming my name. Our violence.
I snap back. His pen scrapes the page. He’s already forgotten my mother. He’s already forgotten everything. “I expect results,” he murmurs, head bent. “Don’t disappoint me again. If you do, maybe I’ll hire someone hungrier next time. See what his girl fetches on the market these days.”
I see red. Full blackout. I slam the file on the desk; it bursts like a gunshot, paper flying. “She’s not yours to fucking sell, you piece of shit!”
Richard blinks at me. Just that. Utterly bored.
“Grow up. You’re still a child. Still want to think she was ever innocent. She wasn’t. None of them are. They arranged it. Maybe under Marcus. Maybe for someone bigger. Doesn’t matter now. The only justice you’ll find is what you carve out for yourself.”
He leans back, the chair creaking under his bones.
“Marcus plays a long game. He’ll cut out his own daughter’s heart if it keeps his fingers clean.
You understand now why the girl’s so dangerous?
She’s the only thing he can’t control, so he keeps her on a short leash.
You want to avenge your mother? We need to take her out of the picture, just like he did to your mother. We will ruin Marcus Bloom.”
I let it sink in. My jaw pulses. Mother, Lola, violence. It’s a straight fucking line.
He’s gloating. He thinks he’s showing me my own death in a mirror. He’s proud of it. Bastard.
“If you want to burn him, use her. Use what she is. She’s already ruined. No point pretending she isn’t. I have something big planned for her, for Marcus. A storm is coming Brody, you’ll want to be on the winning side,” he says, quieter,
My vision blurs at the corners. I see a mouthful of red. My mother on the tile, her skull opened up like a flower of bone. Lola on her knees for me, cheeks and thighs bruised where I left my mark. All the softness scraped away by men like Richard and Marcus.
I step back from the desk. My hands drip. My mind empties out. I want to bite through my own tongue just to stop the noise.
He doesn’t flinch. Not once. “You good?” he asks. Like he’s checking on the fucking groceries.
I slam my fist into the door on the way out. The crack echoes all the way down the hall.