Brutal Boy by Selena

seventeen

Royal Dolce

I’m halfway home when my phone chimes, and fuckwit that I am, my first thought is that Harper is texting me. But no, it’s just Lo.

ThatsLo: Where r u?

Royal: what do u need

ThatsLo: nothing asshole harper is in trouble

Royal: Whats going on?

ThatsLo: Some guys have her surrounded I’m scared 4 her

I slam on the brakes and yank the wheel hard, flying across the median and doing a one-eighty to head back the way I came. Fuck. It’ll take me at least five minutes to get back, even doing over a hundred. I floor the car and grab my phone.

Royal: Fucking do something

ThatsLo: I tried.

Royal: Try harder asshole

ThatsLo: fuck u im not a martyr I’m helping more by txting u than making myself a victim 2

Royal: bitch

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why did I leave her at that fucking party? Every time I turn around some guy has his hands on her. I should have known she couldn’t be left alone for five minutes, let alone the whole night. I curse my brothers for not keeping eyes on her, but I’m the one who should have been watching. If something happens, it’s on me.

A sick feeling grips my insides, twisting them all up into something I don’t want to look at, something weak, disgusting, that won’t go away no matter how hard I try to crush it into a fucking diamond with the force of my hatred. I know not to walk away from someone I—

I stop that thought. I don’t give a fuck about Harper. Still. She’s mine, and you don’t leave something that’s yours and expect it to be there when you go back, not when it’s something precious.

Royal: What is she doing?

ThatsLo: idk

Royal: TELL ME

ThatsLo: She knocked 1 out and kicked a guy in the nuts, but theres like 8 of them. U need 2 come back

Royal: WTF do u think I’m doing?

ThatsLo: then stop txting

Royal: no stay on I need 2 know she’s ok

ThatsLo: She’s not

ThatsLo: hurry k

I hit the dirt road too fast and almost spin out. Anyone who says you can drive fast on gravel has never tried it. But I do my fucking best, and if I slide in the ditch a few times, it’s nothing the Rover can’t handle. Thank fuck I’m not in Baron’s Tesla. I roll up to the party and hit the brakes, sending up a spray of gravel as I pull the brake and bust out of there without bothering to kill the engine or shut the door.

I see Gloria first, over toward the Faulkner side but not at the party. Of course she’s fucking on their side. Everyone on our side knows better.

I sprint across the gravel to where she’s standing a ways off from a small crowd gathered at the edge of the pit. Harper is standing with her back to the edge, not two steps from falling. Her tiny shirt is torn down the front, her hair’s a wreck, and her mouth is bloody. A couple guys are facing her, while two lie on the ground and another kneels nearby, holding his dick and groaning. About a dozen people stand around not doing shit but watching it all go down.

“Out of my way,” I growl, shoving through, not bothering to look who I’m pushing to the ground on my way. I grab the two guys’ heads and smash them together, feeling the satisfying crunch of their skulls connecting. Without bothering to see if they’re conscious, I step past Harper and toss them into the pit.

That gets the crowd going. A couple people scream.

“What the fuck?” Harper yells, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I had it handled.”

I’m too pissed to find the words for her, so I grab her and throw her over my shoulder. She struggles, but I ignore her futile attempts. They’re just a show. Even she knows she can’t get away. She’s doll-sized compared to me.

I turn to the little crowd, wanting to hurl them all over the edge, too. Some of them have the balls to look pissed or upset.

“I’m calling the cops,” a girl says, her face all twisted up and covered with tears. Apparently she liked that douchebag who was hitting a girl. Good fucking luck to her.

“Do you know who this is?” I ask, moving forward a few paces toward the dozen people standing there gaping. “Do you dumb fucks even know who I am?”

A few shake their heads, but the others just stare. They know.

“I am Royal Dolce, and this is mine,” I say slowly, my voice trembling with rage. “If you have something to say about that, I suggest you say it before you join those carcasses in the pit. If you don’t, then get the fuck out of my way. But don’t ever disrespect me and what’s mine again.”

They all scuttle back like cockroaches when I approach, so I shove past. Gloria hovers, her phone in her hand. “I tried to find your brothers, but I don’t know where they went, and they didn’t answer,” she says, sounding panicky and close to tears.

I want to tell her to go fuck herself for not helping, and I’m too pissed to thank her even though some part of me knows I should. Ignoring her, I go straight to the Range Rover and yank open the passenger door. Harper is making herself as heavy as humanly possible on my shoulder, which only makes me want to laugh. I could bench press her ass.

I set her in the seat, battling the rage that’s simmering up inside me like black clouds, trying to churn over my mind.

“I had it handled,” she growls again, shoving my chest. “I didn’t need your help.”

