Page 4 of Abduction
Chapter Three
Josh
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“WHAT THE FUCK IS IT?” I asked Tommy, glancing back inside the bar. I didn’t want to be out here, dealing with some bullshit work stuff. I wanted to be drinking and focusing on having a good time, but it seemed like my brother wasn’t going to have any of it.
“Dad,” he replied simply.
“Yeah, what the fuck does he want?” I asked. I knew I shouldn’t have been speaking about my father like that, but I was trying to relax and have some fun, not get caught up in work stuff again. He should have known that.
Like he had ever taken a night off, though. He had built our family’s empire from the ground up, working his ass off his entire life to make sure we had an established place on the scene. Nobody fucked with us now, and it was thanks to him we never had to worry about being looked at sideways again. Well, not by anyone who mattered, at least.
“He told me Marione just left the country,” he replied, raising his eyebrows at me. Inside, I felt my stomach sink. Shit.
Marione had been my responsibility. He’d owed us a few thousand dollars—not that we couldn’t go without it, but still. It was the principle of the thing. My father had told me a long time ago, you didn’t give space to people who wanted to fuck you over. You did everything you could to make sure they knew who was in charge, and that it was you. Marione, if he had managed to get out of the country, had just proven he didn’t have to worry about it.
“Why didn’t you go after him sooner?” Tommy chastised me, his face twisting up with anger. In the dark half-light of the alley behind the bar, he looked downright monstrous. I hated seeing him like this. He reminded me far too much of my father when he was chewing me out for this shit.
“Because I didn’t think he would have the fucking nerve to go anywhere,” I growled back. This was work shit, on a night where I was supposed to be able to relax and have fun. Yeah, it might not have been ideal for him to have left, but what was done was done, right? Why did it have to turn into this?
“You always do this,” Tommy snapped at me. “We give you an ounce of responsibility, and you fail at it like you always do.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked, bristling with annoyance. I might not have been the quickest to stay on top of shit with work, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t trying to make sure I earned my place as part of the family.
Not that I needed to, anyway. Hell, I had been born into it, I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. So why was my brother acting like I was hanging on by a thread?
“Dad’s pissed,” he warned me, and I rolled my eyes. Tommy was a total lapdog to our father, and sometimes, the way he acted got to me. He needed to grow a pair of balls and stand up for himself, but the more time that passed, the more obvious it seemed that he was only going to get more dedicated to playing the lackey to our dad.
“I can talk to him about it tomorrow,” I replied, but Tommy shook his head.
“You need to deal with it tonight.”
“So why did he contact you and not me?” I pointed out, my voice edged with irritation. “If it’s so important and he was so anxious to talk to me?”
“Because he knew you wouldn’t answer him this evening, probably,” Tommy replied, narrowing his eyes at me. “He knows what you’re like when you’ve got a couple of drinks in you, and he’s not going to deal with you trying to brush him off.”
“Yeah, because I’m trying to live a life that doesn’tentirelyrevolve around work,” I replied. “Is that so wrong? Doesn’t he know I’ve got to have a life outside of this?”
“Not when you’re shirking on your responsibilities.”
“Shirking on my—do you hear yourself?” I snorted derisively. “You sound just like him. You need to pull yourself together.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that,” Tommy snapped back at me. “You know I’m trying to help you—”
“If you were trying to help me, you would stand up to Dad and tell him to fuck off and leave us alone for the night,” I pointed out. “Not cowing to him like a dog.”
Anger flashed over his face. I almost regretted saying something so harsh, but he needed to hear it from someone. He was his own person, a whole new generation compared to my dad, and he didn’t need to do every little thing our father told him to do.
I curled my hand into a fist at my side. If he thought I was just going to let him talk whatever shit he wanted to me, he had another think coming. We were supposed to be in this together—twins, ready to defend each other against anything, but it seemed like I wasn’t going to get so lucky tonight. He had it in his head that I’d fucked up, when all I had done was leave something a day too long and get screwed over. Not my fault Marione had fled the country to try and get out of his responsibilities.
“Even if I’d gone earlier, you really think he’d have paid up?” I told him. “He clearly doesn’t have what he owed us, or he wouldn’t have gone on the run like that.”
“That’s not the point,” Tommy growled.
“So what is?” I demanded, tossing my hands in the air. “What the fuck do you want from me? Did you just want to tell me off?”
