Ten Thousand Lies (5 page)

Ricki

My life wasn’t flashing before my eyes.

Is this a good thing?

Blood trickled from a cut below my eye, dripping down my face and onto the left leg of my jeans. Staring at it, watching the stain spread, I could hardly comprehend what my father was saying.

Oh, that I was no longer his son. He could never have sired such a traitor.

Charles Godwin had thought he was raising cold-blooded killers. He had no clue that his wife had made sure his sons were warriors instead. It was a secret I’d be taking to my grave once my executioner showed up.

Next to me, on his knees with his hands bound in zip ties, Ronen stared blandly at my father. Motherfucker wasn’t even breaking a sweat. He looked fucking bored. My arms were going numb. Charles’s bodyguards had made sure to make my ties particularly tight.

Charles picked up his phone. “I’ve got them. Come clean up this mess.”

Ah…the executioner.
I wondered which one of his goons had been chosen for this task. In the future, I hoped, every time he looked at the motherfucker, he’d remember killing off his own son.

Whenever
I
looked at Charles, I remembered killing Gavin McElroy when I was fourteen. Gavin had been a mule runner, who’d developed a taste for the goods. He’d started pinching to sell on the side, too. Charles couldn’t let that stand. He’d taken Max and me to McElroy’s house and made the man get on his knees and beg for his life.

I’d shot him between his wired bloodshot eyes.

Max had killed his screaming whore wife the same way.

“A Godwin never lets himself get ripped off, lads. This shit stain stole from me. From
you
. You don’t ever let scum like this get away with it. You never show weakness,” he’d told us as his goons rolled up the bodies and cleared out the rubbish.

I hadn’t shown my weakness to
him
, but I’d cried my eyes out in my mother’s arms that night.

“I’d never have believed it, James,” said Charles. “You were my golden boy, my Baby Blues…”

Looking up at him, one of my baby blues swollen shut, I was oddly filled with shame for disappointing him. My right eye filled with tears. “I couldn’t let that kid be sold.”

“He was
mine
!”

“A British citizen, sold by his own father to settle a debt—”

“He was not yours to make any sort of decision either way. You and this fucking pikey stole my property and released it to be a witness against your family! You’re a fucking disgrace! A thief and a traitor! You chose a fucking faggot stranger over your own blood. You are the lowest, most despicable life-form I know. Not even the fucking pikey can compete with the scum you are. He was just following a Godwin’s orders. Even though he has to
die
for it, at least
he
was loyal in his betrayal.”

I waited for something snarky to pop out of Ronen’s mouth, but he was silent.

Behind us came a knock on the heavy doors. Standing sentinel were my father’s two most trusted bodyguards. Mark, the one to my right, shifted and unlocked the door.

“That was quick,” said Charles, sounding…defeated.

My heart cracked at the note in his voice.
Perhaps he’s regretting the order to have me offed?

“I came as fast as I could.”

Everything within me froze, slick with fear.
That
voice had forever been my voice of reason, encouragement, and love. Lurching painfully, my heart kicked back into rhythm.

No. He wouldn’t…would he?

The familiar pattern of Max’s footsteps made their way around me, to the right. The tears in my good eye spilled over while I watched in horror as my brother’s legs came into view.

Oh God, please, not Max. What’s he doing here? Does he even know what we’ve done?

Max laid a case on my father’s massive oak desk, snapping the locks and pulling out his favorite gun and silencer.

“I can’t look at him, Max. I can’t do it myself. You have to,” my father said.

“It’s fine,” said Max. “I have no problem purging the filth from our family.”

My jaw dropped. “Ma-Max—”

Of course, he knew what we’d done. Max was here for the sole purpose of ridding the world of Ronen and me. No doubt our father had told him everything by now.

“Don’t you fucking speak to me, you piece of shit! You are no brother of mine. You thought you’d get away with this, being Baby Blues?”

Now
, my life started flashing.

The trip to Spain when we were kids. We went as a family. My parents truly appeared to be in love. Max and I were spoiled rotten. We were all so happy for those two weeks.

The time I was thrown from the horse and landed on a fence, shattering my testicles, rendering them useless.

Guess that had been prophetic in a sense. I wouldn’t live long enough to father children anyway.

Susan Thompson, my grade-school crush, who told me in seventh class that she wouldn’t go to the dance with me because she didn’t dance with losers. Poor thing ended up with two broken legs the day before the dance.

I knew now my father had had a hand in that.

The last time I kissed a woman. Rachel Jenkins at a school formal four years ago. She wore a red dress. I could’ve fallen desperately in love with her if she hadn’t moved away two days later.

I’d never know if it was my father or her parents who had had their hand in that.

The evening my father took all my drawings and paintings and had them burned, and then he beat my mother because she’d told me I could be an artist if that was what I wanted. Charles Godwin’s sons weren’t going to be bloody faggots and artists.

Behind his desk, my father turned his back on us. A strange sound came from him, a sort of choking
.

Is the man crying?
Unbelievable.

“Kill the fucking pikey first,” he said, unable to face what was going on in his own office. “Make him watch his friend die. Then, take him out. Make it clean though, Max.”

“Whatever you say,” replied my brother, his hard black eyes flashing.

Silencer attached, Max walked up to us, gun resting like a cherished lover in his hand.

It’s fitting then. I betrayed our family, only to be betrayed by Max. I thought we had a common goal. For years, we worked together to figure out how to sabotage the slave trade from the inside, and instead…

“Close your eyes, Jamey,” whispered Ronen. “Don’t give them anything more.”

“Fuck you, pikey piece of shit,” snarled Max. He raised his arm.

My good eye closed.

Pop! Pop!

Pop!

