“Done,” Cat cackled humorlessly.

“You’ll fuck off from Boston. Move far away. And when I say far, Catalina, I mean somewhere he can’t see you. Where the memory of his deadbeat mother doesn’t burn hot. Another planet is preferable, but since we can’t risk aliens meeting you and thinking we’re all cunts, two states away minimum is my requirement. And if you ever come back—which I sincerely recommend against—you’ll go through me if you wanna see him. You walk away from him now, you lose all your motherly privileges. If I catch you messing with this kid, my kid…” he paused for emphasis “…I will give you the slow, painful death you’ve been begging for almost a decade, and I will make you watch your own death in the mirror, you vain waste of oxygen.”

I believed him.

I knew she did, too.

“You’ll never see me again.” Cat’s voice rattled, like her throat was full of coins. “He is rotten to the core, Troy. That’s why you love him. You see yourself in him. His darkness calls to you.”

That was when I turned into a pillar of salt. Or at least that’s how it felt. I was afraid if someone touched me, I would shatter.

I could be like Troy.

I had darkness. And violence. And all the things that made him great.

I had the same hunger and disdain for the world and heart that was just that—a heart—with nothing much inside it.

I could turn a corner.

I could be something else.

I could be something, period.

That was a possibility I’d never considered before.

Cat left not long after. Then Troy and Sparrow talked. I heard Troy pour himself a drink. They discussed lawyers and what to tell Sailor. Sparrow suggested they send me to a Montessori school, whatever the heck that was. I tiptoed my way to bed, too tired to care about my own future. My knees knocked together, and I felt the beef jerky crawling up my throat. I made a pit stop in the bathroom and puked my guts out.

Orphan. A mistake. A monster.

I didn’t know how much time passed before they walked into my room.

I pretended to be asleep. I didn’t want to talk. All I wanted to do was to lie there with my eyes closed, scared that they’d decide they didn’t want me after all or that they were going to tell me something I didn’t want to hear.

I felt my bed dip as Sparrow sat on its edge. I had Boston Celtics green and white linen, a PlayStation, a TV, and a Bill Russell jersey hanging on my wall. My room was painted green and full of framed pictures of me with Troy, Sparrow, and Sailor at Disney, Universal, and in Hawaii.

My room back in Cat’s house was just a bed, a dresser, and a trash can.

No paint. No pictures. No nothing.

I never asked myself why.

Why the Brennans took me in.

Why I was a part of this fucked-up arrangement.

“We know you’re awake.” Troy’s whiskey breath fanned my hair over my eyes, making my nose twitch. “You’d be an idiot to fall asleep on a night like this, and my son is no idiot.”

I cracked my eyes open. His silhouette took up most of my room. Sparrow put her hand on my back, rubbing it in circles.

I didn’t shatter.

I released a breath.

I’m not a pillar of salt after all.

“Are you my real pops?” I blurted out but wasn’t brave enough to look at him when I asked. “Did you knock Cat up?”

I should’ve asked this long ago. It was the only thing that made sense. “You’d never give me the time of the day otherwise. You can’t let me hang out here just because Grandma Maria once scrubbed your toilets. Am I a bastard?”

“You’re not a bastard, and you’re not mine,” Troy said point-blank, averting his gaze to the window. The Boston skyline stretched out in front of him. All the things he owned and ruled. “Not biologically, anyway.”

“I’m a Greystone,” I insisted.

“No,” he hissed. “You’re a Brennan. Greystones don’t have the heart gene.”

I’d never heard about that gene. Then again, I skipped school most days in favor of smoking cigarettes outside bars and selling whatever it was I stole that day to help pay for my next meal.

“I ain’t perfect,” I sat up, glowering. “So if that’s what you want, some perfect yes-kid, kick me out now.”

“We don’t want you to be perfect.” Sparrow rubbed my back faster, harder. “We just want you to be ours. You are Samuel. A gift from God. In the Bible, Samuel was gifted to Hannah after years of praying. She thought she was barren. Do you know what barren means?”

“A woman who can’t have kids.” I shuddered. To have kids, you first had to make them, and I knew exactly how people went about making them—I caught Catalina practicing a bunch of times with her clients—and it was damn gross.

Sparrow nodded. “After Sailor was born, the doctors told me I couldn’t conceive again. Turned out, I didn’t have to. I have you. Your name means ‘The Lord Hears’ in Hebrew. Shma-el. God heard my prayers and surpassed my every expectation. You’re exquisite, Samuel.”

Exquisite. Ha. That was a word I’d use for a famous painting or some shit, not a nine-year-old ex cocaine addict, recovering alcoholic, who was an active smoker, and half the size of kids my age.

My childhood was such a bust, my innocence and I no longer shared a zip code, and if she thought a few home-cooked meals and some back rubs were going to change it, well, she was in for an unpleasant surprise.

“Tell me why I’m here. Why I’m not in an orphanage. I’m old enough to know,” I demanded, balling my fists really hard, clenching my jaw. “And don’t talk to me about the Bible. The Lord may have heard Hannah, but He sure as shit ain’t been listening to me.”

“You’re here because we love you,” Sparrow said at the same time Troy answered, “You’re here because I killed your father.”

Silence descended. Sparrow shot up from my bed, her eyes really wide and really big, staring at her husband. Her mouth hung open like a fish. Troy carried on.

“He said he deserves to know. He’s not wrong, Red. The truth, Sam, is that shortly before your father died, he kidnapped Sparrow with every intention of killing her. I had to save my wife and did so without thinking twice. I wanted you to have a father figure. A person to look up to. The plan was to take you to basketball games every now and again. Provide guidance, advice, and a fat college fund to kick-start your life; getting attached was never in my plans, but it happened, anyway.” He looked me right in the eye. “Very early on I realized you were not a project. You were family.”

“You killed my father,” I echoed.

I knew Brock Greystone was dead, but Catalina and Grandma Maria always said it happened in an accident.

“Yes,” he said simply.

“Who knows?”

“You. Me. Cat. Aunt Sparrow. God.”

“Did God forgive you?”

Troy smirked. “He gave me you.”

Depending on who you asked, that could be seen as a punishment.

Now Brock was dead, and Cat was gone. The Brennans were my only shot at survival, whether I liked it or not.

“All right?” Troy asked. With his Southie accent, it came out as “Aight?”