“You heard me.”
She frowned. Carefully, he removed the shades. He held his breath, afraid of how bad it was. Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as he feared. As an ex-cop, he’d seen women so battered that he’d puked. But it was his childhood memories that were the worst. Sam hadn’t just inherited their mother’s build and coloring; she’d inherited their mother’s knack for choosing losers. Staring into his twin’s face, there was no mistaking the light bruise under her left eye. Then he remembered she’d missed the family’s mandatory Sunday breakfast last week. The bruise had had time to fade, which meant it must have been nasty when it was fresh.
He touched his sister’s cheek under the evidence. “Leo do this?”
“No,” she snapped, proving her daughter wrong. Sam did lie. She just wasn’t good at it.
But holy hell, why did she put up with this crap? The answer rolled over him like an overloaded concrete truck. Because their no-good father had treated their mom the same way. Tyler had studied it in college.
Statistically, the odds of her choosing men just like dear ol’ Dad were great. The odds of him becoming his dad were greater. And considering the rage he felt now for Leo, the odds might be right.
He turned to leave and Sam caught his arm. “Don’t do it, Tyler. I beg you.”
He gently cupped her face in his palm. “If you knew someone was hurting me, would you stand by and let it happen?”
“No but…” Tears filled her eyes. “He was drunk.”
“Isn’t that what they said about dear ol’ Dad?”
“Please,” she muttered.
“I love you, Sam. I know you’re going to be pissed at me, but he needs to know he can’t do this.”
He didn’t stay around long enough to hear her pleas. That would have broken his heart, and Tyler wasn’t sure his heart could take any more breaking. So, he plopped his wig and rubber nose back on, and shuffled his clown ass out to teach his brother-in-law a lesson about hitting girls.
~
Hesitating in the kitchen for a minute to collect himself, Tyler stepped outside. He went to the cooler, figuring Leo wouldn’t be too far from the alcohol. He pulled out two beers, uncapped one and drank half of it in one swig, then looked around for Leo. He spotted him chatting with Tyler’s oldest brother’s wife. And damn if he didn’t see the man eye his sister-in-law’s breasts, when she wasn’t looking.
“Leo?” Tyler held up the two beers as if to say, “Come join me.” When Tyler saw the man coming, he stepped through the backyard gate and moved between Sam’s house and the neighbor’s. He heard the gate shift behind him.
“What’s up?” Leo asked.
Setting the two beers on top of an air conditioner that hummed as it cooled his sister’s house, Tyler faced Leo, who stood so close that the man’s beer-laden breath filled Tyler’s airspace. He didn’t waste any time getting to the point. “You hit her.”
Leo stepped back or he started to. “It was just a tap.” Before his left foot landed, Tyler’s fist landed on the man’s nose and knocked him flat on his ass.
“Christ!” Leo reached for his nose.
“It was just a tap,” Tyler growled but knew Leo’s nose had to be hurting like hell, because Tyler’s fist did. And he saw his knuckles bleeding where he’d obviously loosened a couple of teeth.
“You fucking jailbird clown! You broke my nose!”
The jailbird word that almost did Tyler in.
Leo started to get up, no doubt to give what he’d gotten, and Tyler almost let him. Almost chose to let go and enjoy this. But taking a deep breath, he pulled his emotions back and moved in to tower over his slimeball of a brother-in-law.
“Don’t do it, Leo. If you get up, I’m going to hit you again. I know you think you want to hit me back. It’s only fair, right? But it wasn’t fair when you hit Sam. And I’m not planning on fighting fair now.”
He rubbed his fist in his other hand and continued, “If you get up, and if you even get one punch in, I’m going to yell for my four brothers and when I tell them what you did, every one of them will help me beat your ass to a pulp. Consider yourself lucky you faced only me this time.”
Leo wiped his bloody nose and stared up with hatred in his eyes. But the man was smarter than Tyler gave him credit for. He didn’t get up.
A damn shame, too. Tyler ached to get in a few more punches, and he would if he ever proved that Leo had something to do with Tyler’s prints showing up at the staged crime scene. Prints on a glass that was the same pattern his sister had owned at the time. Someone had to have helped the drug lord asshole who had framed him and his partners, Dallas and Austin. Right now, Leo was Tyler’s prime suspect. However, considering Tyler had been unjustly accused, he wasn’t accusing anyone until he had proof.
“Oh,” he added, “if I see one bruise, one little bruise, on my sister, I won’t come alone next time.” Pulling off the red rubber nose, he tossed it at Leo. “Since I broke yours, have this one.”