My chest aches with a familiar pain. I know what it’s like to be small and helpless and at the mercy of someone powerful and cruel.
“What made it stop?”
“A boy doesn’t stay a boy for long. I grew up. Got bigger. Stronger. Faster than him. One night when I was fifteen, he came home drunker than usual and started in on my ma. Beat her so bad she needed reconstructive surgery on her face. I was gone for most of it, but when I walked in on the middle of it—I blacked out. I did what I’d been dreaming about doing for years.”
“You fought back…” I murmur.
He nods. “More than fought back. I beat him into a coma. Put him in a vegetative state. He’s been sitting in a reclinerwatching Jeopardy reruns ever since, and he’ll stay that way ’til the day he dies.”
It’s a dark and disturbing confession spoken in the late hours of night.
Some people would look at Killian and think he must’ve taken things too far if he put his own father in a comatose state. If he was able to beat him until he became a vegetable.
But I find it morbidly comforting.
Nobody’s ever fought so hard for me and Eva. Even our own mother left us in the end.
“Don’t worry,” he goes on when I remain silent. “I don’t go around beating people into comas often—outside of work. I prefer to use my fists only when on the job.”
“Actually,” I say, “it sounds like you did what you had to do. To protect your mom and baby sister. I’d do the same for mine if I could.”
“That’s what I tell myself. Not everybody agrees.”
“Like who? Your father?”
“He’s too brain dead to have a thought on it. I mean my ma.”
I stop walking, half turning to face him. “She doesn’t agree? But you were defending her!”
He’s stopped too, both of us illuminated only by the dim streetlamp a few feet away. The rest of the city street feels like background decoration, we’re so locked into our conversation.
“She’s never forgiven me,” he says. “For what I did to him. For the lasting effects it had on our family. She thinks I took things too far.”
“But he was hurting her. He could’ve killed her... and the rest of you.”
“Doesn’t matter. You want to see loyalty? Look to how devoted my ma is to him. She’ll stay by his side ’til the day she dies, shattered eye bone and all. In her eyes, she took vows and will abide by those the rest of her life.”
“Wow,” I murmur in disbelief. “Whatever she thinks, it doesn’t matter. I think you did the right thing, and a lot of people would too.”
We start walking again, still at a slow and leisurely pace.
The sky’s beginning to lighten at the edges, the first hints of dawn creeping over the Brooklyn rooftops. Soon the birds will wake up and start twittering.
“I should get you home,” Killian says. “Then I’ve got to head to the gym. Dez’ll have my ass if I miss another session.”
“You’re going to train? After being up all night? Again? You were just there last night.”
“Sleep’s overrated.”
I shake my head but choose not to argue.
We both know he’s running on fumes, burning himself out between the war with the Bratva and his upcoming fight. But pointing that out won’t change anything.
Killian’s as stubborn as I am.
Instead, I find myself saying, “It doesn’t hurt to blow off steam sometimes, you know. I mean more than going to a late-night movie when you can’t sleep.”
He blinks, thrown by the change of subject. “What?”
