Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

It was as if they were too good to be true, and in that neighborhood, they were. We lived in a ramshackle house on the edge of the invisible line that delineated the ‘good’ neighborhoods of Entrance, BC, from the seedier part of town. The house across the street was nice, with a massive wraparound porch and large picture windows, even though the paint was peeling and the yard hadn’t been maintained in years.

The family looked nicer than our surroundings, every single one of the four boys beautiful, the father strong and strapping, the wife, when she rounded the car, young and sweet like one of my kindergarten teachers.

I think I wondered at the time if they were actually real or a product of my often-overactive imagination.

“Quiet, Li,” Dane hushed me, his eyes narrowed, lean torso torqued awkwardly as he strained to hear something.

Immediately, I quieted, my gaze moving to my brother, my protector.

He was twelve years older than me, tall and already stronger than our papá because he spent a lot of time working out to be so. He was smart, too, like a whip, one of his teacher’s had said even though I didn’t understand what that meant.

If he told me to be quiet, I was silent and still as a tree trunk.

Then, faintly, I heard it.

The tinkling crash of glass from inside the house and the low boom like a bass from a blown speaker as my father yelled at someone.

He yelled a lot.

So I didn’t understand why Dane was being so cautious.

I opened my mouth to say so when there was another noise, this one so loud even the neighbors across the street stopped their antics and froze with their eyes on our urine yellow house.

A loud crack like a heavy tree limb breaking off.

A gunshot.

Dane flew into motion, crouched as he jogged across the yard to peer into the kitchen window.

“Stay here, and do not come inside, Li, you hear me?” he ordered.

I nodded mutely, watching with my heart in my throat as Dane slowly opened the screen then the front door and disappeared inside.

This was not the first time we had heard a gunshot from our house.

When your father was a popular drug dealer, the noise was only one of a collection of abrasive sounds in the musical soundtrack of your life with him.

A little scream leaked from my mouth when a throat cleared behind me. Instinctively, I spun around, my fist wrapped around the stupid, stained, plastic bucket filled with flowers I’d picked in the meadow behind our house, I threw it at the person behind me.

The cute teenager I’d been eyeing blinked down at his dirt and petal covered denim shirt then peered up at me through the flop of wavy hair over his forehead. I noticed his eyes, so deep a brown they seemed as rich as the brushed suede jacket my mother wore on special occasions.

I held my breath, my primary fear forgotten in the face of this new, immediate situation.

He was going to hate me, beat me at the very least, or yell in my face for throwing dirt at him, I was certain.

My father had done more for less to Dane over the years.

Instead, his mouth thinned as a hoarse shout sounded from inside our house, and then he bent into a crouch so that we were eye level. His forearms braced on his jean-clad thighs, hands dangling in the gap between his knees so I could see the carefully drawn lines of a Sharpie splitting his skin with illustrations. There was a lone flower striking up from the dirt, but it was what he’d drawn beneath the earth as it edged up one wrist that drew my focus. Little creatures with sharp teeth burrowing deeper, a broken skull crumbling to dust at the edge of an eye socket. It was graphic and as horrible as it was alluring.

“You doin’ okay over here?” he asked, pulling my attention back to his somber eyes.

My voice was locked in its box, shored up under sand like it was buried in the ocean floor beneath leagues of sea water.

The nice-looking woman, the mother, appeared over his shoulder and smiled down at me too.

“Hey, sunshine, why don’t you come on over to our house for a beat? Seems your family is having some trouble, and we don’t want you to be any part of that, do we?”

She had a voice like sun-warmed velvet, worn and smooth. I wanted to listen to her speak all day.

Still, I said nothing.

At that point in my life, kindness was more suspicious than cruelty.

I didn’t understand their angle, and I wished Dane would come out to help me.

Instead, he was inside with our father and a gun.

The neighbor’s dad walked across the street toward us, his cell phone to his ear, his voice low and angry as he spoke into it.