Carter stepped forward and I lost my goddamn mind.
He was my brother. The same one I’d wronged so terribly as a child. I could still feel the weight of Bryant’s belt in my hand, the buckle dripping with my own blood after he’d taken it to my face. Warmth fell from the blinding agony in my cheek and salt from my burning eyes, stinging as the tears settled into the ragged flesh.
Do it, Bryant said, hand squeezing at the back of my neck so hard I thought he might crack my spine. Punish him.
But hitting Carter with the belt wasn’t punishment for him. It was meant for me.
You’re nothing. You’re lucky I let you live under my roof, Bryant liked to remind me. If you want to be a Morelli, you’ll have to earn it.
Earning it meant beating Carter for talking back to our father.
When I refused, Bryant took the belt to me himself, then stood over me until I’d done what he ordered.
The past flashed through my mind’s eye, Carter begging, curled up in a corner weeping. The thickness of the leather in my palm, the way it snapped as I broke it down on Carter’s exposed back. I hadn’t hit as hard as I could have. Even at twelve, I was big for my age. But I’d done it. I’d hit him once, twice, three times, sobbing and breaking apart inside with each impact.
Bryant had let me stop, a cruel smile on his face, one of mad satisfaction.
He’d done it.
Turned my family against me and started me on my path to becoming a monster.
There was no going back after, he wouldn’t let me. Every time I tried to connect with my siblings, he intervened.
Then, I met Grace and he took her from me too.
And now, he was taking Bianca.
I let everything he’d taught me and taken from me course through my veins, all that cultivated rage and violence zigging through me.
Carter took another step, the black eye of his gun on Bianca.
I acted without thinking.
One step took me between Carter and Bianca, the gun inches from my face. Surprise flickered through my brother’s eyes, followed by the slightest darkening of dread, but I was already moving. My right hand came up and under his hands on the gun while my left grabbed the barrel. Leaning my torso out of the direct line of fire in case he pulled the trigger, I wrenched the weapon to the right, dislodging it from his grip.
Before he could get his bearings, I brought the stolen gun down over Carter’s temple in a quick, hard hit.
He crumpled to the ground, out like a light.
“Bianca,” I called out as I stalked toward Bryant who was quickly pulling his own weapon from the holster under his suit jacket. “Get the fuck out of here.”
There was a brief hesitation and then the rapid click of heels against the floor.
It crossed my mind like the shadow of an incoming storm that I might never see her again. My secret had been exposed cruelly with no time to explain. My deception plain to see. Every moment we’d had, any hope she’d harbored that I could be a good man, evaporated in an instant. Agony tore my heart into bloody, throbbing pieces.
I focused.
My gun was up and at Bryant’s chest the next moment.
But so was his, pressed into the left side of my torso, just over my heart.
A stalemate.
We stared at each other, his Morelli dark eyes sticky black, threatening to suck me into the dark.
“What now, son?” he taunted.
“You promise to leave Bianca Belcante alone,” I ground out, my heart beating slow and steady.
I’d been at the end of a barrel too many times to count. This was nothing.
Bryant cocked his head to the side. “I don’t think so. She has something I want. She has the key to tearing down the Constantine empire. Lane’s sterling reputation will be dragged through the mud, and with it, Caroline and her brood.”
“At what cost?” I demanded, digging the cold metal hard into his barrel chest. “You dragged Carter into this. What did you have to do to get him to agree to this? Is revenge really more important than your own fucking family?”
A slow, liquid smile poured across his face. “Yes.”
My own question echoed through my skull.
Was revenge more important than my family?
At first, I’d believed I was doing it for them. For the Morellis.
But why did I consider them my family when they’d done nothing but ostracize me and use me?
Technically, I didn’t even have Morelli blood running through my veins.
Neither did Ezra or Walcott or Henrik.
Neither did the Belcantes.
But they…they cared about me.
It was obvious when I let myself think about it.
They cared about me enough to take me as I was.
Man or monster.
And there I was jeopardizing it all because this fucking asshole had programmed me to believe I was worth nothing if I didn’t earn his praise.
“What are you going to do, boy? Let some Constantine trollop brainwash you into believing you belong with her? It’s all lies. You’re a Morelli. You belong with me,” Bryant taunted smoothly. “Are you so far gone that you’d shoot your own father?”
Brando’s face came to mind, the mess of blond curls and the missing-tooth smile cracked wide whenever I was near because I’d earned his admiration and adoration.
Bianca.
Her face in the dark night on the beach ravaged with pleasure I gave her.
The color of those eyes as she fought with me, as she showed me again and again what it was like to face adversity unafraid.
How tenderly she’d licked my scar, as if she wanted to heal every wound I’d ever survived.
Yes, I thought wildly, changing the course of my life in one mad moment.
“Yes,” I said to Bryant, the word a declaration of war against the family I’d been sworn to protect.
And then I pulled the trigger.
Epilogue
Bianca
I ran through the halls of The Met like a bat out of hell, tears streaking down my face. My eyes were blind to my surroundings, focused on the mental image of Tiernan’s face breaking in two as Bryant exposed him for who he really was.
A Morelli.
A sob broke free like a trumpet call at a funeral.
It felt like that. A death.
A death of a dream I didn’t even know I’d fostered until it was ripped from me by the cruel hands of Bryant Morelli.
I’d thought…
I’d thought Tiernan was becoming family.
That together with Ezra, Henrik, Walcott, Brando, and Picasso in that great, big, unnerving house of Lion Court, we were becoming something bonded. Something stronger than what I’d had with Aida because I wasn’t the only one taking care of our unit. Henrik taught me to fight and Ezra watched out for Brando like a second, hulking shadow. Walcott tended to the house and grounds, but he also tended to our souls, appearing as if by magic whenever someone needed anything.
And Tiernan, master of us all.
If he was just out to use Brando and me to crucify the memory of our father, then why had he been so devastatingly kind?
Why the Hulk action figure, the doctor’s appointments, and Picasso for Brando?
Why the kisses that broke through my soul like sun through a stormy sky?
Why bother?
Unless he was just that cruel, as the stories went about the Morellis, just so heartless that he wanted to reap maximum damage.