Darkness

17. Cain

Seventeen

Cain

How the fuck did he even get in here? The place has the same security system as my place. Only someone with prints in the system can get in here.

Scanning my thumb, the door opens and before I even take a step in, I can smell the alcohol and weed. Walking through the door, I take a look around to see the chairs, which were once around the dining table, thrown across the room, two of them are now broken. He really has taken it out on this room. No wonder the guy came up here to see what was happening.

Shaking my head, how did I forget? I should have been with him today. I would have stopped it before it got out of hand for him. Talking about it would have been enough to keep him going over the edge.

“Lincoln!” I shout, not seeing him in the living room. I hope he’s fucking sleeping. I hear a shout and glass shattering. Shit. I guess he’s not sleeping then.

Walking into the bedroom, I see Lincoln on the floor with a broken mirror around him.

Shit, he’s bleeding, too.

Fuck.

“Come on, man, let’s get you in the shower.” I kneel beside him, wrapping his arm around my shoulder. I manage to get him up.

“It’s my fault. I’m a bad man.” Lincoln starts crying. “I should-”

“Come on.” I stop him from talking. Every year he does this, every year he blames himself. “Sit here.” I close the toilet seat and sit him down while I get the shower running.

Grabbing the first aid box from under the sink, I get the tweezers out so I can start removing some of the mirror pieces from the cuts on his arms and fucking face.

“Man, I’m hor-”

“No, you’re not. Now stop thinking like that.” I check over his face to make sure I’ve got the pieces out, quickly grabbing him before he falls off the seat. I slap his face a few times. “Hey, are you with me?” I ask him. “Lincoln?”

“How…how are you here?” Lincoln asks through tears, again.

I’ll get the rest of the pieces out after. I need to get him in the shower first, making sure the water is cold, I wrap his arms over my shoulder again and getting him into the shower. I should have brought some clothes with me, but I get out of the shower before my clothes get too wet.

Lincoln slides down and sits under the water, and I get back out to his bedroom and clean up the broken mirror and sort the room back out. Within the next ten minutes, he will most likely wake up and get back to normal, well normal-ish. This isn’t my first time doing this, and it won’t be my last time either.

Picking up all the pictures from the bed, I put them back into the box, and get to cleaning the rest of the room, and the living room. He really did fuck himself up tonight. Walking around, putting the empty beer bottles and whiskey bottles on the dining table. How the fuck is that man even awake with the amount he’s been drinking?

He blames himself, and no matter what I say to him, he will always blame himself for what happened. Yet I blame myself for losing Tess every day, so I can’t say much to him. I know how he feels.

Finishing in the bedroom, I get to the sitting area and get things cleaned up. I put the chairs in the corner so we can take them to the dump. Standing by the coffee table, I look at all the joints and I shake my head.

Note to self, don’t say anything to him. I’m here for him to talk to. I clean everything up and go to the kitchen to make myself some coffee. I wait for Lincoln to get out of the bathroom.

Looking around his apartment, I remember when Lincoln first got this place. I still don’t know why he bought it. He already has a house, but then again, this is also something I can’t say much about, because he would say exactly the same thing to me.

But yet looking for an apartment for him, all I can say is the man is fucking picky with what he wants in a place. There was always something wrong with the places he looked at. I even got to the point and told him to go to his house and stay there, but the man hasn’t set foot in that place since he came out of The Pit.

I look over towards the bedroom when I hear the door open, and see Lincoln walking towards me, still looking like shit. Handing him a bottle of water and leaning on the counter in front of me.

“You didn’t have to clean up.” Lincoln looks around the place.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” I tell him. There is nothing else I can say.

“You don’t need-”

“Yes, I do. You know I’d drop anything I have planned if you call.” I walk over to the couch and sit down, and look out the window, leaving the TV off. “You need to go visit them.”

“Like you’ve visited, Tess?” he asks, and I turn to face him a little. “It’s my fault they are dead. How do I tell them I’m sorry?” I shake my head at him. What the fuck is he talking about?

“You were on duty for the country. How can you save them when you are in a different country?” I ask him.

I’ll agree what happened to them is fucked up. No man should have to lose his wife and daughter the way he did.

“I shouldn’t have gone-”

“And how was your captain going to feel about that?” I cut him off.

“She needed me here. The threat was here and I couldn’t help them.” Lincoln drinks some of his water before continuing. “He kept telling me I’d pay for not having his back. I just never thought he would kill my family.”

