At this point, I had gone still, my nerves scratching at my bones. Even though I had an idea of what Khane was about to reveal, it didn’t relieve the tension that his words had built within me.
“My father shoved Arjen out of the way and promised him a month in the vault for interfering. His gaze had never broken away from me. “Pick one,” he barked at my face. I pointed to my left eye, knowing that my right was dominant. I knew that, if I survived, I would need it more.”
I inhaled deeply as my arms tightened around Khane and my tears started to seep out.
“More determined spikes of fear hit me when I saw the blade he extracted. Five men were witness to the barbaric event, but none stopped my father’s cruel punishment.”
I shook my head, picturing the scene like I was there, not realizing I was gripping Khane in a hug, so tight he had to ease me back a bit before kissing my forehead.
“With the blade pointed at my face, I begged my father. The tears streaming down my face made him angrier because he saw weakness. He didn’t see a thirteen-year-old kid begging to keep his eye. I don’t even think he saw me as his son. I pleaded like I never had before, my hands outstretched, asking for mercy. Arjen intervened for me too. “Father, it was my fault. I didn’t secure the man properly,” he told him, lying to help me. My brother ran the risk of getting the same punishment and more time in the vault for interrupting. He knew as well as I did that our father had made his choice long before we had entered that basement.”
This bit of information caused me to lift a brow. I didn’t understand how he was so relaxed, talking about something so traumatic.
“My father had never wanted me. I was the bastard son. The son he mistakenly created when he decided to be careless when cheating on his wife. When my mother could no longer take care of me, he saw an opportunity to gain another soldier, so he took me. My stepmother hated me because I was a constant reminder of my father’s betrayal. My mother was Mexican, so I was called some colorful names by my father and stepmother. When I would slip and speak Spanish, he would punish me, not even wanting me to speak a language I had naturally inherited. When my stepmother would put me out of the house and make me sleep on the back porch, Arjen would always sneak out of the house, stay with me, and sneak back into the house in the mornings.”
A pang of guilt hit me as I started to realize how much Arjen and Khane loved each other, and why Khane had fought so hard to protect his allegiance to his brother.
“I was the subject of many of my father and stepmother’s fights. One fight was so brutal she ended up having a brain aneurysm. She never recovered and died hating me. Of course, I was to blame for her death, so our father punished me every chance he got. I did everything he asked, but none of it mattered. When he made me pick an eye that day, it was the last day I cried. I was finally getting the punishment he had been angling to give me since the day I had shown up on his doorstep as a toddler.”
It must have been my accelerated breathing that caused him to draw me tighter into the comfort of his embrace.
“My father never confirmed it, but I’m certain he killed my mother. She had been his maid and when he found out she was pregnant, he fired her and put her out on the streets with no place to go. Based on conversations I’d overheard, I believed he ordered her execution the night she dropped me off. He was making sure she could never come back to reclaim me.”
His father sounded like a real basket-case. I couldn’t imagine the horror he faced growing up, which made me see him in a new light. His upbringing could have turned him into the monster he allowed the world to see him as. His reputation was the animal he had been groomed to be. However, I knew he was so much more.
“No amount of yelling or screaming on my part deterred my father from the decision he had already made. His strike was quick, the jagged pain intense, and the gasp of the audience sharp. My legs gave out immediately, causing me to crumple to the floor. My hand covered the area I could no longer see from as blood oozed between my trembling fingers. Arjen was there with me, holding and shielding me from watching eyes, promising in my ear the whole time that he would find a way to make him pay.”
Was that a smirk I’d saw flash across his lips?
“We didn’t kill our father. He lives, caged, and tortured in his own version of hell. After that day, all we did was train harder, learn more, and kill any target put before us. It got to the point where our father started to show pride in us. He’d trained and educated us so well that he never saw us coming for him. We had secretly been planning his downfall for years, meticulously working to make sure no one suspected us so that we didn’t get caught.
“We fixed it so that he was caught in Russia with a kilo of cocaine and the bloody knife that had killed the son of a Russian mob boss in his possession. He is currently rotting away for the rest of his life in Petak Island Prison in White Lake, Russia, one of the worst prisons in the world. Petak is the Russian version of Alcatraz, so there are no visitors. It’s cold, isolated, dangerous, and dark. Beatings, deadly fighting, disease outbreak, overcrowding, and no contact with the outside world are a few of its highlights. He’s been there for over seven years now. We pay the guards to send us recordings of his misery and beatings. As a birthday gift one year, I received a recording of the stabbing that resulted in him losing his left eye.”
This time, a wicked grin formed on my lips.
“No one has enough reach to get him out, even if they knew he was in there. If he ever finds a way out, he will have to face the Russian mafia. He has attempted suicide twice, and although the prison treats the men worse than animals, they are adept at keeping them alive to prolong their suffering for as long as possible.”
“I love it when an evil villain gets his just desserts,” I stated, not realizing I had spoken out loud until Khane’s low chuckle sounded.
“After I lost most of the vision in my eye, Arjen and I grew even closer than we already were. I never knew if my eye could have been saved because I wasn’t allowed to see a doctor. I had to learn how to fight, shoot, and do everything with one eye. I had to train myself how to react from a different sight perspective. Arjen helped, and my determination not to be rendered useless made my father look at me with a little less hate in his eyes. It’s funny, but losing an eye made me stronger. Now, I see nothing but dark shadows and very little movement, but I have always accepted that it was gone.”
He was an amazing man. To go through all that he had and have so much care and compassion left within him was a testament to how strong-willed and mentally tough he was.
“At twenty-three, Arjen became one of the youngest bosses. We never told a soul where our father was. People speculated that he had gone missing in Russia, but no one has ever confirmed it.”
My fingertips flirted with the hairs of his bearded chin before I flitted my hand along his jawline and cupped it. “Your father was a miserable asshole that deserves the hell he lives in.” My words made him smile. The moment my gaze fell away and landed on his lips, we drew into each other until we came together and swirled in a delicate caress.
Was I ever going to be able to flush this remarkable man out of my system?