She felt drawn.
Compelled.
Curious in a way that wrapped her heart in a bow of despair.
She peeked around the corner.
The boy was there with another who looked almost identical to him.
Only maybe a little bit younger.
The younger boy was stuffing that sandwich in his mouth and crying at the same time, groaning as he devoured it, as if it’d been weeks since he’d eaten.
Everything inside her clenched in sympathy as the pieces snapped together.
That was the same second the older boy snapped those copper eyes her direction.
Shackling her to the spot.
Glaring with that same hatred and shame. Darkening with the dare. Sure she was going to run and tell.
Her ribs clamped down painfully, and she blinked at him, wishing her mouth would work, knowing she wouldn’t know what to say anyway.
Eight
Jace
“You went over there after I told you to lie low?” Mack scowled at me as he slammed a stack of papers onto the desk and flung himself into the chair beside me where we were meeting at Ian’s office.
My brother Ian laughed and rocked back in his executive rocker, taking a pull from the tumbler he’d just poured a finger of whiskey into. “You didn’t actually think he was going to listen to you, did you?”
I shot a glare at my brother. Thanks a lot, asshole. Thought we always had the other’s back?
Ian’s brown hair was styled impeccably, face clean-shaven, sleeves of his button-down rolled up his forearms, exposing the ink he normally kept hidden beneath his suit.
My brother, who was just eleven months younger than me, was a dichotomy of rough and smooth. Sharp tongue and charming words. He could be the guy next door if it weren’t for that quiet layer of intimidation that was scary as fuck.
I guessed he’d learned from the best.
“And you knew this how?” I asked, voice dry as I sipped from my own glass of whiskey, looking from Ian back to Mack.
“My job is to know who’s going onto her property, wouldn’t you think?” Mack demanded.
I gave a short shrug. “Didn’t come here to sit on my damned hands.”
“I’m pretty sure Jace here has all kinds of good ideas for his hands.” This from Ian, that punk.
“I’m helping her with the house. No secret the place has become a fucking shithole. Falling down around her. Plus, I can keep an eye on things. It’s a win-win.”
I said it like it didn’t matter all that much.
Like going there in the middle of the night last night hadn’t been one of the hardest things I’d ever done. And still, it’d felt like instinct. Breathing. So goddamned natural there was no place else I could have gone.
I’d basically stuck around all night, leaving only long enough to go pick up the supplies I’d needed.
“A win-win for who?” Mack raised a brow.
“Her. You. That kid.” Nearly choked on the last.
“And what about you?” Concern had made its way into Mack’s voice.
“Doesn’t matter what I feel. Owe them.”
I deserved every punishment and penalty coming my way.
“That so?”
No doubt, Mack worried I was going to go over the deep end. Get myself into trouble and drag him right into it with me.
“Yup.”
Mack shook his head, and Ian laughed under his breath, words cynical. “Well, aren’t you a regular humanitarian. You should start a charity in your name.”
He took another sip, muttering under his breath, “God knows, you’ve been giving all your dough to lowlifes for all these years.”
A growl clanged in my chest. “Don’t,” I warned.
When my brother and I had moved into town during my senior year in high school, we’d met Mack, who’d been drawn to us. It was like he’d seen the same thing in himself reflected back. My best friend had seen as much trouble as Ian and I had growing up, begging and fighting to survive.
Mack had pulled himself out of the poverty. Out of the depravity. Worked his ass off until he had detective tacked to the front of his name, wanting to change the world he’d come from.
Ian and I had harnessed all that bitterness and anger from our youth, too. Made something of ourselves.
Though we’d done it differently.
Against every odd, I’d clawed my fucking way to the top, building an empire so no one could ever hurt us again, doing everything I had to do in order to put my brother through school so his life wouldn’t be set to repeat.
So he could have something better.
When we were kids, we’d made dumpster diving a family sport, scrounging whatever food we could steal or find.
Lucky to have a roof over our heads, even though the places were infested with rats and littered with garbage and our mother was a fucking waste, rotting away with all that poison leaking into her veins.
Ian had been the one who’d found our mother when she’d finally taken it too far. When her body had finally given up after the years of abuse she’d put it through.