Page 128 of Seizing Control: Part One

I duck my nose inside the collar of my jacket and try to inhale his scent.

All I can smell is my perfume… alone.

Sobbing next to me, Sander intertwines our fingers.

My blue-handled knife is drawn across Zeke’s throat.

A silent scream fills my mouth.

My brother tightens his grip so much that my fingertips turn white.

From the opposite side, our cousin loops his arm around us both. He crushes us to his chest, holding firm as Zeke is shoved to the ground and our father stalks out of the jail cell with a spring in his step. While I watch a bunch of faceless men work to save my first love, the horror of what I’ve just witnessed hits me like a tsunami. It crashes through me, wave after wave. Shatters my delusions. Dumps me on my head as an ocean of grief pins me underneath the toxic remnants of my demolished hope.

“Zeke’s dead,” I whisper as the paramedics call time on their efforts to save him.

My twin brushes his lips over my temple. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”

“Zeke’s dead,” I repeat a little louder.

Toker circles us with both arms. Squeezing hard, as if he’s trying to hold us together with sheer willpower, my cousin breaks down. He shakes violently, sobs ripped from his throat as he confirms my worst nightmare with three choked words, “Venom’s dead, Cherub.”

My nineteen days of oblivion come to an end.

The emptiness in my chest finally makes sense.

I fight to break free of Toker.

He lets me go.

I clamber over Sander.

He limps after me on one crutch as I escape the van.

Hunter catches me when I try to break into a run.

He pins my arms to my sides and anchors me to his chest.

The silent scream returns.

With Hunter holding me tight, my brothers, cousin, and Cub watching helplessly, I throw my head back and shriek at the heavens above, “Zeke’s dead”, then my vision tunnels to a pinprick and I pass out.

The darkness is my new home.

One I won’t leave without a fight.

23

SLASH

How are you supposed to feel the day you bury your brother from another mother?

Sad.

Angry.

Lost.

I can’t decide which emotion is burning a hole in my stomach and squeezing my chest so tight that I’m afraid my heart is about to stop beating. All I know as I walk into the kitchen of the house that I shared with my wife until I abandoned her is that I’m not ready. Not to say goodbye. Not to look at my life and realise that I’m about to face it without one of the two people I always thought would be there. Venom, Slash, Toker. The terrible trio. We grew up together. Prospected together. Patched-in together. My brothers-in-arms. The men I’d get into a punch-up with over the stupidest things, only to high five and then start beating on anyone who tried to break up our brawl.

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