Page 68 of Brother In Arms

Chapter 24

Bailey

Not how I wanted my mother to find out about Rush. I didn’t know how I wanted her to find out, but this certainly wasn’t it. I sat with my hands over my mouth half because I couldn’t believe what was coming out of hers and half to keep from screeching at Dray. I was so pissed. I was well aware my mother could be an unyielding pain in the ass but that was no reason to sell mine down the river.

The fact that she was asking the men around the table if they’d killed a man and was genuinely disappointed when the answer was ‘no’ just left me reeling. The only thing steadying me at that point was Rush’s hand massaging my knee under the table.

I stared at her and said nothing, ever the obedient child, I’d never gone against her wishes, not once. Though she’d never specifically said who I could and could not be with, I knew damn well her views on Uncle José. Miscreants, dirty, thieves, murderers, rabble, a bad element, all words she’d used to describe them at one time or another. She missed a few descriptors from what I could see though, passionate, committed, honest and honorable were on my list, though I understood that while they were all of the things I listed, it wasn’t necessarily by regular societies’ standards. Of course, my family was regular society, and look how we turned out…

“I’ve made several mistakes in my life,” my mother said quietly. “I never imagined your brother would be chief among them.”

“Mom!” I cried, horrified. She put up a hand, and shook her head.

“I don’t want to hear it, Bailey. What he is doing to you and the people who work for not just you but him… I can’t…” she pursed her lips.

“Yer brother put his buddy up to what happened last night, didn’t even have t’ break his hands to get it out of him.” Uncle Dragon looked sad to have to say it but not one bit surprised.

“There’s spoiled, and then there is what your brother has turned out to be.” My mother’s eyes welled up and she looked at the ceiling trying to get it together which just made me want to cry. It was a worldwide main event when my mother cried, the kind of thing to rock you to your core if you knew her at all. She’d always been the strong one, a real iron lady, so to see her careful façade crumbling really distressed me in a way I couldn’t even begin to convey.

“Mamma, don’t cry,” I said and she looked at me so full of sorrow and disappointment my heart seized in my chest automatically, even though I knew the look wasn’t meant for me.

“I am so proud of you, Bailey.”

Her words caught me off guard and I said, “I don’t understand.”

“For turning out the way you did. For turning out better than your brother despite what a failure I am, and that your father was, as a parent.”

“Mom!” I cried. So not how I wanted their approval… so not. Damnit!

“No, Bailey. No arguments. My own son sent a man to my daughter’s home with a key with express instructions to hurt her badly enough; to scare her into submitting to his will… and for what? Money. We have money! We have enough money for your brother, you, and me to live comfortably and never work a day in our lives! If that isn’t a monumental failing at parenting my child, I don’t know what is.”

It sounded like something Philip would do, as much as you never want to think of any kind of family that way, and he wasn’t wrong. Girls like me were raised to think if it happened to you, it was your fault. Leave it to Philip to go there, if Ken had succeeded, my brother would have swept right in while I was shattered and shaking with the paperwork to sign. Probably with some song and dance about how if I’d only signed in the first place, it never would have happened to me; that my own stubborn willfulness had been the cause.

He missed the part where I’d been sent to an all girl’s boarding school. One that actually educated its girls that it was never our fault. It just went to show, rape really wasn’t about sex, it was about power… Well, newsflash, I wasn’t giving mine up under any circumstances. I stared across the table at my mother’s tear stained face and not for the first time had to wonder about her and why she would allow half of the things she had under her roof. Of course the short answer was, because of my father.

Scary.

“Begging your pardon, ma’am… but your son is what, two, three years older than Bales here?” My mother’s attention went right to Rush who had spoken. His voice, likewise, snapping me out of the deep well of thought I’d fallen into.

“Yes.”

“That makes him what? Thirty, thirty-one?”

“Yes, I don’t understand what that has to do with anything, though.”

“Well ma’am, if your boy is thirty to thirty-one years of age and don’t know what he’s doing is wrong, I don’t think there’s a parenting tactic in the world been invented to handle that kind of wrong. He’s old enough to know better, he just don’t care.”

“There’s a word for that, Trudy,” Dragon said and my mother turned her tear stained face to him.

“Sociopath,” Dray supplied when it was clear she wasn’t getting it.

“I don’t know if there’s any help for ‘im if that’s the case,” Dragon said. “But we can sure try.”

“How do you propose we do that?” she asked, squaring her shoulders.

“Fire with fire?” Rush asked looking grim.

“Not quite ready to turn Reave or Cell loose on ‘im just yet,” Dragon said leaning back in his chair.

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