Chapter 1
RAFA
I pounded the bag until my knuckles were raw and drops of blood were rising out of my pores. It was something I’d been doing since I was a teenager, to release the crippling stress we’d grown up under. Oftentimes it felt like the only way to control the darkness living inside me. The pain would quiet it all, it was one of the only ways I could find peace.
When I was younger I used to get in fights on the playground and beat the shit out of other kids. Usually, they were kids who deserved it, the bullies, the mean kids or the ones who picked fights with the underdogs. The rage got so bad, that when I was seventeen, I went too far and got into a street fight that almost paralyzed my opponent. I probably would’ve gone to jail if it wasn’t for my brothers. Gabe was cool headed and knew how to talk his way out of anything, but it was after that particular fight he decided to buy me a punching bag and boxing gloves to try to channel my anger into something positive and constructive. Gabriel and Malik showed up every single time to bail me out when I failed as a kid. I can’t even imagine what would have happened to me without my older brothers there to guide me in the right direction. Sure, Gabe and Malik knew how to play dirty, we all did, but we also knew instinctively to stay away from the dark side. We’d been born into dysfunction, poverty, and strife and we were dedicated to making sure that any kids we could free from the same fate we’d been handed, would be our destiny and our way of getting back at our tormentors. Justice might never have been served to the men who abused us, but if we could even out the playing field for any kid being abused, then that was redemption enough.
Because of my anger issues, my eldest brother, Gabriel had tried getting me into therapy for years, but I never took to spilling my guts to strangers. They’d ask me questions and I’d just sit there silently staring at whatever wall was in front of me with my hands burning to hit, and pummel something into submission. I never hit any of the therapists Gabe painstakingly found for me, but I wasn’t far from lashing out at whoever tried to talk to me.
“You,” a familiar voice said from behind me, “Done!” I turned to see my brother leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed across his chest, with a cocky smile on his face. He pointed two fingers at me and threw his thumb back gesturing toward the shower. Some days, I wanted to beat that smugness right off his face, but then I realized if it weren’t for him, Mal and I would have been raised by the system with no sense of belonging or any real family to speak of.
I sat down at the bench, grabbed the towel, and started to wipe the sweat from my neck and face
“I suppose I will, for now.”
“You gonna just ignore the blood?” Maverick nodded his head, his eyes zoned in on my hand. “Don’t get an infection.”
“It’s not that bad, I ain’t too worried about it.”
“It’s hard to use a keyboard when your fingers all break and then fall off from gangrene. Those hands are the second most valuable body part in this family.”
“After your dick?”
Maverick stifled a laugh.
“After your brain, kid.”
Maverick, shifted from the doorframe, walked over to me and sat down. He didn’t push me on my knuckles, I knew that he wanted to say more but he also knew better. I didn’t like talking about my personal emotional shit and my brothers didn’t push me. It probably wasn’t the healthiest, but it was how we survived, how I got through the day-to-day in the real world.
“Sophie’s making dinner, you gonna eat with us?”
“Nah, I’m gonna head back up to Lamoille and give Malik a hand.”
Maverick clapped me in the back, forcing my head to shoot up to look at him. Not many people can clap me, even in jest and keep their body parts intact, but Mav was one of the few people I felt safe around, “You know you don’t have to, right? No one's kicking you out of here.”
“I know, brother,” I said, moving away from Mav and tossing a white t-shirt over my head. “I just need a break from you and your ol’ lady.” Maverick and Sophie were still pretty new, they didn’t need me in their space cramping their style. Gabriel wanted to play family now that he’d settled down. I suspected he wanted a redo, a second chance to save me from my childhood.
“Bruh, remember that hacker I’ve been tracking the last few years?.”