STARING at her through the glass French doors, I’m tense with the small distance between us. Knowing the profound things taking part inside of her, knowing what I put inside her, my responsibility, draws me to her like gravity. My pretty little queen. My child.
Mine.
I loved her first.
And I’ll worship what she gives me.
Everything my father said to me is true; missing her swell, becoming a mother, raising our children, would be the worst kind of suffering.
And her mother missed everything. Her whole young life. She left her alone. To survive.
I won’t do that—can’t even bear the thought of her alone and huddled in our bed with a swollen stomach.
And dammit, I won’t share those moments either, outsource them, have others protect her, dote on her, so I can work in the city. Unacceptable. I refuse to miss a moment, refuse to have her live a similar life to her younger self, alone and wanting her mother—I will be present.
Liable.
Madonna Mia.
I’m going to resign as mayor.
I draw my cigar in, the ember eating at the paper, and watch my young pregnant girl play with her white kitten.
My little deer is so many things. At first glance, she’s fragile and delicate, playing on the floor with a creature she matches. Yet, two days ago, she was trekking through a burnt forest to protect my brother. This morning, she was taking my feral thrusts to calm and settle the volatility inside me. And mere hours ago, she was counselling me with wisdom far beyond her age… How the world put her together so flawlessly, it’s hard to fathom such a perfect creature.
She is made for me.
Innocence.
Resilience.
Determination.
Sexual submission.
And she’s so fucking fertile, it makes me frenzied. I’ll keep her pregnant, and it’ll be easy. She’ll carry my heirs. She’ll make me a better man… Christ. I’ve seen it. She’ll keep me grounded. Open for my family. Empathetic and mindful of my brothers when in the past I wasn’t—
My awareness drifts to their confessions, to the reasons Max closed off, Bronson lost his mind, and Xander hides his.
Butch failed them.
I failed them!
My focus on the Cosa Nostra, on Jimmy Storm, on being the heir, is my downfall as a brother. It laid the path that kept us divided. I regret my father’s ignorance, but I can’t blame him for his passion. Not now that I understand it.
Dual-coloured eyes flash at me through the window, and I drop the half-smoked cigar to the ground, preferring her scent to that of my long-term addiction.
The ember smudges the pavers as I step on it and walk inside, twitching to be closer to my reason to breathe. She is my reality now. After the truths from my brothers, the concept of my present, of my past, being riddled with these secrets, she is the constant. The thing I use to ground myself.
She smiles at me, her long blonde hair cascading down her shoulders like a golden stream, and I drop to my knees in front of her, pressing my forehead to her chest.
She holds me to her, and I sigh. “Tell me, sweet girl. Does what my brothers told us today make you uneasy?”
“Of course.”
I hum, displeasure in my very veins over that. “Does it scare you? Does her presence scare you, little deer?”
“I don’t want her anywhere near us,” she says quietly, and her honesty stokes the displeasure to a burn.
I don’t like that. “You need to go to bed, sweet girl,” I state, my voice rough in that order.
She cups the back of my neck, and I roll my face against her little breasts. The supple flesh moulds around me, earning her a groan for her perfection. I’m so damn enamoured, so utterly raw with her, so unnaturally protective, it aches and bleeds. It cuts in through layers and spills violent thoughts.
Love is— Christ. It is heart thrashing, fists clenching, muscles taut and ready. It is fight mode.
“Go to bed,” I state curtly, knowing what I must do now. “Stay in bed. I’m going to have a whiskey with my mother tonight.”
“I could come with—”
“Absolutely not. Believe me, the last thing I want is to be even an inch away from you. If I could, sweet girl, I would exist only when with you,”—I slide my palms up her slim legs and thighs and cover her abdomen from hip to hip with protective hands— “And him. One day, I will exist only for you and what you make for me… but I have to ask—’
“Questions.”
“Yes.” I close my eyes, holding them pressed together with my forehead against her chest. Her nipples pebble beneath her shirt, and my cock responds. I mouth them softly, and her fingers tighten in my hair as she moans. “For my little deer who told me to do so,” I say against her flesh. “And for my brothers.” I continue to roll my face against her. “And I won’t bring you into any stressful situations. Nothing but comfort for you, little deer.” Imagining her defying me again, escaping, picturing her rushing across the parking lot with my baby inside her, her nervousness about being around my mother, I growl. Fuck. “Don’t push me now. You will do as you’re told or drive me to the edge of insanity. I won’t handle you defying me. I won’t— Do. As. You’re. Told.”
“Yes, Sir.”
