Page 37 of Thorns of Silence
The door unlocked and I could hear his heavy boots against the pavement as he came around the car.
“Would you like me to hold your hand and help you in?” There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice, and I certainly didn’t need my eyes to flip him off. The passenger door opened and I braced myself on top of it, then cautiously slid into the seat.
Once he was back behind the wheel, I could feel his curious eyes on me.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“No,” I gritted. “But don’t tell anyone anything or it will be your funeral.”
He let out a sardonic breath. “Okay, boss. But I gotta tell you, that woman… whoever she is… she doesn’t love you. Hell, she doesn’t even want you.”
And that pissed me off even more than getting pepper-sprayed.
“We’ll see about that,” I muttered.
I couldn’t stop wanting her, and while a woman’s rejection was a novelty for me, I suspected it had nothing to do with the challenge and everything to do withher. She calmed the demons inside me, kept them at bay.
There was a darkness in her that resembled my own. A pain that mirrored my own. She was beautiful but broken. I was convinced we were meant to be broken together.
I was determined to claim her and keep her all to myself.
* * *
I stood in the kitchen and laid my hands flat on the countertop to prevent myself from hurling something into the wall. I could hear Father and my adoptive mother arguing. It was nothing new, but it bothered me nonetheless.
I was livid. So angry that my muscles turned to lead and weighed my back down. Maybe they were on to something when they said heavy burdens were carried on one’s shoulders. I fought the urge to end my father, once and for all. Maybe I’d bury him six feet under while he was still alive. Let the worms eat him. He deserved nothing better.
But I knew Mother wouldn’t appreciate it. Nor would the Omertà approve of such a blatant snatch of power. Although, in my case, killing Father had nothing to do with power and everything to do with hate.
Crash.
That wasenough. I exited the kitchen and stormed into the living room where it looked like a cyclone had ripped up everything in the eye of its devastation. The energy in the room instantly shifted, plummeting quicker than a roller coaster.
I found my mother’s eyes. There was still fire in them, but the bruises were already forming. Sweat glistened on her forehead and her body began to tremble. Damn him!
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice stern and emotionless.
“It’s my home,” I stated casually as I made my way farther into the room, the broken glass crunching under my boots. I wished they were his bones. I could almost taste the sick satisfaction I would get from it.
One day, I pacified myself.
I spared him a glance, noting the fury that flashed across his eyes. A hatred so deep it was part of his very DNA.
I never understood why he hated me so much. He wanted a son, and he got two, yet all he did was beat us. Although sometimes I swore he hated me more than Amon.
Maybe it was because I was his replica, albeit bigger and stronger. Or maybe it was because I was a living reminder that he’d been forced to marry my birth mother. He despised being stripped of control in any aspect of his life, yet it was my birth mother who’d paid the ultimate price. No woman came out unscathed once Angelo Leone fixed his attention on them.
“It’s not your home yet,” he spat. Sometimes I thought the man would live to be a hundred just to spite us all. “It won’t be yours until I’m dead.”
“That can be arranged,” I offered, leveling him with a practiced look of indifference.It’ll make all my dreams come true, old man.
His upper lip pulled over his teeth viciously as he came to stand in front of me and his hand reached for my throat.
Come on, old man.I could get away with using self-defense as an excuse. He just had to be pushed a bit more. I flexed both hands at my sides and twisted my neck left and right, relishing the way steam seemed to puff out around his ears.There it is, take the bait.
“Stop it,” Mother hissed, abruptly coming to stand between us. “Both of you.”
For a few heartbeats, Father stood still, probably contemplating how to overpower us both. He couldn’t though. I wasn’t a little boy anymore. I might have lost my memories, but I didn’t lose my will to fight. In fact, that had come back tenfold.
