Chapter 7: Dear Brother

Marcus lives in a mansion.

An actual mansion, with gates and a circular driveway and a fountain out front that is definitely running even though it’s February. My mother drives us there in a car I’ve never seen before, new and expensive, probably a gift, and I sit in the passenger seat with my hands in my lap watching the neighbourhood get bigger and quieter and more expensive the closer we get.

She’s married. To a man named Marcus. Who has a son. Who lives in a place like this.

“Here we are!” She pulls up to the entrance and I look up at three stories of white columns and floor-to-ceiling windows and feel nothing except a distant, exhausted disbelief.

A man appears in the doorway as we get out of the car. Tall, well-dressed, salt and pepper hair, probably late forties. He smiles when he sees my mother and walks down the steps and kisses her, right there in front of me, and I look away.

“You must be Layla.” He extends his hand. “I’m Marcus. It’s wonderful to finally meet you.”

I shake it because I don’t know what else to do. “Hi.”

“Your mother talks about you constantly.” His smile is warm and genuine and I have no idea what to do with that either. “Come inside, dinner’s ready. We’re just waiting on Cain—”

Everything in me goes still.

“Cain?”

“My son.” He holds the front door open. “He’s running a few minutes late, just finishing up at the gym.”

Cain. The gym. Boxing.

It’s a common name. It’s a coincidence. It has to be.

We walk inside and the entryway alone is bigger than our old living room, marble floors and a chandelier and a staircase that curves up to the second floor. Marcus leads us to the dining room where the table is set for four, candles lit, wine poured, food that looks like it came from a restaurant laid out in the centre.

“Please, sit.” Marcus pulls out a chair for my mother. I sit across from them and keep my eyes off the empty chair beside me.

“He’ll be here any minute,” Marcus says, checking his phone. “Just finishing up.”

Footsteps from upstairs. Heavy. Getting closer.

“There he is!” Marcus stands. “Cain! Come meet your new stepsister!”

The words land like a hand around my throat.

The footsteps reach the landing. I can’t see him yet over the curve of the stairs, and for one suspended second I tell myself it’s fine, it’s a coincidence, there are other people named Cain in this city, this is not—

He appears at the top of the stairs.

Dark hair still wet from a shower. Black t-shirt. The edge of a snake tattoo curling out from his collar.

Cain Russo. Looking at his phone. Not paying attention.

“Cain,” Marcus says. “This is Linda’s daughter. Layla—”

He looks up.

Our eyes meet.

For three full seconds neither of us moves, neither of us breathes, and I watch his face go from blank to shocked to something I have never seen on him before and can’t name now, and I think I must look exactly the same because my mother puts her hand over mine.

“Sweetheart? Are you okay?”

I can’t answer. Can only stare at him standing at the bottom of those stairs looking at me like I’m something that just walked out of a dream he was trying to forget.

“You two know each other?” Marcus asks.

“No.” The lie comes out of Cain smooth and immediate. “Same school. We’ve never really talked.”

Two lies in four seconds.

“Well now you’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other!” My mother is still smiling, still completely unaware that the floor just dropped out of the room. “Since you’ll be living together.”

Living together.

“What?” My voice comes back, thin and distant.

“We’re all moving in here,” she says. “One big family.”

“Isn’t it wonderful?” She squeezes my hand. “You’ll have a brother!”

Cain’s jaw is so tight I can see the muscle working. “Yeah,” he says, very quietly. “Wonderful.”

Our eyes meet again and I see it there, the same horror sitting behind his face, the same slow recognition of exactly how trapped we both are. Same house. Same dinner table. Same family. After everything. After all of it.

“Don’t just stand there, Cain.” Marcus gestures at the empty chair beside me. “Sit down. Let’s eat.”

Cain crosses the room slowly and pulls out the chair and sits down next to me, close enough that I can smell him, cedar and soap and something underneath that my body recognises before I can stop it, something that makes the memory of last night press against the back of my eyes.

My mother lifts her wine glass. “This is going to be wonderful. A fresh start for all of us.”

Marcus raises his glass. They look at each other the way people look at each other when they’ve found something they weren’t expecting and can’t quite believe their luck.

Cain and I don’t move. We sit there with our hands in our laps and our eyes on our plates, the silence between us louder than anything being said out loud, both of us knowing the exact same thing.

There is no way out of this. We are stuck, together, in this house, as family, and the only person in this room who understands exactly how catastrophic that is is sitting close enough to touch.

“This is going to be great,” my mother says.

Neither of us responds.

The nightmare, it turns out, is just getting started.