On duty abroad, he was with his team when they got ambushed. It wasn’t his call to get off in that area, and one of the guys with him injured his back, lost a leg, and his left arm. His head was all over the place, and no matter what people told him, he blamed Lincoln, because he was the one who was standing next to him. There are times when even Lincoln thinks it should have been him.

The guy with him was in the hospital. The doctor told his captain he was not mentally stable enough to leave, but they didn’t care. It was the Captain’s fault, and he knew it, so when the guy said he wanted to leave, they let him leave.

And that’s when it all started, Lincoln’s wife was getting fucked up deliveries, cell calls telling her fucked up things about Lincoln, or just saying stupid stuff about him, and that they need to watch their back. Lincoln spoke to his captain about it, and they said they will look after his family. But they didn’t.

The guy taunting his family was fucking crazy. Nothing mattered to him but making sure Lincoln was in pain, the same amount of pain as he was.

One night, the man set fire to Lincoln’s house with his wife and daughter still in there.

Losing them both broke him. It still breaks him.

How do you get over something like that? Your family was murdered, and the government did nothing to protect them. Despite others’ assurances that the man would be dealt with, Lincoln didn’t care. There was only one thing on his mind.

Killing the man who killed his family?

And he did it.

He killed the man who took his family from him.

So how did he end up in The Pit? He walked down there himself. The man walked in as if he didn’t have any will to live. Twenty-Three years old, lost the love of his life and his daughter.

What else was there?

He killed the man that took his family. Instead of going to prison, he came to an even worse place. Hell. Fuck, sometimes I think it’s even worse than hell.

“Remember the first time we met each other?” I ask, making him laugh.

“Yeah, some seventeen-year-old kid stopped me from getting the crap kicked out of me.

Still to this day, I don’t know why you did it,” Lincoln asks this question every year, and I answer him too, but he still asks me.

“Because the look in your eyes when I first saw you walk through those metal doors, you had nothing. As the years went on, the time I spent there I had that look. Difference is, I didn’t come into The Pit with it.” I turn to face him a little. “I did it because no man deserved to die without putting up a fight.” I told him you could see he wanted to die. You could see there was nothing in his eyes to live for.

“I was a dead man.” Even after saving him, he walked past me, making sure I felt him knock into me, and said nothing. He walked back into his cell. Back then, he was twice the size of me.

“Do you remember the first word you said to me when you actually spoke to me? For six months you ignored me, even though I took over your fight. You ignored me for months and months, and I used to think to myself, what an asshole. But what did you say to me?”

“You’ll never be alone again. I’ve got your back.”

“And what did I say to you?” I ask him.

“That I’ll never be alone, and you’ll always have my back.”

“Almost, what, fifteen years later? I still have your back.” And until I die, I’ll have his back.

“Doesn’t get easier, does it? It gets harder as the years go on.” All I can do is nod, because I know how it feels to lose the woman you love, but to lose a child, I have no fucking idea, and I never want to know.

“You got pretty fucked up this time. How did the neighbor get in here? He called me-”

“Who?” God, he was fucking high, and drunk.

“The guy that lives downstairs called me off your cell, so how did he get in?”

“I think I opened the door.”

“You think? I think days like this, I need to put another lock on here so you don’t open the door for anyone.” I joke with him, and he laughs.

“Sorry, I ruined your night.”

“Didn’t ruin anything. Together, look at what we did.” I pat his leg, letting him know we might have lived there, but we own it now.

“Look at what you did. I was just your right-hand man down there-”

“Yeah, but without you, would I be the boss of The Pit?” If he thinks I did it alone, he’s fucking crazy.

“No.”

“Exactly. So we got it together. Remember, I wouldn’t be where I am without you. You won’t be here without me.” We are both a team, and he needs to remember it too. We both look out the window at the night sky, knowing very well neither one of us is going to sleep and I’m not leaving. We continue to talk about things that happen down in The Pit. Even though I hate talking about it, but to get his mind off his family, I’ll talk about it.

I love it when the club is busy. Always makes me know I’m doing the right thing here. Told Lincoln to take the day off, mainly because he was drinking again through the night. I left him to it, because I was watching him, making sure it didn’t go too far.

“Wow, you’re not fucking on the desk.” Mason walks into the office, laughing.

“You guys know how to knock?” I ask as Hayden and Miles follow Mason.

“No, and if you don’t want us to come in, lock the door,” Mason snaps as he and Miles sit on the couch, and Hayden walks to the desk.

