19. Jamison #3
I stood beside him because there was nowhere else to stand. Seventeen years old and already becoming the second blade.
Harrison was fourteen with a gun under his pillow.
The baby shower decorations were never removed. We closed the doors and locked it. The room was still a time capsule to this day.
We tried to keep Kingston.
We moved him into rooms near ours. Hired nannies. Fired them when they failed to understand his nightmares. Had doctors come. Had therapists come. Had guards posted outside his door because we mistook security for comfort and thought if nothing could get in, maybe grief would stop reaching him.
Harlan was burning through every hour we had.
He needed someone who could sit on the floor and talk him through the same nightmare for the tenth night in a row without checking a message about bodies in the river.
Marcel would never admit how bad he was then.
But I knew. He was on drugs heavily, to keep functioning.
I backed him because I saw the pressure he was under. I drank a lot. My violence was useful and I had alot of it.
I was eighteen when we made that call, and I thought loyalty meant standing beside Marcel even when the decision felt wrong.
Harrison fought us.
Marcel and I gave the excuse it would be temporary, and safer. Harrison threw a glass against the wall and shouted that we were bastards.
Then we put Kingston on the jet anyway.
Five years old.
His tiny hands wrapped around a strap of a bag too large for him. He kept asking if we were coming too. Marcel said yes. I said soon. Harrison said nothing because he already knew it was all lies.
We took him to Villain.
Our grandfather stood at the top of the steps in a black coat. Kingston held Marcel’s hand so tightly his knuckles went white.
Damius looked at a five-year-old child and said, “He will be managed.”
King looked terrified.
And the sick part, we still left him. Lied to ourselves on the flight home, that Villain was secure. We would stabilize Harlan and bring Kingston back. He stayed under Damius, for six months, before Nikolai took custody.
Nikolai and Vince were nineteen then.
Same age as Marcel when we gave up Kingston..
They had already inherited Villain, had a region to rule, with enemies. And a house full of children who needed more than money and guards. With Kingston, they had six kids under six.
Six.
And they managed.
That was the part that made Marcel’s guilt harder. It made mine harder too.
Because Vince and Nik had been handed the same kind of impossible and still found room at the table for a five-year-old boy we had left behind.
They did what we did not.
Marcel resented Nikolai for that. Nikolai resented Marcel for making it necessary. Since then, they had acted like divorced parents with too much power.
Marcel watched every decision Nikolai made for Kingston like theft.
Nikolai watched every attempt Marcel made to come closer like a man who remembered a little boy crying for brothers who did not return.
Both of them were right. That was why it never healed.
Villain. I hated the word on that page. Because Villain had loved him better than we did.
“I want his region station changed to Harlan.” Marcel tapped his ring once, gaining back my attention.
Harrison stepped closer to the desk. “Do not drag him back to Harlan because seeing Villain on a form hurts your feelings.”
“My feelings?” Marcel’s voice went dangerous. “He is my brother.”
“He is mine too.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you forget it when guilt starts driving.”
Marcel looked like he might come across the desk.
I moved between them. Again. This was going to be exhausting. I looked down at the file. Post-academy regional station: Villain. The guilt was heavy in Marcels eyes. I’d seen my brother carry it too long.
“No,” I said.
Both brothers looked at me. I tapped the line.
“No to this.”
I would have liked nothing more than to keep pretending this whole fucked mess did not exist. But we failed him.
There was no cleaner way to say it. We let another city raise a Harlan Crow because we were too broken to do it ourselves.
Our mother would have been disappointed.
Our father would have been worse.
Dacre Crow had been born beneath the Villain crest, but Harlan had been placed in his hands. Regional reign was not just a title in our family. A city was given to you before you understood what it wanted. Our father had learned Harlan from the cradle.
Kingston was not some spare Crow child to be shifted across a registry because another region had raised him better. He was born to Harlan, the line our father ruled.
Whether we deserved him here mattered less than the fact that he had a right to be here.
Our father died ruling here.
If he had lived, Kingston would have been raised here. Learning Harlan from the men who were supposed to teach him how to survive it.
I looked at Marcel.
“King was born a Crow of Harlan,” I said. “Whatever else we fucked up, that part is still true. Father would have wanted him here. Kingston is the heir of Dacre Crow of Harlan.” I reached my cigarettes. “He comes home.”
That settled the debate. We backed Marcel plan.
