Truth Be Told (Blackbridge Security Book 4) by Marie James (snow like ashes TXT) 📕

the ones I had for Mom weren’t. It seems God is busy with other things today.

“Is she dead?” Cold. That’s the only way to describe his tone, as if an enemy has fallen instead of his own flesh and blood.

Most people would have more compassion for someone they don’t even know than what he’s showing right now. He acted the same way to the news of Dad’s passing, so I shouldn’t be surprised.

I can only nod, movement catching my eye.

Ignacio steps around my brother and makes his way closer to me, and just the sight of him draws a gasping breath from my mouth, but I can’t do this right now. I can’t let him touch me or hug me or try to comfort me. I’d lose it. The sympathy and sorrow on his handsome face is too much as it is.

“Don’t,” I manage when he opens his arms for me, and the pain in his eyes when he drops his arms chisels away another little piece of me. At the rate I’m going, I won’t have anything left.

“You fucked my friend?” Cooper snaps as if now is the time to have the conversation about something that happened over a decade ago, while his mother’s body is in the other room.

“Enough,” Ignacio snaps.

Like a dragon slayer, he seems to grow in size as he spins to face my brother. Cooper’s eyes snap to him and I expect an all-out brawl, but there must be something on Ignacio’s face I can’t see because my brother takes a step back before looking over at me again.

“I need to call the hospice,” I mutter.

The guys stand in the middle of the room in a stare-off I’m sure will end up with another phone call, this one to the police from the way they’re both acting as I make the numerous calls required.

“They’re going to be here soon, Coop. If you wanted to see her.”

My brother’s eyes dart toward my mother’s bedroom, but he doesn’t make a move to go that direction. He can’t seem to let go of enough anger to step away from Ignacio.

“Fuck this,” he hisses before looking in my direction. “If she’s dead, then half the house is mine. I’m selling this piece of shit.”

And with that bomb, he walks out of the house, the slamming of the door behind him like a secondary explosion in my world that’s already looking like a war zone.

I can’t speak to Ignacio, and thankfully he must understand that as he steps aside when I head back to the room. Instead of letting me walk past, he runs his fingers down my forearm, clasping our pinky fingers for a second before taking a step back.

Long ago it was a promise. It said I love you, I’ll never leave you, you’re it for me.

Everything is going to be okay.

But today, it’s just another hit I have to take, another blow threatening to knock me down.

Because he doesn’t love me.

He did leave me.

He moved on.

And everything is definitely not going to be okay.

I’m numb by the time the funeral home shows up, at that point in a terrible day where exhaustion is beginning to set in, and everything has an unrealistic haze around it.

But somehow the tears are renewed when the funeral home workers explain that the hallway to my mother’s room is too narrow to get the gurney to her.

I keep Alex in my bedroom to prevent him from seeing the indignity of Mom having to be lifted from her bed and carried out of her room. We stay until they’re gone, Ignacio taking care of whatever questions they may have. I didn’t want to see her face shrouded and hidden. It’s not a memory I can live with. If she’d been allowed to stay in the hospital, all of this could’ve been avoided. It could’ve been easier. I don’t know what it’s like to lose someone in that type of setting, but witnessing it at home is brutal. That room will now always carry that final image of her.

“Are you hungry?” I ask Alex, his body cuddled to mine on my bed.

He shakes his head, and I know he’s utterly drained as well.

And because life likes to keep cutting away pieces of me, I hear a growl from the living room before a knock hits my bedroom door. It swings open before I can call out.

Ignacio’s face appears in the crack.

“Why don’t you guys pack an overnight bag.”

“What’s going on?” Alex says, his body suddenly tense.

“I umm—” His eyes dart to mine, and I see the need to protect his son as best he can as if the instinct is innate because he hasn’t been around since the beginning. “Your uncle is going to stay here tonight. He’s not feeling well, and I just think it’s best that we give him a little space.”

Translation—Cooper is drunk or high, and as always he’s belligerent and it’s not safe to be here with him.

“I think that’s a great idea,” I say, leaning up and urging Alex to stand. “A little time out of the house would be good for both of us.”

“I’m not a baby,” Alex hisses, his eyes darting between his dad and me. “You can say my asshole uncle is being an asshole and will continue to be an asshole if we stay.”

Well then.

“Watch your mouth,” I say but there’s no fire in my tone. I look up at Ignacio. “Stay with him while he packs.”

He nods, following Alex out of the room. I shove different things into an overnight bag, not really paying attention to what goes inside. I’m too nervous that we won’t make it out of the house before Cooper decides he has something to say.

It takes mere minutes before we’re walking out of the house, and I don’t even bother to look in my brother’s direction when I pass. Thankfully, his attention is on something in the kitchen. I get into my car, Alex already buckled in and ready to