“Your pills.” He places them on the desk, and I take two straight away. “And dad told me to give you this?” Hayden places a box on the table, but I don’t open it because I know what’s inside.

“What are you three doing here?” I ask them.

“Said I’d come over after.” Hayden sits on a chair in front of the desk. “One shot dead.”

“Told you not to overthink it. Man, never overthink it. That goes to you two idiots as well. Never overthink it.” They both turn to me. The business is going to be theirs. They need to always think straight about the job. “We hit for a reason.

Fix things for a reason. So if you get a hit, or you’ve got to be a cleaner, or you got to hack into a system for a reason, there is always a reason.” The three of them nod, and I know they aren’t just nodding to shut me up, they really are listening.

“So, other than letting me know you did a good job, why are you here?” Now I don’t mind them coming over. It makes me feel like I have family even though I try to keep them away.

“I’m with a blonde-”

“Same blonde?” I ask Miles, making the other two laugh.

“That was your fucking fault. I couldn’t tell her where I really was.” Miles is still pissed off, but I know he won’t say too much to me about it. It gives him a reason to find a new side piece now.

“You got something to tell me.” I turned to Mason.

“No,” I look at Hayden and Miles to see if they have told him about Autumn-Rose, but it doesn’t look like it.

“Really?” Mason questions.

“You have a fight coming up?” I ask.

“I do. In a few days, are you coming?”

“Sure, haven’t seen you in a while,” I answer, hoping the subject has changed.

“So now that you’ve changed the subject, I know there’s something you need to be telling me.” Mason goes back to the question he was asking.

“What is it that I’m supposed to be telling you?”

“When do I get to meet her? I’m the nicest one out of the three of us.” Now, that makes me laugh. He thinks out of all his brothers he’s the nice one.

“You’re joking?” Hayden asks.

“What? I’m lovable.” Now I don’t even know if he’s joking with me or not.

“You beat people up with a baseball bat with a wire wrapped around it.” I remind him.

“Yeah, and whose idea was it?” Mason throws back in my face. I smile because, it was my idea.

One of the things I picked up from The Pit. Fuck. I got beat up with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire enough times, I knew it was going to be a good thing to use once I got out. So, why not use it on someone else? The moment I laid eyes on Mason, I knew there was something messed up in his head, and he would love it.

“Come on, these two know me. I know you’ve got a girl, and-”

“What makes you think I have a girl?” I ask him.

Mason laughs, and points to Miles. “Because this one over here had a crazy one in bed in the middle of the night and fucked up the chance to have crazy sex again. So he lied for you. Then I asked him about it, and he lied, straight to my face.” Mason is pissed off about it all.

“What did he say?” I ask, it’s always good to see what lies they can come up with.

“Cain needed me to check on some cameras at the club.”

“And why is that a lie?”

“Because he would have told me to come with him, and since when does that shit happen at three in the morning? So let me meet her. She’s got to be something special if you’re not fucking on the desk.”

“She’s English.” Hayden says, with a smirk.

“Hayden.” I snap at him.

“Sorry.” He looks at me with a smile.

“What? Does she scream with that sexy accent?” That’s the first question the idiot asks.

“Really?”

“Oh, come on.” Mason argues.

“I’ve been wondering that as well, because when she was talking, she was doing something to me. It’s the accent. It’s gotta be the accent.”

“Not that she’s beautiful?” I cut him off. I can’t believe the three idiots are having this conversation in front of me.

“No, she’s fucking stunning. Like if I saw her somewhere, I’d try getting her in my bed, but I know who’s she’s with, so I’m not fucking around there.” Miles looks at me, and puts his hands up for me to not punch him for thinking about her like that.

“Every time she talks it hits my dick-”

“I think you need to stop talking before my uncle has two less sons.” I look between Hayden and Miles, making sure they know not to mention her again. “She’s British. Mom doesn’t know. Your parents don’t know. And I kind of want to keep it that way-”

“That’s going to be hard. I don’t know what’s in the box, but dad is going to have questions about it. So be ready.” Hayden tells me, and I knew it was going to

be a risk asking him for this, but I know it will make Autumn-Rose happy, so I’ll risk it.

Leaning back in my chair, they continue to talk about the fight and the woman they are with. Being around them gives me a headache, but it also makes me feel a little normal. Because they talk about normal problems, problems I should have had growing up. So I would never kick them out, take my mind off the crazy always present.