26. Twenty-Five

The next day was a Sunday, and Boone was feeling well enough to move around. The nurse mentioned in passing that Algerone’s tower had a chapel on the second floor as she passed him his pain pills in a little paper cup. After that, there was no talking Boone out of going to see it.

I helped him shower, dress, and comb his hair, not understanding why we had to go to this stupid chapel the entire time. Still, Boone insisted that he look his best if he was going to church.

“I didn’t even know you were religious,” I muttered as we slowly made our way down the hallway toward the chapel doors. “I’ve never even seen you pray.”

I’d always thought he was the furthest thing from a God-fearing man considering he drank, smoked, and cursed every day that ended in a Y. That and being gay. The church wasn’t always so kind to anyone who was different.

“I’m not,” he said eventually. “Religion is for people who need order, and I’ve always been a little too chaotic. And God? He’s for people that think they can still be saved.”

“Then why go at all?”

He smirked to himself and leaned into me. “It’s the closest I’ll ever be to Mason.”

Mason. His lost twin. My throat suddenly felt tight, like a ghost had wrapped its hand around me. The thin, gray carpet that covered the floor muted our footfalls as we approached. Without windows in the hallway, peering into the tiny chapel felt strangely like looking down into an open grave.

It wasn’t much to look at, just a little room with some stained glass up front and a big wooden cross. A few wooden pews were scattered around, each one with some hymnals and some pamphlets tucked into the back. I expected it’d be empty. After all, who goes to a chapel on the second floor of a high rise owned by a psychopathic billionaire in charge of a whole network of hitmen?

Instead, the little chapel was full of familiar faces. Xander and Xavier lounged near the back, leaning on the pew in front of them, mirror images of each other but for Xavier’s unnaturally colored hair. They looked bored, but why were they there to begin with? I thought they went home.

Church was there, too. He looked a little better than the last time I saw him. Physically, at least. The shiner he’d gotten had faded a little. Two members of security were stationed nearby, but at least they’d let him off the floor. He sat in a middle pew, eyes fixed straight ahead in one of his thousand-yard stares.

And then there was Shepherd. He knelt at the altar, hands folded and head down like he was some kind of choir boy. Three more security guards stood nearby, eying him with wary looks.

Boone looked at me and squeezed my hand. He didn’t even have to ask. I nodded and let him walk the rest of the way on his own. He sat down in the pew behind Church. “We need to talk,” he said just loud enough that I could hear him.

Church took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I know.”

“It’s weird, right?” Xander said, tugging on my shirt and drawing my attention away from Boone and Church. When I turned my head, he gestured to the front of the chapel with his chin. “Seeing him up there praying like it’s fucking judgment day.”

Xavier elbowed him. “This is a church. Show some respect.”

“It’s an alcove with a little glass and some fancy chairs,” Xander whispered back. “And since when did you care about respect, huh?”

“Since we’re in a church,” Xavier growled through clenched teeth.

Xander rolled his eyes and turned back to me. “I’m not crazy am I? It’s weird as hell seeing Shepherd up there, right?”

I frowned and looked back to the front of the chapel. Weird didn’t even begin to encompass what I felt when I looked at Shepherd kneeling at the front of the church. “Maybe it’s not Shepherd. He’s got like five personalities in there, right? Are any of them religious?”

Xander shrugged.

“It’s only four personalities,” Xavier whispered.

Four? I could’ve sworn there were five, but then my connection to reality wasn’t much better than Shepherd’s, and we’d never been close. “Maybe he feels guilty for what he did to me.”

“To us, bro.” Xander yanked me into the pew with him. “Yeah, it sucks that he tried to sell you out, but don’t forget… He kept this shit from all of us.”

“If he’s here, maybe we’ll finally get an explanation for what the hell he was thinking.” Xavier folded his arms and leaned back in the pew. “I personally don’t care who was running his body. Keeping us out of the loop is inexcusable.”

Xander shook his head. “That’s Shepherd for you, though. He’s never exactly been forthcoming.” He looked over at me, his expression softening slightly. “You look better. Are you okay?”

I folded my hands and glanced at all the security guards in their black uniforms. “I’m pretty fucking far from okay.”

The high rise was just another prison, and I was starting to get desperate for my freedom. I wanted out of there, but Algerone hadn’t budged. Until I talked to him, he wasn’t letting me loose.

Xander sighed. “Same, bro. Don’t get me wrong. It was nice being here at first, but… I miss my old room. I miss being able to go out. It’s not fun being locked up.”

