Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (classic books for 11 year olds .txt) 📗

neck-deep in bodies, secrets, and getting my first taste of the truth we both know about now.”

Roland shuddered, and for a moment, Milo saw the creature he’d been before: fierce and clever but still fragile, still human. Then Roland shook his head and the gangster-warlord was back, every line of him sharp enough to draw blood.

“I figured Jules was small-timing and looking for a lifeline, but I didn’t want to complicate my life by rejecting him. I know it doesn’t help, but I hardly remember even reading your name until he was telling me you’d gone to the penals. By then, he had some sort of operation running in the workhouse, and I was using that operation to get information to a string of people who were useful to me. I’m sorry, but my hands were tied at that point.”

Milo laughed bitterly and rolled the brandy around the glass once before holding it under his nose.

“Don’t bother,” he muttered as he drew in a breath that put the smell of the liquor at the back of his throat. “At that point, you’d done enough damage that I wasn’t going to make it much longer, even without Jules dogging me.”

Roland finished the last of his tumbler and placed the glass on the floor next to his chair as he sank down into it. He slouched in the high-backed seat and looked at Milo and then away several times.

Milo took a half-swallow of brandy and glared at Roland, willing him to look at him.

Slowly, incrementally, Roland’s gaze slid back to him and stayed there.

“Why did you do it?” Milo asked, the words coming out slow and hard.

Roland’s eyes threatened to dart away under Milo’s watchful stare, but the magus wouldn’t let him. He thought about using the Art, but at that moment, he decided against it. He wanted an answer from his one-time brother, and he didn’t want to muddy the waters with magic.

“Which part are you talking about?” Roland asked. “Why did I lie about you stealing the money? That seems obvious, doesn’t it? I panicked, and I knew it was you or me at that moment.”

Milo shook his head.

“You never panicked before. Even when it was you or me, you’d proved more than once you’d take a bullet for me and me for you. You’re many things, Roland, but a coward isn’t one of them. Never have been.”

Roland’s eyes shone as he stared back at Milo, unwilling or unable to answer for a moment. He tried to smile twice, but both times, the expression crumbled as soon as it began.

“So why, then?” Milo pressed. “Why turn on someone you’d protected from the moment we met? Why turn on the one person who trusted you most?”

“Because you turned on me!” Roland snapped, lunging to the edge of his seat, fingers clawing at the upholstery. “I’d protected you, held you, cared for you, and there I was trying to give you everything you wanted, you needed, and you pushed me away. And that look you gave me! Just like the one you are giving me now!”

Roland snarled and kicked the tumbler at his feet, sending it skittering across the floor as he threw himself back into his chair. His hands rose to his face, where they ground against his eye sockets before raking through his hair.

“I’d given you everything, and you threw it back at me.” Roland sighed and sank into a slouch, elbows on the arms of his chair. “I was hurt and angry, and I wanted to hurt you, punish you for how you’d hurt me. That’s why. It’s not a good answer, but it's the truth.”

Milo looked away, his gaze wandering to the fire as his head spun.

“You were like my brother,” Milo murmured as he looked into the flames. “I trusted you, and you tried to use that trust to turn what we had into something else. Something I never asked for.”

Roland made a disgusted noise in his throat, but Milo couldn’t bring himself to look him in the eye.

“You didn’t ask me to stay in Dresden with you,” Roland said, his voice low and sharp like a knife on the whetstone. “You didn’t ask me to teach you how to throw a punch. You didn’t ask me to explain how to tell real jewelry from paste and cheap glass.”

Milo drew in a breath, his chest feeling tight as his nails dug into the leather arms of his chair.

“What does any of that have to do with this?”

A loud, cutting laugh tore out of Roland with such force Milo couldn’t keep from wincing.

“Everything,” Roland spat, still laughing. “You never had to ask me to take care of you because I always did. You trusted me to give you what you needed, and that’s all I was doing.”

Milo sat up and turned blazing eyes on Roland.

“I didn’t need that! Not from you!”

Unshed tears shone in Roland’s eyes, but the smile from his laugh was still affixed to his face.

“Well, then maybe I needed that,” he said with a brittle giggle, but he stopped with a sniff as he cleared his throat. “What was so wrong with me wanting something for myself for once? After everything I’d given you, would it have been so terrible to let me have that?”

Milo shook his head and stood up, leaving his tumbler on the side table.

“You say that like it was a trinket I could hand over after finding it on the ground,” he growled as he stalked behind his chair. “Do you even know what a relationship is, what love is?”

Roland’s hands were in his hair again, and he looked at Milo from under them.

“No.” He shrugged, shaking his head. “I never had a chance to learn. I was too busy taking care of you.”

The answer struck Milo like a hammer blow, and his hands fell to the back of the chair to brace himself. He looked down at the leather cushion, still deformed from where he’d been sitting, trying to figure