“Why the fuck wouldn’t I? After what you did to me? You think what happened all those years ago means anything to me?” His words hit their mark, and I physically recoil from the stabbing pain in my chest from them, which causes my head to rap against the brick wall behind me.
“WhatIdid toyou? You mean whatshedid tous? Dude, she played us both. Then she pulls up right before my surgery after we had started to move past our shit, mind you, I didn’t even call her that day, and you set us back to day one. You say it meant nothing, but I don’t believe that. You’ve spent the past five years running, and you won’t even stop long enough to realize no one’s chasing you. You’re playing games, and I don’t even have a controller.”
“I’m not talking about her. I know damn well who she is and what she’ll always be. You don’t have to believe me. I know I’m being honest. You’re going to have to get over that lapse in judgment one of these days. I’m talking about the nail you put in the coffin with us that night. I’m not going to kill you tonight, but make no mistake, as soon as my sister and your brother are married, I’m sliding this blade across your throat.”
He’s wrong, though. He slowly kills me a little more every time he says this shit to me. He also is full of shit. If what happened didn’t matter to him, he wouldn’t hunt me down like this every couple of months and act like an asshole. It’s like he needs to prove to himself that I’m nothing anymore. Only that fucks with my head even more than he already does.
His eyes drag from mine down my face slowly to the blade in his hand and then back up. His ice blue eyes lock on mine for a beat too long before he shoves off of me and walks away. If he was any other motherfucker on this planet, he would bebleeding out in this filthy alleyway. Alas, he’s my soon to be sister-in-law’s brother and was my best friend for years, so I’ll let this slide this time, just like I do every other time.
‘You think what happened all those years ago means anything to me?’
I shake my head to clear the faraway memories of two drunk guys. Making my way back to the estate that I live in with some of my brothers, I try to push this entire evening out of my mind. Having to deal with Natasha and the mindfuck that comes with it was enough on its own. But add in Jake’s surprise visit, and I’m crawling out of my skin.
It doesn’t take me long to get back to the estate from Manhattan, but when I walk inside the old white house that I grew up in, I notice it’s unusually quiet. It’s late, so I didn’t expect to hear my niece or nephew running around or anything, but usually my oldest brother and his wife are still up. My youngest brothers just graduated from college. Sully starts with the Corey Heights Fire Department in just a few weeks, and Flynn doesn’t have to report to training for hockey for another month and a half. They’re staying here for now, and it seems they also aren’t awake, or at least they aren’t downstairs right now.
Weird.
I’m too wired to go to bed, so instead I decide to go to our home gym and hit shit until I’m too exhausted to move. Pushing open the doors of the gym, I quickly find out where all of my brothers are. All five of them stop what they’re doing and look at me. Mac and Kieran are in the boxing ring, Rowan’s on the speed bag, Flynn is doing some dry ice training that I don’t quite understand, and Sullivan is halfway up a damn rope that’s attached to the ceiling.
“So all of us are having shitty nights, or–?”
All five of them respond with a “yup” at the same time then turn back to what they’re doing.
Okay, so it’s not just me. Making my way to the heavy bag beside my oldest brother, Rowan, he eyes me curiously as I shed my shirt and begin to wrap my hands methodically. It’s one of the only few times in years that I haven’t had to lie about random bruises marring my skin.
Rowan’s older than I am by two years. He’s also the head of our organization. All six of us look eerily alike, only varying a few inches in height and a few shades in eye and hair color. Myself, Rowan, and Kieran are also more muscular than the younger three. Not to say that my youngest brothers are toothpicks by any means, we’re just built more like fighters where they are built more like swimmers. Which given how much time the three of them spend in our big ass pool in the backyard, it tracks.
“You good?” Rowan asks as his medium green eyes lock on my darker ones.
“Yeah, just a shitty night. Had a run in with Fischer.” I practically growl out.
Mac whistles low across the gym, “Damn, lovers quarrel?” He and Kieran laugh like teenage girls at his stupid joke. They’re always making jabs about Jakob and I, but I never let them see how close to home they actually hit. Even if it feels like getting stabbed in the chest every time they talk their shit.
“Shut the hell up you two.” Rowan barks out.
I ignore them and look back at Rowan. “It was nothing, just threw me off.”
Roe’s eyes turn murderous in the next second as he grabsmy shoulder with one hand and pushes my head with the other. “Nothing? What the fuck is that cut on your neck then?”
For the second time tonight, my body recoils on instinct as I throw his hands off of me. I hate being fucking touched spontaneously, and they all know that. Hell, I hate being touched, full stop. The only exception is my niece and nephew. I’ll hug them or hold their hand without pause, every single time. It’s not at all lost on me that there’s someone else who touched me tonight that didn’t make my skin crawl.
All my brothers once again stop what they were doing and make their way over to me.
“It’s nothing.” I slap my hand over the shallow cut on the side of my neck.
“He fucking stabbed you?” Mac roars.
Mac has the temperament of our older brother when it comes to his family. He’s also marrying Jakob’s sister, so the last thing I want or need is little Rowan Jr. to turn on the crazy. They look almost as identical as the twins and will both blow the world up if they think someone they love has been wronged. It’s why they can never know. The guilt would eat them alive.
His and his fiance’s story is truly beautiful. It’s long and involvesyears of heartache and separation, but the short of it is, they met as kids and were best friends before the universe cruelly ripped them apart. They then reconnected in their early twenties and went through some horrendous shit together. Now, three years later, Mac’s over three years sober, Lee’s got a brand new –to her– kidney, I have one less kidney, and they are just around the corner from tying the knot after taking the past three years of their engagementtraveling the world together.
“He didn’t fucking stab me. I saw Natasha before I saw him. I don’t dig into the sordid details of your sex lives, so don’t dig into mine.” The lie slips easily enough from my lips even as a dreadful shiver runs down my spine. Ignoring them, I go back to wrapping my hands.
“Are you dumb? Why would you still be sleeping with her? Are we just forgetting all the shit she’s done?” Kieran asks like I’m truly stupid and not the second in command of the Irish Mob.
Kieran’s the tallest of us all at six and a half feet. His hair is the darkest at a true dark brown, and his eyes are a pale green. He’s one of the middles along with Mac, which makes him the one willing to start the most shit. Kie is unhinged on a different level than the rest of us. The man prides himself on being able to skin someone alive while trying to get information from them. He’s our enforcer, and he’s married to Rowan’s wife’s best friend.
Yeah, it’s a whole thing. Honestly, the lady Byrne’s are the strongest women I’ve ever had the privilege of being around. They’re so fucking resilient, and I don’t just mean because they deal with all of us men. I mean, they’ve individually been through Hell, and they practically laughed in the face of their demons before crawling their way out to the other side. Noone could ever convince me that those three women have ever done anything wrong in their entire lives. They’re the sisters I always wanted, and I put them up on pedestals just like the Queens they are.
