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Macau breaks it to Vegas three days after he wakes from his coma. The doctors are still running tests and keeping him for observation when Macau pitches his voice low and grave.
“Papa’s mistress — she had a baby. Our brother. She left it behind, though. The baby, that is.”
Vegas knew his father’s girlfriend was due to pop. He isn’t particularly surprised that the bitch abandoned the kid. What catches Vegas off-guard is that they appear to be having a sit-down conversation about the whelp. Worse still, Pete rests a supportive hand on Macau’s shoulder as if they’re in on something.
“So what?” Vegas asks suspiciously.
“He’s our brother,” Macau says.
“No,” Vegas says.
“If we don’t take him in, Mr Korn will have him.” Then, to Vegas’s abject horror, “Pete agreed to help care for him.”
Vegas’s brain short-circuits.
No. Absolutely not. That Pete has looked after Macau during Vegas’s coma already speaks of a devotion that Vegas is not entitled to. That Pete stays with Vegas after everything he has done to him beggars belief. The idea that Pete will be shackled to Vegas by an infant (worse than steel chains) is as horrifying as it is intoxicating, and it can’t possibly be allowed.
“Pete has nothing to do with this,” Vegas mutters.
“Well, if you were worried Pete would leave you — “
“Get out. Now. Get out, Macau.” When Macau only blinks back in surprise, Vegas raises his voice. “Leave us.”
Macau looks hurt, but leaves just the same. As the door to Vegas’s hospital room closes, Pete moves to the seat closest to Vegas’s bed.
“That woman must have family who can take him,” Vegas begins.
“Macau was right, Vegas. If I’m your family, aren’t I his family? I’ve met your new brother — Mr Korn and Macau let me hold him. He looks like you.”
“Bullshit.”
“When I looked at him, I saw you,” Pete insists. Pete’s hand finds Vegas’s. “My grandmother took care of me most of the time. I needed somewhere safe with someone who loves me. Mr Korn won’t be that for your brother.”
“Neither will I.”
But Pete has won. If there is one reason for Vegas to take custody of the infant, it is to keep it away from their uncle.
They name it ‘Venice’ — or, Pete does. Pete holds it to his chest and speaks to it. Pete sits on the phone to his grandmother and notes down everything the old woman knows about babies. Pete loves it. Vegas wishes it was dead.
Mr Korn puts them up in an apartment suite — Vegas, Macau, Pete and Venice. There is a nursery. When Vegas refused to co-operate about decorating, Porsche and his brother came by to help Pete assemble furniture and juggle Venice amongst the chaos. The room is now bursting with toys, mostly from Tankhun of all people.
“Would you like to hold him?”
They sit at the table. That thing started crying, so Pete alternates between feeding himself and bottle-feeding Venice.
Vegas looks up coolly. “No. I don’t see why it’s at the table.”
“Vegas…”
“What?”
Pete looks pained. “He’s going to understand, soon. You need to figure this out before he does.”
“Isn’t he my brother?” Vegas sneers.
“You’re warmer to Macau. Macau is almost grown up. Venice is a baby, Vegas.”
Vegas shrugs. “I have figured it out. We’ve adopted my father’s mongrel because you and Macau are soft hearted — only, Macau is in high school, and his contribution to Venice’s rearing is making funny faces at him a few days a week. So somehow you’re raising my bastard half brother who was intended to replace me.”
Pete shakes his head. “I won’t forgive you if you hurt him,” he says in a low voice. It is said, Vegas thinks, like a weary reminder more than a threat (though it is also a threat). Vegas has considered rehoming the thing. He has considered throwing it down the stairs to see if it will bounce — but Pete might leave him if he actually hurt it, so he lets Pete raise the thing.
They still fuck. Vegas thought that might come to a halt, but tired from chasing after the little monster, Pete seems even more eager to submit to Vegas. Vegas binds Pete’s hands with a leather cuff to the headboard and bites his way down his body, delighting when the pain elicits gasps and groans.
Vegas has Pete right where he wants him, he supposes. Immobile beneath him in their bed, yes, but also trapped. Pete won’t leave Vegas because of Venice.
“Vegas,” Pete hisses. “Vegas!”
Vegas draws back. He had latched hard to the flesh above Pete’s hip, and the indents left behind by his teeth are deeper than is comfortable.
Vegas kisses the mark, which tomorrow will be black and blue.
The main family treats the thing as if it is Pete’s son. Tankhun, who has never refrained from making his contempt for Vegas and Macau known, delights in Venice. On a sunny day in the gardens of the main house, he orders Pol and Arm to give piggyback rides and perform animal impressions to amuse the creature.
“Y’know, it used to be kind of funny seeing you hate a baby. It’s not anymore.”
It’s Porsche, who has stepped out of the chaos to have a smoke in the shade where Vegas leans with folded arms. Vegas doesn’t look at him.
