The Sinister Silhouette

“You were the person that attacked her,” he growls, his eyes looking crazed.

“What in the hell are you talking about?” I throw back at him, my knuckles itching to land against the fucker’s face. I really don’t like what he’s insinuating.

“Motherfucker.” Muttering the word, he spins and scrubs his face with his hands before turning back. “You saw her one day a couple of weeks before we got married. You saw her, and you wanted her for yourself. You went so far as tracking her down to try and seduce her away from me. Your own fucking brother. It didn’t work. She came to me and told me what happened. I confronted you, and we fought. I have no clue what was going through your head, but the day we got married, you found out and it flipped some dark switch inside you. You went ballistic.”

I hold up my hand to stop him, because he’s still not making a damn bit of sense.

“I’ve never seen that girl a day in my life, except for some weird fucking dreams I’ve had for years and the few times I’ve visited her recently.”

“Wait,” he interrupts, frowning. “You’re still visiting her?”

“Later,” I snarl. “Now explain to me how I could try to take a girl from you when I’ve never even met her before. And I’ll add that there’s no fucking way I’d do that to you in the first place.”

His hands grab the top of his hair and he tugs at it as he looks to the ceiling, a guttural growl leaving his lips. He’s hiding something, and it’s putting my temper precariously close to the edge.

His eyes flicker to Dad before coming back to me.

“Remember the car accident you had seven years ago?” At my nod, he continues. “Jules was at home that day packing because we were leaving that night after we told the family about us. I was at work getting some shit together. You came by, and I told you we got married. You tore the office apart and stormed out, but I didn’t realize you had completely fucking lost it and went straight to Jules’s house. I got there an hour later and found Jules on the floor, blood seeping from her temple. I knew it was fucking you that did it. I took Jules to the hospital and went looking for you. A couple of hours later, Mom called and said you were in a car accident.”

“What in the fuck, Theo!” Dad booms. “Wait a—”

“You’ve lost your goddamn mind!” I lean toward him, raising my voice. “There’s no way that shit happened, because I would have remembered it!”

“You l

ost six weeks of your memory, remember? Incidentally, five weeks before was when I met Jules, and three weeks before, you met her. You were out for two days before you woke up. She still hasn’t yet. Or not until today.”

I stagger back a step, something sharp and hot lancing my chest. He’s lying. He has to be lying. There’s no way I did the things he said I did. I recall back to when I woke up in the hospital and the lapse in my memory. It’s been seven years, so it’s fuzzy, but I remember being disoriented from the memory loss. I remember the pain in my skull and a dull ache in my chest. I remember feeling like some part of me was missing and accounted it to losing six weeks’ worth of memories. I remember the worried look on my parents’ faces, and the rage in Theo’s eyes. Theo wasn’t around a lot those first few weeks, and when I did see him, he seemed angry. Eventually, he went back to his laid-back self.

I drop to a kitchen chair, my head falling into my hands to grip my hair. I hear Dad saying something to me, but I’m so focused on trying to remember Jules’s face that I can’t comprehend what he’s saying. I try to remember her from seven years ago, or anything that happened in those six weeks. I’ve tried before to pull up that short time frame, but never worked too hard at it. It was only six weeks, and I didn’t really see the point in exhausting myself over it. It’s a jumbled fucking mess, but all I can see are my dreams and the times I visited her in the hospital. Nothing from the past. Not even a fucking hint.

I lift my head, and I know my eyes must look wild or some shit. I feel like I’m going crazy.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I croak through a dry throat. Water. I need some goddamn water. Seeing dad’s beer bottle on the table, I snatch it and tip it to my lips until there’s nothing left to drink.

“Mom and Dad didn’t know about Jules. No one did except me and you. I figured it would only hurt them if they knew, and it’s not like Jules was really there anymore anyway.” I flinch at his hard words, but he continues. “When you woke up and didn’t remember her, I didn’t see the point of telling you. Your memory loss solved the problem of your fixation on her. I purposely took her to Memorial so you weren’t close to her. I preferred you forgot about her.”

My eyes fly to Dad’s, needing him to confirm what Theo’s saying is true. At least the part he knew about. Guilt mars his face, and I have my answer.

“We had no fucking clue, Luca,” Dad croaks.

“Why in the fuck didn’t you call the cops and have me arrested?” I grate to Theo.

His eyes flare and his jaw tenses. “Because I wanted to confront you first. I wanted to look in your fucking eyes when you told me you attacked her. You know the cops don’t give a shit around here, so the chances of you paying for what you did were only fifty-fifty. I had planned to exact my own form of punishment. There was no point when you woke up and didn’t remember.”

I feel sick to my stomach, but I push the need to vomit away. The hatred in his eyes is astounding and unmistakable. I don’t blame him. He has every right to hate me and want to nail my ass to the wall.

It’s still hard to believe what he’s telling me is true, but something deep inside me knows it has to be. There would be no reason for him to lie. I’ve always had a volatile temper. It’s saved me numerous times, but it’s also caused a lot of trouble. Even so, the thought of hurting a woman, Theo’s woman, is too much for my mind to grasp. It’s just not something I can comprehend.

An image of Cora with my hand wrapped around her throat comes to mind, and bile rises again. Am I really capable of harming a woman? As far as I can remember, I’ve never been tempted to until Cora pulled the shit she did. But even then, it was easy to push that urge aside because she was a woman, and I wasn’t that type of man. Or so I thought.

I run my hands over my face and dig the heels into my eyes. My vision is blurry when I look back at him.

“Theo.” I stop, because I don’t know what to say. How in the hell do I apologize to my twin brother for doing something so heinous, whether I remember it or not? There are no words to make up for what I did. “I’m sorry,” I finish, my voice raw.

“Just stay away from her,” he rumbles heatedly.

It physically hurts to think about not seeing Jules anymore, but I nod anyway. I’ve got no right to be anywhere near her. I’m fucking a danger to her. Hell, Theo has every right to beat the living shit out of me, and if he were to try, I’d stand there and take every punch. It still wouldn’t be enough. I’m actually surprised he hasn’t already. I know if the situation were reversed, there’s nothing that would hold me back from slaying his ass.