A Sinner's Heart *FREE*

VIN’S POV

31st of December

The family was all together to celebrate the new year, but four of us weren’t at the table.

Four empty seats, three of them together. All of them close to me.

“Where is Shauwn?” Aunt Xana signed, mouthing the words together.

Hazel translated her sighs to us.

Zeke could do it too, but he was too lost gazing at my sister’s empty seat.

“He refused to come back.” Uncle John answered her, consoling aunt Jully as she started to cry.

My aunt’s hair had grayed overnight. She looked like a true grandmother with all the new frown lines and creases that covered her face. Percy rarely left her lap.

Shauwn refused to come back after his best friends’ death. He took off for America to join the army. He chose to follow in my father’s footsteps and process his grief in another country, under strict discipline.

His godson had gained a room in three different houses.

Mine. Because Sage was his godmother.

Uncle John and Aunt Jully’s house, for obvious reasons. The woman raised the three people most involved in his life, it would be impossible to deny her the right to take responsibility for her surrogate children’s child.

And last, in Meredith and Isaack’s house. Whenever someone is at work, school, sick- she’s there. Meredith fell in love with the baby since the first time she held him. She babysat him with Sage and Shauwn. She baby proofed her whole home to make it safe for the boy. It would be cruel to deny her something his parents allowed. And she was a big help in the midst of this all.

Aunt Jully aged more than twenty years with the weight of grief dragging her down. Hazel and Percy are what has her holding on to life.

You could see it in the woman’s eyes. If it weren’t for them and for my uncle’s begging, she would have departed this world as swiftly as Shauwn left the country.

My siblings left a huge gaping hole in our family, and no amount of grief, time, or patching up could heal us from this.

Every time I left the house, I checked the rear mirror for Diesel. He was always close either on his bike or his car.

My hoodies no longer go missing from Sage’s thieving hands.

There are no more fights with her raven over all the gold he stole throghout the night...

Aunt Stella almost had a miscarriage the day their deaths were announced.

I barely remember the first of January.

After Igor called, I left Hazel’s arms and trashed the house on the way down to the cellar. When I woke, I was in Hazel’s bed, clenching her to my chest, holding her like a lifeline as she burrowed closer to me and slept soundly, listening to my heart.

“Morning,” Hazel whispered.

My pounding headache couldn’t tolerate the sound or any moving attempts, yet I found myself looking down at her. Facing her was the least she deserved after putting up with my sweaty, smelly self through the whole night.

“Did I dream it?” I rasped.

Just the thought of what that nightmare entailed had my mouth dry and tongue heavy as if punishing me for even trying to utter such vile sins out loud.

Hazel’s puffy eyes glinted with sadness, my whole soul shattered at the silent answer.

“Uncle Alan had to call an ambulance for Aunt Stella; she almost miscarried.” She muttered and softly moved my hair away from my eyes.

Fuck...

“Cameron?”

“He’s with nonna.” She muttered. “The ambulance had to take nonno as well. The rest of the uncles went to find your father.”

He wasn’t much better than me when they found him.

To this day, he’s still in denial.

He ordered every enterprise under our family to close for the month, full pay. He spent January locked in his room, depressed, and began February with old ‘Legacy’ coming out to play.

He’s personally investigating the bomb incident; every clue found is sent to Uncle Jack to get analyzed, and every lead is followed, if not by him, then by the guys assembled from the gang.

I don’t know how we’re going to carry on.

I still wash his clothes. Diesel left them everywhere.

I prepare breakfast for two or three every morning, but I’m the only one home to eat.

When I wake up in the middle of the night, the first thing I do is check her room. But she’s long gone, and Ray-Ray no longer creeps around like a demon searching for hell.

The days pass in a blur.

Hazel is stretched thin between Aunt Jully and me.

No one is stepping up.

Life has to go on...

Because it has for everyone else.

The TV has stopped talking about them as incessantly as it had, and the school leave is almost over.

The holidays ended. We were all forced back, but no one could handle it while everything was still so raw.

Now, we must get back to normal, or risk flunking the year.

A new normal was forced to be created.

I was forced to create a new normal.

Aunt Stella is on bed rest. She can’t do anything if she wants to keep the baby, and she does. Uncle Alan is busy with caring for her and the legal side of the business.

I had to take charge of taking Cameron to school. I had to speak with my aunt’s parents to arrange a schedule between the three of us to take care of him.

It’s not that my uncles were neglecting him. They were neglecting school. And we don’t need any more on our plates.

I drove Hazel every single day.

It became our new normal.

Uncle John no longer could do it due. He had to watch aunt Jully and my dad. Almost everyone had someone to babysit.

My father became worst.

He locked himself in his room with mom’s diaries.

Nothing could shake him back to reality.

The whole family seemed ten to thirty years older.

Nonno refused to take charge of anything and spent his days in bed with nonna by his side, gazing soullessly at their ceiling.

House construction was moving forward all around our warehouses, in the poorest parts of our turf and close to school.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,”

It worried me.

“I’ll try to find out something, Vin. Leave it to me.” Her sweet words would’ve been a balm to my soul as her hands were currently on my shoulders had her words not implied illegal means.

“I can’t let you do that, Hazel.”

I will not have her fall into this family’s death hole.

“You know I’ve hacked for as long as you, Vin.”

“I know, love. But I can’t let you do it. I don’t want you dirting your hands.”

She fell silent.

I turned my face and kissed her cheeks.

“I don’t want to risk you,” I whispered, and brought her to my arms, burrowing my face into her shoulder.

She is my calm, my rock, my everything in this never-ending storm.

“Why can you do it, but I can’t?” She whispered. “I’m part of this family too.”

Oh, love...

“I’m the heir, now. I have no choice.” She tensed in my arms. “I won’t allow the same to happen to you.”

“But-”

“If one day the worse happens, I will be the only one condemned, Hazel. You know hacking is illegal. Don’t force my hand on this.”

“It’s not fair.”

“Life wasn’t fair to us. I can’t be either.”

Swarm of blondes moved in quicker than I could blink, and the ‘church cult’ they’ve built near the warehouse and a second one near the school gave me headaches.

All of them where blond.

“Why are they all blond!?”

Their eye colors varied, their sizes varied, but not their hair. Or their skin. Their were all very fair.

They lived near each other. They walked around in groups. They spoke of nothing else but religion.

I watched them whenever we crossed paths. Lately it had been too frequent to be considered normal. Crossing paths daily, two to five times is not normal.

Dad immersed himself in mom’s diaries. I stood watch from his bedroom door.

He hadn’t noticed me yet.

‘If I die and she sends me back, don’t allow her near my grave alone!!!’

The paper fell from between the pages.

“Oh, my love...”

His eyes brimmed with tears.

“She’s already dead.”

He grabbed the picture of their wedding day, caressing her face with an adoring smile.

“And our son...”

New tears rolled down his cheeks.

The two of them were now with her and our baby brother.

He put down the picture.

Dad gazed soullessly at the diaries, leafing through them one by one without reading anything, just running his fingers through the pages until he reached the end of the diary.

This was the third paper that fell from a diary, but somehow, we had never seen them before.