Will crossed his arms over his chest. “Ma’s right. I don’t want to fight with you, Jonny.”
“Then why don’t you leave me be?” Jonny asked, throwing his arms out to the side, fed up with it all. “I don’t want to work for Sharpe. I got free of Blackwood, and I don’t want to be sucked back down. To have men show up at my work, or my football games, practices, or the tavern. And making it seem like I stole from Lady Harcourt? That was low, Will. Real low.”
Will was silent for a moment. “When you left, Jonny, it hurt. Hurt a lot.”
“I told you to come with me.”
“I couldn’t. Blackwood said he’d come after the family.”
“He wouldn’t say that to you,” Jonny scoffed, although a flicker of panic shot to life within him. “Why’d he let me go, then?”
“He said you were getting soft, after you wouldn’t go after the family of the man who owns the munitions business.”
Jonny stilled. “Jones. But you agreed we shouldn’t.”
Will nodded curtly. “Yes, but you told Blackwood it was your doing. He took that to mean you wouldn’t do his bidding anymore.”
“When people don’t do what he wants, he usually sends them to the bottom of the River Irwell.”
“That’s where you were headed.”
“But?” Jonny raised his brows. He had known it was a risk, but he had decided to take it. Once he had made Manchester Central’s club, he had guessed that people knew him too well for Blackwood to risk coming after him.
“But…” Will looked to the side as though he didn’t want to discuss the rest. He lowered his voice. “I made Blackwood promise not to hurt you.”
Jonny placed his spoon down, studying Will, not wanting this to be true, but knowing, somehow, that Will wasn’t lying.
“What did you do, Will?” His voice was low, intentional, fraught with concern that here, this entire time, his little brother had been the one who had sacrificed. That he hadn’t wanted to live that life but had forced himself to. For Jonny’s sake.
“I did what I had to, to keep you safe.”
“What did you do?” Jonny repeated.
His heart was hammering as he knew that his brother hadmade some kind of impossible deal. If what he was saying was true, he would have had to.
“I made an agreement with Blackwood. As long as I continued to work with him, to do anything he asked me to do and made sure you were no trouble for him, he had to leave you and our family alone.”
Jonny’s heart ached. He knew Will could be lying to him, but he also knew his brother, and from his actions the other night… this was the truth. Which was much harder than if Will had been lying. For it meant that Will had sacrificed his own life for Jonny’s. That Jonny had been harboring a grudge against Will for years for the absolute wrong reasons.
“Why did you do that?” he practically choked out.
“Because you had spent your whole life protecting us, Jonny. When our pa got himself, and later us, involved, you always made sure that I didn’t have to do anything that would have put me at risk. You looked out for me, made sure I was safe, did all the things you knew I could never handle.”
“If you had only left with me?—”
“Then he would have come after both of us. And Ma. And Maggie.”
Jonny dropped his head into his hands. He had been such an idiot. All this time, he had blamed Will, had thought him to be coming for him, working with Blackwood and now Sharpe, and in the meantime, Will had sacrificed everything so that the rest of them, including Jonny, would be safe.
He stood, walked around the table to Will’s chair. Will stood himself, confusion reigning on his face.
“Jon?” he said. “What are you?—”
He let out an “oof” as Jonny reached out and, uncharacteristically, wrapped his arms around him and pulled him into an embrace.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice muffled in Will’s shoulder.
“Sharpe’s different, though,Jonny,” Will said once Jonny finally let him go and returned to his seat. “He doesn’t care about the agreement I made with Blackwood. He thinks that you know too much, that if he doesn’t bring you back in, you’ll tell someone about all that you know, and it will bring everything to an end.”
