Brent walked into his office a little after lunch and found me curled up on his couch. He didn’t react at first, just closed the door and walked to his desk to lay down the notebook he’d been carrying. He sat on the edge of the cushion and laid his hand on my hip, a familiar gleam of affection dancing in his eyes.

“Want to talk about it?”

I shook my head.

He waited a heartbeat, then sighed. “Well, we had to sedate your friend down in the safe room. She became hysterical while I was talking to her and wouldn’t calm down. Dr. Noel came and gave her something, said she’d be out for twelve hours or so.”

“You should hear the things they’re saying about her at work.”

“I can imagine.” He got up and picked up a file from his desk and brought it back to me. “West had that messengered over this morning without any request from us.”

I sat up and opened it, discovering old paper records from a mental hospital in New Jersey. A woman named Violet Collingsworth had been admitted to the hospital at the age of twenty-one after a nervous breakdown. She was apparently pulled over by a cop for speeding. During the stop, she became belligerent, verbally attacking the cop, accusing him of wanting to sleep with her. She then got out of the car and proceeded to strip naked and tell him he could have her because everyone wanted her and they all took what they wanted eventually. During her stay in the hospital, it was revealed that she’d been brutally raped by a fellow student in college and had pressed charges, but the boy was never arrested because his parents were important alumni of the school so the dean had called in a few favors with the local cops.

The boy responsible was later found dead on the football field where he reportedly attacked Violet. It was ruled an overdose.

Violet’s breakdown took place on the first anniversary of the boy’s death.

“Is this the boy in the photograph over her bed?”

Brent nodded. “A photograph, by the way, that is now missing. The room has been cleaned, leaving no evidence that anything happened there.”

I found that hard to believe. But Violet had said…

“She said that would happen.”

Brent gestured toward the file. “She experienced hallucinations while she was in the hospital. It’s all documented in there.”

“He’s using her past to drive her insane.”

“He is. And it’s working. She was barely lucid while I was talking to her. She just babbled about cops and dead boys and things I didn’t understand.”

“I should talk to her.”

“Not now. She’s out cold.”

I handed the file back to him and stretched out on the couch, resting my hands behind my head. “Tell me about Mad Dog, Brent.”

He stood and carried the file back to his desk, taking his time straightening up the many piles that sat on his desk. Brent had never really liked computers. He could use one better than anyone I knew—he’d designed the system that kept this building secure—but when it came to day-to-day business, he preferred his notebooks and other physical things. Things he could hold and touch. It was a personality quirk that drove Jack crazy because he felt like Brent did this just to make things more difficult for him in the running of this place. But I loved it. It was what made Brent, Brent.

“Mad Dog is a dangerous group of criminals who interfered in Jack’s beef with another club and who harbored a sadistic ass who was targeting Rhonda’s girls. But all that’s over now.”

“Is it? Violet didn’t seem to think so.”

“Violet doesn’t know our business.”

“But she knows West better than any of us. And she was right about the bug in Jack’s office.”

“What, exactly, did she say about Mad Dog?”

“That they work for West. That you only pissed them off when you raided their clubhouse the other day.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. But we put more than half their club in jail, so I don’t think they’ll be an issue for a while.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Me too.”

He came back to sit on the edge of the couch beside me. I took his hand and touched the finger where he once wore his wedding ring. I couldn’t remember when he stopped wearing it. It was a double-edged sword because I wanted him to be happy, but I missed Madeline and Josie like a festering sore that refused to heal.

“I met Dane.”

His head came up a little and there was something in his eyes that reminded me of what Bo had said. I’m not sure it’s just a rebound.

“What did you think?”

“She’s smart. Strong.”

He grimaced a little. “Yeah.”

“She looks a little like Madeline.”

“Not as much as you think.”

I ran my finger over his again, touching that spot that still had the hint of a white circle on it.

“You care about her.”

“More than I ever expected to.”

“Do you think it’s going to turn into something?”

A ghost passed over his face. “I’d like it to. But…things happened the other night that I’m not sure she’s going to be able to get past. Things that have the power to break a person.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “We’re all broken to some degree, Remy. We all have ghosts that we have to find a way to live with. I have Madeline and Josie. She has this. But, hopefully, we’ll be able to find a way to happiness despite it all.”

I thought about Bo; about the things we’d said to each other this morning. I thought about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother and his aunts, both emotional and physical. There were so many bruises that were visible, but the ones that really festered were the ones we couldn’t see. There had to be a way to heal those ones, too.

“Can I ask you something?”

Brent, being the big brother he was, could read me like a book. He squeezed my hand lightly. “About Bo?”

“He doesn’t think he’s good enough for me.”

“No one’s good enough for you, Rem,” he said with a big smile. “But he’s as close as it gets.”

“Can you tell him that?”

Brent was quiet for a long moment, his eyes moving to the window that stood behind his desk. I thought for a moment that he wasn’t going to respond, afraid that I’d crossed some sort of line in his grief that I shouldn’t have. But when he focused on me again, his eyes were warm and full of affection.

