The heat from agony clings to my throat as I lean towards her, elbows meeting my knees, eyes drilling holes through her. Stunning woman. Cold as ice. She can’t see much right now. Her eyes are glassy, lost in the memory, in her dark truths, in her uncaring recall.
Loyalty is black and white.
My brows pinch at the sight of the woman who birthed me. A blunt pain hits my chest like a fist thrusting through my ribs to seize my beating heart—for not seeing her true colours before, not questioning her. She betrayed my father, hurt my brothers, and set the entire feud between Nerrock and Butcher into action. All the bad blood stems from her. A catalyst.
How much of my brothers’ trauma is because she couldn’t love them?
My mother sips her spiked whiskey sloppily, spilling some on her blouse, hardly noticing when the liquor seeps in, spreading through the white fabric like her lies.
“Did you enjoy hurting your sons?” I finally break the stillness; my voice is deeper and coarse, as though the whiskey was mixed with gravel. It’s the anguish. My hand forced. “Did you enjoy it or are you ashamed?”
“Ashamed?” She slurs. “I was disciplining them as best I could. They were wild. Horrible to me. It-it- was all on me…” She trails off, and then bounces back in. “They-they werebadseeds. Bad kids. Their father isbadtoo—”
I nod at Que, and he leaves the room while she continues to talk and moan. I stare at her in her mumbling, slack state, disappearing for a moment into darkness.
As I consider her closely, panning my gaze over the expensiveCosa Nostrabought jewellery and the flawlessly applied makeup, she slips further into a mindless place. When her body slumps to the side, her spine slides down awkwardly.
I want to excuse you, Mother.
Dammit, she is my blood—a Butcher.
I want to pardon her…
The thing about loyalty is that it is black and white. You are either loyal or you are not.
I rise to my full height.
Rounding the table in front of us, I approach her. I grip the sofa on either side of her body, hovering close. She’s asleep. Soundless. Peaceful. And for a moment she looks harmless, and I despise her even more for her spite in this condition than when she is spitting hatred. Despise her stunning features that always confused me, that once made me hopeful that deep down beneath the layers, she may be vulnerable.
I understand, Mother.
I sweep a blonde hair from her face.You’re a woman trapped in a man’s world, overlooked, and undervalued, choked by the neglect of misogyny, and left to decay. Your sense of the Cosa Nostra, of loyalty, of love, has decayed with you, Mother.
There is no coming back.
Ican’t trust you.
That is the bottom line.
“Does her presence scare you,little deer?”
“I don’t want her anywhere near us.”
With that recall,I lift her feet to gently rest on the sofa, positioning her comfortably as though she were merely asleep. Not drugged by her son. Not drunk.
Then I retrieve the black pillow set perfectly into a diamond by her head and place it over her face, pressing down hard. No retaliation. No twitching. No response. The drugs have snatched all the fight from her limbs.
Staring emptily at the dark fabric over her face, I find myself transported back to that hospital room from more than a decade ago. Feel darkness take over. Sense hot tears spill down my face. Hate them.
“Butchers don’t cry.”
I press down on the pillow.
“Bronson was such a wimp.”
I know the truth.
“You have always looked at me as though you wanted to protect me from this entire world.”