I barely feel her little hands pushing at me. I grab the seatbelt and yank it around her, snapping it into place. She reaches for it, like she’s going to jump out and make a run for it while I head for the driver’s side. I grab her hand, my grip crushing until I see her chest swell as she sucks in a breath. Though her bra is completely exposed, I barely notice her tits. I loosen my hold, but I don’t release her hand. I want her to remember what I can do to her.

“You want to try something?” I ask, low and menacing. I hear my own voice through the rushing in my ears, but it sounds like a stranger. I don’t know when I started to sound like a dangerous man.

Harper swallows and relaxes her hand, and I drop it and slam the door. We peel out in another spray of gravel, but this time, I control my speed and the vehicle on the gravel road. My fingers ache with the force of my grip around the wheel. I don’t speak. I can’t. Everything in my body is charged with rage so deep it pulsates in my veins, sinks into the marrow of my bones. I know this place of darkness well. I have a fucking timeshare here.

We turn off the dirt and onto a paved road, and Harper speaks at last. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Like hell,” I growl.

“I only had two left,” she says. “I can take care of myself.”

“You’re fucking welcome.”

“What, I’m supposed to get on my knees and suck your dick with gratitude that you swept in to rescue me like some gallant knight? Fuck you, Royal. I wouldn’t have been in that situation if it weren’t for you.”

“Every time I turn around, you’re surrounded by guys. I leave for five fucking minutes to deal with family shit, and they’re on you like flies. If you’d stop putting it out there that you’re a whore, maybe I wouldn’t have to keep rescuing your ass.”

“You put it out there that I’m a whore,” she says quietly. “You put the video out there. They saw it, and they wanted what he got. That’s on you, Royal. Not me.”

“They said that?”

She gives a little snort of breath. “Yes, they said that. You didn’t have to kill them for it.”

I want to rip the steering wheel off, tear the car to pieces, go back and drive over every single one of those assholes. I should have killed them. They won’t die, though. The edges of that mining pit aren’t ninety-degree angles. They’re more like seventy-five. They’ll roll down the hundred-foot gravel slope, and even if they weren’t knocked the fuck out, there’s nothing for them to grab onto to stop the slide. By the time they reach the bottom, they might wish they were dead.

“And what was I supposed to do?” I ask.

“Let me deal with my own problems,” she says, throwing up her hands. “I was doing fine. I would have gotten the last two.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” I say quietly. I’m the one who fucked up. But saying that part aloud is impossible.

She just shakes her head. “You don’t get it. You have brothers who always have your back. No matter what you say, they respect it. They’ve got you. Not everyone has that luxury just built into their lives, automatically, without question. Some people learn early to look out for themselves, because they know damn well that’s the only person who will.”

I’d feel like a whiny little bitch if I said anything about my brothers now, if I said they’re a responsibility and not just backup. But she’s right. At the end of the day, I’m fucking lucky.

“You have your mom, though, right?” I ask, even though I shouldn’t give a fuck if she has someone or no one. It doesn’t matter. Nothing about her matters. She’s something to take the brunt of my rage when I need to destroy something beautiful. That’s all. It’s all she can ever be.

She snorts and turns toward the window. “Yeah. Sure.”

I don’t push for more. I know better than anyone that parents and even siblings aren’t always there when you need them. Sometimes, they disappear without a trace. They blow you off. They move on with their lives. They only care when there’s something in it for them.

“I see your shitty mom,” I say, glancing over at her. “And I raise you one dead sister.”

Surprise flashes across her face, and then she laughs. She fucking laughs. It about does me in, that throaty, genuine laugh from this tough-as-nails, pain-in-the-ass, don’t-need-anyone bitch. I should pull over and strangle the life out of her for that, but as I adjust my grip on the wheel, I realize that I’m not pissed. Somehow, I’m calmer, the rage sinking back to the usual simmering level. I don’t know how she did it. I even crack a little smile.

I don’t know how she got me to talk about Crystal, either. It’s still raw as a pulled tooth to mention her, even after two years. In those two years, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard her name. People tiptoe around it, like if they mention it, I might remember that yeah, I once had a sister. Like I could forget. Like it’s not always there, her absence like a tumor pressing against my lungs, so I can never breathe again, not the way I used to.

I’ve never talked about it to anyone, either. What would I say? That I disowned her and told her she was dead to me, and then she was. That those were the last words I ever said to her. That if she could see me now, she’d be disgusted and devastated by the person I’ve become. No one needs to hear that shit, and there’s nothing else to say.

