WYATT
I knew exactly when it happened…
When the monster inside of me woke up.
I was different from my siblings. I’d always known that. I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew I was different from them. Whether or not they would admit it, Ethan and Dona were the real twins in our family. Yes, Dona and I were close. In fact, there were times when I had a feeling she needed me or she’d have a feeling I needed her—twin telepathy, as it’s called. But at the end of the day, no matter how close I was to her, in my mind, Dona was my sister, but she was Ethan’s twin…not mine. The reason I’d never tell her that was the same reason I knew I was different.
Ethan and Dona were children of Machiavelli, masters of manipulation, champions of cunning thoughts and actions. While I knew how to manipulate and on occasion was cunning…I hated it. They loved deceiving people, loved watching as people fell into their traps. Like the old Greek gods, they found amusement in watching people come to tragic ends. They were the eye of the storm; I was a chaos monster. Like he did with my brother, my father gave me The Prince to read as boy. Out of respect for him I read it, but once I finished, I chucked it out of the window, along with The Art of War, The 48 Laws of Power, Crime and Punishment. The list of books that had been tossed to the sky from my window before plummeting back to earth never to enter my room again was enough to fill a small library.
Why?
Too many fucking words.
And I did not mean that in the Neanderthal “I do not like reading,” sense, but in the “why the hell are there so many goddamn books on power?” sense. Why? It has always been simple to me. People want to do whatever the fuck they want to do, but can’t because they fear retaliation, so they seek a position that allows them to do just that…a position that allows them to fuck others and never get fucked over in return. It was for that reason Ethan and Dona plotted and schemed…I, on the other hand, did not like it, didn’t see the world like that.
Yes, like everyone else, whether they admitted it or not, I liked power.
And yes, I not only wanted to do whatever the fuck I wanted, but also always did whatever I wanted because, unlike other people, I did not fear retaliation; I welcomed it.
When I was younger my parents, my siblings, and even I thought there was this softness in me…that the reason I didn’t connect to power or manipulation like Ethan and Dona did was because I was kind, or merciful. In my family, that was akin to being born with a tail. So I worked hard, I pushed myself, all to prove I was just as ruthless as my brother and sister…until one day, I realized I wasn’t kind. I wasn’t merciful.
I was fucking bored with it.
Why fight people who can’t fight back?
Why manipulate people who could never do the same to me?
Those thoughts came to me when I was sixteen because that was the first time I’d ever fought a real opponent…a real chaos monster like me.
My father.
WYATT – AGE SIXTEEN
His fist collided with my nose so hard the blood came down like a broken faucet, and when I stumbled, reaching up to stop it, his foot collided with my chest. I lay on the ground with him standing over me as he kicked me…all the while screaming down at me.
“How much longer are you going to be such a little bitch?!”
I’d never heard such rage in his voice, and in that moment, I felt it. It was stronger than his boot in my rib. It sent chills down my back…it was fear. I heard someone call out to him, and he stopped, but not before bending down, grabbing me by the hair, lifting my head so he could see my bloody face.
“Your weakness will get your siblings killed one day. If your mother was alive, she’d be ashamed of you.” He steered his green eyes on me, glaring down in frustration and anger.
Tasting the blood on my face, I smiled back at him and said, “Are you trying to provoke me?”
Before he could answer, I spit the blood onto his face. Breaking out of his grasp, rushing him, charging him to the ground, pinning him under me, I punched over and over again. He raised his arms, but couldn’t block me, so he took it. And the more he took, the harder I tried to rail on him, until I suddenly felt arms around me, pulling me off him and throwing me to the ropes.
“Wyatt!”
Blinking, I saw Ethan standing in front of me, staring wide-eyed. My legs shook a little, but I managed to stand straighter. Ignoring him, I looked around him to my father, who now stood with his back turned to us, fixing the tape on his arms.
“Mom would be ashamed of me? What about you? Since she died, you’ve walked around like a kicked dog—”
“Wyatt, enough!” Ethan hollered at me as I laughed.
“Ethan,” my father said, standing up straighter, rolling out his arms as he turned to face us. “If you ever interrupt your brother and I again, I’ll break your arms and legs before tossing you out of the ring myself. Am I clear?”
