him backward. “How could you let him do this? He’s in for life now, how did you not think to tell me. I’m his family, not you or the guys, me.”
Corey frowns.
Weak. I push him back, my face twisting with a snarl. “All these years I’ve worried and planned with you to help my brother, and all along you knew how bad he was getting on the drugs… and now he’s in the mafia?”
Suddenly memories flood through my mind. I gasp out, “Thomas.” A man in his late thirties, maybe early forties, always wears sunglasses, denim jeans, and a leather jacket. I saw him a few times a year, only when I turned up to the garage unannounced and he happened to be there at the same time. I asked Rex about him once, and he told me Thomas was a guy he’d hired to help him out in the garage when it got busy. I had replied saying he didn’t dress like a mechanic, and Rex laughed my comment off. I didn’t question it; the garage, the business was Rex’s territory. He was vehement that I find something I loved and pursue that and leave the garage to him.
“Thomas Cutillo… AKA Bone. An enforcer for the Sicilian Mafia,” Slater informs me.
“This is none of your business,” Rex sneers toward Slater. “Thomas knows nothing. He arrives and leaves on the same day, and has no idea about my war with you all. The Caporegime, Paulie, he asks questions now and again when I go to meetings, but I’ve never led him to Portland. I’m not a snitch and I can dish out my own payback.”
Rex finally speaks to me and his voice is emotionless. “I had a house and business to pay for, and not to mention I had to keep food on the table and you were in college. This isn’t Corey’s fault. There was a choice to be made and I made it… end of fucking story. My guys were told not to tell you, and they followed my orders. They’re my crew, not yours. Now, I’m leaving, with or without you, Lana.”
Rex’s jaw is ticking, his tight, tense body telling me to shut the hell up and go with him now. But his words feel like knives piercing my heart, they hurt me more than the searing slap across my face. I can’t leave yet. I’ve learned more in this crappy bathroom than I have in the past five years of my life. I need to find out one more thing.
“Since taking over, have you seen her? That letter. You told me you ignored it, you told me to let it go.”
Rex’s expression turns pained. He shakes his head and begs, “Not here.”
Betrayal of the worst kind surges through me, and it’s delivered by my own brother.
How could he talk to her after she abandoned us? He was able to spend time with her? Get to know her and never told me. My own brother didn’t try and connect his mother and sister in five years?
Emotions, so many are struggling for control. I’m trying to pick just one, but I can’t, my throat feels as if it’s being strangled.
I wanted the truth and that’s what I received.
“Leave,” I say to my brother in a soft broken voice.
“Lana,” Corey tries to approach.
This time, I shout at him and Rex, “Leave! ”
I swipe at my tears with the back of my shaking hands.
Rex rubs at his temples as if in pain and says, “Fine. But remember I came for you.”
You came to tell me your plan, not to save me.
“You don’t want to come home, fuck you then. Become a Kings’ whore, but know this, you aren’t welcome back home ever again.” My brother turns his back on me and walks out of the bathroom, never once glancing at me.
The door bangs closed and it’s as if the room shakes from underneath me and causes my knees to give out. I don’t hit hard ground. I’m caught around the middle and land softly against a warm chest. I have no idea who’s holding me and I don’t care. All I can feel is my chest ripping open, a central part of me I thought was destroyed a long time ago. How wrong I was. This is what a real broken heart feels like, an important part of your soul shattering beyond repair.
Chapter Seven
Brett
“It was Della?”
“The knife, my father, blood was everywhere, yet I don’t think I saw any on you.”