“So what do we do about the first day?” Harrison sat heavily in the chair.
Marcel looked at him like the answer was obvious. “We attend orientation.”
“No,” Harrison said. “We go before orientation. To help him move in. We carry boxes. We do not glare at every Villain child who breathes near him.”
Marcel’s face hardened.
“Rome will be there,” I said. “Luca and Bastion too. They are all starting at the same time.”
Marcel’s gaze sharpened. “Rome is too attached.”
I sighed, already feeling the argument coming. “Do not start. And, do not get into a fight with Nik in front of them.”
I was not in the mood for a one on one with Vince. But if he went for Marcel, I would. Marcel didn’t need me to protect him. The man was as heavy and disciplined for violence as me.
Regardless, I still would. That was the dynamic. Nik and him started the argument. Vince and I stepped in when it got physical or saw the violence coming and blocked it.
“I mean it,” I said. “You and Nikolai have been acting like divorced parents since Kingston was five. Tomorrow is not the day to make him choose which side of the dorm corridor to stand on.”
Marcel nodded, looked down at the academy packet. “His suite is in Crow House. Regional heir floor. Private room, study, weapons vault.”
“He has first-year football trials in the second week. That still mandatory?” Harrison asked.
“It’s Crow,” Marcel said. “Of course.”
I leaned back. “The bloodline loves being the best at everything.” I pulled my phone back out of my pocket.
We agreed on Marcel handing the travel plans. I went back to my office. Turning my phone in hand.
Perhaps, if I had attended the academy I would have learnt to talk to women instead of barking orders.
I fucked women. I restrained them to not touch me. I did not talk to them. My lack of a relationship with Sienna was evidences of my terrible communication.
By late afternoon, I had solved the problem. Not emotionally. Obviously. That would have required a therapist, or a priest. And possibly a court order preventing me from speaking to women until I learned how not to make every sentence sound like a threat.
I solved it by forcing the building she was in to evacuate. It created the perfect excuse to ask how she was again.
Look at Daddy learning communication.
An entire office block two streets over had a faulty electrical panel. It wasn’t dangerously faulty, yet. But the building manager had ignored three safety notices.
Sienna’s studio shared the rear service corridor with that block.
I told Reeves to call the fire marshal.
Reeves, because he valued his life, did not ask why I had suddenly developed such a passionate interest in municipal safety compliance.
Within sixteen minutes, alarms went off through the block. Twenty-two, everyone in the connected buildings was outside. Within twenty-five, Sienna Bellemere stood on the pavement in a pale wrap sweater, looking annoyed.
Excellent.
I had created an opening.
People called this manipulation when they lacked vision.
I called it communication with infrastructure.
My phone was already in my hand.
Are you all right? I saw there was an evacuation near the studio.
That was true. I had seen it on twelve cameras.
Which was the correct number of cameras for a woman who made me lose the ability to think normally when she walked near roads.
I sent the message.
Then stared at the screen like a man with no dignity.
Nothing.
“Reeves. Send Sienna a coffee.”
“From the cafe?”
“Yes. Hers. Oat milk. Cinnamon. Not hot enough to burn her mouth.”
“Understood.”
“And something lemon.”
“A pastry?”
“That is generally where lemon appears in cafés, Reeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sienna’s reply came through before Reeves could deserve any more sarcasm.
I’m fine. It was just the alarm. Thank you for checking.
Polite answer.
She used to send me paragraphs. At the time, I had considered these messages excessive. Possibly criminal.
Good. Stay warm.
I stared at it.
Deleted.
I typed:
A coat is coming.
No. That sounded insane.
Deleted.
I typed:
You should wait somewhere warmer until they clear the building.
Reasonable, not a confession. Or come home, baby, Daddy is losing his mind watching you and decided to make it everyone’s problem.
I sent it.
She looked down at her phone on the camera.
Read it. I leaned closer to the screen like a desperate idiot.
I will. Thank you.
The red-haired café girl appeared with a coffee, and a small paper bag. Good. Lexie Cline was proving useful.
Sienna looked suspicious. Good girl. My baby was learning. She looked around the street after taking the coffee, and for one wild second I thought she might look directly into one of the cameras and accuse me.
She held the cup in both hands. The sight calmed something in me.
Which was pathetic.
A woman drank coffee and I stopped wanting to rip the city apart.
Modern romance was alive and well in Harlan.
I opened her message thread again.
My thumb hovered.