The stunned look on Ethan’s face, how his green eyes widened while father’s only got calmer, deadlier, just brought me so much joy. I couldn’t help the grin on my face.
“He’s interrupting still, old man. Why don’t you break one leg and arm now so he gets the picture?” I asked, not realizing at first that I was hopping in place, more than ready, until I saw my father lift his fist up.
“You worry about yourself.”
“I have nothing to worry about,” I replied.
He tried to hide it, tried to be cold, but I saw it, the small grin on his face. And I didn’t care whether Ethan was in the ring. I charged him…ready to kill him…and he charged me, ready to do the same damn thing.
I wasn’t a kid anymore.
I wasn’t even his son anymore.
I was just a motherfucker in his ring.
We fought till the sun began to set. Blood, sweat, and saliva on each other’s fists; the more I hit, the stronger he seemed to get, the more he punched back. Grabbing my head, locking it into his arm, he squeezed, choking the air out of me…
“So this is where your monster lives, huh?” he laughed right into my ear as I tried to elbow into him. But he just held on to me tighter.
“I’m going to kill you!” I sneered at him through the pain.
“You can try…but you’ll need to get in line, son. When I’m done killing those in front of you, we can try again!” he replied as my vision started to blur. My legs went numb, and suddenly I was on my back, gasping for air. He crouched down beside me, blocking the light from my eyes. I saw double of him as he spoke down to me. “You think because you are my son that I will not kill you…you are wrong.”
“Rule 1…” I managed to say, gasping for breath.
“You kill for family. You die for family because you can’t trust anyone else,” he recited back to me. “What about it?”
“We don’t kill family…you’re bluffing…”
He huffed as if he were going to laugh. “None of the rules say you can’t kill family. Rule 15 makes it clear—”
“If you betray the—”
“Being weak is a betrayal,” he snapped at me. “Being stupid is a betrayal. If it comes down to you over your siblings…my business…I won’t choose you.” He stood up straighter, walking to the edge of the ring. Pietro lifted the ropes for him to step out.
“Would you have chosen Mom?” I asked, laughing and placing my hand over my stomach, slowly sitting up from the mat. I watched as he paused a few feet from the door. “I call bullshit. Either bullshit on you killing me for the family’s sake…or bullshit on you loving Mom so damn much.”
“One day, Wyatt…you will learn…chaos for chaos’ sake is just brokenness.”
What? “Which dead philosopher did you steal that from?”
He didn’t bother saying any more than that. I wish I could have seen his face. He just kept walking forward, got on the elevator and left only Ethan and me around the ring.
“You’re a fucking idiot.” Ethan said while stepping into the ring. I tried to get up from the ground. All of me hurt, worst of all my legs, and I stumbled forward, Ethan caught me, lifting my arm over his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” I said even though I didn’t have any strength left to move away from him.
“You’re a fucking idiot is what you are,” he muttered again, moving to sit me in the corner of the ring.
“I heard you the first time!—Ugh!” Gritting my teeth, I held on to my side, trying to fight back the pain.
“Biggest fucking idiot I’ve ever met,” Ethan said one more time, handing me a water bottle.
“I think you might be malfunctioning…run back to Dad so he can reprogram you to kiss his ass like a good little solider,” I snapped, snatching the bottle from his hand and drinking.
Just like my father, he didn’t react, just shook his head. “What good comes out of going against him? Of provoking him by bringing up Mom?”
For a smartass, he was such a dumbass sometimes.
“Why don’t you provoke him? Why don’t you push back?” I asked.
He frowned. “I would if he was wrong! Don’t you see—”
“No, I don’t see! I’m told. This or that. Now I want to see…I want to see if he’ll keep to his word…if he’ll really kill me.” I grinned up at Ethan before splashing the rest of the water on my face.
“Wyatt,” he said in his warning voice…the one he used on the fucking guards.
Rising back up to my feet…without him…I placed my hands on his shoulders. “Big brother…it’s no fun working inside the rules. Dad might be right…or maybe…just maybe even he doesn’t know what he’d do.”
“So your plan is what? Cause chaos until he kills you?”
“Want to take bets?” I grinned so wide my cheeks hurt.
