Breaker (Unmasked #3)

45. Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Breaker

16 Years Ago, May, Age 12

M y birthday was yesterday. Not that anyone knows that. Some of my brothers don’t have birthdays. Reaper and Hunter do. Striker and Viper do. But Seeker and Raid don’t remember theirs. Makes me wonder how they know how old they are. Maybe Fallon just told them, and they believe him.

It doesn’t matter much anyway—if we remember our birthdays. We don’t celebrate them. There are no cakes like in Cooks movies, or even pancakes like Nanny made me. When I woke up and realized what day it was, my chest ached with missing her. I’ve not seen her in seven years, and I wonder if she’s still living in the same little house in the village. If Fallon visits her like he used to.

I wonder too sometimes if he just liked her or if he ever loved her. I may be the youngest, but I figured out why Fallon came to visit with Nanny those days they sent me away for lessons at church. When it first hit me, I was jealous. Nanny was mine. My good thing. But I guess she was Fallon’s, too. He was usually sweet to her. Thinking back, I think she liked him a lot more than he liked her.

I know how that feels. To like someone so much and they don’t seem to like you back. There’s a girl in the village who likes me. I think she does, and I like her, but she’s a little older than me. She has me kiss her cheek, so she must like me, but she’s not the one I wish would notice me.

It’s a silly thought, because I know he does like me. But some days, I wish he’d look at me longer.

“Get out of your head and concentrate,” Viper says from next to me. “We’re supposed to be practicing.”

I look down at my hands. My fingers stroke over the ivory. I press the white key, then the black and the high notes ring in the air, floating around the bare room with hard vinyl floors and chipped walls.

“Come on, brother,” Viper says. He props his chin on the violin—the fiddle, he calls it—and draws the bow across the strings. A low, drawn out note tugs at my chest. I like it when he plays. He’s not very good, but I still like watching him play. He gets this soft look on his face like he’s feeling the music.

Father insists we practice for an hour every day. Striker tried every instrument in this room and was good at all of them, but he only really likes the old guitar in the corner. He’s out at practice today with Maxim, practicing with a new rifle Fallon brought back from the States when he went last week.

I refocus on the keys before me and play. Viper sets his violin down and sits next to me. That clean, bright smell that seems to surround him fills my nose. Our hips mash together, and he doesn’t seem to notice, so I pretend not to.

I pretend a lot of things.

The door behind us opens, and Fallon walks in, and the air in the room changes. Becomes thick. He’s not wearing one of his suits and little alarm bells clang in my head. Fallon rarely wears a uniform like ours, but today, the gray pants and shirt match mine. There’s a long wooden box under his arm, but I know better than to ask him what is inside. He’ll tell me if he wants me to know.

“ Syn, ” he says, and I know he means me, not Viper. I still have yet to earn my name. “Come with me.”

A frown tugs at my lips. “I’m not done with my lessons,” I say, feeling Viper’s body tense next to me.

I’m the only one who dares sass Fallon, but the second his face turns cold, his features seeming to go flat, I regret the words.

“Come with me,” he says and walks back out the door.

With a glance at Viper, I scoot around the bench and follow Fallon out the door and into the hall, my breathing unsteady. I sort through the last few days, trying to make sure I did nothing wrong, but come up blank. I must not be in trouble.

The stiffness in my legs eases at the realization, and I keep up with his long strides, our boots clicking on the old vinyl tiles as we make our way to the back of the building. When we reach the heavy metal door that leads to the broiler room in the basement, my stomach lurches.

“We’re going down there?” Heart thundering, I do my best to keep the hint of fear from my voice, but I taste the tang of it in my mouth. We’re not allowed in the broiler room. Ever.

“You are a smart boy,” Fallon says, his tone not matching the darkness flickering in his eyes. Something odd glimmers in them, reminding me of the oily pools of water that gather in the concrete entrance at the gate after it rains. “So smart, that what I’m about to ask of you, I know you will never repeat. Not to your brothers, not to Cook, not to Teacher. And not to Commander Maxim.”

My stomach does that twisting, knotting thing. My mind races with a list of things he’d not want Maxim to know, but I don’t think there’s a single thing Maxim doesn’t know.

