Cole McGinnis 05 - Down and Dirty by Rhys Ford Read Free Book Online Page B

child squeed with glee while another counted down from ten, very loud young whispers calling dibs on hiding places.
    The normal of his brother’s life dug its own sharp fangs into Ichiro’s psyche, leaving its bittersweet poison in his blood. Caught between the glittering stab of his father’s constant barbs and Cole’s very American life, Ichi wondered if he’d go mad before he was crushed between them. As much as he denied it, the loss of his father’s approval hurt , and every second he spent with his brothers held a lingering anguish as Cole silently wondered why their mother abandoned her sons.
    He hadn’t had the heart to tell Cole their mother abandoned everything—everyone—including herself.
    A tangle of ache erupted between his eyes, and Ichi rubbed at the spot, willing the headache away before it spread into his brain. The children’s laughter ached, skipping aural stones across his pain, the sound rippling over his jangled nerves. He couldn’t remember laughing like the kids outside were. The giggles were like water drops, washing away the dust he’d built up over the years to cloud his memories.
    With his father’s voice ringing scorn through his calm, Ichiro blinked, and the world spun back—to a time when he stood barely thigh high to the man who ruled his life with a sharp word and disgust. Nothing he did or achieved reached Tokugawa’s exacting standards, and he’d spent his waking moments in misery, wondering why his father’d been given such a weak son.
    His tattoos were less a rebellion and more of a birth, the wash of ink marking his break from his familial placenta, and he’d thrust himself gasping into a world where he’d wear who he was on his skin. Turning away from the family was like cutting off a cancerous chunk of his flesh, and although he keenly felt its absence—like a missing arm—he’d known living as Tokugawa Masahiro’s son would eventually have killed him.
    He could live with the metaphorical missing arm.
    Ichiro tried to shove back the long days of classes, stiff uniforms, and civilly greeting businessmen as they came to beg forgiveness or mercy from the unyielding man he called father and others called sir.
    He should have hung up. He should have done a lot of things—changed his phone number, removed his name from the registry, never expected anything but the hard edge of his father’s words up against the soft skin of his belly.
    “Why did you call, Father?” He fell into Japanese, taking comfort in the stilted formality of his mother tongue. Gods and kami —his mother. “What do you need from me?”
    “I need nothing, but Megumi, she would like something,” his father replied softly. “Your stepmother—”
    “Megumi is not my stepmother. She is your wife but not my mother. Do not call her that. She and I are the same age. She will never be a mother to me. Especially not after….” This time the centipede’s bite scored his skin, prickling through layers of thick denial. “She was my fiancée, and you married her, what… a month after I left for school? Even in your twisted mind, you have to know I will never think of her as anything but your wife.”
    “She will also be the mother of your sister.”
    If talking to his father was a minefield of heartache, discovering the woman he’d once loved—thought he’d loved—was carrying his sibling had to count as a nuclear storm. Ichiro closed his eyes as if the hot wind made of complicated emotions couldn’t burn him if he couldn’t see the world.
    It was a foolish thing to do, like a child hiding under a blanket so the oni wouldn’t chew him up at night.
    He did it anyway.
    But the monster still found him, dragging Ichi out from under the blanket to devour him in a bitter soup of unshed tears and painful betrayal.
    “Should I say congratulations? Or are you looking for condolences because she is carrying a girl?”
    “A daughter is just as useful. Her husband can carry the Tokugawa name. I just