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“Felix!” The second I’m close enough, Tim tosses—literally fobs—the minutes-old baby into my arms, so my stomach heaves as I fumble to catch the child that is still slippery with its mother’s amniotic fluids.
He’s a boy—we already knew that—and tiny. Black hair, pink skin. Ten fingers, almond-shaped eyes, and long lashes.
I guess I expected he would cry at the loss of his mother’s touch, or at the subsequent jostling of being transferred from one man to another, but he merely sleeps in the crook of my arm, oblivious to his new life.
He’s the newest son of a don. The next in line for New York royalty, should Tim, Micah, Archer, and I fuck it all up. And he has no idea what he’s in for.
Swallowing, I look away from my baby brother and bring my gaze back to the expectant one of my father.
What?I want to ask.What the fuck do you want from me?
“You hold the child,” he bites out. “He cries at night, you get up and fix him.” Then he looks to Savvy’s father and clicks his fingers to get his guard moving. “Take her.”
“No!” Cato’s mother, the girl whose name I’ll never know, screams when the soldier tugs her forward. She wears an ugly gown, the kind folks wear in hospitals, but perhaps worst of all, she bleeds beneath it. Along her thighs and down to her ankles.
The harder she fights her captor’s hold, the more crimson falls from her mutilated body, creating a garish mud on the ground.
“No!” she cries, somehow strong again despite her ordeal today.
She angles for me. While Savannah’s father half-carries her one way, she leans the other, her arms outstretched for her baby and her eyes flooded with anguish. “???? beba!Beba!”
Savannah makes a sound of distress behind me. Her soft weeping, piercing my heart, despite her upset being nothing compared to that ofthis young woman who wants her child. Savvy sniffles, while the new mother roars. Savannah whimpers, while the new mother claws for freedom.
“Argh!You fuckin bitch,” Towers slams the girl with the back of his fist, knocking her to the ground and grabbing his arm where her nails pierced his skin.
The baby wakes and wails, as though he knows his mother hurts. Savannah sobs, the mother cries, and all along, Tim watches the chaos unfold with a smirk on his lips.
Some folks, people like Micah and Archer, prefer peace. They want calm. Quiet. They want predictability and smooth seas. Others, people like Timothy Malone the Second and sometimes me, thrive on chaos. Like the quiet gives us too much thinking time. Like a calm life allows us too much freedom to dwell on the fact we’re fucked in the head.
So instead of risking self-examination, we set things on fire and watch the show.
“Pick her up,” Tim orders.
He looks kinda like me and my brothers. We all have different mothers, but the Malone genes are strong. He passed the green eyes down to us all, and the black hair, like it’s somehow our personality. Broad shoulders. Long legs. Trim waists.
He made four sons—five, now that Cato is here—that resemble him and each other enough to know we’re family. But not so much that we could be mistaken for twins.
Or, well… quads?What’s the word for five?
Tim tilts his chin so Savannah’s father lifts the sobbing, bleeding woman and tosses her roughly over his shoulder. She squeals in pain, screaming when he bounces her up and a clot the size of my fist falls from between her legs, hitting the ground with a horrifyingsplat.
She pounds her fists to his back and kicks her legs out as he turns away to obey my father’s orders.
“Hold the child,” Tim repeats to me. “Follow us.” Then he glances to Savannah and looks her up and down the way a man looks at a woman.
The lift of his brow. The quirk of his lips as he works to hide his smile. His eyes glitter with something that makes my stomach ache, andhis hand folds around the handle of his weapon like he knows he’ll have to use it.
I step in front of Savvy, guarding her from his stare, but my movement only makes the monster’s lips curl higher.
Finally, he turns on his heel and clicks his fingers for his soldier to follow. “You know what to do, Antonio.”
“Yes, sir.”
Towers continues across the driveway, ten steps ahead of us, and makes his way toward the trees. The woman kicks and screams for freedom, but her fight grows quieter. Her face, deathly pale despite her position of upside-downness. Her breasts topple free of her gown, the flesh already swollen with milk she’ll never get to offer.
She won’t live beyond the hour.
Am I a man, really, if I let this happen?
