Arron laughed and relaxed back against the chair. “Do you think if Dad hears about this he’ll stop Micky teaching me? He’s one of the things I actually like about moving down here. He reckons I should enter some comps. Says I have a killer right hook.”
Even though my brother held an icepack over his nose, I could see the smile on his face as he talked of his new boxing coach Mitchel, Micky. Arron’s old coach had referred him to Micky and I couldn’t deny that Arron loved his new coach and had improved in leaps and bounds.
“Nah, I won’t tell him. I’d be more worried about Micky finding out you got into a fight. You know his rule. No fighting unless it’s in the ring.”
Arron went white, his eyes went wide and I saw fear. “You don’t think he’d stop training me?”
I shook my head. “Nah. Don’t worry I’ll talk to him.” Arron visibly relaxed. I’d do anything for my brother and he knew he could always count on me. If boxing made Arron happy, I’d do anything to make sure Micky understood what had happened and didn’t kick him out of his program.
Getting comfortable in the chair for what, by the looks of the packed emergency room, was going to be a long wait, I grabbed my iPad, opened my Kindle app, and started reading.
The day couldn’t get any fucking worse. My cousin Richard rang me in the morning to tell me that Bailey, his soul mate and wife, was in labor. That meant Aunt Gillian would be in a mood making sure everything went perfectly for her daughter-in law. If any of us Silvermans had a choice, we would stay away from the maternity ward until the baby was born, but we didn’t. We would all go and show our support. My mother would be the one who had to help deal and listen to Gillian complain when even the tiniest thing didn’t go as planned or she wanted.
The second thing to go wrong with my day was that I was called into the precinct because three people had overdosed and died all in one night and in different places in the city, but all from what looked to be the same drug. My Captain thought I’d be the perfect detective for the case as I’d helped Richard, who had had the problem of people overdosing in his clubs.
But instead of waiting in maternity with the rest of my family, I was standing out the front of the emergency doors at Brisbane hospital with my brother Oakley and cousin Andrew.
Glaring, I slowly counted backwards from ten to calm myself before speaking to the two idiots before me. “Tell me again why the fuck I’m taking you two to the emergency room and not calling mum and Aunty Gillian?”
Oakley winced at my demanding tone, and Andrew stopped before we could go into the emergency department. “He’s in there bro, and the kid is fucking crazy. I mean look what he did to us.”
I was looking, and I was finding it hard not to have a little respect for this kid that they were talking about. My brother had a black eye, he was limping and I’d have bet my next pay check his arm was broken. Andrew didn’t look like he’d fared much better than Oakley. He may even look worse with two black eyes. My brother and cousin had training too, so I knew they were no lightweights. I’d spoken to Philip, their security, on the drive to the hospital and asked why he didn’t step in and help my brother and cousin. He’d told me the guy who’d fought them was just a seventeen-year-old kid, a boy the same age as them. Philip hadn’t said why this kid had beat the shit out of my brother and cousin and that alone had me suspicious.
“I can see what he’s done. Why the hell do you need me with you and not Dad?”
Oakley gazed into the emergency room and mumbled, “Philip is pissed at me and I um…I don’t want Mum or Dad involved in this, especially now Bailey’s in labor.”
“Yeah,” Andrew added. “Can you imagine if I called my mother or even Dad right now? Dad needs to be with Mum or Richard will strangle Mum.”
I groaned because I could just imagine how upset Aunty Gillian would be if for any reason she had to leave Bailey. And if something went wrong she would be unbearable. Aunt Gillian was a handful at the best of times, but I knew right now she would be beyond crazy.
Soulmates, ha. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I didn’t believe in the Silverman gypsies’ curse. Well, I hadn’t until it happened to Uncle Carl too. The tale went in the old country, we helped a group of gypsies flee, and for helping them, they gifted us with the ability to know our soulmate. But there are draw backs that they forgot to mention. Like the fact we Silvermans turned into controlling, possessive, domineering men. Basically cavemen. My parents and two uncles had fallen to the curse and this last year my young cousin Stephan and Richard too, but the shock was my uncle Carl. I didn’t believe in the curse either until my family started dropping like flies. My uncle Carl, who had avoided it to the ripe old age of forty-five, in the last ten months had found his soulmate, gotten married and had twins. One of which was a girl. Silvermans didn’t have female children.