Though I should keep going until I reach the exit that leads to the shitty, derelict part of Faulkner where Harper lives, I pull off the highway on the exit to the winding road toward our neighborhood. I don’t want her hearing the shit I have to say to Dad, but I also don’t want to waste another thirty minutes. This needs to be said now. She can wait in the car.

After a long silence, she shakes her head. “Damn. I can’t beat that. All I’ve got left in my hand is a dad I’ve never met.”

“I wish I’d never met my dad.”

Another silence falls.

“What was she like?” she asks quietly.

That’s her fucking question. She could have asked where I’m taking her or demanded a ride home. But she wants to know about Crystal.

And I want to know why.

When I look over, she’s staring straight ahead, working over her split lip with her tongue. I watch her wet, pink tongue teasing the ragged, bloody cut and my cock throbs in my jeans, and I almost miss a curve and run off the fucking road. Taking her to my house is a real fucking bad idea.

I jerk the car straight and check to make sure she didn’t notice. She didn’t.

“She was… Everything,” I hear myself saying.

“Was she a lot like you?”

“A monster?”

“Your words, not mine.”

“No,” I say quietly. “She wasn’t like me.”

I wait for her to say she’s sorry, the way everyone does when they hear I have a dead sister. But she doesn’t say anything. She’s still tonguing the slit on her lip like it’s a fucking cunt.

Instinctually, I know this is my only chance, the one time I’ll allow myself, the one time anyone else will allow me. I have no right to say her name after what I said to her last. I took her family, her name, and I told her it was no longer hers. What right do I have to speak it now?

Once we leave this car, reality will slam us back to being what we are—enemies.

So I try to think of something to say, letting my foot up on the gas a little to make it last longer, to keep the illusion just a few more seconds. But everything I could say to describe Crystal would take longer than we have or sound cliché as hell—that she was soft but strong, innocent but smart, giving but selfish, eager to please but defiant, clever but gullible.

Before I’ve found something real to say, we’re at the gate to our neighborhood. “She was… A contradiction,” I say, hitting the gate code.

“Most women are,” Harper says simply.

I don’t say anything as we pull onto the white gravel road through the neighborhood. I hate that she makes me think of her as a woman, as human, as someone whose life is as complex—as important—as my sister’s. Seeing the burnt rubble of Devlin’s house after Duke’s latest fire and the gaudy antebellum monstrosity that Dad bought brings reality back like a slap. We didn’t even get to climb out of the car before it hit.

“Stay in the car,” I say. “I’ll take you home in a minute.”

She gives me a look. “You know me better than that.”

I close my eyes and rest my head back against the seat, summoning my patience. She’s right. She’s going to go snooping around no matter what I do. “You can get cleaned up in my bathroom,” I say at last. Maybe she’ll be too busy getting the blood off her face to eavesdrop on my conversation.

She shrugs and climbs out of the car, and I do the same, stepping in front of her to unlock the back door. Thank fuck it’s late enough that the maid isn’t around to hover. I start for the stairs, but just as we reach the bottom, a door opens in the hall behind us.

“I thought I heard a car in the drive,” Dad says, sounding so fucking normal you’d think he wasn’t the worst of all of us.

I turn around and grab the front of Harper’s jacket, pulling it closed over her exposed skin. “Keep that shut,” I mutter to her, but my eyes are on Dad, who’s busy eye-fucking her from behind.

“You’re home early,” Dad says, giving me a knowing look. “Twins still out?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m just taking Harper upstairs to get cleaned up.”

I put an arm around Harper, who tenses but turns reluctantly to face my father, holding her jacket closed.

“Ah,” Dad says, coming along the hall to meet us. “So this is the girl you’ve been spending time with.”

“Stay out of my business,” I snap.

He smiles and holds out a hand to Harper, who awkwardly shifts her grip on the front of her jacket from her right hand to her left so she can shake his hand.

“Hi, Mr. Dolce,” she says, and damn if she doesn’t sound nervous. Never thought I’d hear that tone in her voice.

“Tony’s fine,” he says, still holding onto her hand. “That’s some nasty bruise on your face. I hope my son didn’t do that.” He chuckles, like it’s fucking funny, and raises a brow at me, like I need a reminder not to punch a chick in the face.

Harper glances up at me and extracts her hand from his. “No, I just fell.”

Dad drags his gaze over her. “Well, if there’s one person who knows how to take care of a bloody nose, it’s my son,” he says, smiling like he’s some kind of proud papa and not a piece of shit father.

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I say.

“You might need stitches for that lip,” Dad says, reaching out like he’s going to touch her face, turn it toward the light to examine the wounds.

I block his hand, pulling Harper halfway behind me. “Keep your hands off her,” I growl.

Dad holds up both hands and laughs. “You kids know where the ice and bandages are,” he says. “I guess you don’t need me to patch you up anymore.”

