Back in Black (McGinnis Investigations #1) - Rhys Ford Page 0,86
My clothes. My schools. My behavior. Even my friends. There were expectations—no, requirements—to being Tokugawa Masahiro’s son. And I hated every minute of it because it felt like I was dying before I even had a chance to live.”
Swallowing the sip of tea I’d taken, I nodded, then said, “My father was the same way. And we all know how well that turned out.”
Despite his somber expression, Ichi barked a short laugh. “You and I aren’t so different there. Mike likes being traditional, and in a lot of ways, so do I, but I also want to live on my own terms. I love being an artist. I love tattooing. I love telling stories with ink, and nothing makes me happier than the look of joy on someone’s face when I wipe their skin clean and reveal the piece of themselves I’ve pulled up from inside of them.
“Or at least nothing made me happier until I found you and Mike,” he murmured. “Then I fell in love with Bobby. And suddenly I was the richest man in the world, with everything I’ve ever dreamed of. So, I am asking you as your younger brother and the name beneath yours in this family registry, to please understand how scared I am about maybe losing any of you.”
I didn’t need to see the tears in Ichi’s eyes or hear the thickening of emotion in his voice to know my brother was overwhelmed. He trembled when I pulled him into a hug, his fists knotting into my T-shirt as he refused to cry. I swallowed, trying to choke down the pain in my own throat, tiny razor blades left over from words I’d held back in arguments with my own father. If anyone understood Ichi’s fear, it was me. I’d reached a point of my own life where I was happy, and I knew the depths of loss more than anyone.
“Fucking Bobby doesn’t take this seriously,” he growled against my shoulder. “He was stabbed. Both of you were shot at. And I’m more scared than angry, then more angry than scared because he shrugs it off. That time when you and I were being shot at—do you remember that?”
“I haven’t been in so many gunfights that they become a blur,” I replied softly. “Yeah. You were mad at me for running in.”
“I tell myself I’m used to you being like that, running towards danger to help people,” Ichi said, pulling away slightly, but his hands were still in my shirt. Shaking me lightly, he laughed. “I somehow reconciled myself to having a very American action-hero-type brother who had more heart than sense. But it didn’t occur to me Bobby was the same way.”
Ichi really was a combination of me and Mike—Mike’s features combined with my lankier body type. Our hands were the same, and all three of us were as stubborn as fuck, but Ichi was born a dreamer, an artist who could see beyond the hard lines of our world and into some mystical cosmos he and Jae could talk about. I took a good hard look at my younger brother, trying to save as much of this moment in my memory as I could. We’d only had a few years together as a family, but I loved him as much as I did Mike, and I couldn’t imagine my life without him. And as much as I groused about him and Bobby, I was delighted they’d found each other. They were some of the best people I knew and deserved every bit of happiness they could get.
I just couldn’t say that, because that was the code of being a brother… or at least it had been.
“In a lot of ways, Bobby Dawson is a much better man than I am. He was a cop—a good, upstanding cop—in a time when the LAPD was as crooked as shit and about as corrupt as you could get.” I pushed the shock of blue-streaked black hair out of my brother’s eyes. “He left the force because he needed to live his life out in the open. Kind of like you did. Yeah, he’s always going to try to do the right thing, because he’s that kind of guy. I learned that from him. There have been too many times when people looked away when I needed someone to step in, especially when I was a kid and Dad got too free with his fists. No one spoke up for me. Even Mike had problems