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Macau isn’t a stupid and clueless child like everyone else always seems to think. No, he knew his father had lost his mind when he announced they would be storming the Main Family building.
And he knows his brother and the other isn’t stupid either. He knew Vegas understood the mission to be a suicide. Yet, when Macau had looked at him the other had burned with the desperate need to finally prove himself to their father. Even if it killed him.
He has kept spacing endlessly around the windowless room ever since his brother and father left him there to wait with three armed guards.
There is nothing to do but think in the small room and it’s driving him insane. All he can come up with is horrific images of how things go wrong. Nightmarish scenarios of how he is losing his entire at this very moment and he has no idea. How he can do nothing.
After what feels like an eternity the walkie-talkie on the table comes to life with crackling sound of static. One of the guard’s picks it up, adjust the settings, and steps into the farthest corner possible from Macau.
He can hear what the person on the other end says but he does hear the reply clear as day; “understood. we will bring the boy there.”
Then the man turns to look at Macau and says with a voice avoid of any emotion, “Your father is dead.”
Good, he thinks.
“What about my brother?” He asks but no one answers him.
The guard who answered the walkie-talkie gives a wordless signal to the other two and then he opens the door. The two other unholster their handguns and for a moment Macau wonders if he will soon be dead as well. Instead of shooting him though, they just quietly lead him through the dark and empty building and through the back door to the waiting car outside.
He is pushed to the backseat rather forcefully and the two guards sandwich him on the middle seat. The man on the driver’s seat steps on gas even though the last guard still hasn’t had time to close the door.
No one speaks during the drive through the city.
After multiple traffic violations, the car is parked in front of a hospital. Fear settles as a heavyweight in Macau’s stomach at the sight of the building.
All he knows is that his father has died.
He doesn’t know what happened at the Main Family house. He doesn’t even know if there is anyone else in his family alive. He doesn’t know how many funerals he will be attending to bury people he has known all of his life.
The guards exit the car, their guns ready and Macau doesn’t know what they expect to happen. The hospital parking lot is nearly empty at such a late hour.
The driver holds the door open for Macau and his feet are barely on the ground when one of the guards takes him by the shoulder and starts hauling him towards the entrance doors.
There is only one person waiting in the lobby. It’s his father’s main bodyguard. His gun hand is wrapped in bandages and he has an ugly wound on the left side of his face that barely misses his eye. It looks painful but despite it, the man attempts a smile when he sees Macau.
Sometimes it felt like this man was more of a father to him than his actual father ever was. The man pats him on the shoulder with his unwounded hand.
“What’s going on?” He asks.
The guards he came with stay by the front door with their guns, still alert.
“Khun Korn has made Porsche the head of the Minor Family.”
His feet nearly give out under him and he staggers onto the closest chair. Vegas must be dead. There is no way his brother would otherwise allow that. He has been raised to be the one to lead the Minor Family.
The other must see his panic as he continues hurriedly, “Your brother is still alive.”
Still.
He doesn’t like the sound of that.
“Khun Vegas is in room number seven.”
Macau looks at the signs on the wall – intensive care unit – he has barely time to register that when he is back on his feet. And taking hurried steps in the direction the sign points at.
“Macau – there is something else too,” the man says and it makes him top on his track.
“What?”
“There is someone with him. You will have to ask him what happened but it’s because of him that your brother has a chance.”
He nods, at least he thinks he does, and then he finds himself running. He almost collides with a nurse at the ICU doors and she drops the papers she is carrying to the floor. He doesn’t stop to help her, doesn’t even realize to apologize in his hurry to get to his brother.
His mind is filled with even more gruesome horror images of blood and missing limbs. Still, father’s head bodyguard had said. Vegas is still alive.
The door to room number seven slides open soundlessly. On a chair next to the hospital bed sits someone exactly like he was told to. It’s the man who tortured his brother for days on end with his missing presence.
The only reason Macau doesn’t pull out his gun and shoot Pete right on that spot is that the man is holding onto Vegas’ hand and crying.
