67. Jacob
Jacob
K neeling down at my father’s side, I made the sign of the cross.
I whispered a prayer he didn’t deserve. I confessed to him my own sins—that I did not honor him, that I had murdered.
I would probably do it again, all things considered.
I told him I was in love with three different men, and that we’d be happy to see his downfall.
That one of them was responsible for the bullet currently draining the life out of him.
Anger flashed in the depths of his eyes, then he choked on his breath and his face softened into a kind of pathetic desperation that would go ignored.
I stood up and brushed any dust off the front of my jeans when the door to the office opened.
I didn’t look up and I didn’t flinch. I knew it was Vince before I saw him, before I smelled him.
He closed the door after he came into the room, then gingerly stepped over my father’s slowly dying body, pivoting on his heel so we stood shoulder to shoulder.
“You’re alive,” I said to him.
“Of course,” he said simply. “So are you.”
I huffed a sound out of my mouth that might have been a contradiction or an argument if we’d been anywhere besides where we were.
“Caspian is alive. Orion is alive,” he said. “Daren also.”
“My uncle?”
“That’s up to him at this point,” Vince said. “Up to your cousin.”
My father made a gurgling sound, and Vince dropped down into a squat, frowning at the mess of blood spreading across the floor.
“Caspian is a horrible shot.”
I laughed, because it would have been impossible not to. “Yeah, he is.”
“Your father is going to die here.”
“Yeah,” I said again, “he is.”
“Do you want to talk about how that makes you feel?” Vince asked, shooting a quick look up at me.
“I don’t know why I care,” I admitted. “He was making plans when we got here to…”
Vince hummed, pushing at my father’s shoulder and rolling him onto his back.
My father groaned, eyes fluttering open, but not quite making it to a state of complete alertness.
He was definitely still conscious, just too weak to do anything about it.
He’d lost a lot of blood; Caspian must have nicked an artery .
“Do you want to kill him?” Vince asked. “Would it make you feel better?”
“I don’t know.”
I’d asked myself the question a hundred times over the years, maybe more.
Not because my father had been a bad parent, just strict, just absent.
It had always felt unfair we lived in the shadow of his rules and his presence and nothing more.
There wasn’t love in the house. It was why my mother had left him as soon as I turned eighteen.
Disappeared without a trace. For a while I’d wondered if he killed her, but I overheard a conversation once confirming she’d been lucky enough to escape him with her heart still beating.
“You could wring his neck,” Vince suggested.
My father protested with a low groan that turned into a bloody cough.
“It wouldn’t take much.”
“I want him to die the way he lived,” I decided. “Alone.”
“Do you have any last words for him?” Vince asked.
I swallowed hard, exhaling a breath that trembled more than I wanted.
“No.”
I walked around him and exited his office, stepping into the bright light of the hallway. Vince followed after, closing the door behind him.
“Caspian and Orion are together,” he said, taking my hand in his. “Daren is with your uncle.”
“Where? ”
Vince shrugged, giving a jerk at our joined hands until I turned and faced him. He had a bandage wrapped around his palm, the only evidence of whatever injury he’d endured at the house.
“What happened to you?” I asked, lifting his injured hand and kissing his fingertips.
“Orion found me,” he said, which was a non-answer.
“You were always safe,” I said.
“Always,” he confirmed, letting me kiss his fingers again before spreading them over my cheek and jaw, reaching back into my hair and digging them into the back of my skull. He tugged me closer, our foreheads coming together so I could taste his breath with every inhale.
“Is it enough now?” I asked.
“It’s about to be.”
“What next?”
“Whatever we want,” he said.
“I meant with the four of us.”
“I know.” He bumped his nose against mine, slanted our mouths together and gave me the softest and kindest kiss I think he’d ever given anyone, save maybe Caspian. “But I need to make some phone calls to clean this up. Need to talk to Presley, if he’s still alive.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t want to do any of those things.
I wanted to sleep for a week with Orion on one side of me and Caspian on another and Vince behind him, all of us warm and tired and at some kind of peace for more than a day.
I wanted to wake up and stay in bed and not have to pretend to be someone other than Jacob Moore the man, not Jacob Moore the son of Phillip Moore, Jacob Moore the pawn, the priest.
We found Orion and Caspian in the living room, sitting together on the couch Daren and I had fallen asleep on together more times than I could count.
Someone who didn’t know them wouldn’t have read anything into their proximity, but the fact they sat side by side on the cushions, close enough to touch…
Vince noticed it too, making a pleased sound at my side.
“I called the cleaners,” Orion said, pushing up from the couch like it was nothing.
“Tell them to get the cops involved,” he said.
“What?” Caspian jumped up, face pale as a sheet. He knocked into Orion’s back, and Orion slowly moved a hand out to stop him from falling forward.
“Not to investigate,” he assured, squaring his shoulders and looking every inch the man my father had been so scared of. “But to make sure the message is delivered far and wide. You can bend the knee or you can end up six feet underground.”