Tyler (Inked Brotherhood 2)

“What for? I’ve signed the papers.”

“There is one more little thing left to do.” Connor sits behind his desk as I hurriedly scrawl my signature on all the marked spots, right below Ash’s loopy one. “Then you can go and do whatever young men your age do.” He narrows his eyes. “College? Or work?”

“Work,” both Ash and I say at the same time, then shut our mouths.

I didn’t know Ash was working. I thought he was studying for his GED.

What else does Connor want to tell us? What else did Dad do? He hasn’t left a will, that much I know—but he’s like a ghost, following me around, like a cobweb I can’t get rid of.

Although the room is big and airy, full of light, claustrophobia squeezes my chest. I sink in the other leather chair and struggle to breathe normally.

Connor shuffles the papers again. “Phil! Signatures to notarize.”

Another man enters, a scrawny one with glasses. He grabs seals from the desk, stamps the papers, signs something and then leaves again without a word.

“Just say what you have to say,” Ash grinds out, and for once his clipped tone is not addressed to me.

My little brother. I can hardly believe it. That he grew from that tiny child into this man. That I had to leave him, and he had to rely on others instead of me. It stings.

Then again, who can rely on me anymore? I’d only drag them down with me.

Connor clears his throat, pulling me out of my dark thoughts. “So the reason I asked you to stay is that among your father’s things, we found two items addressed to you.”

The fuck?

“Items?” Ash’s voice is hoarse. “What items?”

His face is pale, and his hands shake on his knees. That motherfucker did that to him, put that fear in him—just like he did with me—enough that just thinking about him, just remembering makes us both shake.

“He left two packages under his bed,” Connor says. “They seem to have lain there for a while. It seems a strange location for something he wanted found in case he died, but maybe he didn’t think death was breathing down his neck.”

Ash shivers. The girl who opened the door is back, coming to stand next to Connor.

“Just get on with it,” I say, suddenly tired of this whole charade.

Connor’s mouth pinches. Maybe he’d hoped for more melodrama at his announcement or something.

He leans back in his seat and reaches under his massive desk, pulling up two narrow, long boxes. The girl picks them up and sidles over to hand them to us.

Asher receives his box. Curiosity shines in his gaze. I hesitate before I take mine, holding it away from me, like a snapping snake. Making no move to pull off the lid, I watch Ash as he opens his.

The girl steps away, her heels clacking softly on the hardwood floor. I barely notice. Ash fumbles with the cardboard box. His name’s scrawled with a thick, blue marker pen over the top.

The name on mine is in crimson. Coincidence? I swallow hard and return my attention to my brother. He’s managed to get the box open and is pulling out something. My mind goes blank for a long moment before I identify it.

It’s a curved knife, a knife burned into my memory.

A rolled up piece of paper is tied to it, and Ash stares at the whole thing for a long while.

“What the hell?” he mutters.

“The family knife,” I say, my heart thumping. “Always passed to the first son.”

“But you are…” His eyes widen, and he stops.

Yeah. Dad’s trusted bowie knife that his dad gave to him. Of course it would go to Ash. There’s a message in the gesture that I can’t miss. Or the memories that go with it, the ones that twist my stomach and wake me up at night in cold sweat.

When Asher unrolls the piece of paper and wonders aloud why his birth certificate is in there, the unease in my gut intensifies.