Chapter 27
chapter
twenty-seven
CALDER
Shay knew who I was. How long had she known? I glanced to my phone, making a conscious effort not to pull it out and look for the fiftieth time at the photo Shay took. At the bite mark. Tried not to think about what it meant that she knew. Or about how I’d dashed out of there like a fucking coward.
Because I was at lunch with my siblings.
And it was going terribly.
Kids ran wild around us. It was almost impossible to hear anything other than digital dings and mechanical music from various arcade games.
Fig’s favorite restaurant growing up had been a Chuck E. Cheese knockoff, some Utah-only chain where instead of a giant rat for a mascot, they had a bee.
I was starting to realize maybe this wasn’t the best choice of restaurant for our first meal together in years.
“Whose idea was this?” Fig asked after a third kid rammed into the back of her chair.
“You love this place,” I said, somewhat sheepishly.
“When I was twelve. I’m twenty-nine.”
Another silence fell.
Well, we fell silent. The restaurant was ear-piercing with dings and buzzing and screaming.
Fig sat to my left, and Stone was across from me, barely fitting into the chair. If I had a swimmer’s body, then Stone had a prison body. He was massive, bulky, and built to fuck you up.
He also looked deeply uncomfortable, shooting side-eyed glances at Fig, like that one monkey meme.
With more tattoos than could be counted, black hair and blacker eyeliner, a silver lip piercing, and a penchant for black, Fig looked every part the kind of person who would live next to a graveyard (which she did).
My sister was five years younger than me, having just barely turned twenty-nine. She was normal. Well, as normal as a person could be when working with dead bodies. She wasn’t like me, though, and she wasn’t like my brother. Her memories of our childhood weren’t bloody.
“So how are things?” I asked.
“What?” Fig yelled.
I yelled back, trying to be heard over the sound of an obnoxious arcade game. “HOW ARE THINGS—”
The game ended, and a group of parents and their kids turned to stare at us.
I rubbed the back of my neck.
“They’re fine,” Fig said.
A pepperoni pizza lay untouched on the table, the yellow cheese shiny like plastic.
“How’s the job?” I asked.
“People get murdered.” She shrugged. “I stay employed.”
Another silence fell. Stone opened his mouth. Then, as if thinking better of what he was going to say, he closed it. Fig shifted on her seat.
My phone vibrated with a message.
Come outside.
Butcher.
I looked up and around, to the front of the restaurant. Butcher waved frantically behind the glass.
Fuck.
“I’ll be right back.”
Stone shot me a look as I got to my feet, appearing more terrified than when he learned he was going to jail.
“What?” I clipped the moment I got outside, then paused. His neck was peppered in red marks. “Do you have fucking chickenpox.”
He grinned, rubbing his neck. “Actually, it was a leopard-print thong.”
I sighed.
My fucking fault for engaging in this.
“Did I interrupt family time?” he asked. “That your sister?” He looked over my shoulder to where I knew Fig and Stone sat, sounding a little too fucking interested.
“Go near her, I will gut you.”
“Kinky,” he said, eyes landing back on me. He crossed his arms behind his neck, leaning against the restaurant window. “I assume you’ve noticed the discrepancy I told you about.”
“Maybe,” I said. “You want to report it to the boss? Go ahead.”
“I want to use this to be the boss.” He smiled, vicious. “You know what happens when guns stop getting paid? They turn on the wallet. I don’t need everyone. I need the people who move the money and the ones who panic when it stops.”
He looked at me.
The one who moves the money.
“Well, sorry to waste your fucking time,” I said. “I can’t move that money. Andrew can’t move it. He fucked up and doesn’t know how to fix it.”
“You don’t busy yourself with the minutia,” he said. “Just give me the books and Andrew, and call me your fairy fucking god-daddy.”
My eyes narrowed on his. “I don’t murder.”
“Yeah, I get it, Robin Hood,” he said. “You just clean the blood money—”
“You don’t get to fuck off if I can’t.” Fig pushed open the door, coming to a halt when she saw Butcher. A moment later, Stone trailed behind her.
Both stopped short, staring at the tattoo on Butcher’s hand. The same tattoo our father had. The same tattoo I hid under gloves or, sometimes, makeup when I was with them.
“Talk later.” Butcher slapped me on the shoulder and left, but not before shooting my sister a smile. I opened and closed my fist.
“I think we still have a pizza to eat,” I said, trying to change the subject.
“Take off your gloves,” Stone said, cold.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“Then take off your fucking gloves,” Stone said.
I exhaled, arms dropping to my sides. Stone took that as the confirmation it was, jaw clenched.
“Let’s go back inside, continue lunch—”
“I’m not pretending we’re some happy fucking family,” Fig yelled. “You both abandoned me. First you went to jail”—she spun on Stone—“and then you left me the minute I turned eighteen.” She spun back to me. “So, what, you could become like Dad?”
“I am nothing like him.” The words slipped out of me, sounding more like a plea than a declaration.
She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “This was a stupid fucking idea. Just because we share the same DNA doesn’t mean we need to share the same table at a restaurant.”
She shoved past me, heading to the parking lot.
“Fig, wait—” Fig didn’t bother turning around, disappearing between the rows of cars.
Slowly, my gaze returned to Stone. A deep groove had formed between his brows, his jaw taut. The silence stretched thorny between us.
“I didn’t go to jail so you could become Dad.”
With one last searing look, Stone left.