“Nearly tore the man apart.”
“Jesus, Ax.”
His shoulder lifts in a half-hearted shrug. “I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but what Gunnar did was inhuman. A thirteen-year-old child. He didn’t even know the man.”
“Then why cover it up?” Hyland shakes his head.
“Mum blamed herself for the state Gunnar was in. We don’t know what happened to him, but he was close to starving, all beaten and bruised. Could barely talk. She never got over abandoning him and refused to watch his life be taken away by a prison sentence too.”
“So you wove a lie.” I nod in sick understanding.
“Not me,” he corrects. “It was all her. Gunnar didn’t exist to us. Not outside of her memories. She ordered him to disappear and never return. In exchange, she’d make it all go away.”
The realisation that Axel had no choice but to conceal a brutal crime as a young kid leaves me cold. Not only did he lose his family, but he also had to rewrite his own family history. All to protect a child forged into a monster.
“I don’t know what kind of life he thinks I had after losing everything.” His shoulders shake, voice trembling hard. “But Gunnar believes that I took his future from him. Now he wants it back.”
“You were just a child,” I reason.
“The one child who didn’t get sent away. Who wasn’t abandoned and left to survive all alone. In his mind, I got everything that he never had, no matter how false that really is.”
“So that’s why he’s back,” Warner muses.
After knocking back the last of his whiskey, Axel places the glass down. He takes a pause to wipe his face, still not looking at any of us.
“I don’t know much about my brother, but Gunnar is tangled up in Madden’s world.He’sthe reason this is happening. I told you that criminal can’t be trusted.”
“Can you be trusted?” Warner’s jaw tics.
“Yes. I’m your teammate.”
“You fucking lied to us, Axel! You’ve been lying to us for two years!”
Honey-hued sadness begs for forgiveness, bouncing between the two men Axel calls his brothers. A part of me aches for him. Whatever evil he’s hiding, I can see the toll it’s taken. Nobody lives a lie for no good reason.
Another part of me remembers all the strained looks between him and Blaine. The tension so thick, no blade could hope to cutit. Their constant sniping. It has been going on for months, and still, Axel didn’t think to trust us.
He kept lying.
On and on and on.
It’s far worse for Warner and Hyland. The Anaconda Team is built on trust. That was made clear to me on my very first day. This secret isn’t just Axel’s cross to bear—it shakes the very core of their foundation.
“Why did Gunnar save me from those jackasses just to knock me out?” I ask the room.
“He clearly didn’t want to chat.” Axel stares down at his hands.
“But why intervene at all?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know what he hopes to achieve.”
“Then let’s ask someone who does.” Warner pulls out his phone, angrily jabbing the screen.
We all watch him make the phone call that will bring our fractured team back together. I doubt Blaine’s gone far. Whatever game he’s playing, he did remain in the hospital while I was checked over and declared fit to leave.
Fraught silence reins until the penthouse’s doorbell rings. The fact that Warner hasn’t clued Blaine in on our security system yet speaks volumes. At this rate, our enemies could pull our team apart like wet tissue paper.
Warner hobbles on his prosthetic while escorting the obsidian-eyed troublemaker into the room. Blaine shoots me a searching look, parking himself in the corner against the built-in TV unit where Axel can’t launch a surprise attack.
