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My pulse pounds in my ears.

The bound man looks at me. Really looks. His eyes are pleading. He thinks I might help him.

Part of me wants to help him.

The man swallows, blood working in his throat. “I didn’t…”

Father sighs and nods to the man on the left.

The next minute burns itself into me.

Not because it’s violent. I’ve seen violence. I’ve been forced to watch as Samson mutilates another in the practice ring.

Not because it’s rage. Because it’s not rage.

It’s procedure. Cruelty as procedure.

The man screams once before a cloth is shoved into his mouth.

I stand there beside my father.

I don’t move. I don’t stop it. I don’t look away.

I watch, and with each second that passes, it becomes easier. Easier to watch a fingernail ripped from a finger. Easy to see a tooth pulled out with pliers as blood spurts.

When the man finally gives them what they want, Father turns to me.

“Now,” he says, “you understand the foundation.”

I stare at him. Then at the man. Then back at him.

“Yes,” I say.

Father rests a hand on my shoulder. “You’re not Samson,” he says. “You don’t need to enjoy brutality. You’re not Cain. You don’t enjoy being vicious. You’re the shield. You keep the respectable face intact while the rest of us do what must be done.”

The man in the chair wheezes behind him.

I nod. I’m barely nineteen, but I’ve known my place in the family for a while now.

The forest smells like damp earth and death.

I drive the shovel into the ground and feel the impact up my arms, through my shoulders, into the base of my skull.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Dirt scatters over the chest.

Hazel is gone, swallowed by the deeper woods after giving me half a truth and leaving the rest lodged beneath my ribs.

A half-brother.

A child my father made.

A child Hazel says she no longer has.