Page 160 of A Vicious Love

The baby shower decorations were never removed. We closed the doors and locked it. The room was still a time capsule to this day.

We tried to keep Kingston.

We moved him into rooms near ours. Hired nannies. Fired them when they failed to understand his nightmares. Had doctors come. Had therapists come. Had guards posted outside his door because we mistook security for comfort and thought if nothing could get in, maybe grief would stop reaching him.

Harlan was burning through every hour we had.

He needed someone who could sit on the floor and talk him through the same nightmare for the tenth night in a row without checking a message about bodies in the river.

Marcel would never admit how bad he was then.

But I knew. He was on drugs heavily, to keep functioning.

I backed him because I saw the pressure he was under. I drank a lot. My violence was useful and I had alot of it.

I was eighteen when we made that call, and I thought loyalty meant standing beside Marcel even when the decision felt wrong.

Harrison fought us.

Marcel and I gave the excuse it would be temporary, and safer. Harrison threw a glass against the wall and shouted that we were bastards.

Then we put Kingston on the jet anyway.

Five years old.

His tiny hands wrapped around a strap of a bag too large for him. He kept asking if we were coming too. Marcel said yes. I said soon. Harrison said nothing because he already knew it was all lies.

We took him to Villain.

Our grandfather stood at the top of the steps in a black coat. Kingston held Marcel’s hand so tightly his knuckles went white.

Damius looked at a five-year-old child and said, “He will be managed.”

King looked terrified.

And the sick part, we still left him. Lied to ourselves on the flight home, that Villain was secure. We would stabilize Harlan and bring Kingston back. He stayed under Damius, for six months, before Nikolai took custody.

Nikolai and Vince were nineteen then.

Same age as Marcel when we gave up Kingston..

They had already inherited Villain, had a region to rule, with enemies. And a house full of children who needed more than money and guards. With Kingston, they had six kids under six.

Six.

And they managed.

That was the part that made Marcel’s guilt harder. It made mine harder too.

Because Vince and Nik had been handed the same kind of impossible and still found room at the table for a five-year-old boy we had left behind.

They did what we did not.

Marcel resented Nikolai for that. Nikolai resented Marcel for making it necessary. Since then, they had acted like divorced parents with too much power.

Marcel watched every decision Nikolai made for Kingston like theft.

Nikolai watched every attempt Marcel made to come closer like a man who remembered a little boy crying for brothers who did not return.