Chapter 1
Kingston
The stillness got to me.
Not only in the air, but the walls, the grounds…the haunting feeling that someone who once took up so much space was now absent.
At first, the quiet seemed to suffocate me.
So much so that I had to stay busy and surround myself with people.
El Peligro offered a distraction in the form of indulging in taking what should have belonged to us from a certain motorcycle club.
My brother helped keep the ghosts at bay, the regrets that lingered in my chest, cutting my soul up into the most insignificant pieces.
Together, we were able to push past the memories and the realization that Presley was lying in bed at night with another man.
I didn’t think about if she’d tried on a wedding dress or not.
The anger inside of me was too intense to consider if she was scared at night, or if she too had shed tears over the loss of our friendship and the love we could have had.
My father trained me to utilize weapons, especially knives, but he’d never warned me that the one I had to worry about the most was the blade I had within my own heart.
The one capable of cutting and murdering hope that was within reach.
If he’d warned me to be conscious of the possibility of ruining my entire life, I would have fucking sat down and listened.
His silence only added to how quiet my life was now. The stillness that now felt like it was haunting me. Over time, the rage that somehow bonded my brother and me had simmered to hurt, and now just pain. Quiet hurt that breeds resentment.
My arms burned as I swung the sledgehammer into the wall, but at least the burn reminded me I was alive. The loud burst of wood battled the quiet and the dust, as splinters disrupted the air.
“Dad was looking for you.” My brother entered the room quietly, but the fact that he’d spoken to me had my head lifting briskly.
Tossing the sledgehammer down, I turned toward him and hated that I could see the lack of sleep highlighted in his sunken eyes and the bags underneath them.
I knew what kept him up at night because it was what ran through my mind as well.
Regret, and even further down, the determination to fix everything.
“Where is he?” I asked, trying to adjust to hearing Gio’s voice again.
He’d been sulking so much lately, we’d gone nearly a full month since we last spoke.
Seeing him now felt like a physical blow, like looking in the mirror but seeing the version of myself I wish I were.
He had the same inky black hair as I did, the same warm brown skin, if not a tiny shade lighter, thanks to our mom.
Gio’s blue eyes looked grayer today as they found the floor where the rest of the debris was tossed into a pile. “You got pretty far.”
Glancing around the old farmhouse, I nodded. “Keeps me busy.”
He didn’t respond, and I didn’t remark on how he used to help me out here until he just decided to sink into the cavity in his chest and not talk to anyone, including me.
“Where’s Dad?” I repeated, wishing I could ask how my twin brother was doing.
I already knew he wouldn’t tell me, and if he did, he’d somehow reveal all the things I’d been worrying about.
That I’d broken him when I chose to punish Presley.
I ruined the only shot we’d ever had at having her together, and now she was about to marry someone else.
Gio finally cleared his throat and took off down the front steps. “He’s in your garden.”
The garden I hadn’t touched in months.
The one I couldn’t even stand to look at now that Presley wasn’t here.
I’d once asked her to tend to it for a year and a half, not realizing how painful that would have been without me here.
I didn’t blame her for allowing it to die.
I didn’t deserve that happiness. I had a feeling Gio felt the same about tracking stars and solar systems.
Without her, what was the point?
Walking down the steps, I tipped my head back and watched as the sky turned white with little strips of gray.
Snow wouldn’t fall, but the boards I’d been pulling out would be stiff and cold.
Didn’t matter, I’d still pull and yank until they all came free.
I’d worked through the humid, hot summer months and toiled during the brisk autumn.
Winter was no different, even as we edged closer to spring.
Our stride through the frozen field was long; our conversation subdued.
I thought back through the past year and how insignificant it felt, yet so much time had passed.
It took us six months to infiltrate the motorcycle club and discover our father’s sister, who had somehow gotten tangled up with them.
October, we’d rushed back home and found Presley here, helping our aunt after our property had been breached.
The shock of seeing her left both my brother and me practically speechless.
Gio couldn’t help but try to go to her, but he was shut down just as I was.
