Silas’ were the voices in his head, the noise.
And mine?
It was the pressure.
Sometimes it felt so real, it was as if I was slowly being crushed to death by a boulder.
And tonight was one of those nights.
I got into bed and took Mila into my arms.
She muttered something else in her sleep, a slight frown overtaking her features briefly before she relaxed once more and snuggled closer to my body.
I tightened my hold on her, took a deep breath, and stared up at the ceiling.
The only light source was a small, dim lamp standing in the corner of the room. It was enough for me to see the tattoo on my wrist.
VII • XXVI
For the first time in a fucking long time, I let myself get lost in the past, to the mistakes I’d caused, the pain and heartache, and to the making of monsters.
The night Daniel Hayes brought forty men to our home and killed my father.
Nineteen YearsAgo
Maverick wasn’t sleeping again.
There was no surprise there.
His thoughts haunted him in the night as much as they did during the day, but at least during the day, he could distract himself with small reprieves.
At night, there was nothing stopping the nightmares from intruding.
No sense of safety, and no distractions.
Maverick didn’t sleep.
Instead, he quietly walked around the mansion at night like a ghost with no purpose, and often enough, he would wander into Silas’ room, or my room, and watch us sleep.
I had woken up to see his shadow sitting on one of the chairs I had placed in the corner of the room, his expression stoic, lost in thought, too many times to count.
Every time, I would ask him what he was doing, what he was thinking.
His answer was the same.
Nothing.
It wasn’t nothing, but I didn’t press for more.
Nightmares haunted me, too. How could they not, considering who our father was?
The old man truly believed the only way he could prepare us for this world, prepare us to take on the family business, was by introducing us at an early age to the kind of violence only men were capable of.
One of those instances involved him locking Silas in the wardrobe of our parents’ bedroom, while I stood guard, as he stabbed our mother over and over.
The sounds our mother made during her murder were all Silas had, but I was forced to watch.
Maverick didn’t know that.