Fallon’s brow rises, waiting for my response. “Do you understand?”

I nod and say, “Yes, sir,” but I’m lying because confusion whirls in my head. And fear. Not just from the intense stare of Fallon’s ice-blue eyes, but what he’s asking me. To keep another secret.

Except this one feels like it’s going to be darker than my sweet, sunny Nanny.

He lifts his chin toward the door, indicating I’m to lead the way. My hesitation earns me a stiff shove. Scared of disappointing Fallon by showing fear, my palms smack the metal bar, and I push the door open. It hits the wall with a loud clang.

A drop of water hits my head, making my heart skitter with fear as we descend the damp concrete steps. My boots scrape as I take the last step and stop at the bottom of the stairs. There’s barely any light, just a bulb overhead, and I imagine dark things living in the thick shadows draping the corners of the room in darkness.

Then I see it.

Instinctively, I take a step back, bumping into Fallon’s solid chest. Confusion mixed with fear slides up my arms, making them tingle.

“Why’s he down here?” I whisper.

Without a word, Fallon brushes past me and approaches the bound and gagged man lying on what looks like a gurney from the infirmary. I stupidly wonder if Doc gave Fallon the metal table or if he stole it.

This is his school. He doesn’t need to steal.

A loud thud jolts me out of my thoughts as the man on the gurney struggles against his bonds and yells through the gag in his mouth

My eyes dart to Fallon. He sets the box down on a small metal tray table next to the man and stares down at me expectantly. I’m not sure what he wants me to do or say. I’ve seen enough movies to gather that this must me an evil man. I briefly wonder if he’s a good man who got caught by the enemy, like I saw in that one movie, but dismiss it because Fallon wouldn’t take a good man and tie him up.

Fallon isn’t nice all the time, and he scares me a little, but he’s still Father. He loves me but has to be hard on me so I become a good soldat . Besides, if he’s too nice to me, it will make my brothers not like me, so I’m punished with everyone else. I deserve it too. Fallon says my nasty streak gets the better of me, and I need to control it.

Like when Nanny told me I had to control the monster in my chest, not the other way around.

After a minute, the man stops yelling and thrashing. I step closer to see if I recognize him. He looks like a regular worker in the village, no one I’ve seen before. His white shirt is stained under the armpits, and his jeans are dirty. His feet are bare and I wonder if Fallon took them off, or if the man lost them.

I wonder too how he got down here.

“Who is he?” I ask again, keeping my voice low.

The sound of my voice seems to do something weird to the man because he twitches a little, like he’s surprised. Then he talks again, but the gag keeps him from forming the words properly.

He sounds like he’s saying, gid, hocking gid , over and over.

He keeps saying it, getting more and more agitated. The sharp slap of Fallon’s hand connecting to the man’s cheek makes me jolt, and the man stops talking.

“This man is a dangerous man,” Fallon tells me. “And we’re going to ensure he understands that there are consequences for being wicked.”

I’m about to ask Fallon why he didn’t just toss him in solitary or take his belt to his back when Fallon opens the box.

My mouth gets sour, bile rising in my throat.

“This man has done something heinous,” Fallon tells me, removing a tool from the box. I step back, not wanting to be near it. “Something that only bad, sick men do.”

My eyes grow wide. “Did he kill someone?”

“Worse, my syn,” Fallon says, eyes dropping to the instrument. “Far worse.”

I can’t imagine anything worse. I know there are other sins nearly as bad, but murder sits at the top of the list. Stealing is bad too, but I doubt Fallon would have this man down here, tied up and gagged, for just stealing.

“He did something terrible to Emilia.”

My blood chills, like someone injected ice into my veins. My voice scrapes up my throat when I say, “What did he do?”

I’m not sure if I want to know. Whatever he did must be bad. Did he kill Nanny? My head spins at the thought. I stumble back some, my chest feeling a little too tight, and I cross my arms, grasping my biceps. My foot taps on the dirty concrete floor. Just once. It echoes loud enough that it drowns out my ragged breathing.

“Do you understand that when I teach my sons a lesson, it is for your own good?” Fallon asks.