I open my eyes and lift my head to meet a vibrant green and a cloudy blue iris staring at me. Uncertain but not afraid.
She sees me.
Raising one hand, I stroke downward from her brows, forcing her eyes closed with my fingertips, needing to touch her enchanting gaze. “I worship you,” I say, still on my knees for her; it’s almost a goddamn prayer position.
As I rise to my full height, she cranes her neck to keep eye contact, a hint of worry coasting across her pretty face. It stirs me further. Knowing she’s uncomfortable, awakening evil that reaps for her. Her alone. Fixing things.
I lean down to take her lips, forcing moans of enjoyment through them that I claim as my own, suck into my mouth. She gasps for air around my tongue.
Breaking our kiss, I nod at the stairs, then watch intensely as her beautiful body turns and climbs them—
Fuck.
I have to move us to the first floor.
She disappears, and I clench my teeth within a smooth smile when I no longer have my eyes on her. The volatility is there, simmering.
Flattening my tie, I walk towards the cigar lounge on the far side of the house, paging Que to bring my mother to me as I go.
WITHIN A FEW MOMENTS, her voice proceeds her high heels. “Well, what a lovely invitation to receive.”
I lean back, nursing my liquor, watching her approach in a white blouse and navy satin pants.
This room is dim, intimate, and perfect for deemed privacy. I’ve not used it since Jimmy died. He used to have gatherings between these walls. The kind that ended in lust-filled exhibitionism. I liked it then. Now, I want nothing more than to watch my little deer in any capacity.
Through the sliding doors to my left, an outhouse with a sauna stands and I’ve taken my fair share of women in that space, even under the eye of Jimmy’s strategically placed surveillance.
I make a note to take Fawn there, have her spread her pretty, white thighs, sweat and come while I watch.
Returning my gaze to my mother, I say, “You have been asking me for a drink for months now. I’ve been busy. So, I am making time for you.” Nodding to the opposite sofa chair, I order her to sit.
Que heads towards the raised corner bar, readying himself to be at my disposal for beverages with a twist.
Across from me, another whiskey waits, and within the brown pool is a concoction consisting of a few things, namely sodium pentothal—otherwise known as truth serum.
I’ve used it in the past in interrogations; the Cosa Nostra has used it throughout history.
Its street name is a lie. It is not a magical serum that forces the user to spout the truth through fighting lips. It is, however, a sedative that relaxes the brain and inhibits clever thinking. It fogs. The facts are easy to recall, whereas it’s far harder to construct a lie when under the influence.
She slides onto the ruby-hued sofa and reaches for the short glass, eager to start drinking. Good girl. “What has brought this on, Clay?”
“I wasn’t pleased with the way you spoke in the meeting a few days ago,” I reprimand with a hint of distaste. “I wasn’t happy with the way you appeared either. Is my father treating you well?”
“He does his thing.” She stares into the translucent dark liquor, thrilled by it. Her old friend. “I do mine. Clay, you have far more important things to concern yourself with.”
I deadpan. “I concern myself with whatever I choose, Mother. And right now, that is you.”
“Well, I thought you wanted me to lay off the alcohol. Always so concerned about me. What has caused this sudden change in your disposition?”
She isn’t a fool.
Remember who she is.
“I do not like you drinking. I do… find myself often protective over you… But Fawn is pregnant,” I offer as a way to explain my change of heart, my desire to discuss my future, discuss motherhood. “I’m making an exception tonight while I find myself in a position I never thought I would be in. And perhaps, you are the only person to understand my predicament. I never wanted children,” I say, lifting my ankle to rest on my knee. “I was contented with my brothers producing heirs for the Cosa Nostra.”
She folds one thigh over the other, sipping her whiskey. Her eyes rest on my face easily. “I’m pleased you put the girl to use, Clay.”
I clench my jaw; she is not worthy to have an opinion on Fawn. My lips slice into a smile that is entirely lethal. “She is not like you,” I say, bearing the acid on my tongue as that was phrased as a compliment.
“I’m like you.” She rocks her top leg over her other. She’s comfortable in a man’s space. She knows it. She’s stared at the misogyny in our business with venom pursing her red-painted lips. It must have bred hatred in her. “I should have been born a man.”
“I don’t enjoy children.”
“Neither do I,” she says matter-of-factly. “You were barely a child to me. Raised by the Cosa Nostra. It was only your brothers who were children to me. But you won’t be stuck with your children, Clay. She will. You won’t have to concern yourself with them. Just make them. You can come and go as you please and fuck whomever you want. That is your right.”