“Bo loves you. I think he’s loved you longer than you’ve loved him, if that’s possible. I’ve watched him all these years, watched him struggle with the things his past did to him. It’s a lot to overcome, those things. Mom worked hard to help him see his way out of that nightmare, but there are some things you cannot do for someone, things he has to find his way out of alone. You just have to be patient.”

“I’ve been patient. For fifteen years I’ve been patient.”

“If you really want it to work, you’ll be patient for another fifteen if that’s what it takes.”

“He thinks he doesn’t deserve any of us. That we’re too good for him.”

Brent inclined his head slightly. “That makes me sad. He’s as much my brother as Jack or Gentry or Aiden.”

“I know. And he knows, too. He just can’t admit it to himself.” I closed my eyes and sighed. “Love is too complicated for me.”

Brent laughed. “Love is too complicated for everyone.” He took my hand and held it sweetly between both of his. “He’ll come around, sis. I don’t see how anyone could not fall in love with you.”

I peeked at him as I squeezed his hand. “Ditto, big brother.”

The amusement left his eyes and he sighed. “I hope so.”

“It’s true. Whatever happened last night, whatever she’s going through, it won’t change how she feels about you. And if you look like this when you talk about her…I don’t see how she couldn’t care about you.”

“Okay, enough of this stuff,” he said, pulling away from me and standing, charging around his desk as he rubbed at his face. “Go away. I have work to do.”

“Yes, sir!” I snapped a little salute as I stood and he laughed, tossing a crumpled-up piece of paper at me. I ducked and jumped out of the door before he could throw another. When I turned, his secretary was sitting at her little desk, a slight smile on her lips.

“Big brothers.”

She nodded. “I have three.”

“Then you know.” I walked off, trying to act like an adult. It was kind of hard.

*

The safe room is hidden behind a panel in the ground floor elevator. I rode it down and punched in my code—a jumbled version of my birthdate. We all had a code that would allow the door to open for us (me, Jack, Brent, Bo, Aiden, and Gentry) that was based on our birthdate so that we could access this area on our own at a time of danger. Then I checked my phone for the latest code on the second door at the end of the first corridor. Jack was always changing the codes and the system automatically sent a coded email to our accounts letting us know what it was, but it always took me a second to decipher it. I would never make a very successful spy.

Violet was asleep in the last room on the left side of the hidden apartment, sleeping on her side on the big bed. I stood just inside the doorway watching her for a moment, wondering what was going on inside her head right now. I hoped the sedation helped calm her and didn’t just trap her in the nightmare of her mind.

After satisfying myself that she was safe, I walked down the corridor, peeking inside each of the rooms. I could almost hear Jack’s voice in my ears, talking about his plan for this place. It was all just a fantasy he was creating for us the night we were first all together after Dad died.

“We’ll have a room for everyone in this room—Gentry, Aiden, Brent and Madeline, Bo and Remy, me—so that if the worst happened, if the zombie apocalypse began—”

“It’d be more realistic to say the second coming of the devil,” Gentry cut in.

Jack laughed, swallowing a healthy slug of his bourbon. “Brilliant!”

“We’d have to have a way to monitor what was happening outside the room,” Brent announced.

“Not you, too!” Madeline groaned.

“Well, if we’re going to play this game, we ought to do it right.”

Everyone laughed at the face she made at him. Even Brent. Then he leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose, making her melt right there beside him. I glanced at Bo as she did, wondering what he was thinking. I caught him watching me, but then he turned away, pretending to be deeply interested in the label on his beer.

“We could set up a computer system, monitors, things that would display what the security cameras outside show.”

“Not just security cameras,” Brent said. “We could run the entire building’s security system through that room, including any and all electronics. We’d want to control the air conditioning system, the air circulation, the water, the cameras…everything.”

Jack nodded, getting on board quickly. “We’d want to be able to take care of any threat to the building from that one room.”

“You guys are crazy,” Aiden said, getting up to leave the room. “Dad just killed himself and you’re talking about a fucking zombie apocalypse. Have a little respect, why don’t you?”

That silenced Jack for all of five seconds.

“And we’d need enough food to last for a few weeks, just in case…”

That was how we grieved. We drank. We talked. We spent time together. And then five days later, we all invested our money into a dream that never should have been successful, but somehow was. And that room…here it was, a reality. A sort of living memorial to our dad.

There was a picture of our parents hanging in a corner of the supply room. I thought it should have had a plaque and a constant light on it, a thing of true honor. Brent had thought it should at least be out in the hallway. But Jack insisted this was more appropriate. Mom and Dad watching over us, watching us together in their own little bubble of love, watching us from a distance, from a place of near secrecy. Watching us the way they’d watched us most of our childhoods—from inside the bubble of their love.

And it was appropriate, I supposed.