The question slices through me, ripping into my thoughts. I peel my eyes from the man and look at Fallon. He’s still holding the instrument, but he’s looking at me now, eyes fixed on my face with a sinister gleam in them. Dread creeps into my gut.

“This man needs to learn a lesson,” Fallon says. “One that will stay with him for the rest of his life.”

“What did he do?” I ask, whispering for some reason again. Maybe because this feels wrong. All of it. The man down here. The sludgy feeling in my gut. But what feels even worse is the thought of this man hurting Nanny.

“I know you won’t fully understand what I’m about to say,” Fallon says. he takes a deep breath. “This man hurt Emilia. In ways men can hurt women. He forced things on her. His hands. His body.”

I imagine this man trying to kiss Nanny and my blood burns.

She’s my Nanny. She’s Fallon’s Emilia. Emilia is pretty and soft and bright sunshine and flowery dresses. The thought of his gross, big hands on her face as he tried to kiss her, making her cry, sends hot anger through my chest. Makes it grow tight. Like it does when I get that bad feeling inside me. That dark, thick sensation that feels like sticky vines wrapping around my ribs, poking into my lungs, and it’s hard to breathe.

When I think about her not wanting him near her, my blood boils. When I think about the other possibilities flooding my mind, that sticky tightness in my chest travels up my throat and nearly chokes me.

Hunter talks all the time about the girls in the village and what they do to each other when he visits. I know what men and women do when they like one another. And if this big man did those things Hunter talks about to Nanny, and she didn’t want him to, then he deserves to be tied up and gagged and kept down here.

He deserves worse.

He deserves a lesson, like Fallon said.

One he’ll remember.

My teeth grind, anger making my hands twitch. My fingers curl into fists.

No. This isn’t just anger. This feels like destruction. Like a need to destroy.

“What lesson should he learn today, son?”

“Not to touch what’s ours.” I step toward the man, my eyes locked on his face. I want to remember what he looks like. His pale skin, pores filled with grit and dirt and other muck. It would feel good to smash my fist into his face. His hands are big—attached to thick meaty wrists. I imagine taking a dull knife and sawing through the fat, slicing them off. He’s got a gut, like Cook’s getting, and he’s got short arms and legs. He’s stocky, not built like a soldier at all.

My teeth gnash together, the urge to crack my fist, my boot, anything into his skull so strong I shake. My chest squeezes, my lungs burning with each rapid breath.

“And how should you teach him this lesson, Breaker?”

It takes a second for the full sentence to slip past my anger. At first, I don’t think I heard him correctly through the thundering in my head, so I rip my gaze from the man and look at Fallon. Then I hear the rest in my head.

You. Breaker.

That thundering grows louder. I feel it in my chest, beating hard, like that monster Nanny said lived inside me is rattling against my ribs, screaming to finally being noticed. I’ve just earned my name.

Fallon always tells me I break things. Rules and codes and dishes and his patience.

I like my name. Breaker.

But then I realize what he’s said.

How should you teach the man a lesson, Breaker?

I blink, looking back at the man. Fallon, Father, he just gave me my name, based on my skills, yet all those things he says I am are bad things. They aren’t a skill like Striker has, or Seeker, or even Viper.

It’s all the bad things that live inside me like shadows.

I break things. I ruin things. I destroy things.

Nanny told me as a little boy, I needed to keep that dark monstrous need under control and not the other way around.

And Fallon wants me to unleash it. To teach this man a lesson.

So, I’m going to break him.

I take the hammer from Fallon and inspect it. It has a sharp point on one side and a flat surface on the other. When the man sees the tool he writhes and screaming, gid, hoking gid, over and over along with a stream of other things I can’t make out.

Not that it matters.

“Go on, son,” Fallon says. “Teach him what it means to hurt.”

The man’s gaze snaps to Fallon. His eyes widen, and he struggles, yelling around the gag. And I finally understand what he’s saying.

Fucking kid. You’re going to have a fucking kid do it.

Leaning over, I look him in the eye. He stills. I raise the hammer. He screams, but then it’s cut off and turns strangled. The sound of bones cracking releases some of that tight, furious tension inside my chest. Sounds gurgle from him, the hammer in his hand oozing bright, thick red.

I pry it out and do it again.

Then again.

No. I’m not a kid.

I’m a monster.