“Wait,” I said scooting forward, “he hasn’t let you guys leave either?”

“For our own security,” Xavier scoffed.

“We’re prisoners here until all this shit is settled. Just like you,” Xander added.

“At least until Annie and Al sit down and talk to each other.”

“You’re calling him Al now?” I said to Xavier, who shrugged. At least he wasn’t calling him Dad. “You both realize how fucked up this is, right? We’re adults. This is kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment… and probably about a dozen other crimes. He can’t legally hold us here.”

Xavier scowled and sank further into the pew. “The guy has CIA level clearance and an army of assassins at his beck and call. You want to tell him he can’t do something? Be my guest.”

There was a small commotion at the front of the chapel as Shepherd rose from his prayers and his security detail closed around him. He barely seemed to notice their existence as he turned, adjusted his jacket, and started down the aisle. We locked gazes after a few steps, and he came to a halt at the end of the pew.

“Xion,” he said in a neutral greeting. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

“No thanks to you,” I grumbled. “You’d better have more than thoughts and prayers or I might add you to my list of names.”

“That would be unwise,” Shepherd said before the security guys tried to move him along. He glared at them and stayed where he was. “If it’s an apology you want, you’ll be disappointed.”

“I want an explanation,” I said, rising to my feet. Xander put a hand on my shoulder, but there was no need. I might’ve been crazy, but I wasn’t going to attack Shepherd in a church. “Why’d you do all this? What did you get out of selling your own family out?”

To my surprise, he flinched then grimaced and reached up to rub his temples with little circles. “Xion, you should know better than anyone that there’s family and then there’s family. While I appreciate the bond we share as adopted brothers, that’s all it is. A legally binding bond, one washed away with the stroke of a pen if need be. Blood, however, is much harder to erase. The bond you three share, despite your time apart, is stronger than the one I share with any of you. You’d die for each other, no?”

I looked at my brothers, wanting to deny it. I didn’t want to die for them, but if it came down to it, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t. I’d certainly be more willing to entertain the possibility for Xander and Xavier over anyone else. Well, almost anyone else.

“If they were in danger, how far would you go to keep them safe?” Shepherd took a step toward me, prompting the security guards to reach for their weapons.

He frowned and paused just short of reaching for me, and then his frown morphed into a yawn. He stared straight ahead with a blank expression, blinking rapidly for almost a minute.

“Bro,” Xander said, “you okay?”

Shepherd stood taller, his shoulders squared. His expression went from pleading to a carefully constructed blank mask as he buttoned his jacket up.

“It wasn’t personal, even if it was unpleasant,” he said in a slightly different voice without acknowledging Xander. “And you were never truly in any danger.”

I clenched my jaw and stepped up to stand toe-to-toe with him. “I don’t care who you were trying to save. My life was not yours to bargain with.”

“Every life is mine to bargain with so long as I get what I want,” he said coldly. “Life is a trolly problem. You all think you’re the ones standing in front of the switch, deciding which way to flip it, but you’re not. You’re the oblivious idiots down on the tracks. It’s people like me that get entrusted with the switch, people like me who choose who lives and who dies. And from where I’m standing, you’re inconsequential.”

“You can’t talk to him like that,” Xander said, suddenly beside me.

“What is wrong with you?” Xavier added on my other side.

“That’s enough, boys.” A woman’s voice echoed through the small chapel.

I turned my head and clenched my jaw when I saw Annie Laskin standing in the doorway. A mix of emotions churned in my gut, everything from regret to anger to sadness. For the first fourteen years of my life, she’d been my mother. I’d laughed with her, cried with her, shared my secrets with her.

Yet if Algerone was right, she’d killed my real mother and hidden us from him. Why?

She didn’t look like a malicious killer, standing at five foot nothing with her silver hair pulled back in a loose bun and her glasses on a string that looped around the back of her head, but looks could be deceiving.

Here was the woman who’d let me rot at Twin Valley Behavioral Health for five years with only a handful of visits and a few letters. The moment I became difficult to love, she vanished from my life. How could I call her mother after that?

Before I knew what I was doing, I was standing in front of her, staring down at the small woman. Inside, I was at war with myself about whether to put my arms around her in relief or close my hands around her throat and squeeze until she stopped moving. I settled for something in the middle, but equally as painful for both of us. “Why?”

“Oh, Xion.” Her eyes shimmered as if she were as conflicted as me. She reached for me but I shifted back, out of her reach.

“Why didn’t you come see me?” I demanded.