I sip my whiskey, wishing for a cigar, but I won’t smoke inside anymore. Reaching up I rub my jaw, contemplating her words. They are full of bitterness. Her tone, masking a true motivation. I let the time, her contentment, and her deemed status as my equal pass between us as she drinks.
Finally, I say, “That’s not what you want me to do.”
“Yes. I do,” she presses, with a smile that is anything but wholesome, curved in a way that suggests she cares little about Fawn; only what Fawn can give us. “I’m glad you’re not falling all over her like your brothers’ do for their women. It makes me so disappointed. I’m glad you’re more like me.”
“Not like my father?” I pry, watching her liberally enjoy the liquor. “He was never around either. You want me to be like him and—”
“No, Clay. Your father is soft. Your father was never around because he spent most of his life grovelling over—” She smiles wryly, and I glance at her half-empty whiskey. “Never mind. You, you have always been more like me. Not soft for anyone. We’re the same.”
“I have always felt so.”
“You are nothing like your brothers.” She smiles approvingly, and I dislike that. “Bronson was such a wimp when he was a baby. He would cry so much. And at everything. I couldn’t stand it. You won’t have to worry about that. Only make sure she doesn’t coddle them. Make them hard. Discipline them hard. Or you’ll end up with weaklings.”
I force myself to relax, resting my fist below my chin, casual as I assess her every expression. “I would have drowned him,” I say without mirth.
“I nearly did,” she admits unbidden. And my veins set ablaze, but outwardly I merely chuckle. She discloses it so easily, so seamlessly. She continues, “I was alone in the house. It wasn’t my fault. I was struggling. And he would scream and scream. My mother was in England. My husband—” She sneers, derision and contempt dripping from her lips. “Off chasing another woman, of course. I was all alone to deal with them. You won’t have to do that.”
I zero in on her eyes, filled with accusations, bubbling with memories. Men and women enjoy nothing more than connecting over their dislikes, their hate. Toxic discussions are addictive, so I use them. Use her isolation, her self-pity, and ask, “What other woman?”
“Clay,”—she waves her empty glass of whiskey, making a large gesture with it— “your half-brother’s mother. It is not a secret anymore. Luca has told you.”
A woman scorned…
“Larger gestures after relaxed ones indicate a spike in passion.” I hear my deceased Don’s words. Jimmy Storm was the master of reading body language, every pantomime, every tic, he was a fucking hound, and he taught me about tells.
I nod at Que, and he dutifully offers her a refill of the dastardly concoction. As is her way, she accepts without offering him her attention. An elitist with her every glance.
“Konnor’s mother,” I confirm.
“Yes. Madeline.” Her name falls from my mother’s mouth like poison. “She had all the men in the District pawing after her. I couldn’t stand the little mouse. And now, your father is set on healing this memory. He talks about her with the bastard. He brings him around our house.” She stares at me expectantly, yearning for my sympathy, for my outrage. I tighten my brows. Let her vent. “Can you imagine what that is like for me?”
The bastard…
My children will be bastards.
Lifting my whiskey glass, I silently order Que to top it up, making it seem as though I am drinking generously also. “This is why you have looked so unwell?” I say smoothly.
“At least you have noticed.” Her spine hits the sofa seat behind her, her position slumping. Her arms are seemingly heavier than before, but she doesn’t notice, keenly fighting the weight to finish her second glass. “It was her death anniversary a few days ago, or whatever people call it. And he had the boy around to mourn her, to wallow. I can’t stand to be in that house with that flaunted in front of me.”
I set my glass down on the table, lean back further, and ram down the regret swarming through me. She hates them… everyone. “I don’t like that.”
“I know you don’t.” Her head hits the back of the chair, her neck now too loose to control. She is slipping from reason. Her eyes begin to daze and her speech comes out slurred. “You have always looked at me as though you wanted to protect me from this entire world. Even when you were young. I am the only woman you have ever looked at like that. Not Aurora. Not that Fawn, girl. You care about your mother.”
She goes on, “But your father, well, he turned out to be a disappointment, simpering after that Australian tart, risking alliances with Nerrock and the entire Cosa Nostra to do so. Well—” She releases an unruly chuckle. “I put a stop to that years ago.”
A wave of unease rises through my chest, lifting the stakes of this conversation as I ask, “How did you put a stop to it, Mother?”
She tries to smile, but the curve of her lips won’t settle, her mouth becoming hard to control. “I tried to help him, Clay. Lessen the hold she had on him,” she drawls. “It was brutal to see him so pathetic. I tried to make Luca’s life easier when I saw how much she tormented him. I had to do something.”
I nod.
“I had to help end it.”
