Page 219 of His Pretty Little Duet

I nod.

“I had to help end it.”

I nod again, using my silence to encourage her to fill the space with carefree words and thought.

“I went to Dustin,” she states, and I hiss through my teeth, closing my eyes to her deadly confession. “I cared enough to tell him the boy wasn’t his. That Luca and Madeline were having an affair. I did it for him. For your dad. And for you. You deserved better, Clay. So, I got rid of the temptation of that child and that woman.”

Christ.

“But they kept him alive, didn’t they?” She shakes her face on anexaggeratedsigh. “Kept him alive, and here we are. I would have killed him myself if I was Dustin. That would have been easier for everyone” She points her long slender finger at me, drowning in the laced whiskey’s depths. “That is whatyoushould do. As Boss. Finish it. You should dispose of him for me.”

I am dangerously still.

Christ.

Did you just ask me to kill my half-brother?

What have you just done, Mother.

The heat from agony clings to my throat as I lean towards her, elbows meeting my knees, eyes drilling holes through her. Stunning woman. Cold as ice. She can’t see much right now. Her eyes are glassy, lost in the memory, in her dark truths, in her uncaring recall.

Loyalty is black and white.

My brows pinch at the sight of the woman who birthed me. A blunt pain hits my chest like a fist thrusting through my ribs to seize my beating heart—for not seeing her true colours before, not questioning her. She betrayed my father, hurt my brothers, and set the entire feud between Nerrock and Butcher into action. All the bad blood stems from her. A catalyst.

How much of my brothers’ trauma is because she couldn’t love them?

My mother sips her spiked whiskey sloppily, spilling some on her blouse, hardly noticing when the liquor seeps in, spreading through the white fabric like her lies.

“Did you enjoy hurting your sons?” I finally break the stillness; my voice is deeper and coarse, as though the whiskey was mixed with gravel. It’s the anguish. My hand forced. “Did you enjoy it or are you ashamed?”

“Ashamed?” She slurs. “I was disciplining them as best I could. They were wild. Horrible to me. It-it- was all on me…” She trails off, and then bounces back in. “They-they werebadseeds. Bad kids. Their father isbadtoo?—”

I nod at Que, and he leaves the room while she continues to talk and moan. I stare at her in her mumbling, slack state, disappearing for a moment into darkness.

As I consider her closely, panning my gaze over the expensiveCosa Nostrabought jewellery and the flawlessly applied makeup, she slips further into a mindless place. When her body slumps to the side, her spine slides down awkwardly.

I want to excuse you, Mother.

Dammit, she is my blood—a Butcher.

I want to pardon her…

The thing about loyalty is that it is black and white. You are either loyal or you are not.

I rise to my full height.

Rounding the table in front of us, I approach her. I grip the sofa on either side of her body, hovering close. She’s asleep. Soundless. Peaceful. And for a moment she looks harmless, and I despise her even more for her spite in this condition than when she is spitting hatred. Despise her stunning features that always confused me, that once made me hopeful that deep down beneath the layers, she may be vulnerable.

I understand, Mother.

I sweep a blonde hair from her face.You’re a woman trapped in a man’s world, overlooked, and undervalued, choked by the neglect of misogyny, and left to decay. Your sense of the Cosa Nostra, of loyalty, of love, has decayed with you, Mother.

There is no coming back.

Ican’t trust you.

That is the bottom line.

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