She froze in place, an expression of surprise crossing her face before she dropped her arms to her sides. “You don’t remember?”

The weight of everyone’s eyes was on me, and I suddenly just wanted to shrink into the floor and disappear. The voices started chattering, telling me how much everyone hated me, that they were out to get me.

I swallowed and tried to ignore all the static. “Remember what?”

“I came to see you several times, Xion. Almost weekly in the beginning.” Annie said. “But you told me you didn’t want to see me anymore. Any of us. Xion, it was your decision to terminate our relationship, not mine.”

I lowered my head and massaged my temples. Was that true? It was possible. Flashes of memories went through my mind, a parade of Wednesday afternoons in the ward. Visitation days.

Annie sits across from me, a bag of greasy fast food between us. I’m not hungry. I hate food. I hate her. I hate everything. I wish I’d died instead of coming here. The only thing worse than being imprisoned in a hospital for the rest of my life is the way she’s looking at me. I can’t stand the pity in her eyes. It makes me want to gouge them out. The voices are telling me to do it, but all I have are my hands. They won’t let me have cutlery on the ward anymore.

I shook my head and the memory disappeared. “No. Don’t gaslight me. You stopped coming to see me. I remember.”

“Because you told me to stop.” She reached for me again but stopped herself when I flinched away. “I didn’t listen at first, but every time I came after that, you refused to see me. Eventually, I came to the ward, and they said you’d become so upset when you heard I was coming that they had to sedate you.” She lowered her head and clutched her purse until her knuckles were white. “I tried a few more times after that, but it was always the same. They said you refused to see me, or you were sedated, and I wasn’t allowed back to the patient rooms.”

My jaw trembled. I raked my fingers over my arms, trying to sift through memory fragments. It was all so fucked up. Between the schizophrenic episodes, being drugged out of my mind, and the memories of abuse I’d probably suppressed to stay sane, the five years I’d spent in the hospital were pieces of a broken funhouse mirror. I couldn’t make any sense of it.

Hugging myself tight, I looked over at Xander. He wouldn’t lie to me, would he? “Is that true?”

Xander’s throat bobbed before he nodded. “Even when I didn’t want to go, Mom tried, but it was tearing her apart to see you like that. We didn’t know what was happening to you there. The doctors eventually just said it’d be better for you if we limited contact since you got so upset every time she came to see you. Then when you turned nineteen you changed your name, and we all took it as a sign you didn’t want us to be involved anymore.”

“I wrote letters to your social worker,” Annie said. “Sent pictures. You got those, right?”

I shook my head and sank into the nearest pew. “She never gave me anything.” Was she involved? Was she in on whatever was happening to me?

Stop. I closed my eyes and tried to take a deep breath. It wasn’t easy, and I had to force the issue. That’s the paranoia talking. No one is out to get you. Not anymore.

Except I wasn’t entirely sure that was true. I’d killed a man. What if Harold had friends? He was part of that network of people, wasn’t he? What if whoever was running that disgusting website was looking for me? What if the social worker was part of that? She had to be, right?

“I thought you would stop me,” I said. My voice sounded distant, as if it were someone else speaking, but it was still my voice. “When I filed the paperwork to change my name from Laskin to Loomis, I thought you would come back to talk me out of it.” I looked up at my family, unable to stop the tears from leaking from my eyes. “It wasn’t a goodbye. It was a cry for help. Only… none of you heard me. None of you were listening. It’s my fault, isn’t it? I pushed you all away.”

“We all made mistakes here, Xion,” Annie said with tears shimmering in her eyes. “I should’ve tried harder. Whatever else was going on, there was no excuse for what happened. None. I’m so sorry for everything that happened to you, but I never gave up on you. And even if there’s some distance between us now, I hope it’s not so much that we can’t heal what’s been done. It’s never too late.”

I pushed my tears away roughly and looked up at her. “Did you do what he says you did? Algerone, I mean. Our mom—our real mom—he says you…”

She closed her eyes and sighed, dropping her head. “Imogen was a good woman in a lot of pain. Motherhood is hard under normal circumstances. She had a national spotlight on her, and she was struggling with her own demons.”

Xavier moved closer, his hands in his pockets as he loomed over us. “Did you kill our mother?”

Annie lifted her eyes, wet with tears, meeting Xavier’s cold gaze. “Your mother left you boys with me with the understanding she’d be checking into a hospital. Instead, she checked into a hotel and overdosed. I kept you from your father because it was the last thing she asked me to do.”

For a moment, the chapel was completely silent. The only sound was my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.

