Page 167 of Adam
“You were just another unwanted kid they kept coddling like porcelain, while I had to grow up fast and clean up the blood behind you. I had to watch your back, hold your goddamn pieces together, while she tore me apart.” I point at my chest, my eyes going wild. “I protectedyourfucking sanity. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I didn’t want you to hate her like I did. I didn’t want you carryingmyscars.”
His eyes stay down. Either he’s too ashamed to face me, or he’s already picturing ways to put me in the ground.
“And then that bitch died,” I spit, pacing, unable stay still. “And Grayson just crawled right into you, wrapped himself around your grief like it was his new religion, and dragged you down with him.”
I laugh under my breath.
“He didn’t give a damn about me. Never did. Why would he? I wasn’t his precious little son like you were.”
“You’re being unfair. He took care of you,” he hisses.
“So I wouldn’t die out of misery while I was still underage? Bless his kindness.”
I step closer and grab his shoulders tightly.
“You got revenge. You wiped out the monsters that ruined you. I never will, because mine was my mother.” I swallow hard. “I spent years blaming myself, drowning in shame for something I had zero control over. I was a fucking kid. Her kid. And she never loved me the way a mother is supposed to.” My voice drops. “That’s what’s unfair.”
“Do you blame me?” he asks.
“For a long time, yeah,” I say, eyes locked on his. “You’re my brother, but you were the one who had her. Even if Atticus killed her, I blamed you, because she only ever cared about you.”
My voice cracks.
“She was your mother. To me, she was just a fucked-up woman who couldn’t love her own son no matter how much he begged for it.”
Judas stays quiet, watching, listening, hand dragging slowly across the stubble on his jaw.
I turn to him, almost amused. “Oh, she loved you, too. You were her son, after all.”
“What?” Cain snaps, his eyes darting between me and him.
Judas’s stare hardens, locking onto me. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“Good times,” I say with a grin. “Heard her once, sobbing to your dear old dad about how he raped her, too. And then you happened.”
Judas stiffens. “My father was her brother.”
I nod, unfazed. “Yeah. Same thing.” I clap once. “That makes us all brothers.”
Cain and Judas exchange glances—somewhere between trying to decide if I’m lying or if they should just kill me fordragging their sainted, fucked-up family name through the filth it was actually born in.
“Now that the truth’s out, and I’ve been the poor bastard carrying it alone all this time, I’ve got one question.”
I step forward, my grin twitching as I glare at them.
“Do you still wanna help me bury that sick fuck and save my girl?”
It’s been two days. Two long, crawling days with Cain and Katerina under this roof, breathing the same stale air.
Judas is gone. Probably ran off to chase ghosts or bury more of his secrets. I didn’t ask. I don’t care.
What eats at me is this silence, this stalling. We’re sitting ducks, and Adam just waits. He knows damn well my father’s aware of where we are.
He wants us to come. He’s baiting Adam like some twisted game, and Adam—the prideful, stubborn, arrogant bastard he is—won’t bite.
Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe he just wants my father to come here so he can play the martyr. So we wait in thissuffocating standoff between two monsters who’d rather watch each other rot than make the first move.
Adam barely talks to me anymore. He spends every waking hour lost in training, running himself into the ground like pain might make the silence easier to bear. He never says a word. He just keeps hitting the pads, kicking the bag, and shooting at targets.
