My arm was yanked and shoved behind my back. I used the inertia to drag whoever was there with me to the ground. As I did so, something sharp and cold sliced my abdomen.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
Whatever little leverage I’d gained, I quickly lost. My assailant took the opening, spinning us right before we hit the ground. His knees pressed into my chest until I was breathless, a knife to my neck.
I stared into dark-blue eyes so similar to mine.
“You know,” I choked out. “Some siblings FaceTime.”
“You were slow.” My brother, Stone, pulled the knife back in one quick, fluid movement. “If this was a real attack, you’d be dead.” He stood up, shooting me a chastising look.
I followed, standing to my own feet.
“Good to see you too, bro.”
Most brothers bonded over Sunday dinner, but, then, most brothers didn’t spend a decade in jail for a crime they didn’t commit.
Lights turned on as we made our way into the house. I grabbed a first aid kit from under the sink, lightly dabbing antiseptic on the wound. Just beneath my rib cage. Superficial, but bloody.
Stone leaned with his back against the wall, and a convenient view of all corners of the house.
Stone was seven years older than me, having just hit his forty-first year. We were somewhat estranged, which tends to happen when your older brother goes to jail for ten years when you’re barely an adult.
When we were growing up, my brother was talkative and charming, had all the men and women at his feet. Now he barely talked, let alone smiled. When he did speak, it was in short, staccato sentences.
“You’re home late,” Stone said.
“I was with a girl,” I said—not totally a lie. I was with her digital footprint.
I focused on my wound, dabbing the blood away with a clean rag. My mind drifted back to her note. I already knew some of her kinks…were there more? What else could she be into?—
“Your girl—she good?” my brother asked.
“She’s got a PhD and everything,” I said as I finished applying a compression bandage.
Something in my brother softened at the lie. “Good.”
The lie wasn’t that Shay was a good person. The lie was making it sound like she could ever bemygirl. That I could ever have that normal life he’d dreamed for me.
My brother went to jail for me, took the fall after I killed our abusive piece-of-shit father. In return, he expected I live a normal life.
But, in order to keep my brother alive in jail, I’d had to make a deal with the same men my father worked for.
The Mafia waited years to approach me, and when they did, I didn’t immediately fall in line. I was fresh out of grad school, and I foolishly believed that that life was behind me. Maybe the years had softened me. Made me forget.
Then I came home to find my roommate skinned alive, hanging from our ceiling fan, a photo of my brother stapled to his face.
“Hungry?” I asked as I finished applying a compression bandage.
I took his shrug as theyesit was and pulled out an iced lemon and poppy seed loaf I’d made a day ago. Of all the recipes at my disposal, this was the least fancy. Something my mom used to make us, and his favorite.
My brother would not approve of myextracurricularactivities. I was supposed to go to college, get a boring job. And after everything he’d done, all the years he’d spent in prison for me and my sister, the least I could do was pretend his plan worked.
That I didn’t end up indebted to the same people who owned our father.
Ruining bad men as a hobby to make up for the moral stain that debt left.
“You talked to Fig recently?” I asked, as I placed the loaf on the bar. He pulled up a stool and placed his wallet and keys next to the ceramic plate.