We had tried to get her attention all throughout dinner, even as our eyes lingered on her bare finger, curious where her engagement ring was. The next morning, she was gone.
It had been nearly four months since then and a total of nine since we’d fucked her, and acted as if we couldn’t have cared less that she’d chosen to give us her virginity.
Nine months since that day when we watched Adrian whisk her away, out of our lives, and suddenly, the insatiable need to push down the rage burst from my brother and I in the form of destruction.
Frenzied hearts often did reckless things, and once ours lacked the tether to the only person who ever made our worlds make sense, we indeed became reckless.
She blocked our numbers and hadn’t reached out.
Her parents and Scotty traveled to see her often.
Scotty remained there regularly, but not a single person ever told us how she was doing.
Not if she’d married Adrian yet… We would ask, but we had removed the possibility of knowing anything when we declared war against the family.
The peace was tentative, so we never dared bring her up, knowing her existence was a trigger.
Gio’s boots crunched some dead branches behind me, and it made me want to ask him where he’d been sleeping.
Neither one of us lived in the manor anymore, and if we were around, we spent time on the farm.
I had moved into the barn so I could spend every waking hour on the farmhouse, but I had no idea where Gio had been.
“You talk to Dad recently?” I tossed the question over my shoulder, and when my brother’s gaze met mine, pain twisted around my heart.
He wasn’t doing well. I could sense it; it made me nervous because of how dark things got for him when we were in Mexico.
There were places his mind would go that were too vast and deep for me to understand.
“I go over for dinner every now and then.”
Irritation burned under my skin as we drew closer to the manor. Red brick four stories tall loomed ahead, the roof was black, and from here I could make out the iron railing that led from our side of the house to Presley’s.
“Ever consider inviting me?” I joked, but my brother would be able to pick up on the seriousness of my tone. Gio had abandoned me, and while I had mostly understood it all these months, it hurt.
My twin’s head remained dipped, his eyes on the ground. He ignored me, and I decided to ignore him too as we neared our part of the manor and my small garden came into view. Our dad stood amongst the weeds and frozen soil, wearing his chino pants and a black turtleneck, brown loafers on his feet.
I greeted my father with a nod.
He turned, narrowing that assessing gaze on me.
Sometimes the guilt over how badly we’d fucked up dug inside me so deep that I worried I’d never recover.
Our father was disappointed in us, but it went deeper than that.
We’d taken the dangerous thing he’d inherited and had successfully used for good and broken it.
Twisted it once more and made it bend to our demands, and now we were its leaders.
Reluctantly and begrudgingly.
“Kingston, thank you for coming up here.”
Gio stepped next to me but kept a wide berth. I felt like I was stuck in a bad dream. One where my brother hated my guts, and my father couldn’t stand the sight of me. Except this was real.
“What’s going on?” I flicked my eyes over the garden.
Nothing had grown here in so long it was difficult to even make out that it was once a thriving plot.
Flashes of small fingers digging into dark soil and a dimpled smile ran through my mind, going back in time to when Presley would help me grow things.
Dad stepped closer. “Your mother and I are considering leaving. We think it might be time for our family to start over.”
My chest ached, heavy and blunt. The worry felt like a rock.
“Where would you go?”
My gaze slid to my twin. Thankfully he looked just as taken aback by the news as I was.
Dad kept our gaze. “Chicago, maybe Texas. We aren’t sure yet.”
“Alex is going with you?” Gio asked.
Dad’s eyes flicked between the two of us before he let out a small scoff. “I was hoping to take all of you.”
Gio and I both shook our heads at the same time. “We aren’t leaving.”
He knew we couldn’t. The ink over our hearts demanded we stay; required us to lead.
We didn’t have the twenty years Dad did in managing the beast that was El Peligro.
It had only gotten worse with the new ties to the cartel that our uncle had developed over the past few months.
It was stronger now than ever, and more dangerous.
I desperately wanted to ask Dad how he led it back when he did, but I never would. Not when he’d worked so hard to subdue it, only to have us fuck it all up.