I nod again, using my silence to encourage her to fill the space with carefree words and thought.
“I went to Dustin,” she states, and I hiss through my teeth, closing my eyes to her deadly confession. “I cared enough to tell him the boy wasn’t his. That Luca and Madeline were having an affair. I did it for him. For your dad. And for you. You deserved better, Clay. So, I got rid of the temptation of that child and that woman.”
Christ.
“But they kept him alive, didn’t they?” She shakes her face on an exaggerated sigh. “Kept him alive, and here we are. I would have killed him myself if I was Dustin. That would have been easier for everyone” She points her long slender finger at me, drowning in the laced whiskey’s depths. “That is what you should do. As Boss. Finish it. You should dispose of him for me.”
I am dangerously still.
Christ.
Did you just ask me to kill my half-brother?
What have you just done, Mother.
The heat from agony clings to my throat as I lean towards her, elbows meeting my knees, eyes drilling holes through her. Stunning woman. Cold as ice. She can’t see much right now. Her eyes are glassy, lost in the memory, in her dark truths, in her uncaring recall.
Loyalty is black and white.
My brows pinch at the sight of the woman who birthed me. A blunt pain hits my chest like a fist thrusting through my ribs to seize my beating heart—for not seeing her true colours before, not questioning her. She betrayed my father, hurt my brothers, and set the entire feud between Nerrock and Butcher into action. All the bad blood stems from her. A catalyst.
How much of my brothers’ trauma is because she couldn’t love them?
My mother sips her spiked whiskey sloppily, spilling some on her blouse, hardly noticing when the liquor seeps in, spreading through the white fabric like her lies.
“Did you enjoy hurting your sons?” I finally break the stillness; my voice is deeper and coarse, as though the whiskey was mixed with gravel. It’s the anguish. My hand forced. “Did you enjoy it or are you ashamed?”
“Ashamed?” She slurs. “I was disciplining them as best I could. They were wild. Horrible to me. It-it- was all on me…” She trails off, and then bounces back in. “They-they were bad seeds. Bad kids. Their father is bad too—”
I nod at Que, and he leaves the room while she continues to talk and moan. I stare at her in her mumbling, slack state, disappearing for a moment into darkness.
As I consider her closely, panning my gaze over the expensive Cosa Nostra bought jewellery and the flawlessly applied makeup, she slips further into a mindless place. When her body slumps to the side, her spine slides down awkwardly.
I want to excuse you, Mother.
Dammit, she is my blood—a Butcher.
I want to pardon her…
The thing about loyalty is that it is black and white. You are either loyal or you are not.
I rise to my full height.
Rounding the table in front of us, I approach her. I grip the sofa on either side of her body, hovering close. She’s asleep. Soundless. Peaceful. And for a moment she looks harmless, and I despise her even more for her spite in this condition than when she is spitting hatred. Despise her stunning features that always confused me, that once made me hopeful that deep down beneath the layers, she may be vulnerable.
I understand, Mother.
I sweep a blonde hair from her face. You’re a woman trapped in a man’s world, overlooked, and undervalued, choked by the neglect of misogyny, and left to decay. Your sense of the Cosa Nostra, of loyalty, of love, has decayed with you, Mother.
There is no coming back.
I can’t trust you.
That is the bottom line.
“DOES HER PRESENCE SCARE YOU, little deer?”
“I don’t want her anywhere near us.”
WITH THAT RECALL, I lift her feet to gently rest on the sofa, positioning her comfortably as though she were merely asleep. Not drugged by her son. Not drunk.
Then I retrieve the black pillow set perfectly into a diamond by her head and place it over her face, pressing down hard. No retaliation. No twitching. No response. The drugs have snatched all the fight from her limbs.
Staring emptily at the dark fabric over her face, I find myself transported back to that hospital room from more than a decade ago. Feel darkness take over. Sense hot tears spill down my face. Hate them.
“Butchers don’t cry.”
I press down on the pillow.
“Bronson was such a wimp.”
I know the truth.
“You have always looked at me as though you wanted to protect me from this entire world.”
I asked the questions.
“You should dispose of him for me.”
And I am making her liable.
“Make the tough calls.”
Baring my teeth, crunching them together until they ache within my jaw, I apply more of my weight to the back of the pillow, smothering my mother as the clock ticks slowly, over and over, dragging the seconds into minutes until her lifeless essence and bitter memory is all that remains.
‘WHAT YOU DID today was only the start,’ she says, and I listen to her. I always listen. ‘You are not like everyone else. You are better. One day, it will be your job to weed out betrayals. To finalise loose ends. To make the tough calls.”
