“How can you expect me to trust this? Suddenly, after years of distance, you want to hold fucking hands and sing kumbaya?” I demanded. “What the fuck’s changed?”
“We grew up.” Leo put his hands in his pockets. “We gained a different perspective.”
“They’re happy now.” Carter snorted. “Hell, they’re also both happily in love, now. Don’t you know love changes people, Tiernan?” His tone was gently mocking, but his eyes were too shrewd as he stared at me, as if he had a direct line to my heart and who laid claim to it.
I wanted to make light of his words, but how could I? Loving Bianca and Brandon had set off a chain reaction of life events and emotions that I was still reeling from every single fucking day.
Leo rolled his eyes at Carter, then stepped closer to me. “Come on, Tiernan. I know there’s been bad blood, but we’re honestly here to make amends.”
I crossed my arms over my chest even though it pulled at my wound. “I don’t hear any apologies or see any fucking flowers.”
Walcott snickered.
“You want an apology?” Lucian asked, his eyes suddenly flashing. “What if I want one from you? You’ve been working for Bryant and against us for years. Should I list the ways you’ve helped him? Should I unlock the closet hiding all the skeletons?”
“I did what I had to survive,” I told him. “I won’t apologize for that. I didn’t have the luxury of being the first-born incumbent to Morelli Holdings; the heir or the spare. I was just the hammer.”
We glared at each other, the energy crackling so palpably the hair rose on the back of my neck and arms.
“Tiernan wants to settle it the way we used to,” Leo said, his voice powerful and absolute, the voice of a highly successful CEO. “Fight it out. Winner apologizes first.”
“No way,” Henrik said, stepping forward into our circle. He ignored the way my brothers glared at him as if he was the intruder in this house and not them. “Bryant just shot your brother in the shoulder nine days ago. He’s not fighting.”
“I’m in,” Lucian said, a sly, mean grin slicing across his face. “I’ll fight for all three of us.”
He began to shed his blazer and roll up the cuffs of his shirt.
“No need to fight for me,” Carter said, hands in the air. “Tiernan and I sorted our shit already.”
Leo stared at me so hard, I felt the weight of his gaze divot the skin of my cheeks. Finally, his rigid posture relaxed. “I don’t need an apology.”
“Yeah, well, I do.” I stepped toward him, even though Lucian put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. I shrugged it off and bared my teeth at him before facing my second-oldest brother. “You were everyone’s champion but mine. You left for a fucking trip for school and we were all defenseless. You think I’m going to let that slide without an apology or explanation, you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
It seemed the lid I’d kept locked and tightly sealed on my emotions over the years had been punctured irreparably by the bullet Bryant had put through my shoulder and the loss of Bianca from my home. I was seething with them until my skin felt it would tear at the seams.
I wanted to fight. That was a language that made sense to me. I could land my sorrow in an upper cut, my rage in a single jab. And the opportunity to ring Lucian’s fucking entitled, arrogant bell would settle something deep and dark inside me that had be thirsting since I’d been scarred at twelve years old and left for dead by all of them, led, as they always were, by Lucian.
“Get in the ring,” I growled to Lucian before turning on my heel and stalking over to the ropes.
Ezra was there to lift them for me to step between and then he, Henrik and Walcott followed me onto the platform.
“You’ve always been good at bad decisions,” Henrik drawled as he poked at the fresh blood seeping through my bandage. “But this has got to take the cake.”
“He’s a paper pusher. Even injured, I can take him,” I argued as I kept an eye on my brothers.
They huddled together to speak quietly as Lucian rolled up his sleeves, toed off his thousand-dollar loafers and rolled his shoulders in preparation. Leo had found a spare pair of wraps and methodically wound them around our brother’s hands. Finally, they broke apart, Leo looking tense but resigned, and Carter with something like an awkward smile on his face, a cheerleader who wasn’t sure which team to root for.
“He’s a big guy,” Henrik pointed out as Lucian ducked between the ropes and into the ring, taking up his corner. “And he hasn’t been shot or spent the last few hours pounding on a bag. He’s fresh and he’s fucking mean.”
“I’m not going to lose,” I said easily, and I wasn’t.
There was no way I was going to lose this fight.
I was owed an apology and I might have been tired and wounded, but I had a tank fueled with years of poisonous history to fuel me.
“I’ll referee,” Walcott decided loudly, then softly to me. “You’ve got this, T. Can’t wait to see you make that motherfucker bleed.”
He stepped into the middle of the ring, producing a whistle from his pocket because Walcott was like a boy scout, always prepared.
Lucian and I met in the middle of the ring, my perfect brother in his deconstructed bespoke suit facing me like the polished version of my rough draft.
He grinned at me, a manic, excited look in his eye that I felt mimicked in my own heart.
We were going to enjoy this.
The moment Walcott released our hands, it was on.
Lucian attacked first, which I knew he would do, snapping a tight jab at my bad left shoulder. I slid past the punch, ducking to deliver my own to his exposed kidneys.
He barely seemed to feel it, already driving forward with another series of hits.
It became obvious, immediately, that Lucian was both very strong and very smart.
But he hadn’t spent the last eighteen years of his life being trained by Bryant Morelli and his league of martial arts specialists. He hadn’t had to physically fight for his life against someone who had no regard for it. Or maybe he had, I didn’t know.
I was going to win, but it wasn’t going to be clean, because Lucian was a ruthless asshole.
Because he was a Morelli.
And as with all things in our family, this was about revenge.
Mine, of course, but also his.
He knew he wasn’t going to win, I could see it in the way he took each punch and almost blindly powered on. He knew it. But he would wreck the utmost damage on my person before he finally went down.
One of his uppercuts caught me on the chin and my skin split under his knuckled force. Another pounded me just under my bullet wound, sending pain wheeling through me so that I lost my sight to black spots for a vital moment. Then, one to my other shoulder, another to my gut.
He seemed frustrated when I just grinned at him, blood spilling down my chin.
Of course, he didn’t understand that the pain cleared my exhaustion and surged through me like battery acid. This was what I knew, I wanted to tell him, this is what he did to me.
But I didn’t say the words.
It was time for the language of violence and it flowed through me as sweet a wine.
I kicked into high gear and finally went on the offensive with a series I’d picked up from Hardy Hayes, the world champion boxer, himself. Lucian tried to defend himself, but I was an unstoppable force. Hatred and misery, bitterness and the triumph of revenge crackled like kindling in my heart. My brother hit the ropes and raised his hands futilely.