“Do you have any proof?” Xavier demanded.

Annie’s jaw flexed. “The coroner’s report clearly shows she died of an overdose of sleeping pills.”

Xavier folded his arms. “I think we both know you’re capable of bribing a coroner to make him write whatever you want. And where did she get the sleeping pills to begin with? You were a nurse. Why didn’t you—”

“Enough, Xavier,” Annie said firmly. She glanced between us. “I know you want there to be more to this, but there isn’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell us any of this?” I said quietly.

Annie took my hands in hers. “What good would it have done to focus on such tragedy? I thought I was doing the right thing. Imogen told me your father was a dangerous man, and that if he ever discovered you three existed, you’d be in danger. She was right. Algerone Caisse-Etremont is a dangerous man. Not the sort of person I wanted you three to be involved with. As far as I knew, he wasn’t aware of your existence until recently.”

I jerked my hands away from hers. “So this is all just some horrible tragedy and misunderstanding from twenty years ago? That’s why my life is so fucked up right now? That’s what you want us to believe?”

“That’s the truth,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. “Whether you and Algerone believe it or not, it’s what happened. I can’t change it. I wish I could, but I can’t. There are no conspiracies here. Not this time.”

I studied the woman in front of me. She seemed… repentant? Authentic? What was the right word? What was it I was looking for from her? An apology didn’t feel like enough to make up for all the wrongdoing on everyone’s part.

For all that Annie had done wrong, I wanted to believe her. If our mother was like me, it wasn’t unfathomable that Annie’s story was true. I could barely handle taking care of myself when things got bad. I couldn’t imagine having three helpless babies to care for. Annie loved children. I’d never seen her be anything but sweet and protective of them.

I tried to put myself in my mother’s shoes the day she left us with Annie, tried to imagine what she was thinking, what she was feeling.

“It must’ve been hard for her,” I said, my voice just above a whisper. “She…” I stopped to swallow the thickness in my voice. “It’s hard to admit when you can’t do something. People don’t understand what it’s like to live with voices in your head. But I do. I know it can make you do terrible things, things she wouldn’t have wanted for us.”

Annie’s chin trembled slightly. “She loved you boys so much. All she wanted was for you to be safe.”

And we were. Annie protected us, even from our pasts. Even when perhaps she shouldn’t have. Sometimes love could be a prison too. She’d never meant it to be one, though. Annie thought she was doing the right thing by withholding that information from us. No one could’ve predicted it would result in this huge mess twenty years later, and it wasn’t even her fault it had. Algerone had initiated this. He was the one at fault, even if her past silence complicated it.

I tried to find a reason to hate her, but every time I reached for the simmering rage that had once been there, it was out of reach. What was the point in hating someone who’d only done what she thought was best?

But just because I didn’t hate her anymore didn’t mean I was ready to forgive her and move on.

I sighed. “What do you want from me? You want me to tell Algerone to fuck off and take your side?”

She shook her head and reached out to cup my cheek. This time, I allowed it. “I want you to be happy. Whether that means you stay with your father, or you come back with me, or go off on your own, your happiness is all that matters. I won’t lie though. I do hope this isn’t the last I’ll see of you. I’d like a chance to get to know the man you’ve become, even if that means doing so from a distance.”

I frowned and ducked my head, picking at my fingernails. That was really the choice in front of me, wasn’t it? I felt like I was the rope in a game of tug of war with Algerone pulling on one side and the Laskins on the other. Where did that leave Boone?

I glanced across the chapel to where he sat, engaged in a quiet conversation with Church. He’d been the only one to take care of me while everyone else was arguing about bounties and who had the right to call the three of us their children. When he had the chance to take the money and walk, he chose me, and when I asked for vengeance, he handed me the means. Boone had chosen me at every turn, even when I was more trouble for him than I was worth.

I looked up as Maxime entered the chapel with another guard. The place was getting downright crowded with so many people present. Maxime wore a three-piece suit that morning, beige on beige with a crisp red tie. Could a man look more like some bureaucrat’s assistant? Except my father wasn’t a bureaucrat. He was the head of a group of international assassins. The tablet that Maxime carried around probably had more kill orders on it than any other piece of technology in the country. I’d treat the damn thing like my most prized possession too.

“Good. Everyone is finally here,” he announced. “If you’ll all follow me, we can get started.”

I frowned and looked over at Xander. “Get started with what?”

Maxime’s smile made me want to punch him right in his stupid face. “Negotiating the terms of your release.”