Macau isn’t sure how long he stands there until Pete finally notices him. The other blinks a few times, teary-eyed. He never lets go of his brother’s hand.
“Khun Macau,” he croaks out, his voice shaky from his tears.
“What happened?” Macau asks.
Vegas lies on the hospital bed, his face nearly as pale as the white sheets around him. He is connected to multiple devices by a colorful array of wires and there is a tube going down his throat. Despite all of that, he looks almost like he is merely just sleeping.
“It’s my fault,” Pete answers, “I didn’t hear them coming. They shot him.”
His brother was shot. But the rest doesn’t make any sense to him. Why is Pete here? And most importantly, why is he no longer wearing the Main Family pin? He doesn’t ask. Not now.
Instead, he asks, “How is he?”
“The doctors are hopeful.”
An hour later Vegas is wheeled out of the room and into surgery. It takes over six hours to finish and afterward, they are no longer allowed into the room with him. Even the name of Theerapanyakul isn’t enough to make the doctors change their minds.
So, Macau and Pete sit side by side in the hallway and watch Vegas like a hawk. Neither of them is capable of eating or sleeping. Even going to the bathroom down the hall feels difficult.
Macau fears that if he takes his eyes off his brother, it will be the last time he sees him alive.
On the third day in the hospital, Macau is alerted by his own guards that two bodyguards from the Main Family entered the hospital.
He thought they would send more people to kill his brother. But perhaps they didn’t think there was any need for that. The other is unconscious in a hospital bed and wouldn’t be able to put up a fight, it would be easy to finish Vegas off. No one ever stops to consider Macau. They all forget he has teeth too.
He pulls out his gun when the two Main Family guards turn around the corner. But they don’t look at him, or even glance in Vegas’ direction. They are looking at Pete.
And to Macau’s surprise, Pete steps in front of him and thus places himself between his gun and the two of them.
“Arm, Pol,” Pete sounds surprised before his stance turns defensive. “I’m not coming back.”
“We are not here because of that,” the one wearing glasses says and turns to look at Macau, “Khun Macau put the gun down. We are not here to hurt your brother either.”
He lowers the gun but he doesn’t put it away. “Why are you here then?”
“Khun Tankhun is worried Pete isn’t eating well.”
That’s when he notices the basket the other guard, Pol, is carrying. They set it on the empty chair next to Pete and open it to present him with multiple containers of different kinds of food.
Macau sits back down, the gun still resting on his lap. He looks at his brother who is still too pale for him to breathe any easier. It makes him feel bad for every single time he has made his brother worry about him.
He tries to tune out the conversation the three men next to him are quietly having. Macau doesn’t want to know how wonderfully the Main Family is doing after massacring his family. Doesn’t want to know how Porsche is ruining everything their family has ever accomplished in mere hours.
“There is enough food for you too, Khun Macau,” Pete suddenly says and places one of the food containers into his hands.
He accepts it, wordlessly, because this man left the Main Family for his brother.
After that day Arm and Pol bring food to Pete once every day. They will sit down and chat with him as the other eats. He seems livelier every time the two come to visit. Macau wonders if this smiling Pete is anything like the Pete his brother fell in love with.
“Khun Tankhun wants to see you,” Pol says, Macau hearing the words even though he doesn’t want to.
Even though Tankhun might be the most tolerable of his cousins – right now just hearing his name makes his blood boil.
Before he has time to object though, Pete answers; “I made my decision; I am not going back.”
“He knows that,” Arm says, “he just wants to see with his own eyes that you are doing well.”
Macau’s heart aches for a moment. No one wants to see him to know how he is doing. Not that he wants to see anyone from the Main Family, but they still share the same last name. They are his family even if he has spent most of his life wishing they weren’t.
His brother is all he has left and the other is clinging onto his life behind the glass window. Close, but too far to touch.
Pete watches Vegas for a long time before answering this time, “I am not ready.”
It makes it easier, somehow. Pete refuses to see his cousin.
