Where Souls Spoil (Bayonet Scars Series, Volume I) (Bayonet Scars #1-4.5)
J.C. Emery
Prologue
May (23 months to Mancuso’s downfall)
Ryan
When you're drowning, you don't say “I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,” you just scream.
John Lennon
THE HOUSE IS dead silent except for the quiet murmurs coming from Ma and Pop’s bedroom. When Pop called and told me to get my ass over here as soon as possible, I thought he was fucking around. He wasn’t.
We’ve known that shit could go down for a long fucking time—or at least Ian and I have—so it shouldn’t be this big of a surprise. But it is.
“You good, brother?” I ask, looking down at Ian, who’s sitting in a chair at the kitchen table. He hasn’t said anything since he showed up a few minutes ago. The way he is now—wavy, light brown hair slicked back, skin pale, a thin sheen of sweat on the ridge of his brow—takes me back to when we were kids. We’d been brothers all of five minutes when the kid freaked the fuck out over Pop throwing his boot at the wall in a moment of frustration. He was so skittish and fearful of every fucking thing. He looks up at me, jerks his chin at the chair across the table, and then lets his eyes fall back down to the table top. I pull the chair out, cringing when it creaks and squeaks as I drag it out from under the table. Everything’s so goddamn quiet right now that the noise feels invasive.
“Just fucking with my head, ya know?” he says in a gravelly voice. His face is carefully blank, and his posture gives away nothing, but I know him too well to think this shit isn’t sending his ass sideways.
I nod and lean my elbows on the table and say, “I get that.”
“What Pop’s about to do? You good with that?” he asks.
I pause to consider the question. Am I good with it? I’m not entirely sure. I never stopped to wonder if I was or not, because I know how much this means to Ma. In my mind, she needs this, so we do it.
“Doesn’t matter,” I say. Because it doesn’t. Pop made a promise he shouldn’t have fucking made. But he did, and here we are. I’m not about to let Ma suffer for Pop’s bad call. Ian looks up at me, an eyebrow raised, a look of disbelief on his face.
“Look, the shit that went down? The promises he made? It happened. Nothing I can do about that. The kid’s family,” I say.
With a nod of my head, I meet the man who I consider to be my brother in the eyes and say, “What we’re doing here is righting a wrong. It’s about fucking time that Mancuso got his.”
Ian’s face hardens at the mention of the man who once gave him nightmares.
“We run into him and I got a clear shot?” he says. I nod my head and smile wide because now he’s finally thinking shit over.
“You get a clear shot, you wound him,” I say. My body warms at the idea. “And carve out his eyeballs with your fingers.”
Finally, a smile spreads across his face, and a smirk plays at his lips. If anybody deserves the kill the guy, it’s my brother.
“You got it, brother,” he says. Feeling better about where Ian’s at, I stand from the table and stride through the living room and down the hall on the opposite end of the house, toward Ma and Pop’s room. The door to their room is at the end of the hall, just past Ian’s old bedroom and the hall bath. The door is open, giving me a good line of sight to what’s going on inside. Ma’s curled up in the center of the bed with Pop hovering over her. The last time I walked in on an intimate moment between the two of them, they were both naked and I had to blow a grand on coke just to numb the images of Ma getting drilled from behind. If I hadn’t made the mistake of telling Duke—that fucker—I might not be reminded of it on the regular.
“It’s okay, Mama,” Pop says. He kisses the top of her head and smoothes down her wayward hair.
“Should I talk to them?” she asks. He lets out a stilted laugh and groans.
“Nah, they can unload their shit on me. You step in the room, they don’t do it now, and next thing ya know I got guys losing their shit and getting themselves killed.”
“What if they say no?” Ma asks. I bite my tongue to keep the grunt that’s burning in my throat. Pop, Ian, Wyatt, and I already discussed this. If the club votes against it, then the four of us will go alone. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than the kid ending up dead.
“What did I promise you?” he says in a harsher tone than he was using just a minute ago.
“I know,” she says with a sigh. “It’s just…”
“No, fuck that. It’s not just anything. I make you a promise, I keep it. I ever give you reason to doubt me?”