Page 89 of Brother's Keeper

My fists balled. “You, too, huh?” I growled. “I thought—” I shook my head— “Ihopedyou of all people knew me better than that.”

He shifted backward, suddenly cagey. “Better than what?”

Rolling my eyes, I beckoned him with a wave. “Go ahead, Nash. Tell me. Where’s the damn fire?”

“I just… woke up and you were gone.”

I hummed an aggravated sound. “And?”

“I was worried,” he said slowly.

“About me? I’m fine.” The smile I forced felt almost feral, too sharp and full of pain to be convincing.

“You’re not.”

My arm swung toward Maximus next. “Well, he is. And that’s what you were really sweating about, isn’t it? That I’d waste the old man and burn my last bridge with the precious Capitol? I didn’t come down here to kill him, dumbass. I came to let him go. I’m done. With everything.”

Nash inched forward, so hesitant that it grated on me. When he came within arm’s reach, he stretched a hand toward my waist, but I dodged him.

“Have you thought about this?” He frowned. “Now might not be the best time to make decisions—”

“I said I’mdone.” A sob snuck in, and I cursed it silently. Talking to Nash, seeing his face and his fingers extended toward me made me feel too weak and vulnerable.

I whirled around and focused a thought on theshackle clasped around Maximus’s ankle. The lock clicked open, and the restraint fell into a pile of chain on the dirt floor.

“Get out of here,” I barked, filling up with anger and another wash of tears. “Walk home, for all I care. And when you get there? Do your goddamn worst.”

“Fitch…” Nash’s voice from behind me preceded a touch on my shoulder.

I shrugged him off and glowered at Maximus, who had yet to budge. “You want me dead, right? You signed the kill order. Here’s your chance to get rid of me for good. Send the investigators. Tell them I’ll be here, and I’ll be waiting.”

Maximus stood. A month underground had not done him any favors. His hair was greasy and plastered flat to his skull, his clothes unsalvageable. He looked almost frail despite being well-fed and tended to.

He remained in place beside the ratty mattress, processing my words until he asked, “What kill order?”

“Don’t play dumb,” I seethed. “I saw it, and I’m letting you go anyway.”

His brow furrowed. “I never signed any order, Fitch.”

I sucked a breath to rage at him again. What was the point of lying? Buttering me up now earned him nothing. So, maybe he wasn’t lying. But that meant someone else had.

The scene at the warehouse replayed in my mind. Grimm at death’s door, held in my grip, Donovan begging for mercy. And then that paper flashed like a red flag in front of a raging bull. A last-minute redirection.I’d never touched it. Seeing it in Grimm’s hand had been enough.

As I recounted every conversation I’d had with Maximus since then, my pulse began to race. Had I ever asked? Did I come out even once and accuse him of the crime for which I condemned him? No. I hadn’t.

A horrified gasp of a laugh crept up my throat, and my eyes bulged wide in dawning realization. I stepped back, cackling like a madman until I ran out of breath.

When I stopped reeling, stopped reveling in my own ignorance, Maximus was watching me.

“I didn’t want to kill you,” he said.

“Well, fuck me,” I said as a final chuckle shook my body. “I bet you do now.”

Donovan already had a grave. A headstone was marked with his date of presumed death after only eight years of life. It was tucked away in a small cemetery, having been interred beside our mother and father at a service I had desperately wanted to attend.

I went after the fact; years later when I had my own car and Grimm couldn’t so closely monitor my comings and goings. I had no money for flowers, so I came empty-handed and sat in the grass till night fell, hoping to feel close to the family I had lost. In the dark and the quiet, I felt nothing but absence. I never came back.

At the time, I hadn’t given much thought to Donovan’s grave. He was at the motel watching cartoonsor reading. Safe. Alive. But I had wondered what they buried there in the absence of a body. After six hours of sweating and sinking the tip of a shovel into the dirt over and over until I’d lost all feeling in my shoulders and arms, I found out.

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