I didn't tell my mother I loved her before she died. I had the chance to, but I didn't.

I didn't know what to do with myself when she became lucid. I was in my office going over all the bank statements for Sin when she stumbled inside. It caught me off guard because she needed someone to walk her from place to place at all times.

"Mother?" I'd stood up, eyes darting around her. "Did the nurses bring you downstairs?"

She had two that took care of her around the clock but I didn't see them nearby.

She'd smiled at me and it made her look years younger. My mother was a beautiful woman, with long and wavy brown hair and a dimple in her right cheek that neither of her sons inherited. Her hazel eyes shone as she walked over to me. They looked like they had life in them. For so many years they had looked cold and vacant.

"Knox," she'd whispered when she reached me. I inhaled sharply. She recognized me. "Oh, look at you. You've gotten so big."

That was definitely recognition in her eyes. I felt wary as she reached her hands up to cup my face. "Mom?"

"I'm here," she assured me softly. "I'm sorry I've been gone so long, my love."

My breath was knocked out of me. I hadn't heard her call me that since it happened.

"Hello. Hi." I stumbled over my words and she laughed when I cursed at my own stupidity. "Christ. I don't know what to say."

"That's okay." She placed a hand over my heart. "I know what you're saying in here. I may have been gone but I always listened."

I swallowed hard. It all seemed too good to be true.

Mother was always around but I hadn't had a mom for twenty years. I took care of her until I was eighteen and when I closed the deal on Sin and collected enough money to take care of all of us, I hired additional help. Aside from checking in on her in the morning and before I went to sleep, I didn't talk or interact with her much. She just wasn't there and my hopes had been shattered one too many times for me to allow myself to get hurt again.

"I want to admit something," She bit her lip, looking nervous. "This isn't the first time I've been lucid."

I blinked at her. Had I missed the previous times? I was usually gone out on business so that seemed entirely possible.

"You didn't know," she rushed out when she saw my expression. I guess she still knew me and that brought me immeasurable relief. "It's just, every time I became lucid I remembered it all and I couldn't bear it. Couldn't face you or Felix knowing I'd failed my darlings. God, I'm so sorry for the coward I've been."

"Mother." I brushed her fallen tears away with my thumb. It felt like an odd gesture. I had no affection to give anyone but for her, I tried. "You will not apologize for how you've had to cope. If doing so meant being able to stand here in front of me, alive, then that is all I could hope for."

More tears gathered in her eyes that I didn't bother wiping away. I had a feeling they would not stop anytime soon. A faraway expression took over her face.

"I wanted to be there for you but it was hard. The voices wouldn't go away. The monsters made sure I heard them. I think they're gone today. I haven't seen them for a while."

My chest had sunk a little. She wasn't making sense but I shouldn't have expected otherwise. I could tell she was fighting to stay aware when her brows closed in on each other. She blinked fast like she was trying to stay focused and my chest pulsed harder. It never got easy seeing her like that.

"You've grown into such a wonderful man." Her eyes zoned back in and raked over me, drinking me in. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I was anything but wonderful. That I didn't have a heart at all. "I wish I could have given you a better life."

"I wish the same for you everyday."

"You have done more than I could ask for." Her smile faltered and her hazel eyes darkened. I knew that look. I braced myself. "But, my love, I'm afraid I have to ask you for one more thing."

"Anything."

"I've had to hide for so long. I can't do it anymore. I need you to kill him—the man who did this to me. Is that possible?"

I stiffened, startled by her admission. What's worse was I hadn't been able to tell if she was lucid enough to know what she was saying. But the pain in her eyes had been so clear that I shut up and listened. "You know who he is?"

"He was no stranger, Knox. One day I will tell you everything. Your father even kept journals, bless his soul. I need you to find him."

No stranger? My father? That meant they had history. I was in disbelief. For so long I'd used my resources to try and search for him. I didn't have anything to go by except those fucking eyes that I saw every time I closed my eyes. I searched through profiles in every state looking for those eyes but I never found them.

"Who is he?" I demanded, my hands curling into fists. Just the thought of coming face-to-face with him evoked such fury in me that I began to shake. "I won't just kill him—I'll torture him until he will see death as mercy."

Mother smiled despite my dark words. "You are so much like your father. I wish I'd had the courage to ask you to do this sooner."

So do I but I don't say that. I know she did the best she could. "Give me a name."

"Ferrera. Patrizio Rossi Ferrera."

I knew that name. I'd known it for years. "The consigliere to Lorenzo Cavallo? Lucio, now."

"Yes."

I'd known him but never seen him. My business with the mafia was scarce and I never, not for a second, thought to look in that direction. "He's one of us?"

She smiled sadly. "No one would have believed me. His ranking is too powerful."

It made sense. To accuse him of something like this would bring forth a war. The evidence would have to be unmistakable for the mafia to even considering killing one of their leaders.

"Fuck."

Doubt crept into me. I'd assumed he was a nobody, someone I could kill and dispose of. This made things far too complicated. To eliminate him would take time, a plan, inside alliances, and a lot of fucking patience.

