Page 7
“No.” I chuckle darkly, my voice echoing in the small, sterile room. “That bastard wasn’t scared of anything.”
“He was scared of you,” Xander corrects quietly.
I turn to look at him. While Xander has always been the quiet one, he is the most astute of us. He watches and doesn’t miss a fucking thing. He’s the middle brother, the one who reads philosophy, collects antique knives, and watches everything with eyes that miss nothing. He’s the only one of us who ever contradicted Roman and survived.
“Of me?” I scoff.
“Of all of us,” Xander clarifies. “Of what he made. He bred us to be weapons. And weapons turn on their makers. It’s in the nature of the thing.”
I consider his words. I think of Roman standing over me when I was nine, his belt in his hand, teaching me that pain was weakness leaving the body. I think of him at sixteen, when I brought home my first girlfriend, and he told me I was soft, that softness was death. I remember when I made my first million and realizing, from the look on his face, that I’d somehow still failed.
Did he fear us? Did he look at his five sons—his five soldiers—and see the monsters he’d created? I fucking hope so.
“I need some air,” I breathe, pushing to my feet and swiping Kaden’s cigarettes.
Outside, the hospital courtyard is cold and wet, the early smells of autumn heavy in the air. I walk to the edge of the parking lot and light a cigarette, my first in five years. Roman hated smoking, some bullshit about it showing a lack of discipline. I inhale deeply, holding it for a moment before exhaling the smoke into the gray sky.
My phone buzzes in my jacket pocket. After pinning the cigarette between my lips, I retrieve it.
“Hello, Mom,” I answer.
“Vance.” Her velvety voice is perfectly controlled. “Thank you for sending your brothers. We’re on our way to the hospital. I would like a few minutes alone to say goodbye to him.”
“Of course.”
“I assume you’ve handled the arrangements.”
“Kaden is handling them.”
“Good. I want the service at St. Michael’s. Roman didn’t entirely hate the priest. And I want a closed casket. He wouldn’t want people seeing him like… like that.”
“We’ll take care of it, Mom.”
“I know you will, my darling boy.”
She ends the call, and I finish the cigarette before crushing the end under my heel. When I go back inside, my brothers have congregated near a vending machine, arguing about where to eat when we leave the hospital.
“We should go to the penthouse,” I interrupt. “Mom will want company.”
BECKETT
We’re pulling in now.
I push away from the wall and slip my phone back into my jacket. “Mom’s here.”
Kaden pockets his own phone, while Xander abandons his quest for snacks. Together, the three of us leave the family consultation room and make our way toward the emergency entrance.
The black Escalade has barely come to a stop beneath the awning before Beckett opens the rear passenger door. He offers his hand, and Mom steps out. She’s dressed in a tailored navy dress with a camel-colored cashmere coat draped over her shoulders to ward off the evening chill. Even at this late hour, she is perfectly put together. She looks as though she’s just arrived for a board meeting, not to say her last respects to her bastard of a husband.
Her eyes find me immediately. “My darling boy.” I step forward, leaning down so she can kiss my cheek. Her hand lingers on my jaw for the briefest moment, cool and impossibly steady. “Take me to him.”
She slips her arm through mine, and together we walk up to the sliding glass doors, while my brothers fall in behind us in respectful silence. The automatic doors part, swallowing us back into the sterile brightness of the emergency department. I lead her down the series of corridors to where we left Roman. For a fleeting moment, we almost resemble a normal family.
When we reach the room, I rest my hand on the handle. “Would you like to be alone?”
She considers my question for only a second before shaking her head.
“No.” Her fingers tighten around my forearm. “However complicated things were, he gave me each of you. You boys don’t need to forgive him to say goodbye.”