With a shocked gasp, I opened my eye. Behind us, the muffled crunch of bodies hit the floor. Before me…

Charles Maximillian James Godwin wasn’t anywhere I could see.

“Max,”
I whispered.

My brother unsheathed his knife from his ankle and severed the ties that bound my hands. Then, he took my face and kissed my brow before hauling me into his arms. “Fuck, Jamey…how stupid can you be?”

“You just…”

“Both of you!” he raged. “Everything—
everything
—we’ve dedicated ourselves to could have been blown to hell! Why didn’t either of you run this by me first?”

Ronen sighed.

Max’s arms tightened around me. “You just went with him, didn’t you?” he asked Ronen.

“Shit, can you bloody untie me already?”

Max gently pushed me back and made his way over to Ronen. Cutting Ronen’s ties, Max sat down and raked his hands through his black hair.

“You killed Charles,” I croaked.

“It was going to be either you or me, Jamey.”

Stunned, I stared at our father’s desk, wondering about the sight behind it. “Headshot?”

“He probably never even felt it. No doubt, his ghost is screaming for our heads as we speak.”

Shuddering, I sincerely hoped our father would reap some sort of judgment. He’d ruined so many lives, destroyed the souls of too many people, for him to simply be put down and that be the end of it.

“Jamey, you have to leave. Deo should be here any minute—”

“He’s not in Oxford? What about his mum? Did Dad—”

Max shook his head. “Dad might’ve suspected Deo was involved, but he made no calls to go after Deo or his mum. You left Wallace alive at the warehouse. He called Dad and said only you and Ronen were there with the kid, nothing about Deo.”

“Then, how—” Ronen said.

“I called Deo, and he told me what went down, what you asked him to do. No one is going after the kid or that family. No one who is left knows. I took care of Wallace. Then, I called…I can’t even tell you. You’ll find out soon enough. Deo is on his way, and you are to stay out of sight until you leave. You have to leave England. Everything is being sorted out by some people. I can’t say whom. But I’ve been in touch with them since you two came back from Amsterdam last year. They’re going to contact you when it’s clear.”

“What the fuck—”

Max gave me a rib-cracking hug. “You’re
out
, brother. You get a new start. A new life.
Do something with it
—the both of you.”

“What about you? Mom?”

“We’re Godwins, Jamey. We don’t all get this chance.”

“But—”

Max’s phone started ringing. “It’s Deo,” he said, checking the number. “Go out the back way. He’s waiting for you there.”

“Max,”
I said, my voice bordering on panicked.

Black eyes met my one good blue. “I’ll try to see you one last time, but I can’t promise. Now, go.”

“Well, that’s something you don’t get to see every day,” I said as I clicked off the telly.

Deo had brought us to his uncle’s small holiday cottage somewhere in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. It might have been big enough to house just Deo, but with the three of us, shite got cramped quick. I couldn’t imagine the place packed with Deo’s similarly massive cousins. There were only two bedrooms and a miniscule bathroom.

Deo had left early in the morning, around six, saying he had some errands to run, but I’d spotted him on the telly at the funeral service. It wasn’t a live broadcast; the service had ended nearly four hours ago. The news channels were getting a right kick out of a double Godwin burial though.

“I can’t imagine what’s going through your fucking head,” said Ronen as he set up his tattoo machines and power pedals for the third time in three days.

“Surreal,” I grunted.

I had just watched my own funeral on television. My father and I had been laid to rest in the family plot. There had been a lot of mourners. My mother had looked much older than her forty years, her face swollen from crying. The sheer black veil couldn’t disguise her grief.

A rumor had spread that our biggest rival, the Frasers, had infiltrated our family and had killed The Godwin and his youngest son in the hopes of taking over our territories. In retaliation, Max had had the Frasers wiped off the map. Within days of The Godwin’s slaying, every high-ranking member of the Frasers and their families, even the children, had vanished. Of course, no one could find any evidence linking the new Godwin to something so vile, but we paid the authorities well.

I understood why it had been done even though my heart ached at the thought of innocent people being slaughtered. The Frasers had been deep into human trafficking and had been encroaching on Godwin territory for years. Charles had kept them under his thumb for a long fucking time. With him gone, they could have potentially taken over that particular business for themselves. Max couldn’t risk that.

“You ready?” asked Ronen, pushing the power pedal, making the machine whiz to life.

The Godwins had some pretty strict rules when it came to their appearance. We were to be distinguished gentlemen, looking presentable at all times. Direct descendants were never, ever allowed to mark themselves with tattoos. Scars were one thing; they came with the territory. Our hair was to be trimmed short. We were never to grow facial hair or have piercings.

I’d spent the last three days getting my skin inked, starting with my neck and hands—the most visible parts—and even a couple of small ones on my face. I had a tiny black triangle below the outside corner of my right eye—each point representing my brother, my mum, and myself. On my left temple, Ronen had tattooed a tiny upside-down cross because he was an asshole
and thought it would be a laugh. Anti-God. Anti-Godwin.

A rebellious teen at the time, Ronen had started tattooing when he was just sixteen. He wasn’t just a good artist; the man was gifted. He loved nothing more than putting art on skin.

I had met him when I was eighteen, and I had been insanely jealous of his life. Gypsy wanderer, he’d listened to no one, obeyed no rules he deemed unnecessary. Tattooed, scruffy, a free spirit on a mission, Ronen was everything I was never allowed to be.

Until now.

Since the night of the massacre a week before, I hadn’t shaved. Each time I looked in the mirror, I would be startled to see the face of this person, especially after the tattoos. I fucking loved them. They were
me
. The real me I’d had to deny. It was sad my father had had to die for me to be able to be myself.