Mother wrung her hands nervously. "I don't want to bring you any trouble, Knox. I've done enough of that. You don't have to do this if it means risking too much."

My gaze sharpened on her. "You are my mother. Nothing you ask of me could be too much."

Her eyes became alight in a way I hadn't seen in so long. Warmth flooded my chest, the sensation so foreign.

"I love you." She stood on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek, her arms going around my torso. "Don't you ever forget that, darling."

The words were on the tip of my tongue but they didn't come out. I wanted to say them but I had never said them before. To anyone. I simply cupped the back of her head and buried it in my chest, hoping she felt the shuddering of my heart and understood what I so badly wanted to say.

I should have said it.

"Here."

I'd looked down when she placed something in my hand. A sick feeling overtook my lungs and made it hard to breathe when I recognized the charm, the one mother had worn around her neck the day it happened. It was broken and I vaguely remember that happening too. I clutched it tightly and looked at Mother again.

"Keep it safe. I'm not as strong as I used to be. I can't fight the monsters when they come looking for this. Keep it safe, Knox."

Her eyes glazed over and my stomach sank. She was starting to go away. I couldn't have wasted another moment.

I'd taken her back upstairs to her room and told her to stay put, still unable to find her nurses. I would have went looking for them but I had to get my brother before her episode passed and she was no longer lucid. He could not have missed this. He was so young when it happened. I didn't think he even remembered Mother as who she was before it happened. He only knew her as a shell of a person his whole life.

I'd dropped a quick and awkward kiss to her forehead and left her sitting on her bed as she'd smiled at me. When I got downstairs, I bumped into her nurses that were frantically looking around.

"Where have you been?" I barked and they jumped at the sound of my voice. Both women had the decency to look ashamed. "Look after her. Don't let anything happen while I'm gone or it's your asses. I won't be longer than ten minutes."

I knew Felix wouldn't answer his cellphone. He was training and he took it seriously enough that he never took his phone with him. Felix required complete focus and zero distractions in his practice to kill, a trait he'd always had. It didn't take a genius to figure out why.

I parked in front of the gym Felix paid to have built from the ground up. It was his territory, a space where he could train in solidarity and never be seen by others, and I rarely paid it a visit. My skills were found in the business scheme of things but Felix had a bloodlust that would never allow him to be taken away from a fight. I trained with him from time to time to keep myself sharp but in the recent years, I admit I hadn't been able to keep up with him.

I entered the pass code only I knew and let myself in, approaching him while he flung knives at a target thirty feet away. Each of them hit the red circle in the centre that was no more than a few millimeters wide to begin with. He looked immensely bored.

"What is it?" He asked without taking his eyes off the task. The tensing of his shoulders had given him away. "Something's wrong."

Of course he'd been able to tell.

"Home. Now," I said by way of answer. I was reluctant to share the news with him for fear that he'd react badly and refuse to come home. But he didn't accept it.

He flung another knife forward and it cartwheeled in the air before it pierced the bullseye effortlessly. He swung his enraged gaze to mine. "Tell me."

The anger that radiated off him left me no choice. "Mother is lucid. And she remembers the man who did it."

His entire body went still but his expression gave nothing away.  A darkness I'd known he always had but hadn't quite seen circled around him. The air tasted like fury, vengeance, and pain. I understood. This was going to be one fuck of a battle.

Only we never got the chance to fight.

As soon as we pulled into the driveway, mafia soldiers drew their weapons on us. Both Felix and I had reached for our guns but we'd been shot at before either of us could react in time. I shot back, ducking in my seat when a bullet barely missed me. Felix abandoned his gun and lunged for me, covering my body in protection. We never stood a fucking chance. We were in handcuffs before we could so much as blink.

The semblance of hope I'd allowed myself to feel moments ago shattered into jagged pieces that cut into my soul when I saw it. Those eyes. Those fucking eyes that I spent my life searching for, but in that moment hadn't been the least bit prepared anyway. An anguished scream fought to tore past my lips but I pushed it down alongside everything else I felt. If I felt it all, I would have died right there.

Ferrera's eyes locked with mine, an eerie calm surrounding him as he barked orders for us to be taken away. Beside me Felix had gone white as a sheet and I fought to get to his side but the guards holding me rivalled my strength.

The scene was madness. Soldiers everywhere, my mother's nurses stumbling out bloodied and frantic, gunshots piercing the air. Before my head was shoved into the back of a car, I caught sight of the very thing that finally tore my soul in half. My cry ripped the air apart and burned my throat before a bag came over my head to silence me. But I'd seen it. Seen her.

Mother. Bled out and white as a corpse.

Dead.

And my brother and I pronounced as the killers.

______________________________

A/N

These flashbacks are killing me. Both brothers have been through so much it literally rips my soul apart.

But as we steadily near the ending, the plot has to tie up somehow. You guys will get your answers and more. Just buckle in because it's going to be a crazy few chapters.

Little pick me up: you can expect a little heat in the next chapter. Or a lot. A LOT. See ya Tuesday.

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Happy Reading :)