had a brother, and he could have been there for me? What if he existed and my uncle never touched me? Would I be the same man I am today? What if we had grown up together and were close?
All the what ifs, all the what ifs that don’t matter because now we are on opposites sides of the glass.
“Porter? Stop with the taunting and just talk,” Zain warns as he walks behind me. “I’m going downstairs. Hopefully if you guys fight, you kill each other, so I don’t have to worry about killing the one that lives.” His footsteps are quiet since he is barefoot, and the stairs creak as he walks down the steps.
I lay the knife next to my leg. Porter follows the movement, then grins when he sees it. “Well, I’m proud. Little brother comes prepared.”
“Stop calling me that. We both know you hate me just like I hate you.”
The mockery on his face is gone, and I’m not sure if I believe his sincerity. “I did hate you, for a really long time. I wanted to take from you, Wayne. I wanted to take, take, take, until nothing was left for you to live for. I was jealous. So damn jealous, and mad at you. Mad at you for existing, mad at you for not knowing you, and mad at her.” He doesn’t look away from me as he starts to speak.
“Her?” I ask, watching an orange tabby cat jump from the top of the dresser in his room and onto the floor. The fur ball struts toward Porter and purrs, rubbing his body against his side.
He scratches under the cat’s chin. “Our mother.”
“I don’t remember much of her.”
“Good. She was a lying whore. There isn’t much to know.”
I bang my fist against the glass again, causing another crack. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. She was a good mom. She—”
“She was with my old man for a long time, you know. The president of an MC. She was one of his whores at first.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Like I’d ever tell you a lie. The truth always hurts more than a lie ever does, baby brother.”
I grit my teeth and any good memories of her I had start to tarnish. “I don’t remember her much. She died when I was young.”
“I know. I killed her and your dad,” he says nonchalantly, leaning back on his hands.
The blood drains from my face and my hand curls around the knife. “What did you just say?”
“That little accident you were in. All of you were supposed to die, but only she did, and that man—”
“My father!” I slam my shoulder against the glass. The damn thing holds more than I expect it to. I try again and again.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
But it won’t give.
“He was a good man!”
“Wayne, do you know nothing of them?” He scoots closer to the glass. My mind is whirling from the shock of his words. He has to be wrong. I know my parents. I know… I know…
Fucking damn it, I don’t know anything.
“Your mom married my dad and got pregnant with me. They lived happily ever after for a while. Dad was a real asshole and hit me every chance he got. She fucked around a bit. Dad didn’t care if she slept with other members. She got passed around. Then Dad died on a club run and she finally took that as the escape she needed, so she left. She left me behind. Me. Her own son, to start another family. And then you came along.” He curls his lip in disgust. “I followed up with her the best I could, watching this family build themselves in suburbia.”
I don’t remember living in the suburbs. I don’t remember much before my uncle. It doesn’t sound like the kind of life I’d live. Look at me. I don’t look like I mow the lawn every Sunday and play golf with the guys every Wednesday.
“Come to find out, your dad wasn’t so straight and narrow. He loved drugs. He worked for a cartel, smuggling all sorts of good stuff over the borders, which the MC loved by the way. Our mom knew.” He continues to pet the cat with gentle stokes. I expect him to stop and to wrap his arm around the cat’s throat and choke it to death, but he doesn’t. He seems as though he loves the cat.
I didn’t think such evil was capable of such a thing, but I