It’s the 8th day since Vegas was admitted to the hospital when they move him from the ICU to a regular hospital room. The doctors tell Macau he is doing better even though he has no visible proof of that. His brother is still unaware of everything happening around him.
They take out the tube going down his throat and replace it with an oxygen mask. It fails to make him look any more alive. His cheeks are hollow and lack any color.
When Arm and Pol come by that day, Macau refuses to let them into the room.
Yes, they have been a good friend to Pete and taken care of him. But they are still working for the Main Family. It was different when no one but doctors and nurses were allowed into the room. Macau won’t take any risks.
After some convincing Pete leaves the room with the other two. He lingers by the door for a moment before leaving, his eyes glued to the man on the bed. The door closes quietly behind him.
Only a moment later Vegas’ heart rate drops and one of the machines starts beeping loudly. A nurse rushes into the room, another one following closely in her footsteps. They speak to each other in words that sounds like another language to him.
“What’s going on?” Macau asks but the two don’t pay attention to him.
The nurse fills a syringe and pushes something into Vegas’ upper arm. Then the three of them stand still and wait as the line on the heart monitor slowly climbs back up to the normal rhythm.
Afterward, a doctor comes to speak with him and tells him it’s normal. Vegas was shot and his body is working hard to repair all the damage. It’s tiring work and it will take a while for all of his vital functions to return to normal.
Macau thanks the doctor but he knows what the real reason is. It can’t be a coincidence it happened just a moment after Pete left the room.
When the other man returns Macau doesn’t say a word about what happened. He doesn’t say a word even though it happens every time Pete leaves the room.
“How did you do it?” Macau finally asks one day.
“Did what?” Pete asks.
“Left the Main Family.”
They both know you don’t just leave in this line of business. When you enter the world of Theerapanyakul’s you get a roof over your head and you will never have to go hungry. That’s more than most had before they joined the family. And the last ones are convinced by the pay that is large enough to send some back home too.
All you have to give in return is your life.
When you sign the contract, you become the property of Theerapanyakyl’s until the day you die – and oftentimes even after that. Most never get to go back to their families or get proper funerals.
Macau can’t even remember anymore how many personal guards he has lost because they dared to entertain the thought of getting out of there alive. Every time his father would agree and when they turned around to leave the man would shoot them in the back.
Pete considers for a long while and then says, “I don’t know.”
Macau believes him.
“Do you love my brother?”
“Yes.”
“You love him now but what about next year? In ten years?”
Pete opens his mouth to answer but Macau won’t let him as he continues, “What about when he won’t let you be friends with Porsche anymore? When he won’t let you see Arm and Pol and let alone Tankhun?”
The other looks at him, his mouth half open but the words die on his tongue. He seems almost surprised about Macau’s outburst.
“What about when he kills someone just because they happened to look at you in a certain way? What about when he kills Porsche because he will do anything to get the Minor Family ring back to us?”
People always underestimate him. They look at him and see only a child and forget he was raised by the same father as Vegas. He is cruel just like his brother is and he has never known how to be anything else.
“What about when he will lose his mind trying to seek his dead father’s approval?”
Macau wants to make sure Pete knows what a horrible human being his brother and he wants to know the other will love him despite all of that. He needs the other to know that the other will stay – forever.
“Will you still love him then, Pete?”
“Yes.”
It’s just a moment but Macau catches onto that hesitation; the way the first letter of the word wavers in the other’s mouth. For a second Pete had hesitated.
That is enough for him to make his decision. He knows his brother.
A few days later Pete agrees to meet with Tankhun. Macau insists that it happens away from the hospital grounds. He doesn’t want his cousin, even Tankhun, anywhere near the building his brother is in.
He watches until Pete disappears down the stairs before he returns back to Vegas’ bedside. His heart rate drops on the machine next to the bed but it doesn’t start beeping this time. The line climbs back up before dropping too low again. Again it climbs back down before the machine starts yelling.
