4. Moth
Chapter four
Moth
I swill back the shot of whiskey, and once I’m done with the glass, I launch it at the bar wall behind me, hardly flinching when it smashes.
As soon as our clean-up crew finished at the warehouse, I rushed home and lost myself in a bottle of whiskey.
Since I don’t normally drink, it’s actually quite frightening.
But the moment I heard that name, I reached straight for the bottle…
Snow White.
Fuck.
So, I didn’t imagine that little girl at the White Mansion.
As the second son, Dad often brought me along to his work meetings with the so-called king in order to teach me the ways of the family business.
Usually, it was when Prince was too sick to attend, and I envied our youngest brother, Hunter, at those times.
He got to keep his childlike innocence, while I was listening in on meetings about blood and carnage in the guise of stock and investments.
Fun.
They would talk of killing as if it were merely a report on spending and finance, and that was when I had to sneak away—those linear lines on their graphs were actually an increase in deaths rather than company profits, and sometimes the two correlated, and the line was always blood red.
The king’s mansion was huge, as one would expect of the don of an underground empire.
I snuck out into his expansive garden, and that was when I heard the sweetest singing.
As a seven-year-old, I was absolutely convinced that I had stumbled upon a magical creature, like a nymph or a fairy.
Yet what I found by that rose bush truly took me by surprise.
It was a child, just like me.
To my seven-year-old mind, she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and honestly, not a single woman I have met since has ever come close.
The girl was singing to a bird, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
It wasn’t until the matriarch of the family called her name that I returned to earth. The mother had called her Snow.
Fucking Snow White.
You can’t make that shit up, and yet I thought maybe I had imagined it.
It turns out that she had been real all along.
I have never shared this memory with anyone.
Not even my brothers.
I knew I had stumbled upon something very special that day. Someone hidden from the world, and I had felt blessed. Truly.
I had never seen anything quite like Snow, and for years, I had convinced myself that she had been a figment of my imagination.
I was seven, after all.
But as soon as her name spilled from that traitor’s mouth, my reality fell apart, and now here I am getting shit faced.
Great times…
“What’s the matter, big bro?”
“Shit!”
I jump up, bumping my head against the wall, and holy fuck… I didn’t even see or hear Hunter coming. Maybe it’s time we got him a bell.
Quite a few of us need a bell, quite frankly.
Saint could do with one, too, and his twin, Angel.
The only way I can ever tell those two apart is via Angel’s eyepatch, and sometimes, they like to wear one at the same time just to fuck with our minds.
Cousins. Almost as bad as brothers.
Little brothers, especially.
Hunter is just two years younger than me, but at times he feels ten years younger. He's still a big kid, especially with his constant partying.
“Get lost,” I gripe, filling another shot glass with whiskey.
I have them lined up and waiting. Anything to numb my brain and forget that angelic face from eighteen years ago.
She is real…
And I know exactly what my eldest brother plans to do with her.
In a bid to avenge our late father and to get back at his widow, Regina, he will find that girl and do everything in his power to destroy her.
And I will have no choice but to stand back and watch as this cruel world takes away something else beautiful.
Just like it took our mother. Our sweet mother who drank herself to death.
I gazed down at the bottle of whiskey.
It’s half empty.
Am I turning into her?
I only drink occasionally. Usually when the mafia life gets too hard, and I need that crutch to help me cope.
There’s enough ugly shit in this world to go around. But I know how my brother’s heart works.
No, what am I saying? He doesn’t have a heart.
It died the day our mother did.
And when Dad died, he grew worse.
I barely recognize him now.
Hunter drops down from the bar, landing in a crouching position beside me, and he grabs the neck of the bottle.
He raises his eyebrows, and I concede, letting him take the poison.
I’m numb enough, anyway. Well, almost .
I can’t rid her beautiful brown eyes or that sweet voice from my mind.
Hunter wraps his arm around me. “Now, tell me what is on your mind.”
I shut my eyes, letting my booted feet drag across the floor as I spread my legs out.
