“That’s your problem, Tiernan.” He leaned forward as much as he could with his hands locked behind his back, the face so much like my own open and honest. “You’ve been Dad’s weapon for years––the big, bad, scary Morelli––but you always fall into line so easily.”
“You think I wanted this?” I scoffed, resentment churning low in my belly.
He had been coddled by the whole family his entire life. Other than the beating I’d been forced to give him so many years ago, what trials and tribulations had this soft handed man known in his twenty-eight years? He was the golden boy, the one set to do great things. At least, that’s how I’d always thought about Carter. I’d always thought he was lucky to get of Bishop’s Landing, but now I wasn’t so sure. He had returned with lines of strain etched around his mouth, tired lanes fanned out beside his dark eyes. He accepted mysterious phone calls and wasn’t afraid to fuck around with a man as dangerous as Bryant Morelli. Who really knew what my little brother had been up to in that last ten years? Most of my trauma was represented by ugly scars across my skin, but I knew how many would never surface and I didn’t doubt Carter had earned his fair share of those since he was the kid I’d known.
“No. But I don’t think you fought very hard to get out from under Dad,” he said, the angle of his chin so familiar from childhood, when he’d dig in his heels until he got his way.
Something inside me ached at the memory and stretched toward him like a flower searching for sunlight.
“You don’t know anything.”
Carter eyed Walcott and Henrik, who’d both finished up and stood flanking me, offering their silent support even though they had to have questions and doubts about what happened that night.
These men were my family. These men who overcame their struggles every fucking day could inspire me to do the same.
“I know more than you think.” Carter rearranged his long limbs on the fainting couch. It didn’t look comfortable. “You took in Bianca and Brandon Belcante to use them to embarrass the Constantines and impress Dad.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from telling him I’d mostly done it to impress him. Carter and the other siblings I’d lost to Bryant’s manipulations. For so long, nothing had mattered as much as their love and acceptance.
Now, it felt ridiculous that I’d ever put so much importance on the opinions of people who didn’t matter. Sharing the same blood might have given us the same hair color, but it didn’t give us the same hearts.
“Now you’ve lost them because of Dad,” Carter continued, a sly kind of look in those dark eyes. “Haven’t you lost enough to him?”
“You think I’m going to go back to work for the man who just shot me in the chest?” I questioned drily.
He shrugged. “You went to work for the man who split your face open with a belt.”
“I was a fucking kid, then,” I snapped, immediately irritated with myself for showing how keenly his words cut.
“Exactly,” he said, triumphant. “You were a fucking kid, Tiernan. So was I. Yeah, I hated you. You were my best friend and then you beat me blue with a belt. It didn’t matter to me that Bryant made you do it, that he scarred you and marked you for life at the very same time. I was a kid.” He shrugged again, but his expression was as somber as a funeral goer. “I couldn’t get my head out of my ass enough to see you had suffered, too. That came later.”
I stared at him and wondered if I was a little dazed from blood loss or if I was actually hearing him correctly.
“Dad caused the rift between us, Tiernan. He did it purposefully. He couldn’t stand that we were close, and he knew how to drive us apart. He had plans for us both and he didn’t want brotherhood coming in the way of that,” Carter said, each word strong, perfectly enunciated with a hint of British crispness he must have picked up overseas. “I’m not willing to let it continue. I heard about what you had put into motion. I heard about what he was planning to do. And I decided enough was enough.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. “If you came here to help me, can you fucking explain to me why you were at his side waving a damn gun in my face an hour ago?”
Carter eyed Henrik and Walcott, lips pressed tight. “This is Morelli business.”
Neither Henrik or Walcott moved an inch.
“I’m not a Morelli,” I said for the first time in my entire life. I’d been so worried voicing the words would give them some extra truth, some irreversible power. Instead, they were a release, the value open to release the poison I’d been harboring for years.