Anger pulses in my temples, and I grab Harper and drag her up the stairs. All the lightness from the car ride is gone, and I just want to get this over with and get her out of my house.

“Your dad seems nice,” she says, her words measured.

“You’re just his type,” I snarl. “Almost legal.” I pull her along the hall to my bedroom, unlock the door, and pull her in.

“You have a lock on your bedroom door?” she asks. “That’s… Interesting.”

I flick on the bathroom light and pull her inside. “All the other doors have locks, too, so don’t bother trying to snoop. Clean up. You might shower, too. You smell like garbage.”

She rolls her eyes. “Got a T-shirt I can borrow?”

I grab her a school shirt and hand it into the bathroom. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Don’t go anywhere else, and keep your hands off my shit. I don’t need your greasy fingerprints all over everything.”

I find Dad downstairs in his office, a shot of whiskey in a glass in his hand as if he’s waiting for me. “That one’s a looker,” he says when I walk in.

“Who’s Thomas Hertz?” I ask.

Dad frowns. “Who?”

“Thomas Hertz,” I grit out. “Some asshole who sold a car to two teenagers the night she disappeared. Apparently he came to you with that information, so why the fuck haven’t I heard about it?”

Dad swishes his whiskey around in his glass, his eyes never leaving mine. “Oh,” he says at last, leaning back in his chair. “One of those.”

“One of what?” I ask, fighting the urge to throttle him across his desk.

“One of the vultures,” he says flatly. “Do you know how many people came forward with worthless tips when we offered a million-dollar reward? Hundreds of unscrupulous conmen came running with bullshit stories that led nowhere. Did you expect me to share every single one with you boys? You were grieving. I had to protect you.”

“I deserved to know,” I growl at him. “She was my twin.”

He shoots to his feet, slamming his glass down on the desk. “She was my daughter,” he shouts. “I followed every dead-end tip as far as it would go, and they all led nowhere. You want to stand here and tell me I didn’t try?”

He’s breathing hard, raging at me across the desk, his own temper meeting mine and dampening my impulsive outburst. Of course he looked. Of course he followed the tip, even though it was some poor asshole from Harper’s side of town who was only after a quick buck. Just because he didn’t share every detail with us doesn’t mean he didn’t fucking try. He’s not the person I’m really pissed at, anyway. As always, that honor goes to my own damn self.

“I know you tried,” I say quietly. I barely remember a thing for the six months surrounding her disappearance. Dad and King took care of everything. I was worthless. Before and after, I was living in some kind of autopilot nightmare. I remember looking, how desperate and immediate everything felt at the time, like every moment was a punch in the gut. Now it’s just a dark blur, a ruined page in the story of my life where the ink runs together and bleeds into all the pages after.

Dad sits down heavily, pulling the cork from his whiskey to pour himself another shot. He grabs a glass from the liquor cart and hands me one, too. “I don’t remember the names of any of them,” he says. “I offered a reward for information that led to her recovery, and none of it did. If it had, I’d have written someone a check for a million dollars, and you can bet your ass I’d remember it.”

“And she’d be here,” I say, sinking onto the edge of the chair next to his desk before downing the shot and reaching for the bottle.

For a rare, peaceful moment, we sit in silence, not blaming each other for tragedies that don’t make sense, that have no ending, no villain, and no winners. When there’s no one to blame, but the weight of it is too great to bear alone, we each find someone to point fingers at.

I remember a fuss when some of the people who had tips didn’t get paid, that a couple of them got together and tried to sue Dad, because that’s the kind of assholes who live in this town. The kind who would sue a father who just lost his daughter because he didn’t hand over money for worthless information and lies. Dad won that one when they dropped the lawsuit, and a lot of people in town rallied behind us because everyone loves a good tragedy, and we had so fucking many.

No one wants to be known as a tragedy, especially a man as proud as Dad. As any of us, really. No one wants their pain on display for the town to walk by and marvel at, offering sympathies while secretly relieved it’s not their life behind the glass. Maybe we’re all just doing the same thing Duke does, creating a chaos around us so great that the true moments of hurt aren’t standing out for all the world to see. Instead, they’re buried in a hundred other tall tales and true stories. If we keep giving them shit to look at, to distract them, they’ll stop quenching their thirst for gossip in the endless well of our pain.

Dad’s the one who breaks the silence. He jerks his head toward the ceiling, gesturing with his eyes. “You enjoying the girl?”

I push back and set my glass down, avoiding his shrewd gaze. “I’d better go check on her before she plants a bug in my light.”

“Just watch what you say around her,” he says. “Everyone’s after something.”

Don’t I fucking know it.