Chapter 12: Tirone: Chapter 12

“He’s fine now,” I told Furore as I came out of the room covered with Ty’s sweat and blood like before. “If you’re going to talk to him, please let Doc help him with the bruises and cuts first.” I glanced at his body. His shirt was ripped, and he had blood on his chest, face and knuckles. “You, too.”

He dropped his foot off the wall against which he was standing. “I’m fine. What happened in there?”

“I gave him what he needed.”

“And what the fuck was that?”

“An ear that listens to pain and a soul that can pat it away.” I hugged him until he calmed down and returned to his senses, telling him what he needed to hear. Did his possessive touch tried to reclaim me? I didn’t wait long enough to give it a chance. We were both vulnerable and our minds couldn’t be trusted. “Same like I did with the letter. What I hope you’ll be able to give him one day. He needs you, Laius. The real father he’s been looking for,” I added. “What were you thinking leaving the door open like that?”

“I wasn’t. I’m not used to having him in the house.”

“Your brothers or the sweetbutts could have walked in on us.”

“You think it’d have slipped my mind if they could have? You know how fucking jealous I can be over you. I won’t let anybody see you naked. My men know better than to come to my room when I’m with you, and the bitches aren’t even allowed up here unless personally invited.”

“Well, the newest member of the club didn’t know those rules. Perhaps next time you make sure he knows them before you traumatize him for life.”

“He’s not a virgin chick. He knows what fucking is. The rough kind, too, and everything. I know you think he’s young, but he’s not the kind of innocent you think he is.”

I knew all of that. Sometimes the hard way. I wished I could have told him what I’d meant, the kind of trauma I was referring to; watching the woman he obsessively believed was only his to touch being forced under another man, one he loathed. Again, I opted for some truth, not the whole. “You’re his dad. It’s different. Especially when he’s…that attached to…his mother.”

“Yeah, I fucked up, all right? I’ll find a way to fix it.” He exhaled a long breath, shaking his head. “I don’t know how yet. He thinks I’m a monster.”

“Then prove him wrong, not right.” Blame laced my tone against my intention.

“I never laid a hand on him or his mother like she’s been telling him all his life,” he said in both anger and pain. Ty had told me so many stories about his dead monster of a dad. Supposedly, Laius used to beat him when he was only a toddler. Then he’d hurt his mother severely that she was hospitalized when he was almost four. His brave—as I’d thought back then—mother filed charges that put the man in prison, left her abusive husband and changed her life around for her and Ty. It turned out it was all bullshit Delilah had made up and fed him for years. It looked like his creative skills came from her. “I wouldn’t have touched him if he hadn’t taken a swing on me. You saw the whole thing. He came in to beat me, his old man.”

“No child should become physical with their parents. He deserved a kind of punishment. No question about that. But do you not think that was a little extreme?”

“Didn’t you see how he was? He was fucking possessed by a demon. I had to do something to stop him. When I told you he was fucked up, I meant it. I’m not in the dark. I know he goes batshit crazy when he gets angry. He got in trouble before for it. He got locked up for six months in one of those hospitals.”

“You mean a psychiatric hospital?”

“For the criminally fucking insane hospital.”

That was news to me. Ty had never told me about it. It was surprising yet in a way expected. Did I want to know what Ty did to earn it? Probably not.

Laius shook his head. In disapproval? “It was better than prison. I paid a lot of money to get him that deal, put him in a fancy ass hospital and got his record expunged.  I thought the doctors might help a little, but somehow he got worse when he came out. I’d never seen him like that. You said you did? How? When?”

“I taught him for a year. You think episodes like that just sprout all of a sudden out of nowhere?” I said way too defensively. “He…he had a similar one at school. If you don’t believe me, call Delilah to check.”

“Jo, baby, don’t be like that. Not now.”

“And while you’re at it, check the story of Mark Chadwick, too.” I ignored his demand, remembering how mad I was at him before Ty came crashing down on us. “But I swear to God, if you hurt an innocent boy based on a fucking rumor, we’re done, Furore. I don’t care if you threaten me or fuck me into subordination. I don’t care how much I love you or how much you love me. If you hurt that poor boy, we’re fucking done.”

He reached out an arm, but I spun and walked toward the banister. “Oh, and by the way, I decided the idea of teaching here was good after all. It’s a great motivation for your son to go back to school and stay away from violence.”