Page 118 of Idaho

"It's been a long time," I told him.

He slammed a fist down on the desk, forcing me to shut my mouth. The rage was still there, boiling under the surface for all these years. "You left our mother to die alone," he snapped. He was trying to contain himself.

"She wasn't alone. She had you."

"Oh," he sneered, "and that makes it better?" He gave a humorless laugh. "She wasted away in that bed for a week. Waiting for you." His chest was rising and falling rapidly as his anger mounted. "I fucking waited there for you. And where were you?"

"I-"

"Where the fuck were you!" he bellowed, half rising from the chair, leaning over the desk. He wanted to kill me. I could see it in his eyes.

"I made a promise," I told him.

"Fuck your promises!"

The door opened and we both looked over at Hush. "Need some help, Lock? Idaho?" he asked, looking between us.

'Help', as in, the boss was going full Lockout and we didn't want holes in the walls. Hush knew Lock well. "No. It's fine," I answered because my brother was too busy foaming at the fucking mouth to answer. "Give us a few minutes."

As soon as the door shut Lock focused back on me again. "I don't want your bullshit excuses. Either tell me where you were instead of being next to our mother's side, or get the fuck out. Out of my office. Out of my club. Out of my goddamn life."

I'd asked for this. There was no holding back this time. The promise I'd made to our mother didn't matter anymore. She was gone, and her sons were at each other's throats. She had thought by keeping it secret we would avoid this situation. I wasn't breaking the intent behind her promise, so it was time to fix this. "I got there before you did."

Lock stopped breathing for a few heartbeats. It was as though he'd turned to stone. Once he began again, he sat down. It was the only invitation to speak I was going to get.

"I got there a day before you," I said again. "I had every intention of sitting there with her, with you, until the end. Until that fucking disease took her from us." I held his gaze. "But then her phone rang." I shook my head, looking down, studying the wood grain pattern on the desk. "She was too damn weak to answer it, so I did."

Silence stretched between us. I could hear his voice all over again.

"It was Dad. He was tripping over his words, that's how fast he was speaking. He was in trouble."

"Who gives a fuck?" Lockout snapped. "He abandoned us."

"Mom gave a fuck," I answered. "She-" I sighed, knowing he wasn't going to like what I was about to say.

Lock hated our father. Hated him more than he hated anything in this world. It was because he saw too much of himself in the man who helped create us. Only our father was a piece of shit. He never deserved our mother. Didn't love her. Didn't love us. He was a lowlife. A criminal. And had never done anything with himself. He lived off Mom, and us when we were sixteen and old enough to get jobs. Drank the days away. Fought with Mom. The day he raised a hand to her was the day we stepped up and took over as the men in our house. He didn't abandon us so much as we forced him out. And we could both live with that.

What Lock meant by he abandoned us, was that the man who'd sired us had changed not long after we were born. He'd gone from the guy Mom had fallen in love with, so hopeful about the world and his family, to a useless fucking cokehead. He'd started drinking heavily and eventually turned to drugs to deal with the demons that haunted him. That's what he told Mom anyway. We knew better. He just wanted to escape reality and all the responsibilities that came with having a family. We never got to have that strong father figure and Mom lost the man she loved. She never gave up hope that he'd return to her. Not even in the end.

"She asked me to help him."

"And you went?" Lock spat, looking disgusted.

"You wanted me to ignore her dying wish, Liam?" I asked, incredulous.

His shoulders sagged and he sighed. "No. She would have only badgered you until you went anyway." We both grinned at his words. That was Mom. She had been our strength as kids. The one who was always there for us whenever we needed someone. And we needed her a lot. More than we should have. Fuck, I missed her.

"He called because he owed some dealer money." I shook my head. "I don't know what the fuck he did with it all, but he had to come up with two grand or they were going to kill him." I snorted. "Two grand. A fucking drop in the bucket for either of us at this point."

"Did you find him?"

"Not before Catfish Willy did," I admitted. "Took me a while to track him down. By the time I did, he was in a dumpster."

"So he's dead." Lock nodded his head, not showing any emotion. "I figured. Otherwise he'd have shown up looking for money a long time ago."

"I tried to get home," I told him.

"You showed up the day after the funeral."

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