Isit at my desk staring at the blank computer screen, so lost in my own thoughts that I don’t even hear Liam walk into the room.
“You okay?” he asks quietly as he takes a seat opposite me.
“What?” I blink at him as he narrows his dark eyes at me in concern. “Yeah. Just thinking.”
“Did I hear you on the phone to Aunt Em earlier?”
I nod in response. Our Aunt Emma is our mother’s younger sister. She and her daughter, Siobhan, are the only members of our family in Ireland that we have any contact with. Emma did her best to look out for us when we were kids, but she was barely more than a kid herself. My father terrified her, as he does most people, and eventually he drove her away completely. We reconnected when me and my brothers moved to New York. She hates our father almost as much as we do.
“She give you any news?” Liam asks with a frown.
“He’s still alive,” I reply. “Barely.”
His only response is a snort.
“Apparently, he’s asking for us.”
I see the change in Liam’s face instantly as it contorts in pain and anger. “What?” he snarls. “All of us? Or just you?”
“All of us,” I reply with a sigh. There is no escaping the fact that I have always been our father’s favorite — a curse rather than a blessing.
“Cunt!” Liam spits. “Why? What has he said?”
“Em spoke to his nurse. She said he’s been asking her to contact his sons for him. He told her he had four and they’d all moved away and left him. Seems this nurse is doing her best to get our contact details, but Em wouldn’t give them up.”
“Four sons?” Liam shouts before banging his fist on my desk. “Four? Did he conveniently forget he all but disowned me and Mikey the moment we were born?” spittle flies from his mouth as he is unable to contain his anger and he slams his fist down on my desk. “He is no fucking father of mine!”
“I know,” I reach across the desk and place my hand on top of his. The things our cunt of a father put my younger brothers through still give me nightmares and I can’t imagine the horrors that even hearing his name bring up for Liam and Mikey.
He looks up at me with tears in his eyes and I have to force myself not to look away from him, because it kills me to see him like this. I haven’t seen Liam cry since he was three years old and recalling that day slices a fresh welt across my heart. Mikey used to cry. It was a pitiful sound that used to cut through me like glass. But Liam never cried, because he understood from a very young age that his tears gave our father some sick sense of satisfaction.
He’s twenty-six years old now, and he is on the brink of breaking down in front of my eyes. “When you speak to Aunt Em again, you give her a message for that nurse of his,” he spits. “You tell her that I am no fucking son of his. He gave up the right to call himself my father when he tried to drown me at birth, and every other fucking time he tried to kill me.”
“I’ll tell her,” I say, squeezing his hand.
“Why did he fucking hate me so much, Shane?” he hangs his head low and sniffs loudly, trying to stop himself from crying.
“Because she loved you so fucking much, that’s why,” I place my free hand on top of his head. “Mum was over the fucking moon when she found out she was having twins and he hated that she wanted you so much. She hid everything from him as much as she could, but when he wasn’t there, she would tell me and Conor about all her plans for you both. Her dreams for all of us. She used to let us feel her stomach whenever you kicked. He despised that he already had to share her with me and Conor, and he couldn’t handle how much of her time and attention you needed. She named you both after her grandfathers. And he hated that too.”
“Did he kill her because of us?” Liam sniffs.
“No! He killed her because he is a jealous, sadistic cunt, and don’t ever forget that.”
Liam wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand but keeps his head bent low because he doesn’t want me to see his tears. As though I might think him weak, when he is one of the strongest men I have ever known.
“I don’t even remember her,” he whispers.
“I know, kid,” I say as the emotion almost chokes me. Our father murdered her when the twins were only a year old. I am both blessed and cursed by memories of her. She had a smile that could make you forget any hurt you felt. She had the softest hands. She was kind and smart and funny. She was everything our father was not. And despite everything he ever did to her, she always woke us each morning with a smile and a kiss on the forehead. “You remind me so much of her. The way you can make people see things differently. She could do that. Your eyes crinkle the same way as hers when you smile too,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat.
“He took everything from us,” Liam spits.
I sit and look at my youngest brother and the guilt of what happened the night before we left for New York weighs heavy on me. “I’m sorry I didn’t kill him for you, kid.”
He looks up at me and wipes his eyes with the pads of his thumbs. “What? That’s not on you, Shane.”
“It is,” I swallow hard. I’ve never told Liam or Mikey this before. “The night before we left. I found him. He was at mum’s grave. He was drunk. And alone. Crying about how much he missed her.”
Liam frowns at me, but he doesn’t speak.
“I pressed the gun against his head, Liam, and all I had to do was pull the trigger, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let him die on her grave. Not after what he did to her. I couldn’t tie him to her in death too,” I feel the tear run down my own cheek and wipe it away. “But, I should have dragged him out of there and put a bullet in his head for what he did to you and Mikey. I let you both down.”
Liam stares at me for what seems like a goddamn eternity. He’s always looked up to me. He’s held me on some kind of pedestal, and I can’t help but think I just knocked myself off it. “No,” he finally answers with a vigorous shake of his head. “You didn’t let us down. Not even for a second. You raised us, Shane. All of us. If it wasn’t for you, none of us would have survived at all. You could kick our asses onto the street and never speak to us again for the rest of our lives, and you’d still have done more for us than any brother could ever ask. I would still owe you everything.”
“I didn’t do anything that you wouldn’t do for me” I say dismissively, uncomfortable with the fact that he thinks he owes me anything at all. For all I have done for my brothers, they have done just as much for me.
Liam smiles at me. “You say I can’t take a compliment?”
“Well, I already know I’m awesome,” I laugh. “And I did a pretty fucking good job of raising you, didn’t I?”
Liam grins at me and I see the little kid who used to sneak into my room in the middle of the night to make sure I hadn’t left him. When I called off the wedding to Erin, she blamed my brothers. She couldn’t accept the fact that it was due to her deceit and manipulation. And while she was wrong about a lot of things, she was right about the fact that I would never leave them. Not for anyone.
