“You’re a poet, Milo,” Ezra said as he stared down at some rock he’d pulled out of the drawer. “You look like a thug with all your tats, and like you belong with the rest of us thanks to that angelic face… but you’re a poet. We would not have liked each other when we were younger.”
“We didn’t,” I pointed out. “You and Adam were very intent on kicking my ass that first time we met.”
His frown passed with a hint of fresh laughter. “Yeah, that didn’t work out so well for us.”
“Live and learn. Live and learn. I don’t think you’re such an ass now. I think you can be. I think you’re a lot more than your money and your position in society—because neither of those things makes you happy.”
The dark look on his face redoubled. “I don’t know who I am without those things. I’ve spent my whole life disappointing my father and worrying my mother. Nothing I did ever seemed to be enough.” He shook his head, closing his fingers around the stone before looking at me.
“Fuck ‘em,” I said without missing a beat. “Shitty parents don’t get the right to judge us. They had their opportunity. They failed. Not you.” I shrugged. “Julius King is a walking, talking, piece of shit that thinks he hung the damn moon when all I will ever see is the man who walked out on my mother and baby sister. A man who wanted to punish me because I chose them over him. I don’t give a rat’s ass what he thinks about me.”
“I wish it was that easy,” Ezra admitted. “I wish…fuck, I don’t know what I wish any more.”
“Yeah you do, you’re just afraid to look at the good stuff and see that it is good. You’re braced for it to go bad. You’re waiting for Mayhem and Adam to cut you loose. Or for me and Bodhi to kick you to the curb because you screw up. You’re convinced you’re going to—and I don’t disagree. You’ll fuck up.”
Shock stamped its way across his face.
“But here’s the thing, cousin,” I said, emphasizing that last word and punching it up. “Real family? They don’t walk away because you fuck up. They don’t let you chase them away. They might kick your ass, and they will definitely slap you upside the head if you take too long to get your head out of your own ass, but they don’t abandon you.”
I checked the time. It seemed a century and yet it hadn’t been more than seven minutes since we came upstairs.
“You mean that,” Ezra said, almost bewildered.
“I do. I told you once, I’ll never let you hurt Mayhem. You’ve treated her badly, but you’ve also made up for it. You chose to suffer rather than let her get hurt. That matters. But you’ve also been hurt and it scared her. Scared Adam. That means you get to live with everyone being a little overprotective for a while.”
“How long’s a while?” He pocketed the rock then emptied the last few items from that drawer into his bag before he went to the dresser and popped out another secret hidey hole.
“Ten or fifteen years, I would imagine.” The droll delivery pulled a real laugh from him. “Anyway, what were you saying earlier about asking me?” I hadn’t forgotten.
“The house—Harrows Park. Technically, it should be part yours and Em’s too. I mean, if my grandfather had ever claimed King beyond the private fund he gave him.”
Wait… “Private fund?”
“Fuck, I knew I’d forgotten to tell you. I found out about it in some of Dad’s old papers. Grandfather paid off King’s mother, she was his mistress for years but he refused to acknowledge him. Just paid for everything.” He zipped up the bag and slung it over his shoulder. “After he died, he left a codicil in his will that said if King were ever to sue for his name, he would lose everything. Every dime. Pretty ruthless. But King and Dad met at some point and became… friends I guess.
“At least until some other guy in the old Bay Ridge Royals chased King off. He was pretty vicious about it. So then King disappeared for a few years…and I guess he came back at the right time, Dad needed the help. King could do things he couldn’t and well… you know how it goes.”
Yeah, I did.
“Anyway, the house, the land—all of it. It should rightfully be half yours, half Em’s…” He looked around the room. “There’s actually some nice stuff, I suppose. The best art pieces are down in the vaults below, so not too worried about losing them and Dad’s taste was pretty shitty.”
“I really don’t care about the house. I don’t need some giant ass palace or pseudo mausoleum.” Not that I’d tell Adam that, but the Reed place felt more like a crypt than a mansion. Lainey’s grandfather’s place had lots of personality but I was pretty sure that was Lainey and Leopold.
“You really don’t care,” Ezra said, amazement creeping into his voice.
“Nope,” I said. “I’ll earn my keep and do my work. This place? It’s more a house of horrors for you. So burn it down, sell it, demolish it—and build something new in its place. But do what you need to do to heal.”
“You do cousin real well,” Ezra said after a minute. “Nicky says I suck at it, but I’m gonna get better.”
“You’re fine,” I said. “Now let’s go, we’re going to be late and make Mayhem worry.”
“She wants to know how to burn a house down and get rid of a corpse,” Ezra actually chuckled at the end of that sentence. “Is that as attractive to you as it is to me? Or am I just warped?”
“Oh, you’re warped,” I assured him. “But it’s really fucking attractive too.”
Some of the weight seemed to leave him as we walked out of the bedroom and then the suite. He was abandoning a childhood that had abandoned him a long time before.
Frankly, it was a damn good thing. Burning this shit down felt right.
Chapter
Eleven
LAINEY
The fire they set at Harrows Park had been incredible. The smoke was visible for miles around. The storm of flames swept through the marbled halls consuming everything in its path…
The unfortunate fate of some of the staff as well as the “master” of the house would take a few hours to be discovered. We didn’t hide from the fire department and the police when they arrived—though it took them far more time than I expected to get there.
Maybe they weren’t fans of Wallace either. Everything stank of smoke. It was in my hair and my clothes. It coated everything. The heat from the fire damaged the glass, scorched the stone, and there was a collapse from farther inside.
The crews stopped trying to save the house and focused on containment. Bodhi had wrapped his coat around me and I leaned into Milo as we all stood there, watching it burn.
I suppose we could have left earlier, yet none of us had made the move to leave. Ezra stared at the mansion as it burned. Harrows Park, even if any of the structure was left, would need to be demolished afterwards.
There was no saving the main building from the flames consuming it. The greed with which the fire acted, mirrored the home’s former master. It had become a funerary pyre of sorts. For Ezra, we could stand here and be witnesses.
