Page 120 of The Woman on the Jury

Unfortunately, our sons still managed to have a similar rivalry as Silvano and I did. Though it lacked the bitterness we used to share. One moment, they were at each other’s throats. The next, they were going to go hang out with friends like nothing happened.

Sibling rivalry.

The problem was they were getting bigger.

These weren’t the ‘toss a building block at your brother’s head’ days. These were the ‘someone is bleeding and bruised’ days.

The guys in the family who had sons claimed they would grow out of it.

Halle and I were starting to have our doubts.

“Is it bad that, if it weren’t me being afraid for the breakables, I kind of want to turn around and go back out for dessert?” Halle asked as I unlocked the door.

“It’s the third fight this month,” I said, reaching for the knob. “I get it.”

But we were good parents.

We had to go in.

And there they were.

Our sons.

One, seventeen. The other, just shy of sixteen.

Fucking clones of me at their age, both of them. The only difference being our older son got Halle’s eyes, and the younger one got mine.

They were both in that stage after a big growth spurt where they seemed to be all limbs and not enough meat on their bones. Despite the fact that we literally couldn’t keep enough food in the house because they never fucking stopped eating.

The younger one was in a long hair stage that Halle liked because she thought it made him look younger still.

As expected, they were on the ground, beating the shit out of each other. They never pulled punches, either. They were like fucking feral dogs in a fight.

What neither of us expected, though, was a girl sitting on the couch, looking scared as fuck.

It must have been her presence that made Halle start forward.

I was the one who broke up fights.

They were big kids.

She could too easily get hurt.

Then I’d have to give them a world of hell for hurting their mom. Even though I knew they would feel guilty as hell about it without me going there.

But suddenly, Halle was storming over to those boys that easily outweighed her by fifty pounds each, and several inches.

Reaching down, she grabbed the back of one of their shirts, yanking with everything in her.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she yelled, her voice ferocious enough to make my brows raise. And the boys? Fuck, they looked wide-eyed and terrified.

Because Halle wasn’t much of a yeller.

And she rarely cursed like that.

“Acting like a bunch of lowlives in front of a girl? Like you were raised by animals!” she raged at the boys who were both sitting on their asses on the floor, one holding his lip, the other his nose. Both of them bleeding. And looking sufficiently chastened. “How dare you embarrass your father and me like this? TheFamilylike this?” she went on, and the boys shared a look of consternation. “And making this poor girl scared of you? That is unacceptable. And there are going to be consequences, do you hear me?” she raged.

“Yes, ma’am,” they chimed immediately, voices low.

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