I never doubted that our parents loved us. Mom was always there for us. And Dad? He tried. But their love for each other overshadowed everything else. He died because he missed her so terribly, because he couldn’t live without her. Not even the little piece of her that was inside each of us wasn’t enough for him. That was sad; something that each of us had to reconcile in our own way.

This picture, hanging in near obscurity, was Jack’s way of dealing with it.

I thought for a long time that Brent had found the same sort of love with Madeline. They were good together, affectionate in ways that could be embarrassing sometimes. And then Josie came along and their romance cooled a little. It evolved the way a marriage was supposed to. For a while, after they died, I thought Brent might go the same way Dad had gone. But he survived. A little worse for wear, but he survived.

Jack was different. I thought for a long time he was afraid to commit because of his frustrations with Mom and Dad’s relationship. And then he met Stacey about the time Dad died and he seemed attached to her. Or maybe it was just my need to see him attached to someone. It never occurred to me that he was just going through the motions, and that itself spoke volumes about his warped vision of commitment. I could only hope that this Raelyn, this woman he’d ended his engagement for, would help him figure things out a little better.

Aiden…I didn’t know about Aiden. He was so angry so much of the time, an anger that only seemed to explode to massive proportions after Mom died. I thought the military might have been good for him, teaching him how to channel his anger. But I hadn’t seen him since Dad’s funeral. He didn’t come for Madeline and Josie’s funeral—blamed it on his deployment, but we all knew he just didn’t want to be there—and he hadn’t come home during his brief leave between deployments. He didn’t even write much anymore—just the occasional letter to let me know he was still alive. It hurt me that he was in pain and had no one to talk to about it.

And Gentry.

Gentry was always the romantic one, the one who wanted the whole wife and kids thing. When he dated a girl, it was because he could see himself with her in the long run. He wanted a marriage just like the one Mom and Dad had, and we all thought he already had the girl. Amelia Wilde was the only girl for him from the time he was a senior in high school until his college graduation. We all heard wedding bells in the near future. But then he decided to join the Air Force and things went…I don’t know. None of us knew for sure what happened. But it ended and he went back to Germany, choosing to re-enlist after Dad’s funeral instead of coming home like Bo and joining the new family company. He was running and I had no idea why.

And I was pissed.

Why couldn’t anyone in this family ever say what they were really feeling? Why couldn’t we face up to our demons and tell the people we loved what it was we really wanted from them? Why couldn’t Jack end things with Stacey when he realized he didn’t want her? Why couldn’t Aiden tell us what made him so angry? Why couldn’t Gentry make up with Amelia?

Why couldn’t I convince Bo that we were meant to be together?

Why couldn’t I? That was a good question. Maybe I should be the first to prove that we didn’t have to keep on this trend. That one of us could actually do the right thing, actually do what needed to be done.

I turned on my heel and marched out of there, taking the elevator back up to the top floor before I could talk myself out of it. I rounded the corner at his office door, convinced he wouldn’t be there or he’d be inside with some good-looking woman who would be all over him—why does the mind always go there when it comes to a crisis of the heart?—or that he simply wouldn’t want to hear me out.

I think it was the last that scared me the most.

He was there and he was alone, sitting behind his desk in that insanely sophisticated suit, his jacket missing now and the tie slightly loosened, but the collar of his shirt still buttoned all the way to the center of his throat. He was on the phone when I burst through the door, a frown on his handsome face that only enhanced the beauty of his full lips.

He breathed my name the moment he set the phone down, his eyes moving over me as I leaned against the closed door that locked out the world behind it.

“Remy.”

It wasn’t a question. Wasn’t a statement. It was simply my name on his lips.

“I know your childhood sucked,” I said softly, taking a step toward him, “and I know your aunt and her employers treated you like you were worse than dirt. I know you have scars from that that I will never see and can never fix for you. And I know the things they said and did to you make it hard for you to see yourself as anything more than the little boy they thought was always in the way. But you were never that little boy, Bo. You were never less than dirt.”

Shock danced in his eyes as he opened his mouth to speak. I held up my hand to stop whatever it was he felt like he needed to say.

“My family never treated you that way. We always treated you as an equal because that was how we saw you. That is still how I see you. You are not below me; you are not too good or too low for me. You are exactly what I need. I have been in love with you my whole life because you see me as I really am and not just the façade I present to the world. And I see you the same way as much as you think I don’t. I know you inside and out, Beauregard Lee Villemont.”

Again, he looked as though he wanted to speak. Again, I waved my hand at him.

“There will never be anyone else for me. I could go marry some lawyer from a good family, or one of the asses I went to college with and we might have a good life. But it wouldn’t be the same. I would always feel like a part of me was missing because no matter how much he might love me and I might love him, he would never be you.”

Those last few words got caught in my throat. I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, trying to keep control of my emotions. When I focused on him again, he was just watching me, clearly dumbfounded.

“I don’t care how long it takes. I will be here when you get over yourself and realize that I’m the best damn thing that ever happened to you!”

With that, I spun on my heel and marched out. Let him chew on that for a while!