Ethan shook me off his shoulder, moving away from me, but not before saying, “Dead men don’t pay.”
“Fuck, you are annoying.” But I wasn’t going to ruin this. If our father couldn’t kill me…that meant no one could…this was going to be fun.
Let the games begin…
WYATT – NOW
Let the games begin. That’s what I thought. That’s how I saw all of this…as a game. And like all gamers, I only wanted to fight the best. I wanted a challenge; I wanted to stand on the edge of danger. I was a child…I didn’t see what my father…what my brother saw. What I really wanted was to fight death. I was angry. I was, as my father said, broken. And I wanted to fight the thing that broke me—death. My mother’s death. In my mind, my father was the only thing that seemed close enough to that. Maybe that’s why, not even three months from that day, death came to show me it was bigger than even my father…that it didn’t care what I wanted and what I felt. It took what it wanted when it wanted. Mother’s death broke me; my father’s death scared me. His death proved I was weak. I couldn’t win. I would never win…. not like that. That’s the real reason I became a doctor. I didn’t give a shit about other people. This wasn’t about other people. It was about me and death, me stealing victory out of its hands. In all honestly, I didn’t even see the people in between.
“Sir…Sir?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Greyson, who stood in front of my closet door. Again, he repeated, “Forgive me, sir, I knocked a few times and got no answer.”
I stared for a few seconds, still baffled by how he called me sir. Without sarcasm or annoyance, but with respect.
“It’s fine. What is it?” I asked, as I clasped the button at my wrist.
He lifted a file, an old-school yellow folder with far too much paper in it. “The boss has paperwork to sign but…”
“But?” I questioned, grabbing my suit jacket off the hanger and slipping it on, adjusting the shoulders. He just looked at me like I was supposed to read his bloody mind. Then again, only an idiot wouldn’t know what he was thinking. He was thinking how in the hell was he supposed to go see his boss, my brother, and talk about work as if the man hadn’t only just witnessed his wife’s murder…it had barely been one full day. It was only logical that he would think that. It was what any logical person would think. However, my family made it a habit not to think like everyone else. As my father would say, to rule over the sheep, you can’t be among the sheep. And because my mother got a kick out of proving my father wrong, she would say of course you could, as long as the sheep didn’t realize you were a wolf.
Dear God, I’m mentally quoting my parents now…
“Sir...?”
“Ugh…This shit is going to get annoying really quick,” I grumbled while walking over to him and taking the file, looking him dead in the eyes. “Greyson, how long have you known my brother?”
“Almost twelve years now…”
“So why the fuck are you acting like a virgin in front of me?” Taking the file, I smacked the side of his head. “No wonder Ethan thinks he’s a damn god. I would too with how easy it is to fool you people.”
His eyebrows came together, and I’m was positive that there were little men in his head running around going error, error cannot compute. “Let me help you think before you give yourself an aneurysm…. What do they call my brother?”
Silence. He didn’t form a reply.
I waved my hand slowly, hoping it would jump-start his mind. “But you and I both know who he truly is ….do you think that a woman he hasn’t even known for a half a year would change who he’s been for the last twenty-eight years? You truly think that it’s just a coincidence he married a woman related to the Flanagan brothers, giving him the perfect opportunity to go to Boston and take back what is his, destroy their whole entire family, and not even two weeks later she is murdered right in front of him…where he grieves for all the world to see…” I laughed, shaking my head at that. “The man had her cremated not even three hours later… There is no funeral… Dona is rushing back home… You all see him and think, ‘Oh, the lion must be licking his wounds’…not realizing he’s licking the blood off his palms. He used Ivy to get to the Flanagans…what makes you think he wouldn’t kill Ivy to get to his enemies, Greyson?” I saw the gears turning slowly in his head and went on, “Because I’m so kind, and Ethan has you working for me, I’ll give you this little piece of advice. It might save your life one day…stop thinking my brother is normal. Be afraid when you see him. But be mortified when you don’t.”
“Am I interrupting?”
I didn’t even bother looking back. I knew who it was. Grinning, I placed my arm around Greyson’s shoulder. It was impossible, but I could have sworn I felt his body temperature drop, forcing us to both turn around.
