Ten Thousand Lies Read Online Free PDF

phone. “I’ve got them. Come clean up this mess.”
    Ah…the executioner. I wondered which one of his goons had been chosen for this task. In the future, I hoped, every time he looked at the motherfucker, he’d remember killing off his own son.
    Whenever I looked at Charles, I remembered killing Gavin McElroy when I was fourteen. Gavin had been a mule runner, who’d developed a taste for the goods. He’d started pinching to sell on the side, too. Charles couldn’t let that stand. He’d taken Max and me to McElroy’s house and made the man get on his knees and beg for his life.
    I’d shot him between his wired bloodshot eyes.
    Max had killed his screaming whore wife the same way.
    “A Godwin never lets himself get ripped off, lads. This shit stain stole from me. From you . You don’t ever let scum like this get away with it. You never show weakness,” he’d told us as his goons rolled up the bodies and cleared out the rubbish.
    I hadn’t shown my weakness to him , but I’d cried my eyes out in my mother’s arms that night.
    “I’d never have believed it, James,” said Charles. “You were my golden boy, my Baby Blues…”
    Looking up at him, one of my baby blues swollen shut, I was oddly filled with shame for disappointing him. My right eye filled with tears. “I couldn’t let that kid be sold.”
    “He was mine !”
    “A British citizen, sold by his own father to settle a debt—”
    “He was not yours to make any sort of decision either way. You and this fucking pikey stole my property and released it to be a witness against your family! You’re a fucking disgrace! A thief and a traitor! You chose a fucking faggot stranger over your own blood. You are the lowest, most despicable life-form I know. Not even the fucking pikey can compete with the scum you are. He was just following a Godwin’s orders. Even though he has to die for it, at least he was loyal in his betrayal.”
    I waited for something snarky to pop out of Ronen’s mouth, but he was silent.
    Behind us came a knock on the heavy doors. Standing sentinel were my father’s two most trusted bodyguards. Mark, the one to my right, shifted and unlocked the door.
    “That was quick,” said Charles, sounding…defeated.
    My heart cracked at the note in his voice. Perhaps he’s regretting the order to have me offed?
    “I came as fast as I could.”
    Everything within me froze, slick with fear. That voice had forever been my voice of reason, encouragement, and love. Lurching painfully, my heart kicked back into rhythm.
    No. He wouldn’t…would he?
    The familiar pattern of Max’s footsteps made their way around me, to the right. The tears in my good eye spilled over while I watched in horror as my brother’s legs came into view.
    Oh God, please, not Max. What’s he doing here? Does he even know what we’ve done?
    Max laid a case on my father’s massive oak desk, snapping the locks and pulling out his favorite gun and silencer.
    “I can’t look at him, Max. I can’t do it myself. You have to,” my father said.
    “It’s fine,” said Max. “I have no problem purging the filth from our family.”
    My jaw dropped. “Ma-Max—”
    Of course, he knew what we’d done. Max was here for the sole purpose of ridding the world of Ronen and me. No doubt our father had told him everything by now.
    “Don’t you fucking speak to me, you piece of shit! You are no brother of mine. You thought you’d get away with this, being Baby Blues?”
    Now , my life started flashing.
     
    The trip to Spain when we were kids. We went as a family. My parents truly appeared to be in love. Max and I were spoiled rotten. We were all so happy for those two weeks.
    The time I was thrown from the horse and landed on a fence, shattering my testicles, rendering them useless.
     
    Guess that had been prophetic in a sense. I wouldn’t live long enough to father children anyway.
     
    Susan Thompson, my grade-school crush, who told me in seventh class that she