Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
“Gonna go get you some water,” Joe said, standing from his desk.
Cory didn’t say anything that time. Joe moved over to the bed, and checked his brother over. Seemed Cory had passed the fuck out, and wasn’t getting back up anytime soon. Joe made sure to listen for steady, even breaths, and once he heard that, he was satisfied enough to move on and get his brother shit to have once he woke up.
Hangovers were a bitch.
Reason number one why Joe hated to drink, honestly.
Leaving the sanctuary of his bedroom, Joe padded through the upstairs, and then made his way down to the bottom level. The darkness of the house comforted him, even though he knew he wasn’t alone. His parents were likely sleeping, and his little sister, Monica, always went to bed at seven sharp every single night, no excuses.
Tonight hadn’t been any different.
Joe filled a glass full of water, and then dug into the cupboard above the stove to find the meds he was looking for. Tylenol did wonders for a head—
“What are you doing, son?”
Jesus Christ.
People called him the Shadow, but there was goddamn reason why people also called his father the Ghost.
Joe swore a man couldn’t even hear Damian Rossi walking on fucking bubble wrap.
Spinning on his heel, he faced his father. Damian stood in the entryway of the kitchen with his arms crossed, and his sleep clothes on.
“Well?” Damian asked.
“Nothing,” Joe replied, hiding the bottle of Tylenol in his large hand. “Getting some water.”
“Mmhmm. Did Cory get home yet? His curfew was thirty minutes ago.”
Joe looked at the clock—shit.
“Yeah, he got home an hour ago.”
“Oh?”
“Came up to my room, and we chatted.”
Damian eyed his son. “You know that I know you’re lying, right?”
Joe just shrugged.
Plausible deniability.
“You would risk getting yourself in shit just to protect your brother, wouldn’t you?”
Joe shrugged again.
Because, yeah, he kind of would.
It didn’t matter that he and Cory were two entirely different people. It didn’t matter that his brother was always pushing him to do more shit, be sociable, or anything else that Joe hated. It didn’t really make a difference that Cory had a knack for pestering the living fuck out of Joe on a daily basis, so much so sometimes that he really just thought about knocking his brother out to shut him up pretty regularly.
He’d done that a couple times, too.
Cory could handle himself.
None of that really mattered to him at the end of the day.
What mattered, was that Cory was his brother.
So yeah, he’d always take shit for him.
Damian nodded when Joe chose to stay silent. “All right—keep looking out for him, huh? You’re good like that, Joe.”
“Whatever you say, Dad.”
“Mmhmm. Take your drunk brother his water and Tylenol, and let him know in the morning that his curfew dropped by an hour.”
Oh, damn.
Cory wasn’t going to like that.
“Got it, Dad.”
“But,” Damian added as Joe passed him by, “if you go out with him, he can take an extra hour beyond the old curfew.”
Shit.
Well, it wasn’t only his brother trying to take Joe out of his comfort zones.
So was his life.
Joe and Cory
“When was the last time you talked to your brother?”
Cory stared at his reflection, and admired the sight looking back at him. There was no point in lying or trying to hide it—he was a vain fucker. He liked the way he looked, and he wanted to keep looking like this too because females loved it.
Vain, selfish, and a little too reckless for his own good. That last one, at least, was what his father liked to tell him.
Nobody said it was a lie, though.
Cory found trouble when boredom found him.
Simple as that.
He ran a fine-tooth comb through his hair to smooth the longer bit of the high fade to the side he wanted it on, and then flattened his palms against the well-groomed facial hair that covered his jaw, and throat. He’d taken more after his mother’s side of the family in looks—he got the sharp DeLuca jaw, and that same cocky expression that never left his face even when he wasn’t trying to look that way. His blue eyes, though, came from his father.
“Are you listening to me, or staring at yourself in the mirror again?” he heard his father ask.
Cory rolled his eyes upward. “I mean, you called me.”
“Yes, because I had questions.”
“If you have questions about Joe, then you should call Joe.”
“Joe doesn’t answer my questions. He thinks I’m trying to pry.”
“Because you are,” Cory returned. “That’s what you do, Dad. You pry when you think he’s shutting himself off from others, and then you irritate him until he leaves his house for a few hours. That’s what you do—don’t deny it.”
“If I don’t get him out of his house, who will?”
Fair enough.
Cory didn’t argue that point.
That was the thing about his brother, though. Despite the two Rossi brothers only being a year apart in age, they were polar opposites. Cory was wild, and enjoyed attention. Joe was reserved, and preferred his space.