“If it isn’t the great Helen of Chicago.”
She glared like she usually did when I called her that, crossing her arms at me.
“Aww, doesn’t she look cute, Greyson? Like an angry miniature puppy!”
He didn’t say anything. “Greyson?”
“Huh? I’m sorry. What were you saying?” he replied, suddenly paying attention again.
Grinning, I shook my head and said, “Never mind, go on. I’ll get these to you momentarily.”
He nodded, and I watched as he left, his face soberer and paler than when he came in. It was only when the doors closed that the grin on my mouth dropped and I could finally take a deep breath, clenching my fist to stop from shaking.
“Everything you told him was a lie,” she signed with her hands to me, not even wanting to risk speaking. I stared into her brown eyes; they were just as tired as mine.
“Did you get it?” I signed back, ignoring her and grabbing my medical kit from my bedside. Inside it, I double-checked the syringe before outstretching my hand to her. It was a rhetorical question to avoid answering her question, or rather her statement…I knew she would get it, and sure enough, she held out the drugs for me. I reached to take the vials from her, but she clenched her hand into a fist, coming up closer to me and whispering harshly.
“What do you think he’ll do when he finds out you sedated him, cremated his wife without telling him, and also started a rumor that he killed her? Wyatt, are you insane?!”
“That medication needs to be kept cool. When you clench it like that, it heats up faster,” I snapped quietly back at her, once again outstretching my hand, waiting. Her nostrils flared, and with a clenched jaw, she handed the vials over.
“Thank you, this should be enough…”
“Wyatt!”
“No fucking shit, Helen!” I yelled at her before whispering again. “Yes, he’s going to be pissed! Yes, he’s going to be ready to murder me! Yes, to everything you said! Yes, you were right! … Are you fucking happy? Can you stop the moral condemnation now?”
“Moral condemnation?” She huffed before a bitter laugh escaped her lips. She took a step back from me, shaking her head. “And here I thought I was saving my cousin from being murdered by my other cousin and his grief. Sorry, I’m the idiot. Do whatever the fuck you want… thank you for finding your suits again. Now we can just throw in you the ground without making a big show of it.”
She turned to leave, but I grabbed onto her wrist to stop her. “Whether he kills me or not, I still deserve a little bit of a show at my funeral, don’t you think…living to twenty-six in this family isn’t easy.”
She turned back to me, the look of rage on her face hilarious, but I couldn’t find the strength to laugh. I could barely find the strength to do anything right then.
“Fine, I’ll have the church choir boys sing Dies irae for you.”
A small grin appeared on her lips as I pouted like a kicked dog. “I’m not sure which is crueler, the song choice or subjecting any human being to our church’s choir.”
“Says the former choir boy.”
And just like that I was waving the white flag. “I apologize, Helen, now please stop hitting below the belt?”
She chuckled, and we both fell into silence as I let go of her wrist to fill the syringes.
“My father called. He’s thinking of coming back…”
“Did you tell him what the definition of retirement is?” I asked, taping the syringes with my index finger.
“Wyatt…”
She froze as I turned to her, knowing better than anyone else how serious I was at this moment. “Tell him not to come back. Tell everybody not to come back until Ethan tells them to come back. That is how everyone helps. Ethan might forever hate me for what I did to Ivy. I didn’t let him say goodbye… She’ll have no funeral… Now I’m dragging his love for her through the mud. I knew all of that when I did it, and I would do it again. And Ethan wouldn’t stop me, nor will he ever deny the rumors. Why? Because his feelings mean nothing in comparison to our family name, to everything our parents and grandfather, and his father before him, built. It means nothing in comparison to what our mother sacrificed. You know as well as I do, the moment people out there think we are weak…think we are wounded…is the moment all of the guns and knives come out. I know my brother, Helen. I know for a fact that he cared about her. I didn’t want to drug him. But I couldn’t let people see him like that. He’s given everything to be the head of this family. I’m protecting him. And this is the only way I know how to let him grieve and still not destroy what he’s built.”
Her eyes were filled with tears, and she fought hard not cry as she asked, “So what are we going to do while he’s grieving then?”
“Be ruthless.”
Without another word to her, I grabbed my things and began walking to the door.