“Would you want this for him?” Vegas asks icily, his gaze never leaving Pete, whose hands hover inches from the little monster at all times, lest Uncle Tankhun grows over-zealous with their games.
Porsche snorts. “No one wanted Pete involved with you, let alone playing house with your baby brother. But he treats Venice like he’s his son, and even if everyone hates you, they love Pete, and Venice by extension.” Porsche takes a drag of his cigarette. “You should be glad he stepped up. Somebody had to.”
Vegas laughs miserably. “Do you think I want this for Pete?”
The creature has started crying, and nothing Tankhun, Pol or Arm do stops the thing’s wailing. Tankhun ends up thrusting it into Pete’s waiting arms, and Pete does that funny bounce-hop movement he performs around the house to placate the child when it howls.
“From a distance, it looks a whole lot like you’re jealous of a baby,” Porsche muses. “Which is freaking embarrassing.”
“If I hadn’t been in a coma, I would have killed the whore before the due date, and the baby with her.”
It’s an old trick reserved for those allowed to see beneath Vegas’s facade (bodyguards and enemies, usually). He will say something so vile that it dissolves the conversation to silence. But Porsche has grown a thicker skin in the past few months. He stubs out his cigarette.
“You wouldn’t do that to your father’s son, and certainly not Pete’s.” Porsche shrugs. “I can’t think of anything more embarrassing than Pete leaving with Venice to raise him with the main family — which is exactly what’ll happen if you keep saying that shit.”
Vegas feels it like a punch to the gut, but recovers quickly. “As if I would let him leave with Venice,” he growls.
Porsche looks to be about to unpack that when Kinn arrives with refreshments — drinks for everyone (except, quite pointedly, Vegas).
As always, Pete looks hurt and goes inside to make Venice a bottle and Vegas a drink. Vegas almost screams.
Vegas watches through the bars as the thing gurgles and gahs and squirms in its cot. Pete says it looks like Vegas, which can’t be true — Vegas takes after his mother. But Pete looks at the creature the way he looks at Vegas — a soft fondness, a slight wariness.
“I could have bound him in titanium chains and it wouldn’t compare to the hold you have on him. You’ve trapped him. He can’t leave us now, can he?”
The thing keeps wriggling mindlessly.
“He shouldn’t want you,” Vegas spits venomously. “He should have decided you were too much trouble at the hospital and left. Pete should have seen that being involved with our family is poison. You don’t even have anything to make it worth his while — living off Mr Korn’s handouts, nothing to show for your name. He gives and you take. You’re a burden with a vice-like grip, and you’ll ruin his life because he’s the only person in the world capable of loving you. Everyone else left. Everyone who could leave left, and he’s trapped exactly where you want him.”
“Vegas…”
The door, which had been ajar, opens to reveal Pete. Vegas grimaces and braces for disappointment or long awaited anger. Pete has been gentle with him about Venice — patient but firm. It’s about time Pete snapped at him.
Of course, that doesn’t happen. Instead, Pete is on his knees beside Vegas, and then Vegas is engulfed by his embrace.
“No, Vegas,” he says urgently. “You have me, and Macau, and now Venice. You aren’t alone. I’m not trapped.”
Vegas shudders. “I can’t… After everything…”
Vegas can’t say it — not quite. He can’t bring himself to say, I tortured you as an enemy, but hurt you even after we were lovers. Even that seemed impossible to make right. But now you’re held hostage by a baby, and anything I do for you will never compare to your loyalty to us.
“Two months ago, I worked for a family,” Pete whispers. “Now I have one. I like it. I like being your family, Vegas. I feel bound to you — and Venice, and Macau — but not trapped.”
Vegas takes a deep breath and nods.
“I don’t need it tonight,” Pete continues softly, “but it would be easier for me if you treated Venice as your brother, if not… if not as a nephew or a son. He will love us, soon. Children love easily, Vegas.”
Vegas closes his eyes and focuses on Pete’s voice, and on keeping his breaths even. For the first time, he imagines the creature returning Pete’s embrace, and his stomach clenches.
A fleeting image crosses Vegas’s mind, then. A kitchen, a pan. Venice is not a monster nor a baby, but a child, standing atop a step stool so that Vegas can show him how to crack an egg into a pan. The counter-top is messy with his failures, but the room is loud with the sizzling and shrieks of success. When breakfast is plated up, the child will zoom away with it, eager to get it to Pete and emphasise that he did it all by himself (and Porsche will finally be right — Vegas will be jealous of a toddler).
Vegas likes the image, and thinks Pete might too.
Getting up off the floor, Vegas reaches into the cot and plucks the child up into his arms. He’s certain it isn’t comfortable for either of them — that he lacks a knack — but he can see Pete’s smile even in the dark.
I’ll teach him to love you, is what he thinks to say, but doesn’t.
“I’ll try, Pete,” Vegas murmurs as he holds his baby brother for the first time.