Page 239 of Redeeming 6

“What good are you to them when you can’t keep them safe?” Every inch of my body shook and trembled as I fought against the desperate urge that I had to comfort her. I couldn’t do it again. Not this time. “You’re a fucking ghost in this house. You’re wallpaper, Mam. A mouse. You are not good for us.”

“Joey, wait, wait, please don’t do this.” Grabbing onto my hands, my mother dropped to her knees in front of me, and the move made me want to die. “Don’t take them from me.”

“I can’t leave them here,” I choked out, feeling too much for her as my heart gunned in my chest. “And you’ve made your choice.”

She had.

Whether she denied it or not, she chose him.

She would always choose him.

But this time, I was choosing my siblings over her.

“You don’t understand,” she wailed. “You don’t see.”

“Then get up, Mam.” Tears filled my eyes, and it honestly felt like she stuck her hand through my chest and wrapped it around my heart. “Get up off your knees and walk out of this house with me.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head, eyes pleading. “He’ll kill me.”

He’ll kill them, too, I wanted to scream.

What part of that didn’t she get? How the fuck could she justify keeping them in this house? This wasn’t love. This was sick. She was as sick as he was and I wanted no more part in this.

“Then die,” was all I replied.

“Let him go, Marie,” my old man commanded. “He’ll be back with this tail between his legs. Cunt is useless. Won’t survive a day on his own.”

“Shut up!” Throwing her hands up, my mother screamed at the top of her lungs. “Just shut up! This is all your fault. You’ve ruined my life. You’ve destroyed my children. You’re a fucking madman—”

He struck her so fast that I didn’t have time to react.

His fist connected with her face, and I watched as my mother hit the floor like a sack of spuds. Crumpling onto her hands and knees just like a million other times in a million other arguments in the same damn kitchen.

“Think you can talk to me like that?” he sneered, towering over her. “You’re the worst of the lot, you fucking whore!”

Don’t do it.

Don’t do it.

Don’t do it.

“Keep your fucking hands off my mother,” I heard myself roar, reacting on a lifetime of instinct as I shoved him away from my mother’s broken body and moved straight for her. “Mam.”

I could feel myself breaking, my voice, my self-control, my heart. All of it was just shattering into a million pieces. I knelt down beside her, hating that she feared my touch almost as much as his when all I ever tried to do was shield her.

“Just walk away from him.” Pushing her hair out of her eyes, she looked so much like Shannon as she looked up at me. So frightened and childlike. “We’ll figure something out, okay? We’ll sort this, but we can’t stay here. I’ll take care of you .”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he snarled, clamping a beefy hand on the back of my neck. “Think you know it all, boy? Think you’re better than me?” His touch brought with it a lifetime’s worth of horrendous memories and flashbacks. “Think you can take her away from me?” Overpowering me with strength, he forced me to my knees. “She’s going nowhere.”

Increasing the pressure on the back of my neck, he pushed me onto my stomach. “I told you I’d put manners on you, ya ungrateful little bastard.” The weight he was pushing down on me was unbearable and rendered me completely fucking helpless against his assault. “Think you’re a man now, boy?” His knee dug into my back, and I had to bite back a scream when pain scorched through my already mangled back. “Show your mother what kind of man you are, crying on your knees like a little bitch!”

“Stop it,” Mam begged and pleaded. “Get off him, Teddy.”

“I’m more of a man than you,” I forced out, desperately trying to keep my face off the tiled floor he was intent on crushing me into.

“Oh, you think so?” Laughing cruelly, he knotted his hand in my hair and snapped my head back before roughly slamming my face into the tiles. “You’re a piece of shit, boy.”

Everything inside of me was eerily calm for the briefest of moments before the sudden rush of heat and pain coursed through my face, bringing with it the familiar metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

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