Macau knows his brother. He knows there is no point for Vegas to survive death if loving Pete is going to kill him anyway.
Pete had hesitated and that hesitation would kill Vegas. He would hold his breath and wait for the day the other finally sees him who he truly is and leaves him. Maybe it wouldn’t happen next year or in ten years but it would happen. And that wait would torment his brother until the day the other finally leaves him – if he doesn’t go insane before that.
Macau loves his brother. He loves him in the only way he knows – to the point of insanity.
For a long time, he just stares at his brother. Tries to memorize every single detail of his face all the while hoping he won’t remember this face. Macau wants to remember his brother like he has known him all of his life. Confident. Handsome. Larger than life.
Vegas was always a good brother to him. Always trying to shield him from the fury of their father and the horrors of the world they live in. But he is older now and their father is dead.
“Don’t worry, I can take care of myself now,” he promises.
Macau turns the machine next to the bed off. To his own surprise, his hands do not shake as he does so. The room feels deafeningly quiet after the constant beeping, which has been the only proof he has had of life, suddenly stops.
Now it’s his turn to be a good brother. He will give Vegas the only thing no other Theerapanyakul will ever have. He will let his brother go without pain. He will give his brother a good death, a painless one.
“Hia,” he whispers, “go knowing he loves you.”
Part of him hopes Pete will follow him to the afterlife. But even if he doesn’t, Macau breathes easier knowing his brother will never have to doubt the one good thing he had in his life. That he will never have to go on living worrying when he will lose the love he found.
He removes the oxygen mask from his face.
Then he sits down and holds onto Vegas’ hand. He watches how his brother’s chest rises and falls in a slow rhythm. He waits and watches for his brother to take his last breath.
Because Macau knows that sometimes death is kindness.
After Vegas Theerapanyakul passes away peacefully in his own hospital bed, Macau places the oxygen mask back in its place. He turns the heart monitor back on and watches how it immediately flatlines and the machine starts beeping loudly.
Then he rushes to the door, shoving it open with such force it slams against the wall and he screams for help.
A few nurses hurry into the room, yelling orders at each other. He is thankful to all of them for trying to save his brother’s life. He is thankful that these strangers cared for him all this time.
Macau's legs give out under him and he collapses against a wall. Tears fill his eyes, turning everything blurry and he cannot stop them from falling down his cheeks. He cries for his brother who he loved enough to let go.
“Khun Macau?”
One of the nurses stops in front of him after what feels like an eternity. Really it can’t have been longer than few minutes. The nurse is an older woman with a kind face. She smiles at him warmly but her eyes are pitying. He wonders if she knows he just lost the last family he had left.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she says.
She pats his hair like he is still a little kid and lets him cry against her shoulder. The realization that he doesn’t remember the last time he hugged someone makes him cry even harder.
When Pete finally comes back, the room is quiet once more. There is a nurse who is unhooking Vegas from the last of the wires still connected to his body. His hands have been crossed on his chest and he looks more peaceful than Macau has ever seen him before.
Before leaving the room, the nurse places a white sheet into his hands and she too says, “I am sorry for your loss, Khun Macau.”
He hugs the sheet close to his chest as he bows down, resting his forehead against Vegas’. I am sorry, he thinks, for never being able to do more for you. Thank you, he thinks, for always being a good brother.
Macau hopes that in some other life, they can be brothers again.
Until then, he will love Vegas as he always has. In the same way, Pete will always love him. Vegas Theerapanyakul will remain unchanging as will their love for him. His brother will rest easy knowing that. He won’t be lonely like he has been all of his life.
Instead of covering his brother with the white sheet he offers it to Pete who still stands by the door, rooted in his place. His eyes are full of unshed tears.
“Say your goodbyes,” he places the sheet in the other’s shaking hands.
Pete doesn’t meet his gaze, instead, he stares at the white fabric like it’s a ghost. In a way it is.
“Why?”
“Because he loved you. And you loved him.”
This is the one thing Macau can do for Pete.