It’s quick work to get him pinned to the wall, my superior mass and better training giving him no choice but to stop the fight before I cause serious damage. Because I can. I’m just not sure if I should.
Yet.
“What the fuck did you do?” I ask, his grin pleading, honest in a way a liar perfects by the time they’re ten.
“I didn’t do anything. Calm the fuck down.”
The slap of bare feet returns. “Clara?” I ask, my heart in my throat.
“I’m okay, Trips.”
My brother laughs. “You know it’s weird to give yourself a nickname, right?”
“Stop talking,” she snaps at him. “It’s a bad idea to insult the man who’s got your life in his hands.”
“He won’t hurt me. He can’t hurt Father’s golden boy. The consequences would be too steep.”
“Father told you to leave Clara alone.”
The look in his eye has more in common with a stone than a human. “She and I were coming to a better agreement. Look at you. How are you a good choice for her? You’re one good kick from a dog so far gone it should be put down, Archie. Snapping at the hand that feeds you. How long until you hurt the girl you’ve claimed?”
Clara’s hand is warm on my back, but I’m not lost in the rage. No, I’m perfectly in control, the flames in my veins for once not requiring me to dissociate, to pull away from the horror I’m going to enact.
Because I don’t feel bad about what’s going to happen next.
“Been there, fucked that up already, Trevor. And she’s still here, so I don’t think your trump card is winning this hand.”
The act falls from his face, his monster closer to Father’s than mine, but spoiled and selfish. Father has never seen the rest of us as people, but at least we’re useful tools. To Trevor, we’re toys, to be used and discarded when he’s done with us. “So, it’s like that, then?” He turns to Clara, his voice box vibrating under my forearm as he speaks. “You actually like my meathead little brother? Such a pity. You’d be so fun to play with until Olivia’s available.”
“I’m not a toy,” she says, mirroring my own thoughts.
“No, I don’t suppose you are. Or at least, you’re not my toy.”
“What’s going on here?” Falk asks, command clear in his tone as he steps into the hallway.
And Clara, knowing without any hint from me that this shit-show is hers to handle, bursts into shuddering sobs.
The switch is so quick I’m certain that my brother and I are wearing matching expressions of confusion. It makes me wish we weren’t related when I see it, though, especially when his calculating gaze catches mine. He’s known we were up to something, but Clara just told him that whatever we’re up to, we might be good at it.
And as every act of mine has only ever received criticism from our father, he’s had no reason to believe that I’m anything besides a fuck-up and a pair of fists.
Clara breaks our staring contest as her story falls out between sobs, and the details unravel my control, my arm pressing tighter against Trevor’s throat until he’s struggling to swallow.
“I don’t know exactly what he was going to do, but it wasn’t just that he was going to rape me. It was more. There was a, a—” This sob sounds real, the panic in it making my vision hazy. “Threat to it. I think if I said no, he was going to drown me.” This last part comes out as a whisper, and despite the acting that started her story, this is real.
So real, I’m counting the fine lines around my brother’s eyes to keep myself grounded, even when I want to break his neck for whatever the fuck just happened.
He scared her. Really and truly scared a woman I wasn’t sure knew how to run from fear. Not without convincing, at least.
And her fear has Falk throwing me from my brother, concerned I might kill him.
Even without the fog of rage, I want to, so he’s making the right move. At least if I want my brother alive when this is all done. And I’m suddenly not so sure I do.
But then Clara’s in front of me, and the need to hold her after that moment of genuine fear takes precedence. That damn upscale floral scent in her hair has me huffing her like she’s my drug of choice, and her arms band around me like I’m the one that needs comfort. Fury surges.
Trevor laughs when I catch his eye, Falk calling for backup, for once my brother the only one restrained. “I saw you there, brother. I saw you, and I’ll be watching. And that girl of yours? I’m curious which version of her is real. The one I know, or the one you seem to believe she is. I’m excited to see which it is.”
I struggle to find words to explain how fucking pissed I am, but Clara saves me, simply flipping him off, her face still pressed to my chest. “You don’t know shit, Trevor. Fuck off.”
