Unravel Me (Shatter Me, #2)(63)

Adam blinks like he’s going blind.

“And then when she died,” he says, taking a deep breath, “when she died all he ever did was blame me for her death. He always told me it was my fault she got sick, and it was my fault she died. That I needed too much, that she didn’t eat enough, that she got weak because she was too busy taking care of us, giving food to us, giving … everything to us. To me and James.” His eyebrows pull together. “And I believed him for so long. I figured that was why he left all the time. I thought it was some kind of punishment. I thought I deserved it.”

I’m too horrified to speak.

“And then he just … I mean he was never around when I was growing up,” Adam says, “and he was always an *. But after she died he just … lost his mind. He used to come by just to get piss-drunk. He used to force me to stand in front of him so he could throw his empty bottles at me. And if I flinched—if I flinched—”

He swallows, hard.

“That’s all he ever did,” Adam says, his voice quieter now. “He would come over. Get drunk. Beat the shit out of me. I was fourteen when he stopped coming back.” Adam stares at his hands, palms up. “He sent some money every month for us to survive on and then—” A pause. “Two years later I got a letter from our brand-new government telling me my father was dead. I figured he probably got wasted again and did something stupid. Got hit by a car. Fell into the ocean. Whatever. It didn’t matter. I was happy he was dead, but I had to drop out of school. I enlisted because the money was gone and I had to take care of James and I knew I wouldn’t find another job.”

Adam shakes his head. “He left us with nothing, not a single penny, not even a piece of meat to live off of, and now I’m sitting here, in this tank, running from a global war my own father has helped orchestrate”—he laughs a hard, hollow laugh—“and the one other worthless person on this planet is lying unconscious in my lap.” Adam is actually laughing now, laughing hard, disbelieving, his hand caught in his hair, tugging at the roots, gripping his skull. “And he’s my brother. My own flesh and blood.

“My father had an entirely separate life I didn’t know about and instead of being dead like he should be, he gave me a brother who almost tortured me to death in a slaughterhouse—” He runs an unsteady hand over the length of his face, suddenly cracking, suddenly slipping, suddenly losing control and his hands are shaking and he has to curl them into fists and he presses them against his forehead and says, “He has to die.”

And I’m not breathing, not even a little bit, not even at all, when he says,

“My father,” he says, “I have to kill him.”





FORTY-TWO


I’m going to tell you a secret.

I don’t regret what I did. I’m not sorry at all.

In fact, if I had a chance to do it again I know this time I’d do it right. I’d shoot Anderson right through the heart.

And I would enjoy it.





FORTY-THREE


I don’t even know where to begin.

Adam’s pain is like a handful of straw shoved down my throat. He has no parents but a father who beat him, abused him, abandoned him only to ruin the rest of the world and left him a brand-new brother who is exactly his opposite in every possible way.

Warner whose first name is no longer a mystery, Adam whose last name isn’t actually Kent.

Kent is his middle name, Adam said to me. He said he didn’t want to have anything to do with his father and never told people his real last name. He has that much, at least, in common with his brother.

That, and the fact that both of them have some kind of immunity to my touch.

Adam and Aaron Anderson.

Brothers.

I’m sitting in my room, sitting in the dark, struggling to reconcile Adam with his new sibling who is really nothing more than a boy, a child who hates his father and as a result, a child who made a series of very unfortunate decisions in life. 2 brothers. 2 very different sets of choices.

2 very different lives.

Castle came to me this morning—now that all the injured have been set up in the medical wing and the insanity has subsided—he came to me and he said, “Ms. Ferrars, you were very brave yesterday. I wanted to extend my gratitude to you, and thank you for what you did—for showing your support. I don’t know that we would’ve made it out of there without you.”

I smiled, struggled to swallow the compliment and assumed he was finished but then he said, “In fact, I’m so impressed that I’d like to offer you your first official assignment at Omega Point.”

My first official assignment.

“Are you interested?” he asked.

I said yes yes yes of course I was interested, I was definitely interested, I was so very, very interested to finally have something to do—something to accomplish—and he smiled and he said, “I’m so happy to hear it. Because I can’t think of anyone better suited to this particular position than you.”

I beamed.

The sun and the moon and the stars called and said, “Turn down the beaming, please, because you’re making it hard for us to see,” and I didn’t listen, I just kept on beaming. And then I asked Castle for the details of my official assignment. The one perfectly suited to me.