Page 41 of Man of Lies

"Stay back!" he shouted.

Like hell. This was my home—and I was faster. Years of running from shit that didn't want to be outrun gave me a head start, and I pushed off the gravel, overtaking Silas in an instant.

Nothing mattered more than getting to my brothers. We'd grown up scrapping any time tempers flared, but this was more serious than that. They wanted to hurt each other. I couldn't even tell whose blood was streaking the grass anymore.

I threw myself at Gage, hooking an arm around his throat, arms burning with the effort of yanking him off Dominic.

Gage snarled, and suddenly, the world spun. One second, I was hanging off his shoulders, trying to force him back, and the next, he ragdolled me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing. It all happened so fast, I didn't even clock flying through the air—only the thud of landing. It felt like being slammed into a boulder.

My lungs seized, and for a moment, nothing existed beyond a breathless, paralyzed gasp. Then I wheezed, clawing at the grass and dirt, desperate for oxygen that wouldn't come. My lungs had turned to stone, refusing to inflate no matter how hard I struggled.

Through the haze of my watering vision, I saw Gideon standing in the doorway, framed by a spill of warm light from the house. His eyes were fixed on the fight, but his expression was colder than I'd ever seen it—remote, like he was watching a piece of theater that didn't concern him.

Gideon, the peacemaker, wasn't lifting a finger this time.

There was no time for questions—not with Silas cutting through the fray like a knife. A switch had been flipped, and suddenly, he wasn't just an ex-con with a devil-may-care grin, but a man who knew exactly how to bring order to the chaos. He grabbed Gage's wrist, twisting it behind him in a way that had him growling like an animal caught in a trap.

I recognized the move immediately, the way Silas anchored Gage's arm with his forearm, locking it against a pressure point in his shoulder. I didn't know the term for it, but I'd seen it before in the courthouse when guards needed to take someone down without breaking their necks. Silas performed it without breaking a sweat.

Gage had been a fighter all his life, so he fought back hard, growling like an animal caught in a trap. Silas stepped into him, using his own body weight to drive him to the ground, and jammed a knee into the small of his back. The whole thing was over in seconds—efficient, controlled, and brutal.

"Settle down," Silas said, voice low, the command in it unmistakable.

He looked up and met my eyes from across the yard, and suddenly, it felt like that private bubble was back, surrounding us, shrinking the world to just him. Just Silas—and the electric connection neither of us could ignore.

I couldn't put my finger on when it happened, but somewhere along the line, I'd started needing him. Not just as an outlet to reluctantly blow off steam—buthim.The way he moved, the light in his eyes when he smiled, and the way he effortlessly took control when I needed it most.

With his past full of bad choices and prison time, he wasn't made for solving problems, but somehow, whenever I was with him, the weight on my shoulders felt light enough to carry. I'd never asked for a distraction like him in my life. I wasn't looking for it. But somehow, over time, he'd become the only man I could imagine turning to in a crisis. Even now, he was here with me, standing between my brothers like it was nothing. He made it seem easy.

It wasn't easy. None of this was easy.

Gage wasn't ready to quit. He struggled against Silas, face flushed with anger and grief that I couldn't begin to fully understand. Dominic, on the other hand, was still desperate to finish what they'd started. He was older and maybe wiser—butdeadlier. We all knew it. So when I saw him head toward Gage, vulnerable on the ground, I didn't hesitate.

I surged forward, locking my arms around his waist and driving my shoulder into his chest, shoving him back with everything I had. Every inch of ground he gave felt like a goddamn victory, but the force of his resistance nearly sent us both to the ground.

"Knock it off!" I yelled, slipping in the wet grass and digging in my heels to keep him from going for Gage again.

"Did you think I'd forget?" Gage shouted, white-knuckling fistfuls of dirt and grass in his rage. He craned his neck, glaring up at Dominic through the blood dripping into his eyes from the cut above his eyebrow. "You think you could just waltz in here like it didn't happen? Like I'd ever forgive you for putting your hands on Wyatt and dragging him through that hell—myhell?"

Dominic didn't flinch, but the set of his jaw tightened. He turned his face away, unable to meet our eyes. Gage was the youngest of us, and in plenty of ways, he'd struggled the most. Dominic had always gone out of his way to protect him, sometimes more than he deserved. Hell, he'd even taken a charge for me when I was caught hotwiring my first motorcycle as a kid. But tonight, his patience was gone.

"You think you've got the high ground, little brother?" Dominic's eyes glittered with ice. "Who gave you that luxury?I'mthe one Boone left to make the hard calls once he was gone. That moral superiority y'all enjoy?I'mthe one who bought that for you with goddamn blood. You don't have to like it, but I did what I had to do. What I thought was right."

"Bullshit!" Gage spat a mouthful of grass and scrambled to his feet when Silas relaxed his hold, but he didn't try to go after Domagain. Silas still had a warden's grip on the arm he was twisting behind Gage's back, so Gage just stood there, wiping at the stains on his jeans with scraped and trembling hands. "You're so far gone, you don't even have aclueabout right and wrong—if you ever did. You hurt the one person I love more than anything. We—we can't ever come back from something like that."

Guilt flickered in Dominic's eyes, but he hid it fast, burying it under layers of pride and self-righteousness so deep that most days he was probably able to convince himself he didn't feel it at all.

"I'm not looking for forgiveness," he said, so softly he might as well have been talking to himself—but he was staring directly at Gideon when he said it.

Gideon's cheek twitched.

They stared at each other for a beat, but even with all my experience interviewing witnesses, I couldn't read them. As the two oldest and the first to be taken in by Boone, they'd always been able to communicate without saying a word, but tonight, it felt different. Alien. Gideon's face was carved from granite, and the look in Dominic's eyes…it was pure violence. Whatever silent communication passed between them, it was enough to chill the blood in my veins.

"Come on, Dom," I said diplomatically, pulling his focus back to me. "We can work this out, but you've got to give us some time."

Dominic didn't reply. His eyes flashed to me and then back to Gideon. One corner of his mouth lifted in a sneer.

"I'm done trying to make peace," he said, cold enough to sting.

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