Hunter is still crouched, and if he’s not careful, he will get stuck that way.
“Leave me to my woes, brother.”
“Come on, let me see that smile.”
I groan, pushing him away as I stagger to my feet.
He rises with me, trying to keep me upright as I stumble across the living room. It’s barely dark out.
Finally, I find the couch, face-planting into a cushion, and I hope sleep finds me soon.
I don’t want to feel right now.
Unfortunately, Hunter has other ideas. He sits on the edge of the couch, and I feel a headache coming on.
Footsteps approach.
“Just who we need!” Hunter exclaims. “Knight always has something positive to say.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Not that grinning idiot. I can never tell who’s worse—Hunter or Knight.
“My, what happened here?” Knight says gently.
I have never heard the man yell in anger. Even during a psychotic episode. My polar opposite.
His younger brother, Casper, stands by his side. He’s my favorite cousin.
He's shy and hardly talks, and I tend to seek out his company the most when I’m down.
Casper never pesters me or tries to make me feel better.
But Hunter and Knight can fuck off.
Knight kneels and checks me over, ever the family doctor.
Unlike the rest of us, he managed to have a semblance of a normal life before this world sucked him back again, and I envy him.
It must have been nice to feel like a normie for once.
Normies being those who aren’t a part of the criminal underground.
“Wow, you look like shit,” Knight remarks, and I roll my eyes, burying my face in the cushion.
“I said, fuck off!”
Hunter coos, pinching my cheek. “Always so grumpy... Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
“I’m good right here.”
I don’t care where I sleep; I just want to forget.
Any day, Snow will arrive, and I may just split at the seams.
Prince will taint her beauty.
I wish that traitor hadn’t squealed. At least then, her beauty will have been preserved.
Prince is one ruthless bastard.
When the door creaks again, the room falls graveyard silent. I don’t have to look up to know he has entered.
Prince comes around to stand before the couch. His eyes find the mess I’ve left around the bar, and he cocks a brow.
I match his glare.
I bet arrangements have already been made to get the girl.
We will soon have her in our grasp, and I curl my fists.
“What the fuck happened here?” he utters, voice quiet.
I sigh, trying to block out the world as I turn away from him, facing the couch.
“It looks like Moth depleted half of the shelf,” Knight mumbles, looking across at the bar.
Prince will be so pissed. That was his whiskey after all.
“Care to share why you plowed through three bottles, Moth?”
That was all? It felt more like ten.
I don’t answer. Instead, I just show him my middle finger, and if I weren’t his brother, Prince would snap that finger and feed it to a tank of piranhas.
But I’m wearing his patience thin. I can already feel his anger burning.
“Timothée Diamante. You speak when I address you.”
“It’s Moth, and I said leave me alone. Let me wallow.”
They can’t know. They never can.
I will not appear weak, least of all in front of Prince.
Finally, he loses his patience, snatching me up by the shirt, and now I meet those incensed eyes.
I’m too drunk for this.
The door opens for the final time, and now the twins step into the room. Angel’s sole eye flares with excitement when he sees the shit show that is about to go down.
“I reiterate. What. Has. Got. You. In. Such. A. State . Brother?”
What? Is he going to get Angel to peel off my fingernails?
I’d like to see him try.
I shrug. “Just felt like a drink.”
It's a horrible lie, and he knows it, but he will never learn the truth. I’m not sure whether he would view it as a betrayal.
After all, I knew of Snow’s existence this whole time, yet I never told him.
I didn’t tell another soul.
Finally, he lets go of my shirt and rises back to his feet. Then he stalks off toward his wing. “I’ll be in my office. Hunter, Knight, take him to bed. He’s stinking up my nice leather couch.”
Oh, nice. Very polite.
Asshole.
Hunter and Knight drag me up to my feet, and now they haul me to my own wing, laying me in bed.
Hunter even fluffs up my pillows, tying back my black hair, and Knight leaves a glass of water with aspirin on the nightstand.
I’ll fucking need it later.
But for now, I will black out and forget.
It's just unfortunate that her brown eyes fill my dreams.